"The monolith in Pannonia is in present-day Hungary."

“I see. And Wazeba’s Obelisk?”

"The Obelisk of Axum."

Nod. “Thank you again, Brother.” Araari scribbles a short summary in Oromo, this being the one of her languages with the fewest speakers, so she can trust her memory of the book when she returns to tell the rest of the group, and then returns the book. “I will pray for your safety and intentions.”

"And yours as well."

Oswald, meanwhile, is sleeping in and regretting his decision.

He is trudging through the Georgia swamp behind Carrie when the ground opens up beneath her, the water rushing into a hole in the ground, lined with yellow, human teeth — dozens and dozens of teeth. For a moment, Carrie is falling feet-first into this hole, but then the mouth snaps shut, chewing her in half in three terrible bites. She screams, blood spraying from her mouth. The swamp-water-filled mouth gurgles out a scream. He snaps out of sleep with a start, all but screaming himself.

Mordred is going off to develop Magnificence's photos.

In addition to several blurry photographs of his own feet, the tent, and the desert, Magnificence took pictures of what is recognizably the inside of the Obelisk of Axum.

Mordred sees that there was once writing on the inside of the Obelisk, but someone had scraped nearly all of it off.

GOOD picture. 😇

Whoa.

He also sees a cartouche written in some language he does not speak.

They are really remarkably aesthetically pleasing pictures for a monkey. He could probably display them in a New York gallery.

Anemone will LIKE this picture.

When you return, Lev is at the tent, with a very unusual aura of misery.

Or at least unusual since his visit to New York.

"Where's Anemone? How is she? Did you get her to a doctor?"

"She... didn't make it."

".............oh."

This doesn't make sense. Anemone is not the sort of person who just dies.

Zoe sinks to the floor and stares off into nothingness, trying to make a world in which Anemone is dead make sense.

Oswald starts silently weeping. He doesn't seem to realize that he's doing it until it starts actively choking him up.

He is going to give Oswald a hug. "She didn't even make it to Massaua. She died... less than a day after we left."

Now Zoe also starts crying.

Pat pat pat the sad human. He is sad that Anemone is not back yet, too! But she will be back soon.

Anemone always comes back.

"She wanted me to cremate her body, so I did." His voice seems kind of distant, like he's reciting facts that happened to someone else. "So everyone can carry around a piece of Anemone with them-- us, and the circus, and anyone else who needs it. Her heart didn't burn, so I buried it in Massaua."

Zoe remembers the last time she saw Anemone, weak and shivering and clinging to Lev on the bike, and squeezes her eyes shut at the idea that that will be last time she saw Anemone, ever.

Aha. Mordred isn't sure he believes that's true but it's exactly the kind of story Anemone would come up with. He kind of loves it.

This makes three gone, now.

It does not even occur to Zoe to question it. It seems appropriate.

Carrie and Lacie and Anemone. All of them are gone now and Zoe feels responsible in some way for each.

Now she is responsible for... Magnificence. And carrying on Anemone's work, although she doesn't have the mind for it the way Anemone did. Mordred and Oswald and Lev will hopefully be able to do most of the thinking, and Zoe can just... take care of Magnificence. And stand watch with her shotgun and not let anything happen to anyone else.

"What she said when she died is-- This is how the story goes. The evil thing doesn't get to eat everyone. It eats two or three or four people, but it doesn't eat everyone, and the story goes on. The band finds a way. Sometimes it's hard. But stories are the records of the ways we found to survive. All the ancient peoples we're looking at are peoples who survived. They put down the Thing with a Thousand Mouths, and we can too. And her notes are another piece of the story. Of how we survive. All it takes is practice to make the story come out right." He starts crying halfway through the sentence. "We don't-- tell stories the way a god told us to. We practiced and refined them over thousands of years, like the tarot cards. We are ephemeral. Not like the gods. Not as old as them. But they are always the same. And we can change our stories from one era to the next. Make them better. Yesterday and today and tomorrow the gods are always the same. Not like us. We grow."