Excerpt from THE THIRD MESSIAH

A rectangle of light appeared in the angular silhouette of the farmstead. People appeared. Rosina heard the sound of an engine being started.

She glanced at the maps, but they suddenly made no sense. She just had to use intuition. There was a path ahead, which she took. It ended almost at once in a maize field, which she began blundering through, the maize poking at her, like little imps armed with pikes.

Then she was out in open land again; she stopped for a moment to get her bearings; those vehicle headlights must be the main road. They seemed a world away, but at least she was headed in the right direction. How far away were they? A kilometre? Two kilometres?

‘It went that way!’ someone shouted.

Get across this field before they see you!

Rosina began to run again, mud now grabbing at her feet. She was almost half way across the field, when she realized that at the far end there was a ditch.

‘I’ll jump it,’ she told herself – till she reached the bank. It was the river she had crossed on her way here. At least five metres wide. Five metres of swirling, busy liquid darkness, darkness that would be near freezing – and that she couldn’t have swum even if it were warm and lazing along.

So where was the bridge she’d come by? Nowhere.

Rosina began running along the bank, till she came to another ditch, at right angles to the first one, but just as wide, boxing her in. Now should she follow this new ditch or admit her error and return to where she’d first hit the river, and try the other way? Her mind was made up by the sight of a torch flashing in the night and the sound of people entering the maize. This new ditch would take her straight back to them. So she ran all the way back to where she’d first hit the river, and on – but still no bridge. Then she saw another dyke ahead of her, and her confusion began to turn to despair. Boxed in on three sides by water, and on the other by people who thought she was a demon.

She ran up to this new obstruction, anyway. And she stood and stared at it. And told herself that it was narrower than the other two dykes, which it clearly was, and that it if she put everything into it, she could jump it.

No time for doubt. Rosina retreated five or so steps, then a few more: she took a deep, deep breath – ‘Over there!’ someone cried – and ran. And slammed her foot into the dyke bank; and threw herself into the air, willing herself to fly. Time seemed to stop.

Then the bank was rushing towards her, then her feet were hitting the earth and her hands grabbing fistfuls of grass, then she was scuffing the water with one of her flailing boots, then scrabbling up the bank, then dragging herself to her feet, then running again. Running, along the bank of that vile river that still cut her off from the road, but at least free from that terrible three-sided trap.

And then she saw the bridge.

‘Thank you,’ she said. (To whom? To Marx? To Ye Huo Hua?). But then that gratitude evaporated, as she saw it wasn’t a bridge but a pipe. A round metal pipe.

For a moment, Rosina gave in to despair. It would be covered in ice, she would slip and fall and…

‘Kill the demon!’

She walked up to the pipe and put a hand on it. It didn’t feel cold, and certainly not icy. Something must run through it that kept it warm. The surface was rough, too. She could walk on it.

Rosina glanced up at the road ahead – headlights and safety – then scrambled up on to the pipe and took a first step.

Then another.

A third step, and she was over the water. The moon was down there, fixing her with its rippling cold white eye.

Sometimes they had drowned people brought into the hospital, from Beihai or Houhai or the Tonghui River. They were cold and white, too.

Another step.