Lönnrot is still there, in front of the others, but somehow the fish skin is almost entirely transparent now. The combinations of shadow and flesh become between instants not four figures disentwining themselves but five arranged along an axis. She can see the bones in Lönnrot’s ribs, and through them she can see Berihun Bekele, the lines of his much older face sketching themselves on to Constantine Kyriakos, and behind them all the handsome, high cheekbones of Athenais Karthagonensis, and all of them together, moving about their tasks, somehow create the stable image of a woman lying in a chair just like the one Neith herself occupies: a ballsy, lined face and big librarian’s hands, unruly hair and eyes that miss nothing.