ELIZA WENT ON WITH FURTHER interrogations. Jack heard not a word of it, as he was making observations of this pond, and of the mostly abandoned village that crowded along one shore of it. He paid particular attention to a gossamer-thread of smoke that rose and piled up against some invisible barrier in the atmosphere above. It was coming from a lean-to thrown up against the wall of an old collapsed house. A dog whined somewhere. The scrub between the pond and a nearby forest was scored with various trails cutting purposefully toward water's edge, and the forest itself trapped in a miasma of smoke and vapors.