There was a boat, a metal-hulled antique some forty feet long.

Shadrapar was its birthplace, as it is mine, but it took us east down the river into the unmappable and hungry jungles. The thump of its engine was a constant companion to all of us aboard her. We dreamed in time to its artificial heartbeat.

I take you to the point in time when that indefatigable engine proved mortal after all, and was stilled.

The boat was listing as the current took it gently towards the bank behind us, and the river – my first sight of it – was wider than I had expected. It was opaque, brown with silt, loose vegetation and the reflection of the jungle.

Stefan Advani

I’d have you picture a man of aristocratic feature, as of a good family: a long face, dark straight hair and brown-olive skin. A high forehead – a sign of intellect and not just, as Helman always claimed, receding hairline. The nose is finely shaped but, even in the owner’s opinion, a trifle long. Eternally clean-shaven, a gift from my genes, my loose, ill-fitting clothing is dirty grey and does not flatter. This is your narrator contemplating the fate that was so nearly his, something I have made a career of.

Peter Drachmar

…seen there on deck, is quite a different sight. His hair is the colour of wet sand and there are laughter lines on his face even when he is not laughing. He has broader shoulders than I and wears clothes from a far better tailor. Luckily for his future employment, black is his preferred hue for a shirt. His trousers are of mustard colour and he has a short half-cloak of burgundy red that was the height of fashion the year before last. It is edged with gold trim that has faded slightly. If my description of him is more accurate, remember that, from this point on, I seldom crossed paths with a mirror.

Whether the eyeless creature took him, or some other unseen river horror, I never knew…

…but it was just as I imagined. The sudden break in the man’s swimming, the moment of confusion, and then he was gone and there were only the ripples.

So, in the aftermath of that, picture those same two men sitting across a small table, playing chess, I thinking only that if I so much as displeased the man across from me I would be back in the company of my fellow prisoners.

“They call them web-children,” the captain told us shortly.

“Who calls what web-children?” Peter asked.

“Them things that built that,” the captain explained. “They live out here.”

“People live in this jungle?” Peter wondered.

“Ain’t people.”