Far Cry
I was sitting on the ground, straight up against something rigid, my head was hanging, my chin on my chest. I smelled smoke and heard the snap and hiss of a fire. I’d been asleep and didn’t want to wake up but had to know where the fire was, so I opened my eyes. I saw my hands lying loosely in my lap. My legs were sticking straight out in front of me like a doll’s and my ankles were tied. I saw that I was wearing Jake’s boots and a pair of his thick woollen socks.
I raised my head, it hurt terribly to do it, and saw that, yes, there was a fire in front of me, not too close, but not that far away. It was a small, tame fire, quietly burning on the ground. People were standing around it. They seemed unnaturally tall, and for a moment I thought I was dreaming and was relieved. I then realised they seemed large because I was on the ground and they were standing. A few were moving about slowly, almost lazily, spreading things on the ground by the fire. Someone tossed in a small branch, sparks rose.
The people didn’t seem to know I was there. I was thirsty. I tried to say something, but couldn’t. Something bitter came into my throat and I had to cough it up. Coughing made a pain rise in my head like a demon pounding on my skull from the inside. When I held myself still, it subsided somewhat.
The people were settling themselves around the fire. I tried to count them, but was unable to. There weren’t that many, as far as I could tell, fewer than ten. I was very thirsty. I tried to lift my arm to gesture to them, but found that both arms were tied against my body. Then I realised that my body was tied to a tree, my back rammed up against the trunk, with ropes going around and around my torso. The people sitting around that fire had to be the ones who’d tied me to the tree.
My breathing got fast and my heart felt strange in my chest. At least I believe this is how it was. I’m struggling now to recall as much as I can of these events, as I struggled then to stay conscious and make sense of it all. I was determined to put together, piece by piece, the particulars of my situation. I had to wake up.
I had to keep my eyes on those people. The fire’s light didn’t spread far and it was night. I saw colours moving the way water moves, in and out of deep shadows, punctuated by the articulation of an arm, a head turning, someone rising, going into the dark, someone returning from the dark. But I could see nothing that told me who those people were. Something was wrong with my eyes. I blinked and squinted, blinked and squinted harder though it hurt like hell. I forced myself to stare through the murk and distortions. I kept at it until, bit by bit, I understood that those people around the fire, those people who’d tied me to that tree, were Indians. I’d seen Indians, and those were Indians. I’d been captured by Indians.
I don’t remember exactly how I felt. Knowing myself as I do now, I imagine I was stunned, yet removed. Is this what’s happened to me? Truly? It was like something out of someone else’s story, I’d heard many. But here I was, tied to a tree, and there were the Indians, sitting around the fire. I was a captive, those people were my captors, and there was no escape.
They’re going to kill me. I won’t let them, I told myself. I’ll make myself die before they do it in some hideous way. I was certain they were waiting for a larger audience to do the unspeakable things I’d heard of. I’d stop my breath, stop my heart. I’d will myself dead. But I thought of my mother. I had to see my mother again. I will stay alive. One way or another. I will keep my wits about me and I will stay alive.
Then one of them stood. I watched him walk towards me, silhouetted against the firelight, coming closer and closer, until he was right in front of me and I could see nothing else. He was holding something metal. He’s going to cut my throat. I pushed my spine into the tree trunk, turned my head sharply away and forced a howl out of my mouth. He put his hand on my jaw and began to turn my face front. I tried to bite him. He laughed and spoke to me as if I were a skittish horse. I made myself look. There was the hand at the end of a red sleeve, but no knife. He was urging me to drink from a metal cup. I felt the cool edge of it against my lower lip. Water. He slowly tipped the cup and I finished it. He turned back to the others. I watched as they arranged their blankets and then lay down by the dwindling fire. What happened? How did I get here?
I was lying on my horse with my arm hanging down, stroking him. I thought I’d been hurt and he was taking me home. Then I realised it wasn’t Pegasus, I was on some other horse, was tied to it. I was horrified for my horse. But what came before this? Before the horse? Plums. What? Stupid! Think harder. A bright sky. The smell of smoke. Yes. The sound of something shattering close by my ear. Yes.Yes. Go deeper.
The sound of shattering came back over and over. I wanted to shut it out, it stirred up such fear in me that I couldn’t breathe properly. But I had to know what it was, it seemed somehow the key, so I let it come and come and come, with greater and greater intensity, until I was so terrified by it that I pissed myself. Oddly, the letting go, the warmth of it between my legs, feeling it seep through my skirts, sitting there in the cooling wetness of my piss eliminated any remaining confusion about my condition. It brought back the thing that explained the sound, that told me how I’d gotten there.
The wild plums were ripe. I’d walked out of the dugout, around behind it, up over the crest of the hill and then down the long slope to the creek where there the plums grew thick. I heard my skirt swishing in the grass, the crunch of my husband’s boots, the ping of my wedding ring striking grass seeds. The sun was going down behind the hill in back of me and it was already shadowy along the creek. The creek water didn’t move fast, but it moved and made a pleasant sound.
The air buzzed with cicadas. A red-winged blackbird called. I filled the basket with plums, stood for a bit among the trees watching the water. Then I turned and began walking back up the hill with the basket of fruit in the crook of my left arm, my carbine in my right.
The sun had just dropped behind the ridge and tall spears of grass were sharp black against the yellow sky. I thought I smelled smoke on the breeze, and as I was wondering about this, thin black swirls started rising from the other side of the hill. I stood transfixed as the swirls thickened, the smell became unmistakeable, it was smoke, more and more of it. The dugout! Pegasus! I began to run, tripping on my skirts, I grabbed them up and ran harder.
Just short of the crest, at the steepest part of the hill, they sprang up out of the grass right in front of me. Four of them — black against the sky — as if the earth had just spit them up from its bowels. I raised the gun but one of them wrenched it from my hand. I saw his hair flying, the arc of his arm as it rose and rose and then came down.
That shattering was the sound of bones breaking. Mine, the bones of my face.
I’d been a girl gathering plums. Demeter’s daughter was a girl gathering flowers when Hades rose up from a crack in the earth and took her. That’s what happened. They rose up in front of me, cracked my head, and took me. They dragged me away face down through the grass as I reached for the plums.
These are my first memories of captivity. The men around the fire — a small band of Lakota, as I later learned — took me just after sunset on a September afternoon in 1866. I was nineteen years old.
© Sigrid Heath 2020
This story is the first chapter of Far Cry, a novel by Sigrid Heath, Epigraph Publishing 2020
I was sitting on the ground, straight up against something rigid, my head was hanging, my chin on my chest. I smelled smoke and heard the snap and hiss of a fire. I’d been asleep and didn’t want to wake up but had to know where the fire was, so I opened my eyes. I saw my hands lying loosely in my lap. My legs were sticking straight out in front of me like a doll’s and my ankles were tied. I saw that I was wearing Jake’s boots and a pair of his thick woollen socks.
I raised my head, it hurt terribly to do it, and saw that, yes, there was a fire in front of me, not too close, but not that far away. It was a small, tame fire, quietly burning on the ground. People were standing around it. They seemed unnaturally tall, and for a moment I thought I was dreaming and was relieved. I then realised they seemed large because I was on the ground and they were standing. A few were moving about slowly, almost lazily, spreading things on the ground by the fire. Someone tossed in a small branch, sparks rose.
The people didn’t seem to know I was there. I was thirsty. I tried to say something, but couldn’t. Something bitter came into my throat and I had to cough it up. Coughing made a pain rise in my head like a demon pounding on my skull from the inside. When I held myself still, it subsided somewhat.
The people were settling themselves around the fire. I tried to count them, but was unable to. There weren’t that many, as far as I could tell, fewer than ten. I was very thirsty. I tried to lift my arm to gesture to them, but found that both arms were tied against my body. Then I realised that my body was tied to a tree, my back rammed up against the trunk, with ropes going around and around my torso. The people sitting around that fire had to be the ones who’d tied me to the tree.
My breathing got fast and my heart felt strange in my chest. At least I believe this is how it was. I’m struggling now to recall as much as I can of these events, as I struggled then to stay conscious and make sense of it all. I was determined to put together, piece by piece, the particulars of my situation. I had to wake up.
I had to keep my eyes on those people. The fire’s light didn’t spread far and it was night. I saw colours moving the way water moves, in and out of deep shadows, punctuated by the articulation of an arm, a head turning, someone rising, going into the dark, someone returning from the dark. But I could see nothing that told me who those people were. Something was wrong with my eyes. I blinked and squinted, blinked and squinted harder though it hurt like hell. I forced myself to stare through the murk and distortions. I kept at it until, bit by bit, I understood that those people around the fire, those people who’d tied me to that tree, were Indians. I’d seen Indians, and those were Indians. I’d been captured by Indians.
I don’t remember exactly how I felt. Knowing myself as I do now, I imagine I was stunned, yet removed. Is this what’s happened to me? Truly? It was like something out of someone else’s story, I’d heard many. But here I was, tied to a tree, and there were the Indians, sitting around the fire. I was a captive, those people were my captors, and there was no escape.
They’re going to kill me. I won’t let them, I told myself. I’ll make myself die before they do it in some hideous way. I was certain they were waiting for a larger audience to do the unspeakable things I’d heard of. I’d stop my breath, stop my heart. I’d will myself dead. But I thought of my mother. I had to see my mother again. I will stay alive. One way or another. I will keep my wits about me and I will stay alive.
Then one of them stood. I watched him walk towards me, silhouetted against the firelight, coming closer and closer, until he was right in front of me and I could see nothing else. He was holding something metal. He’s going to cut my throat. I pushed my spine into the tree trunk, turned my head sharply away and forced a howl out of my mouth. He put his hand on my jaw and began to turn my face front. I tried to bite him. He laughed and spoke to me as if I were a skittish horse. I made myself look. There was the hand at the end of a red sleeve, but no knife. He was urging me to drink from a metal cup. I felt the cool edge of it against my lower lip. Water. He slowly tipped the cup and I finished it. He turned back to the others. I watched as they arranged their blankets and then lay down by the dwindling fire. What happened? How did I get here?
I was lying on my horse with my arm hanging down, stroking him. I thought I’d been hurt and he was taking me home. Then I realised it wasn’t Pegasus, I was on some other horse, was tied to it. I was horrified for my horse. But what came before this? Before the horse? Plums. What? Stupid! Think harder. A bright sky. The smell of smoke. Yes. The sound of something shattering close by my ear. Yes.Yes. Go deeper.
The sound of shattering came back over and over. I wanted to shut it out, it stirred up such fear in me that I couldn’t breathe properly. But I had to know what it was, it seemed somehow the key, so I let it come and come and come, with greater and greater intensity, until I was so terrified by it that I pissed myself. Oddly, the letting go, the warmth of it between my legs, feeling it seep through my skirts, sitting there in the cooling wetness of my piss eliminated any remaining confusion about my condition. It brought back the thing that explained the sound, that told me how I’d gotten there.
The wild plums were ripe. I’d walked out of the dugout, around behind it, up over the crest of the hill and then down the long slope to the creek where there the plums grew thick. I heard my skirt swishing in the grass, the crunch of my husband’s boots, the ping of my wedding ring striking grass seeds. The sun was going down behind the hill in back of me and it was already shadowy along the creek. The creek water didn’t move fast, but it moved and made a pleasant sound.
The air buzzed with cicadas. A red-winged blackbird called. I filled the basket with plums, stood for a bit among the trees watching the water. Then I turned and began walking back up the hill with the basket of fruit in the crook of my left arm, my carbine in my right.
The sun had just dropped behind the ridge and tall spears of grass were sharp black against the yellow sky. I thought I smelled smoke on the breeze, and as I was wondering about this, thin black swirls started rising from the other side of the hill. I stood transfixed as the swirls thickened, the smell became unmistakeable, it was smoke, more and more of it. The dugout! Pegasus! I began to run, tripping on my skirts, I grabbed them up and ran harder.
Just short of the crest, at the steepest part of the hill, they sprang up out of the grass right in front of me. Four of them — black against the sky — as if the earth had just spit them up from its bowels. I raised the gun but one of them wrenched it from my hand. I saw his hair flying, the arc of his arm as it rose and rose and then came down.
That shattering was the sound of bones breaking. Mine, the bones of my face.
I’d been a girl gathering plums. Demeter’s daughter was a girl gathering flowers when Hades rose up from a crack in the earth and took her. That’s what happened. They rose up in front of me, cracked my head, and took me. They dragged me away face down through the grass as I reached for the plums.
These are my first memories of captivity. The men around the fire — a small band of Lakota, as I later learned — took me just after sunset on a September afternoon in 1866. I was nineteen years old.
© Sigrid Heath 2020
This story is the first chapter of Far Cry, a novel by Sigrid Heath, Epigraph Publishing 2020
Narrated by Sigrid Heath.
Narrated by Sigrid Heath.
TN: Hi Sigrid, it’s great to talk to you. I feel we’ve met before, though we never have. I know you and Brent go back a ways.You somehow have a presence here in Woodstock, while living on the Greek Island of Paros. What’s your secret?
SH: Well, I lived in Woodstock and environs for quite a while, from the fall of 1983 until about 2009, and I was very active in the arts community. I was also… I’m lucky, I made wonderful friends there with whom I’ve been able to stay in touch over the years.
BR: It’s great to hear your voice again, Sigrid. We just heard the first chapter of your novel Far Cry, published in April of this year. Without giving too much away, can you tell us what the rest of the book is about?
SH: Oh, Brent, that is a hard question—what is the book about? (laughs) I don’t have an elevator pitch, no simple one-sentence answer, nothing that would make any sense, so I’ll give you a very brief synopsis. Shortly after that first scene that we just heard, Sarah, the narrator, sees that another woman has also been captured—Elizabeth. After a while, they learn that Far Cry, the chief of the small band of Lakota, the man in the red shirt who captured them, intends to use them in a hostage exchange. Sarah and Elizabeth end up traveling with the band for a year. During this time the two become very close, as you can imagine. But the friendship is challenged when Sarah falls in love with Far Cry, and with the culture, and begins to assimilate. Elizabeth, defiantly, does not. She has a husband and children at home near Fort Laramie, and she thinks of nothing but rescue and return. When George Armstrong Custer rides in with the Seventh Cavalry to retrieve the captives, Sarah tries to escape, and in the ensuing violence, her horse is shot out from under her and she’s badly injured. So this rescue, and the return to white culture, means something very different to each of these women. The story then follows Sarah back to her Virginia plantation home. Her parents have both died during her captivity and she has to settle the estate. She’s confronted by her former slave, the strong and very wonderful character of Ruth, who tells her the true nature of her family’s involvement in the trafficking of slaves. Sarah is shocked out of what she realizes was her own willful, deliberate ignorance of the rampant racial hatred in which she was raised, and its effect on people she’d come to love and respect. So, what’s the book about? Well, one major theme throughout it all would be Sarah’s struggle to live honorably in a country that is evolving through violence.
TN: It strikes me that there’s something archetypical about tales of women getting abducted. You mention Persephone and Hades—a myth tied to the seasons. It’s very old and ingrained. It happened a long time ago. It happened all through the histories of many cultures. It’s still happening now. Were you conscious of this historical weight when you wrote the book? Is that part of its meaning?
SH: No, no, I wasn’t conscious of anything like that—certainly not at first. I was intrigued by this extraordinary friendship, but then the characters took over, and I became intimately, and in fact viscerally, involved in the details of their lived lives, over many years during the latter part of the Indian Wars in the West, and the continuing depredations against Black people in the South. In fact, I was close to finishing the book—I’d done a great deal of research—before I articulated, even to myself, anything about its having historical weight.
BR: Some people would say it just comes down to sex. Kill the men and spare the women, then have children with them. Is this a side-effect of patriarchal societies? Or is there something deeper going on—something unconscious and more primal, like the survival of genes?
SH: I think, at the core, it’s absolutely primal—kill the men and enslave the women, as you can read in the literature of ancient Greece. Euripides’ Trojan Women is a perfect telling of this. What better way to annihilate your enemy and take his territory? In the wild, male lions will kill the cubs of a rival in order to impregnate the female. Power and dominance—we humans have refined it. The enemy must be dehumanized, the men emasculated, the entire race hated. But it’s interesting, as James Baldwin wrote in The Fire Next Time, the flip side of this hatred is pain. I’m wondering if perhaps he meant the pain, the loneliness, of having to forever defend your supremacy. And the knowledge, at least on some deep level, that it’s a lie.
TN: On the surface it’s a historical novel, set in America after the civil war during the expansion westwards. A time of great displacement. Are you, in some ways, making a comment on today’s world? Are there parallels?
SH: Oh, I think there are clear parallels, many of them. For example, when witnessing the signing of the 1868 Fort Laramie treaty, Sarah is told of an atrocity perpetrated by the army against a group of friendly Cheyenne. Now this had happened many many years earlier. Sarah didn’t understand how potent this incident still was among the Indians. She said, “But that was a long time ago.” Her friend corrected her, telling her that in these matters, everything is now. And I think this is till true. We in the United States have a legacy of racial violence; it’s in our collective DNA. And I believe it’s reached critical mass. We’re seeing the proof of it all over the country. In the novel, Sarah sees this brutality at close hand, in the South and in the West of the mid to late 1800s. She feels complicit.
BR: What led you to write this story? Do you have some family history around these times and events?
SH: No, but there’s definitely an affinity I can’t quite explain. As a kid, I was drawn to novels about the frontier experience—The Last of the Mohicans, The Little House on the Prairie books of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Jack London’s books, Willa Cather’s, many others. And I’ve driven back and forth across the States about four times or so, taking different routes, and was always most affected by the northern plains and the mountains. But I never lived there. Maybe in a former life.
TN: Not that it’s apparent in an audio version of this story but I notice your text uses Anglo-English spelling, rather than American English. Yet your novel is very much an American story. Are you English or American?
SH: I’m an American, as you can tell by my speech (laughs). But my computer, which I bought in Greece, speaks Anglo-English. I didn’t notice it for a long time, probably because the books I read can just as easily be one as the other.
BR: This is your first novel, though you have written plays. How have you found the publishing experience?
SH: Fabulous, actually. I self-published through Epigraph Books in Rhinebeck, NY. There’s far less stigma now regarding this than there used to be. You know, I’m 73, I didn’t have time to send this book out over and over again to get an agent, and then a publisher, while making some sort of sculpture with the rejection letters. I worked hard on this book for a very long time, and when it was finally done this past April, and I could see its timeliness, I wanted it out there. Working with Epigraph felt like a collaboration, along with the artist, my dear friend Carol Zaloom, who did the cover and some evocative interior images. And together, I think we made a beautiful book.
BR: What are you working on these days?
SH: To be honest, Brent, I’m just beginning to emerge from the world of Far Cry, so I don’t know yet. Maybe some stories of my life here on Paros. I’ve got a few good ones. We’ll see.
TN: Well it's time to wrap it up. I have to go upstairs and kidnap my wife. She’s a friend of yours—on Facebook that is. So thank you Sigrid... for your story and for talking with us today.
SH: Thank you, my friends. I have enjoyed this very much.
BR: Yes, thank you Sigrid. Be well.
TN: She seems to have gone.
BR: She was never here.
TN: Hi Sigrid, it’s great to talk to you. I feel we’ve met before, though we never have. I know you and Brent go back a ways.You somehow have a presence here in Woodstock, while living on the Greek Island of Paros. What’s your secret?
SH: Well, I lived in Woodstock and environs for quite a while, from the fall of 1983 until about 2009, and I was very active in the arts community. I was also… I’m lucky, I made wonderful friends there with whom I’ve been able to stay in touch over the years.
BR: It’s great to hear your voice again, Sigrid. We just heard the first chapter of your novel Far Cry, published in April of this year. Without giving too much away, can you tell us what the rest of the book is about?
SH: Oh, Brent, that is a hard question—what is the book about? (laughs) I don’t have an elevator pitch, no simple one-sentence answer, nothing that would make any sense, so I’ll give you a very brief synopsis. Shortly after that first scene that we just heard, Sarah, the narrator, sees that another woman has also been captured—Elizabeth. After a while, they learn that Far Cry, the chief of the small band of Lakota, the man in the red shirt who captured them, intends to use them in a hostage exchange. Sarah and Elizabeth end up traveling with the band for a year. During this time the two become very close, as you can imagine. But the friendship is challenged when Sarah falls in love with Far Cry, and with the culture, and begins to assimilate. Elizabeth, defiantly, does not. She has a husband and children at home near Fort Laramie, and she thinks of nothing but rescue and return. When George Armstrong Custer rides in with the Seventh Cavalry to retrieve the captives, Sarah tries to escape, and in the ensuing violence, her horse is shot out from under her and she’s badly injured. So this rescue, and the return to white culture, means something very different to each of these women. The story then follows Sarah back to her Virginia plantation home. Her parents have both died during her captivity and she has to settle the estate. She’s confronted by her former slave, the strong and very wonderful character of Ruth, who tells her the true nature of her family’s involvement in the trafficking of slaves. Sarah is shocked out of what she realizes was her own willful, deliberate ignorance of the rampant racial hatred in which she was raised, and its effect on people she’d come to love and respect. So, what’s the book about? Well, one major theme throughout it all would be Sarah’s struggle to live honorably in a country that is evolving through violence.
TN: It strikes me that there’s something archetypical about tales of women getting abducted. You mention Persephone and Hades—a myth tied to the seasons. It’s very old and ingrained. It happened a long time ago. It happened all through the histories of many cultures. It’s still happening now. Were you conscious of this historical weight when you wrote the book? Is that part of its meaning?
SH: No, no, I wasn’t conscious of anything like that—certainly not at first. I was intrigued by this extraordinary friendship, but then the characters took over, and I became intimately, and in fact viscerally, involved in the details of their lived lives, over many years during the latter part of the Indian Wars in the West, and the continuing depredations against Black people in the South. In fact, I was close to finishing the book—I’d done a great deal of research—before I articulated, even to myself, anything about its having historical weight.
BR: Some people would say it just comes down to sex. Kill the men and spare the women, then have children with them. Is this a side-effect of patriarchal societies? Or is there something deeper going on—something unconscious and more primal, like the survival of genes?
SH: I think, at the core, it’s absolutely primal—kill the men and enslave the women, as you can read in the literature of ancient Greece. Euripides’ Trojan Women is a perfect telling of this. What better way to annihilate your enemy and take his territory? In the wild, male lions will kill the cubs of a rival in order to impregnate the female. Power and dominance—we humans have refined it. The enemy must be dehumanized, the men emasculated, the entire race hated. But it’s interesting, as James Baldwin wrote in The Fire Next Time, the flip side of this hatred is pain. I’m wondering if perhaps he meant the pain, the loneliness, of having to forever defend your supremacy. And the knowledge, at least on some deep level, that it’s a lie.
TN: On the surface it’s a historical novel, set in America after the civil war during the expansion westwards. A time of great displacement. Are you, in some ways, making a comment on today’s world? Are there parallels?
SH: Oh, I think there are clear parallels, many of them. For example, when witnessing the signing of the 1868 Fort Laramie treaty, Sarah is told of an atrocity perpetrated by the army against a group of friendly Cheyenne. Now this had happened many many years earlier. Sarah didn’t understand how potent this incident still was among the Indians. She said, “But that was a long time ago.” Her friend corrected her, telling her that in these matters, everything is now. And I think this is till true. We in the United States have a legacy of racial violence; it’s in our collective DNA. And I believe it’s reached critical mass. We’re seeing the proof of it all over the country. In the novel, Sarah sees this brutality at close hand, in the South and in the West of the mid to late 1800s. She feels complicit.
BR: What led you to write this story? Do you have some family history around these times and events?
SH: No, but there’s definitely an affinity I can’t quite explain. As a kid, I was drawn to novels about the frontier experience—The Last of the Mohicans, The Little House on the Prairie books of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Jack London’s books, Willa Cather’s, many others. And I’ve driven back and forth across the States about four times or so, taking different routes, and was always most affected by the northern plains and the mountains. But I never lived there. Maybe in a former life.
TN: Not that it’s apparent in an audio version of this story but I notice your text uses Anglo-English spelling, rather than American English. Yet your novel is very much an American story. Are you English or American?
SH: I’m an American, as you can tell by my speech (laughs). But my computer, which I bought in Greece, speaks Anglo-English. I didn’t notice it for a long time, probably because the books I read can just as easily be one as the other.
BR: This is your first novel, though you have written plays. How have you found the publishing experience?
SH: Fabulous, actually. I self-published through Epigraph Books in Rhinebeck, NY. There’s far less stigma now regarding this than there used to be. You know, I’m 73, I didn’t have time to send this book out over and over again to get an agent, and then a publisher, while making some sort of sculpture with the rejection letters. I worked hard on this book for a very long time, and when it was finally done this past April, and I could see its timeliness, I wanted it out there. Working with Epigraph felt like a collaboration, along with the artist, my dear friend Carol Zaloom, who did the cover and some evocative interior images. And together, I think we made a beautiful book.
BR: What are you working on these days?
SH: To be honest, Brent, I’m just beginning to emerge from the world of Far Cry, so I don’t know yet. Maybe some stories of my life here on Paros. I’ve got a few good ones. We’ll see.
TN: Well it's time to wrap it up. I have to go upstairs and kidnap my wife. She’s a friend of yours—on Facebook that is. So thank you Sigrid... for your story and for talking with us today.
SH: Thank you, my friends. I have enjoyed this very much.
BR: Yes, thank you Sigrid. Be well.
TN: She seems to have gone.
BR: She was never here.
