Broken April

Gjorg travels the roads. It is his last day as a free man. After noon, he can be killed. He plans to find a place to hide and travel by nightfall to one of the towers of refuge. With his last days of freedom, he searched for Diana’s carriage but failed. He comes across a waterfall that strikes him with its beauty. He remembers Diana’s hair. Then, he looks up at the sky, thinking, “Just a little while now and his bessa would be over, he himself would be leaving the time of the Kanun. Leaving time, he said to himself” (205).

Meanwhile, Bessian and Diana travel along the Road of the Banners, the greatest road in the High Plateau. Bessian remains frightened by Diana’s paleness and silence. Maybe he made a mistake taking her here. Maybe it’s the cost he has to pay for writing about the High Plateau: “A tribute because of his writings, for the fairies and mountain nymphs that he had described in them, and for the little loge where he had watched the play in which the actors were a whole people drowned in blood” (207). They leave the High Plateau more disconnected from each other than ever before.