“It was an old enough feeling, that of realizing that whatever you touched changed to something else under your hand, but so is cancer an old disease, and yet people still die of it. Earth changed, it grew and shed grass, filled up old gullies and cut new ones; rivers changed, a flood in one season, low water in the next. Old people died; young people lived and got old. You tied to a tree, and it grew and broke the tie-rope; to a house, and it rotted and fell down; to a woman, and she got frightened of what her own body could do to her and went away.”