““Nothing was going right. They’d been attacked by a venomous crested woodfoul. And then they’d hidden in the cave with the spiders and the whatever-that-thing-was that had bitten Simon’s tennis shoe, possibly a rat. And then Baz had taken Simon’s hand. Or maybe Simon had taken Baz’s hand.… Anyway, it was totally forgivable because woodfoul and spiders and rats. And sometimes you held somebody’s hand just to prove that you were still alive, and that another human being was there to testify to that fact.””
