The nymphs have departed

The wind was cold but silent, tugging at Phlebitis's sleeves and the tails of his untucked shirt. It seemed to find all the gaps between his clothes, sliding icy fingers down his back and along the underside of his arms until goosebumps rose. He shivered, wishing that he'd not left his coat behind in the city. Even so, he thought, it was a small price to pay to have managed to leave unseen, undiscovered by the strange coterie of men who called themselves the City Directors. The wind tugged a little harder at his shirt and he tucked it in again, knowing that it would pull free when he started walking once more.
He stood on a gravelled path just inside a wood or forest; he'd not been able to see clearly from the path behind just how large the expanse of trees was. The leaves all around him were the colours of autumn and here and there were small drifts against the tree trunks; red and gold turning to a dead and dessicated brown. He'd been hoping that the trees would shield him somewhat from the wind, but it was contriving to blow past them and tickle him still.
He'd stopped because he'd found a small sign, a wooden rectangle neatly nailed to a tree. Carven into it, with something hot that had charred and blackened the wood, were the words "The nymphs have departed." As he looked at, reading and re-reading the words, he felt a sense of hopelessness settle on him like fog falling from the sky and hiding the road ahead. The last time he'd felt like this had been as he'd left Madame Sosotris with a future that he'd paid for and couldn't understand. Slowly, he was learning what it was that she'd told him only in the most oblique terms. And the nymphs, he knew, were somehow associated with Belladonna, our Lady of the Rocks.
Sighing in concert with the wind he started forward again, following the path with weary footsteps. He'd spent seven days in the city, only intending to be there a couple of hours but unable to find his way out. Streets that seemed straight turned subtly, winding back on themselves and leaving him where he'd started, confused and dizzy; while streets that clearly went nowhere somehow stretched out and branched when he walked along them, offering new places to be lost in and dark rooming houses where saturnine landladies tapped fat fingers against shiny timepieces with a look of menace in their eyes. At certain junctions he smelled the unforgettable stench of boiled frog, and at certain others there was a faint haze in the air that tingled against his skin. And then, finally, he'd come to a square where the City Directors sat together at a trestle table in the open air. A white tablecloth failed to cover the whole table, and set upon it were seven crystal glasses filled to a quivering brim with red wine. As he watched, lurking in a shadow in a doorway, they'd lifted their glasses and stood, chiming them together with a cheer and a toast to the end of summer.
He'd fled then, and been running ever since. A young boy with no teeth had taken pity on him and shown him a street that only appeared when you walked through a gate into a garden that then didn't exist. Looking at the urchin, seeing the desperation in his eyes, Phlebitis had slipped the coat from his back, checking the pockets first and taking the last of the jade statuettes from them, and given it to the lad. There was a flicker of gratitude and a shadow of shame on his face when he accepted. Phlebitis had barely taken another ten steps before the lad reappeared and handed him a verdigrised copped coin, worthless everywhere except inside the city. Only then did the streets straighten out and behave themselves, and as Phlebitis reached the southern gate at last he heard rumours from the travelling-folk that the City Directors were hunting for a sailor.
The wind, still silent, rose as he walked forward, listening always for the sound of water and a path back to the sea. It pulled his shirt loose, then blustered it around, lifting it up and trying to tear it from his skinny torso. Leaves rustled an angry sussuration, finally pulling free from the trees and swirling about him in an autumn blizzard. As he struggled onward, pushing against the wind into the leaf-storm, all he could think was how it seemed as though the air were bleeding.