The hour on the forest path
00:00:00
The deodand keeps
0
paces off
Until the red sun returns
00:00:00
How near it comes through the day
In Vance's Dying Earth a deodand is a man-shaped thing with black skin and a taste for human flesh. It haunts the forests and talks smoothly to the travellers it means to eat. The rest is this clock's own reckoning: the red sun rises at six and sets at six, and the creature comes nearest at three in the morning.