The chapter opens with lines of the old spiritual, “Hang me and I’ll be dead and gone.” Shadow hangs for the first day, noticing only boredom and discomfort rather than pain. After that, the prickling in his limbs becomes worse and his vision starts to blur. He starts chanting a motto: It’s easy, there’s a trick to it, you do it or you die. A squirrel climbs down the tree, chattering “ratatosk” in Shadow’s ear. Shadow hope the squirrel will not bite, and manages to fall asleep. He sleeps restlessly, the pain waking him often from disturbing dreams.

Shadow dreams of an elephant headed-man who says he could have made Shadow’s journey easier. The elephant man further tells Shadow that he will lose many things while he hangs on the tree, but he should not lose “this,” showing Shadow an illusion with a mouse disappearing into the tree and then cryptically telling Shadow “it’s in the trunk.” It starts to rain, waking Shadow again, and Shadow tries to catch some water in his mouth. He can’t even feel the cold, his body numb as he watches lightning in the distance. As the storm beats on Shadow’s body, he feels an odd joy at being fully alive – and feels that the sacrifice is worth it for this one perfectly clear moment. He drinks more rainwater and then feels warm and comfortable, sleeping deeply and dreamlessly.

The next morning, Shadow’s entire body is in pain. He spends the day alternately burning and freezing as the squirrel continues to visit him periodically. As the storm clouds gather again, Shadow sees his whole life spread out before him, especially his wedding day with Laura. He hallucinates that Laura is there and laughs about her silliness as they got married, kisses the hallucination once, then sleeps again.

Shadow wakes again, feeling distant from his body and the tree. The squirrel comes again with a walnut shell of water and tips it into Shadow’s mouth. Refreshed, Shadow struggles against the ropes, but the knots hold. Delirious, Shadow feels that he is the tree and tries to distance himself from the pain of the man who is hanging on the tree. He feels connected to everything: the tree, the sky, the wind, the storm clouds, the squirrel. Shadow, as the tree, manipulates the stars as he would coins.

In a rare moment of clarity, Shadow comes back to his body. He sees a naked man standing before the tree. The man explains that he saw Shadow in Cairo, and Shadow realizes that this dark-skinned man must be Horus, who Mr. Jacquel mentioned lived in Cairo as a hawk. Horus greets Shadow as a fellow sun god, then turns into his hawk form and catches a rabbit to eat. While perched on a branch of the tree, Horus turns back into a man, and asks Shadow’s name. When Shadow tells him, Horus nods that the shadow and the light go together. Horus comments that Shadow is dying, then turns into a hawk and flies away.

During the night, Laura arrives at the tree. Shadowasks hoarsely how Laura found him, and Laura explains that Shadow is the nearest thing that Laura has to life, and so Shadow shines like a beacon in an otherwise grey world. Laura offers to cut Shadow down, but Shadow explains that he has to stay here in order to be truly alive. Laura nods, then complains that she lost her job at a gas station for looking too dead, and says she is very thirsty. Shadow tells her to go to the farmhouse and tell the sisters there (the Norns) that Shadow said to give her water. Laura says that she should go, but Shadow asks her to stay the night. Shadow sleeps, then wakes again and sees that Laura is gone. He has a vicious headache and cannot fight the pain in his body to keep breathing. As his heart stops beating, Shadow falls into a darkness lit by a single star, the final darkness.