“It was you? All along? Who helps yourself to candles? Who causes our misfortunes?” Anna wants to open her mouth, to confess, to wipe all this away, but the fear is such that it has stopped her ability to speak. Maria is praying without moving her mouth, praying behind her eyes, retreating to some private sanctum at the very center of her mind, and her silence only infuriates Kalaphates more.

“They said, ‘Only a saint would bring children who are not his own into the house of his father. Who knows what evils they’ll bring?’ But did I listen? I said, ‘They’re only candles. Whoever steals them only does so to illuminate her nightly devotions.’ And now I see this? This poison? This sorcery?” He seizes Maria by the hair and something inside Anna screams. Tell him. You are the thief; you are the misfortune. Speak. But Kalaphates is dragging Maria by her hair into the hall, right past Anna as though she were not there, and Maria is trying to scramble to her feet and Kalaphates is twice their size and Anna’s courage is nowhere.

He hauls Maria past the cells where other needleworkers crouch behind their doors. For a moment she manages to get a foot under her, but stumbles, a great fistful of hair tearing away in Kalaphates’s fist, and the side of Maria’s head strikes the stone step leading to the scullery.

The sound is that of a hammer passing through a gourd. Chryse the cook watches from her wash pot; Anna stays in the corridor; Maria bleeds on the floor. No one speaks as Kalaphates grabs her dress and drags her limp body to the hearth and pitches the pieces of parchment into the fire and holds Maria’s unseeing eyes to the flames while the quires burn to ash one two three.

Omeir

Twelve-year-old Omeir is sitting on a limb of the half-hollow yew, gazing down at the bend in the river, when Grandfather’s smallest dog appears on the road below, running hard for home with its tail between its legs. Moonlight and Tree—resplendent two-year-olds, heavy through the neck and shoulders, cords of muscle rippling across their chests—lift their chins in tandem from where they’re grazing among the last of the foxgloves. They sniff the air, then raise their eyes to him as though awaiting instructions.

The light turns platinum. The evening becomes so still that he can hear the dog pounding toward the cottage, and his mother say, “What’s got into that one?”

Four breaths five breaths six. Down on the road, heralds with mud-spattered banners come round the bend three abreast. Behind them come more riders, some carrying what look like trumpets, others with spears, a dozen at first, and behind them still more: donkeys pulling carts, soldiers on foot—more men and beasts than he has ever seen.