He looked down, expecting a tree root or exposed rock, but instead a dirt-flecked whiteness pierced the forest floor. He brushed away dead pine needles and the like. A bone. A large one, half-buried. His first dreadful thought was of Victor and Julia, but he swiftly realised that was not possible – he’d seen them just the night before.

I knew immediately, but Christophor needed more time to remember. I could forgive him that; I was there, after all, he had all but dreamed it. A bone that looked similar to a human’s, but different in important, noticeable ways: the scale of it, for one. Then it came to him.

He stood and looked about for the rest of her, the rest of Tabitha. I had seen her bones arranged deliberately, her flesh in a gruesome river of blood and gore, but Christophor didn’t truly believe that. Where he found the one bone he expected the rest of the skeleton in a natural mess. He even went so far as to dig with his hands among the needles and soil nearby. He found nothing. Somehow I understood that the remains of our horse stretched out into the forest. A trail or now dry riverbed, whatever comparison made such a heinous thing more palatable.

He returned to his purpose. Unable to find the children or their post, he decided they must be either in church or about some other business. In some respects that made his task easier. He eventually found his way back to the edge of the forest and the Eder house beyond. Still in the cover of the treeline he lowered his lamp’s shutters. He found a stone a little larger than his fist and smashed the empty bottle with it.

The cloudy glass shattered inwards, the jagged edges forming a strange kind of nest for what was his real prize. Slivers of glass of various shapes and sizes. He angled the lantern for a better view, and then produced a pair of tweezers from somewhere in his coat. He made his selection carefully and tested the small shard for its sharpness. It drew blood from our fingertip readily enough. He wiped it clean with a handkerchief, then wrapped it up in the very same cloth. Thusly armed, he turned his attention back to the house.

He needed to be sure of all three doors for any hope of success. It stood to reason that the front door would still be occupied by one of Victor’s apotropaic markings, but Christophor’s own experiment required a degree of certainty. Stealing across the open ground he made for the front of the house. Appropriate hiding places on the Eder’s porch for a square of metal were few and far between; it needed to be close enough to the door to have the desired warding effect. He checked the two large plant pots that stood beside the front door, running his fingers through the wet soil. Reaching deeper, he spotted the square nestled among the trellis beyond.