To my shame I shrank away as the tears crested her head. Terror rippled through her even as she ran. There was so much of her gone, so much stripped. Muscles distended and bulged and then broke loose.

Finally, she could take no more. She stopped, abrupt, and threw me from the saddle. She may have saved me then from whatever had taken her. Whatever had flayed my horse alive.

I struck a tree hard enough to blacken my vision. It returned only briefly, enough to see the final throes of Tabitha, flesh gone and innards failing her. Selfishly I wished the black to take me from the death of a friend, and it did.

ALEXSANDER

25th October 1721

I’ve seen the moon, whatever my night-brother might think.

Pale and full; that’s how it was that morning when I woke in the forest. Struggling above the treeline it was out of place, of course it was. The moon didn’t look right against the washed out blue. It was as confused as the rest of us.

I had dead pine needles for a bed and a huge, exposed root for a pillow. I ached in every joint – every part of me where bone met bone. I was wearing thin, and had felt it for some time. My mouth was so dry I wondered if I’d ever drink a drop again or if that was it: I’d become a desert creature with scales and a grittiness in places that used to be soft.

I went to curse Christophor but stopped. I could recall enough of what had happened. So instead I rose unsteadily to my feet with the help of the tree trunk. There was no telling who had the rougher feel, me or the tree. It didn’t help to have the moon staring at me the whole time.

I found her ten or so paces away.

I didn’t want to look. I choked back a sob, and glanced away to the trees; it wasn’t a sight any man would seek out, but I had to. We both cared for her.

She was strangely neat, if such a thing could be believed. Lying there, but not sprawled or crooked or ungainly in her last. I didn’t think that should be possible.

A full horse skeleton stripped completely to the bone and arranged in front of me.

She appeared so… false. She couldn’t have been real. The whole scene spoke of artifice, perhaps even the artistic. A sculpture or painting – it had the unnerving mix of flatness and depth that a quality painter could produce. I felt compelled to touch her.

A leg. That’s where I started. Somehow that was safer, less intrusive, perhaps even approaching a normal thing one might do. The smoothness of the shin from the knee down – though even in such a moment it occurred to me those weren’t the right words. Those were my words, words for me, not her. Christophor might have known, but I didn’t. I ran my fingers the whole way down to her hoof. I had no idea they were so complex, so full of moving parts that were now stilled. It was a foolish ignorance but I simply hadn’t thought on horses’ hooves before.