I touched more bones before my morbid curiosity was sated. All were smooth in that most natural of ways. I continued to marvel at that, right until I approached her skull.

And there it was: the whole reason we were there. In that forest, somewhere near that village, hundreds of miles from where we should have been. A hollow eye socket.

I felt for the jagged pip of a tooth, of course I did; it was impossible not to wonder. There was nothing here that could be reasoned, or that could be considered coincidence, or that would be so unusual as to be disbelieved. Tabitha and that boy in St Leonars prison couldn’t have been further apart, and yet my night-brother and I had briefly entered their lives, and that was that. But there was no tooth.

I stood and realised how helpless and useless I was. The right thing would be to bury her but how could I? With my bare hands? I didn’t like the idea of leaving her in such a state but there was little else for it. One small consolation to the whole despicable thing: I doubted her bones would become food for scavengers and the like. No, whatever evil had wrought this would be keen to preserve their message. I could tell so by the lack of smell – no rot or decay or similar markers of death. These were separated from the skeleton of Tabitha. The rest of her was not so cared for.

Gore marked a trail back along the forest floor. It glistened where it caught the morning sun and meandered briefly, like a stream, where it met roots or a rise in the ground. The smell was ferocious. It was cooking, this offal and organ and muscle. The sky may have been bright enough, clear enough, to show the imposter moon but the heat was nothing so natural. I approached with a hand over my face and still the stench stung the back of my throat.

The mess bubbled like a simmering stew. It was true for as far as I could see down the trail of bodily destruction. Elsewhere the forest floor was entirely normal, but where the flayed parts of Tabitha had congealed there was a hellish scene. It popped and gurgled and groaned without shame.

My night-brother, either wilfully or by necessity, appeared not to think on the terrors and evils he witnessed. I couldn’t be so hard, so closed. How could anyone? To see a living creature reduced to such a state by some wicked design, let alone an animal I considered a kind of friend, was beyond my ability to consider dispassionately. That was one of the many differences between Christophor and I.

I felt things. He pushed them away, or avoided them altogether.

I wouldn’t avoid the full, gruesome truth of what befell Tabitha. Let Christophor do what he would with my memory of the matter. If he had a shred of courage – the kind of real courage that came from deeper feelings – he would return later that night to see it for himself. But I knew he would not. So, I stared at that horror enough for the both of us.