When Ramus moved, the crackle of breaking stone limbs startled him. The gray people around him were still gray, but now they were motionless and dead. Here and there he could still see the soft texture of flesh and skin instead of the dulled tones of stone, but as he watched even these hardened. His attackers were statues, frozen forever into one moment in time. He heaved away the people who had been crawling and clasping across him, pulling himself from beneath their dead weight and feeling the rough edges of their fingers, teeth and hair scratching the exposed skin of his face.

An arm stood in his way, fingers turned into the soft ground where its owner had been grasping for balance. One thump with the heel of his hand snapped the arm from the shoulder and it tipped over, fingers still splayed like a dead spider.

Gasping, still barely believing what he had done, Ramus stood and looked across at Lulah.

Her gray attackers still smothered her, but now they were looking at him with suspicious eyes. They did not seem perturbed by what had happened—indeed, none of them seemed to be looking at their dead, petrified companions—but the threat had bled from them. One stood on Lulah's chest, stepped off and loped back between and into the trees. Soon, the others followed.

Lulah remained motionless on the ground. Ramus wanted to go to her, but then his legs began to shake, and he went down to his knees.

All instinct, the Widow said in his memory, and he relished his vision of her. He closed his eyes, and drove away all the sour memories the gray people had dredged up. He answered her, and it felt good to have his own voice back.

“Much for you to see here, Widow. Plenty for you to know. You'd be proud of me.”

“Ramus,” Lulah whispered, and she was looking at him in fear. “You have the power of the gods.”

Ramus shook his head, unable to meet her eyes. “Maybe just one of them.”

LULAH STUMBLED AROUND the dead people, staring down as if they would move again at any moment.

“I spoke without thinking,” he said. He frowned, not understanding. The Widow's words of advice echoed in his mind, but she was not really here, did not really know what he had.

Lulah kicked at a stone man's leg and it came off, thumping to the ground. She looked at the broken part, running her fingers across the insides and rubbing dust between fingertips. She avoided catching Ramus's eye. She had yet to thank him, and he felt a brief rush of annoyance, but smiled at such foolish petulance.

“They were preying on bad memories,” Ramus said. “Sucking them out of us.”

“Not me,” she said.

Her denial surprised Ramus. “You were screaming.”

Lulah rubbed her chest and neck. “They were hurting me.” She looked away again, retrieving and sheathing her dropped sword.