“. . . and where the sword and cannon hold dominion keep this heart from trembling . . .” Mosca frowned. She’d been expecting some radical rantings, or political revelations, but this looked very like an old-fashioned “heart’s ease” prayer. In the time of the civil war many soldiers had marched into battle with a prayer of this sort written out on parchment and folded in the pocket over their heart, in the belief that it would bring them luck and courage.

“It’s like someone’s getting ready for a battle,” she murmured under her breath. Why were the heart’s ease prayers being printed, rather than handwritten by a priest? Could it be that there was too little time to write them out—or too many soldiers to supply?

“. . . the land has sunk into a sickness of the soul . . . a poison that can only be removed by letting blood . . . our figures seem dark for the Light is behind us . . .” Mosca read on with new interest. “. . . our glorious brethren of the—” The next word was hard to read, running as it did across Mosca’s wrist. She twisted her arm about and squinted until the smudged ink revealed its secret to her.

She sat back with a crash. The air was suddenly full of birds. They erupted from the rushes on all sides, their wings beating like frightened hearts, the white undersides of their wings flashing with each beat. The air they left behind them shook and rippled and would not settle.

But they’re dead, thought Mosca desperately, they’re all gone, everyone knows that.

With urgent eyes she stared at the smudges on her skirts, skin, and stockings, tracing the threads of sooty letters that wound about her like snakes.

“. . . with a sword of fire . . . and even their children . . . purity . . .”

And there again was the word she had found on her wrist. And there, and there . . .

Birdcatchers . . .

The morning air was as golden as ever, the wild rosehips still bobbed gaily on the hedges, but the breeze had a new taste now, and the cries of the birds sounded like tearing metal.

Birdcatchers . . .

Anything was possible now. Mosca thought she could hear bland hillsides groaning open to release the monsters of the past. The worst of the dead times were rising from their graves, and it would take more than Little Goodman Postrophe and a mountain of mellowberries to stop them coming home.

But no, Mosca realized, the truth was less childish and more frightening. The Birdcatcher army that awaited these prayers would not be a spectral horde. Its soldiers would be flesh and blood, men and women of Mandelion, all waiting through the years for the right moment with a ghastly patience, like the Birdcatcher church attendant in Kohlrabi’s story. The Birdcatchers had never been extinguished at all. They had just remembered how to be invisible.