Not far from this village, at the hem of the forest’s shade, there stretches a broad heath. There the heathgrass sprouts as tall as men, and even on the stillest days these blades sway under strange winds from elsewhere. Upon this heath is a cluster of standing stones. How long they have stood no one knows. The winds that bully the heathgrass also erode these stones. Occasionally large pieces are lopped off. These pieces are often fashioned into bowls, as today’s villagers have done.

Matthias has followed us dutifully throughout this scorching season, skillfully gathering the precious blood and then feeding it as offerings to the gods of certain hidden places that the Headsman regards as sacred. Matthias wanders off, his bowl brimming. The blood will be meticulously borne to the heath and poured upon the standing stones, food for the power that pulses inside them.

Matthias was born to serve the standing stones. He has shared with me the methods his parents employed to groom him for this role. As to why I was recognized to the role of Headsman’s Trust I do not know. Perhaps the Headsman perceived some shift in my soul, a quickening that has transformed me alchemically into something purer than I was before. I do not sense it myself. But just before the season turned the Headsman informed me that I was no longer to collect the blood offerings, I was to tend to the block.

Today I am to be shown yet another step in this sprawling ritual.

The Headsman lifts the carcass from the block and sets it upon the platform. It is like a morbid enactment of the bridegroom laying his love upon the marriage bed.

We disrobe her.

“We should wash her,” I say. My request is met with a rigid denial.

Instead the Headsman hands me a crude map that reveals a path to the hovel of the casket-maker. I am to collect the custom coffin for the recently fallen. He attempts to bolster me for what I will witness at the casket-maker’s hovel. He orders me to make haste.

The midday heat swells the veins in my hands, causes my breathing to become laboured. I yearn for the shade of a glen but my path snakes through open country.

The casket-maker dwells and works in a pithouse far from any village, far from any burial ground.