The sight of her homestead steals my breath. I am impelled to lower my tired frame, to cross my legs and sit in contemplation of this mound-like structure. Being a pithouse, the dwelling is a bored-out hole in the earth that is roofed with a rigid entanglement of bones. Fibula and femur, scapula and tarsal; they all nest into one another as if Nature Herself had forged this skeleton, the remains of some fabulous arachnid that had skittered across the plains with the mammoths. The bones are the colour of old wheat. They nestle so tightly together that no view of the pithouse’s interior is possible.

After a respectable amount of time has passed, I rise and approach. An odd sound creeps into my ears.

Crickets.

To hear one or two of them chirping in the daylight is not uncommon, but what I hear is not the thin creaking of a few stray bugs, it is an orchestra. Their serrated song gives the afternoon a nocturnal pulse, a rhythm ill-suited for raw light and heat. It is instead the cool, murky rhythm of twilit mires, of waning embers, of the charm hung above the bed before slumbering, of secrecy, of dim potential.

Their song passes over me, through me, and I imagine that my heart is altering its beat to match this pulsation. I move closer to the pithouse, the womb that houses the crickets. My face is practically pressed against the spiky mesh of bones. I can see precious little through the weave, but I can hear the chirping fully now and I can smell the heady stench of mud and milt. It is sickening and arousing at once.

There then comes a sonorous creaking which joins the cricket orchestra like the faint rumble of distant thunder. The creaking pulses low, then high, low, then high. Its pace is measured and patient. I press my eye to one of the few slits in the bone shelter.

Within the pithouse, something shifts. I can almost discern the shapeless form. It reposes in the centre of the shallow hole. Needles of sunlight manage to pierce the darkness through the tiniest of apertures, pressing in like unwanted seawater through a ship’s hull. These bright threads form a luminous crosshatch. As my eyes grow accustomed to this, I am better able to spy the figure in the hut.

I can only presume it is a woman, for the figure is dressed in a luxurious gown, one that suggests nobility. The hair is piled hectically upon the pale head. I cannot discern the face. If woman she is, if human she is, she is seated in a frame chair, one that rocks slowly back and forth, creating that measured creaking. The chair is composed of pale wood. Or is it bone?

Instinct presses me backwards. I scuttle back from the hut. The crickets continue to chirp.