Leaning against a warped, canker-laden tree is the coffin. It is a wicker casket. The thin branches that form its woven body are the grey of morning fog.

Suddenly remembering my task as if newly woken from a dream, I scramble to my feet and creep over to collect the casket. I am glad to be ignorant of whatever arrangement the Headsman has with the casket-maker. I simply take up the coffin and flee.

My load is mercifully light, but its shape makes carting it a chore. I lug it on my back and can feel the knots of its branches pressing into my flesh. I do not offer the pithouse a backward glance. Soon the only cricket-song I hear is the one that stains my memory.

*

The light is already fading to a late-afternoon shimmer by the time I return to the scaffold, where I find the Headsman waiting in what appears to be the same standing position as when I departed. I plunk the coffin down and begin to breathlessly explain what I have seen.

Unconcerned, the Headsman simply goes about His task. He removes the wicker lid and from the inside of the coffin He produces a length of fabric. I aid him in unfolding this. The long sheet feels coarse against my palms. It is a shroud, dyed midnight blue.

We begin to wrap the headless body. The shroud is a sullied thing, woven with many kinds of thread and soaked in the waters of the Moon. Or so the Headsman tells me. When this task is complete, I help the Headsman lift the swaddled body and deposit it inside the coffin.

Once we replace the lid, the Headsman orders me to step away and turn my back. This I do, all the while trying simultaneously to both hear and not hear the words He mutters over the casket. I wonder what gestures the Headsman makes, what substances He might use to anoint His victim.

Eventually He announces that it is time.

We take up the casket. I am at the foot of the box, following my leader as He marches steadfast through the forest and across the great heath whose stones seem to study us as we pass and whose billowing grasses urge us to hush…

The Headsman does not utter a sound and I dare not break our shared trance by asking any of the thousand questions that swim in my brain, foremost of which is where our destination will be.