I watch her climb the cavern walls, nimbly, like some ugly salamander. She skitters to the very summit of the cave. She contorts her body and presses her open neck against one of the stalactites. For one indescribable instant, this creature dons the entire cave as her crown. The tapered rock penetrates her throat and suddenly I can hear the cave’s long-buried song. It comes to screeching life through the woman’s flesh. Her pores open like the mouths of some heinous choir.

The chthonic music screams at me.

I stagger up and charge down the daylit passage.

I would flee the area entirely, but I discover a trio waiting for me on the plateau: the Headsman stands with Matthias by His side. The boy is holding the block before him, not to boast of his appointment as the Headsman’s new Trust, but to show me that he understands his duty, that he reveres it.

Standing behind them is the woman from the pithouse. Her face is worse than words can convey. I turn away from her, but not from revulsion. Her visage is a sun at full glare. I am awed. I am awakened.

The headless cadaver comes bounding out of the cave. She flails about like a manic puppet.

Gracefully, placidly, the woman from the pithouse advances. She swipes her claw-like nails at the cadaver, wielding these natural weapons with swiftness and skill. With a single slice, she ends the corpse’s mad enactment. The thing falls, goes still.

I feel I should speak yet I can find no words. The only sound is the pounding surf and the incessant wind that creates dust-devils all around us.

The headless cadaver begins to twitch, but only for an instant. Something is struggling to free itself from that lifeless husk. It finds the yoni forged by the woman’s razor-like claws. It erupts from the flesh.

A shrike.

Despite the gore that greases the bird’s plumage, I can sense the pristine shading of its feathers. It seems to carry celestial light in its down. The bird’s eyes are the silver of burnished nails. The bird takes flight.

I see. I want so very deeply to see more. But what observes this richly shaded world is not my eyes, but my throat, my fingers, the soles of my feet. I am a vent for visionary power.

The bird begins to sing. And I hear the music of the spheres. I somehow comprehend the wisdom of the song. It speaks of a knowledge deeper than the mind, a frenzied light that lies within the flesh and beyond it.

The song stirs my soul while it lulls my flesh. I am only dimly aware of dropping to my knees, of resting my head upon the smooth block that the Headsman’s new Trust has set before me.

*

I watch my predecessor and I believe she feels no pain.

She is now a bird, floating, soaring, singing.