First, she slipped out of her room and travelled to the place where four roads met. Under the light of a full moon she temporarily buried the blacksmith’s nail at the crossroads, along with a sprig of parsley and a phial of her monthly blood.

Next, she stole the money from the family coffers and sent away for a fine new diary from a bookbinder overseas. It took weeks to arrive, but when it did it surpassed her expectations. The vermilion cover had the stink and texture of genuine leather. Its spade-shaped clasps were burnished bronze. The first time she opened its covers Berthe hearkened back to the open vault in the founders’ graveyard, which summoned a mad grin to her face. Properly weathering the journal was a matter of spritzing the leather covers with rubbing alcohol, then scouring the book’s surface with a bundle of copper wire. She then painstakingly stained each page with soggy tannin leaves and the heat of a beeswax taper.

By the time the tome was ready for her third precious task, a harvest moon was brightening Berthe’s bedroom window. On the appointed night she ignited a fresh candle, slaked her fountain pen with ink, and switched her writing tool from her dextral hand.

She began to write.

As to the nature of the message, Berthe had only dim intuitions. She willed herself to remain aloof, to allow the words to flow solely from the cold, airy appendage that had closed over her own and now guided it. She recalled the rotted arm dangling from the shroud and wondered if this hand had now closed over hers in order to guide her.

Day was nearly breaking by the time this phantom limb slithered back from wherever it had come. By the last guttering flits of the candle’s stump Berthe scanned the stained pages. Upon them a new pledge had been offered, which, through written by her hand, Berthe knew had come from the Master. She vowed to whisper these words into her pillow the following night, which would allow her to come to him.

The next night her mouth struggled with the bizarre charm, and in the end she shed her body like worn clothing and drifted into the night.

The experience of caroming from treetop to treetop, of having the bats sensing her skinless presence with their sonar and accepting her as one of their own, of passing nearer to the moon than she’d ever thought possible; all these sensations were, for Berthe, beyond description, beyond feeling.