Her life as a spinster only increased local speculation about her innermost nature and raised questions as to exactly how her folks had passed away. Fortunately for Berthe, her neighbours’ loathing was weaker than their fear of witches. In fact, only the Abban boy ever showed resolve enough to stand at the edge of her field where, in better times, her family’s cattle had grazed. He’d lean on the frail wooden fence and stare at the house. The few times she’d glimpsed him doing this, the simpleton was concentrating so fiercely it was is if he could see through the stone walls of the farmhouse, through the flesh and bone of Berthe’s brow, into her psyche.

It was after just such a fierce visitation from the Abban boy that Berthe (who’d been spying on him from behind the frayed and yellowing cloth of her bedroom drapes) saw him produce a penknife from the chest pocket of his overalls and scratch something into her fencepost before he finally went tearing off down the road.

When she’d gone out to investigate, she found that a symbol had been crudely gouged into the wood. It was the kind of sign Berthe had grown up seeing, usually above the barn doors of superstitious farmers. It was a sigil of exorcising, of purification. Berthe knew that it was only a question of time before the Abban boy managed to convince enough of the locals that it was she that needed to be purified, purged.

All the pieces were falling into place. It could be made no plainer that the time had come for her final departure. This world had nothing to left to offer her. One by one its pleasures had lost their vigor, and its trials lost their joy when conquered. For years now, all the things with which Berthe felt empathy seemed to radiate from another world, or at least from a hidden sector of this world that few people ever sensed.

The time had come to pass through the veil.

Deep down it bothered her knowing that the Master had extended this invitation to Berthe at the very beginning and that she’d naively resisted it. There had always been some promise or glimmer of potential that kept her clinging to worldly life: her relationship with her parents, her duties on the farm, and so on.

Convincing oneself of not needing human company in order to make isolation more tolerable was one thing, willingly writing oneself out of the Book of Life was another thing entirely. Now Berthe felt prepared for a full and final departure.

Hurrying away from the marked fencepost, Berthe worried whether she had the gumption to see this through. But by the time she entered the kitchen, she was prepared to do whatever needed to be done.

V.

At twilight she opened the hatch above her father’s old rolltop desk and retrieved her implements.