“Thanks.” He twisted around and looked through the grating into the camper shell; he saw Trygg standing calmly in the center of the truck bed, with her three limbs smoothly absorbing the shocks like the legs of a photographer’s tripod.

“Incredible,” Nick said. “How does she do that with only three legs?”

“That’s one more than you’ve got.”

Alena showed no signs of slowing down, though the road whipped back and forth like a kite’s tail. The well-worn gravel rolled under the tires, causing the tail of the truck to spin out on every curve with a shuddering crunch.

“I was just wondering,” Nick said. “If you’ve been on your own since you were ten, who taught you how to drive?”

“I taught myself.”

The truck skidded to the right; Nick stuck his head out the window and found himself staring over the edge of a fifty-foot overhang.

“I want to find a graveyard,” he said. “I don’t want to be buried in it.”

“Do you want to drive?”

“Yes.”

“Well, it’s my truck, so shut up.”

To Nick’s relief the road gradually leveled out and began a wide arc around the edge of the water.

“Now where?” she asked. “This is a big lake.”

“The western side.”

“How do you know that?”

“The history said, ‘Sara watches the sunrise over the waters of the dog’s leg’—you can only see the sunrise over the water from the western side. It said there was a ‘great oak’ there; we could look for one, but I doubt we’ll find it. That was two hundred years ago—a lot of great oaks could have come and gone since then.”

“Should we look for a clearing?”

“Hard to say. The graveyard would have been in a clearing originally, but that was a long time ago. It depends on how long it’s been forgotten. I’ll tell you where to stop; just drive along the shoreline—slowly.”

Nick watched the trees as they passed; he wasn’t sure there would be any trace of the graveyard at all after all these years. He searched for a spot where the trees were less dense or the pattern of growth seemed different. He made his best guess and told Alena to pull over.

She opened the back of the camper shell; Trygg stepped onto the tailgate and smoothly jumped down.

“How did she lose that leg?” Nick asked.

“It was chewed off, just above the paw. Some moron down in Chester Gap left her staked out in the yard when she was in season. I found her in a shelter there; she asked me to help her, so I did.”

“What happened to the rest of her leg?”

“I took it off.”

“You took it off ?”

“You have to, or the dog will keep trying to walk on the stump.”

Nick made a low whistle. “Never mess with a witch.”