Jo steps into view. Of everyone here, she looks the most practical about all of this, hands up and down, step, step, as if she’s tidying up the shop after closing for the evening. This is very clearly some kind of arcane rite, but there’s no ecstatic fervor in her expression. Her brow is furrowed, like she’s trying to remember the last item on her order list. It’s enough to make me forget I’m hiding behind an oak tree, watching uninvited.

They didn’t want me to know about this.

Jo turns. I freeze, my head still jutting past the trunk, but she keeps spinning, eyes lifted, locked on the canopy of oak leaves. She hasn’t seen me. I shrivel back into hiding.

You’ll understand everything by the end of the Day.

I’m not meant to understand today, and I don’t. I don’t understand.

I close my eyes and breathe, listening to that ungodly drone until I can hardly bear it. I’ll let out a wail of my own if it goes on a second longer.

It breaks. The chanting stops, replaced by a few sheepish chuckles, and then the normal chatter of a Sunday afternoon down at the pub.

Was this a social gathering?

My shoulders drop, clench, drop again. I dare one more peek, and I’m glad I did. They’re out of formation, smiling and laughing as if at themselves. I find myself attempting a grin too, in a weak, tentative way. I could pretend I just arrived. Give a bemused wave, maybe even admit to my little nicotine habit as a bit of currency, a fair trade for an explanation.

Lannie Joiner shifts to the right, offering an arm to Diana, exposing the view through the clearing.

There it is, behind them. What they’re here for.

That flat, dented, jutting, gray nothing.

The tithe stone.

It’s not completely gray today. There’s something clotted on top of it. Dripping down the side. Livid red.

My throat locks iron tight.

I need to go, I need to go. I wait until all their backs are turned, one, two, five, seven, my mind listing each neighbor so quickly the names no longer land, then I slink backward through the grove, stealthier than I ever thought I could be.

I hit the open heath and fight the urge to run, forcing myself to walk instead along the dirt path with loose, languid strides, nothing to see here, nothing to have seen. Let them think I hiked past the grove on my way from the archaeological site. No, the lighthouse. Maybe I was up having a cup of tea with Matthew Clare, two old chums. There is no explanation that isn’t ludicrous! I have to get home.

That last glimpse of the grove clearing is printed in my brain, that bright crimson smear on the altar stone.