I peek through the trees, dizzied by the shifting light. I can’t see anything but grove, but I know where they are. My stomach clenches, turns over, roiling with fear and something else. Familiarity. This tune that’s not a tune, I’ve heard it before.

I feel, strongly, that I shouldn’t be hearing it now.

Still, I have to see.

I don’t use the trail. I pick my way in silence between wide oak trunks, holding my breath, exhaling slowly. I press my white fingers against the oak bark, begging it for protection as the figures emerge like spirits taking form.

Not spirits. Neighbors.

I see five, no, seven men and women, dressed all in white. If they’d been wearing robes, I might’ve fainted dead away or, more likely, burst out laughing, but these are normal clothes, trousers and button-down shirts, all plain starchy white.

The noise they’re making, though, that drone—it’s unnerving. They form a loose, rotating circle, hands raised skyward with every step, then dropping down to their sides once more. Some of them are slower than the others, and with good reason. They’re so very old. I haven’t seen Mrs. Morris display this much energy in the seven years I’ve known her, and even Diana Shaw is keeping pace on her prosthesis, loping along with an elegantly slow limp, like the waves of the ocean.

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?