As the conveyance rolled nearer and the chanting grew ever louder, the old hag could hold her position no longer. She jumped from her ledge at the very front of the stage and leapt out upon it herself, shouting and pounding her thighs with her fists, surely bruising them. She swayed with the rhythm and reached for the sky, calling to the blade to lower.

Sensing her audience growing larger, she began to prance as an aristo might. She put on airs. She curtsied and flaunted and flipped her hair. She strolled along, with imagined umbrellas. All the while, the crowd chanted. If one strained an ear, as the old woman did, the closer sound of carts nearing the square could be heard, but the crowd took no heed, intent as they were upon her antics. She made her way to the block itself. She swayed, she danced, she pulled at air under the blade, willing it to descend. Then, as the carts rounded the corner, almost visible, she placed her own head on the block. The crowd’s calls rose in pitch. She writhed, she wiggled, she begged the blade above her to drop.

Hearing the wheels enter the square, she jerked her head up. Relief filled her, but she stared at one entrance, eyes and mouth open. “They’ve gone! They’ve gone!” She pointed her long and slender finger at the empty carts pulled by donkeys, without even a driver. “Ghost carts, they are! Ghosts!” Her shriek echoed against the walls around them. Eerily in the now-silent square, cart after cart rolled in, led by the habitual pace and path of the donkeys, but empty of any visible human soul.

When the first cart pulled to a stop in front of the platform, the crowd let loose. Guards shouted, tearing down the street from whence the carts had come. People hurried, searching up side alleys and back again.

Many ran away, spooked by the evil magic that invited ghosts at the scaffolding.

The old woman jumped on top of one of the caged carts, shouting, “After them! We must go in pursuit!” With her sharp slap of the reins, the donkeys moved forward in a slow trot. She stood atop, shouting and urging them onward. Out of the square they moved, too slow but quick enough. People clung to the bars, stealing a ride until they tired of the donkey’s slow gate. Down the streets of Paris, away from the square, away from the throng, the cart continued, other carts following.