Ida is set down beside Nethe. The rope trails from her waist, cut in half. Nethe has stopped screaming, but she is among the dancers, and her feet are stamping. It is too late, thinks Lisbet. Nethe is already elsewhere, unaware that Ida is beside her.

‘Careful!’ warns Frederich, as the mob surges around the stage, lifting Lisbet almost off her feet, carrying them to where the musicians sit, silent and uncertain. Someone sets up a chant at them, and they pick up their instruments, and begin to play. All around them, the crowd break into maniacal dancing, buoyed by their act of disobedience. The atmosphere is fevered, dangerous, exhilarating. Lisbet looks up at Ida and Nethe, high on the stage above.

Ida’s pupils are huge and black, dilated with poppy. She is looking around herself, dazed. But then she looks at Nethe, dancing beside her, and a dreamy smile plays on her lips. She takes her lover’s hand, and joins her in her trance.

Men and women alike flood the stage, and Lisbet again loses sight of them, but then they are there as they were that night in the guild, spinning and spinning as though they are alone in the whole world. Dread grips Lisbet.

When she was a girl she rode a horse astride. It was only a knackered old mare, its knees thick as ship knots with inflammation, its coat scabbed and worn thin as old cloth. She loved it and rode whenever Mutti slept and it could be spared from the fields. Loosed from a harness, it ran like a colt. One day, it jumped a hedge and left her behind it: as she fell, she felt exactly this sensation, the air made rapid and cool. The certainty of hurt. Despite the din, all Lisbet can hear is a whining sound, like flies around rotted meat.

‘Fakery!’ bellows Plater. Lisbet sees he has climbed up on the musicians’ stage, and is brandishing his hook at the dancing women. The crowd boo and spit, and he ducks to avoid a thrown patten. He cannot reach them, dare not descend the platform. ‘Deceptors!’

But Lisbet knows that Ida and Nethe are no fakes. They shimmer with something otherworldly, something divine. They move like they are made of feathers, each of their fingers lifting light on nonexistent currents, their faces smooth. Their eyes are soft closed as in sleep, lids pearly pink and glistening with sweat or tears or holy water. Only their feet make them less than angels, crashing up and down as they wheel and loop, dive. Their bodies a murmuration, perfectly in time, moving with a singular clarity.

Lisbet draws up short of the stage, the crush thickest here, people squabbling to grasp the dancers’ feet, some holding up vials to catch their sweat and blood. Lisbet doesn’t want to touch Nethe or Ida, who are now within reach, doesn’t want to interrupt the perfect pendulum of them. She wants to sink to her knees and watch until they have danced the platform clean, their minds empty, their bodies into flight.