“But those two things can lie too close together. The line between them fades. So when the people heard the sounds from the iliz at night they said nothing because that was the way of things. When the dogs went missing, they said, ‘That is the way of things.’ Death in life, life in death. But I did not accept that.” She paused. “One morning the boy who slept with the animals, Pemoc’h, did not come to the door for his cup of milk and his crust of bread. I went to look for him. He was not in the stable. There was blood in the straw. All day I hunted for him. He had no one to care what happened to him, except me. I looked in ditches in case he had been knocked there by a passing car, and in the henhouse in case he had fallen asleep among the warm bodies—and, oh, many other places. I did not find him.

“My father found me in the grain store in the afternoon and cuffed me round the ears. ‘There is the cooking and the laundry. You should not be idle.’

“‘I am looking for the boy Pemoc’h,’ I said. ‘I am afraid that something has happened to him.’

“‘Go to the kitchen,’ my father said. ‘You are neglecting your duty. I am ashamed.’ My father looked at me. I saw that behind each of his eyes there burned a tiny candle.

“When he went out that night, I followed him across the field, into the village, into the graveyard, to the place under the church. And there I saw his true nature.

“What did you see in the church?” I whispered. “Mommy, what?”

“I saw them in the cages.” She did not look at me. “Father’s pets. I saw what had become of Pemoc’h.

“On Sunday, I denounced him in the church. I stood up before the congregation and I told them all what he had done. I told them to go and look, if they did not believe me. They did not go to look. So I saw that they already knew.” She paused. “They preferred to close their eyes, to lose a stray dog, even a stray child, every so often. It had always been so. It was the way of things. People who have lived together for many generations share a special kind of madness. But when I spoke the truth aloud, they were forced to act at last.

“I woke that night to fire. There were five of them, with kerchiefs over their faces and torches in their hands. They took me from my bed, dragged me outside. My father, they bound to his bed. Then they set the house alight. The ankou wore my father’s face that night.