Zorya looked over the river to Landstrasse, the ornate decorative tops on the pillars of the bridge like skulls against the sky. Crossing was always hard because an ancient, atavistic part of her fought against the impulse. She had to will her feet to move. Even then, they advanced only reluctantly, as though her body were resisting this flirtation with dissolution. The air became colder as she advanced, and Landstrasse grew fainter instead of more distinct. By the time she had reached the far bank, its buildings had vanished entirely, and Zorya stood alone in a featureless gray landscape across which shadows moved like the drifting contours of unseen clouds.

Except clouds did not move in such patterns or with such agency, and they were not drawn to the living.

The lands of the quick and the dead were distinct territories, but overlapped at the margins. If one knew the paths, and could see what others did not – because most people remained barely conscious of their immediate surroundings, never mind those that lay beyond simple perception – then it was possible to move between them. But the journey came at a price, because the living did not belong among the dead, and they left behind a little of themselves each time they crossed.

And if one lingered too long, and fell prey to the lassitude that was a prelude to the final sleep, well, then one would remain among the dead. In the ordinary world, the world of bridges and trains, of rain-filled gutters and baroque architecture, a body would be discovered, perhaps still warm and without a mark on it. Its heart would simply have stopped beating because sometimes hearts just gave out. No questions would be asked and no mystery would attach itself to the death – or none beyond the mystery that follows every death, which is the matter of what comes after, and to that a body cannot testify.

But Zorya could have answered, had she wished. She could have spoken of wandering souls, and the whispering of angels – or worse. She might have talked of a lake, barely glimpsed through mists, and the endless host of the dead in a state of constant subsumption by its depths and the sea beyond. Sometimes she thought she perceived the distant figure of a girl by the lakeshore, facing the water, but Zorya had never approached her to investigate further. It was better to pass through this terrain unnoticed, to find out what one came to discover and depart without being seen.

But this girl both intrigued and frightened Zorya because she, like Zorya, did not belong here. She was dead, yet she chose not to follow the rest. Instead she waited, and Zorya sensed that whatever knowledge she herself might have possessed of this land paled beside the intensity of the other’s cognizance. But if the girl was aware of Zorya’s presence, she gave no indication of it.

Or had not done so, until now.