Jil Punkinflake’s shoulders are shaking. His flung-back head drops down and forward out of the shadows; his eyes shimmer like silver and his face is drawn up in a comedic mask, screaming with laughter. His brows furrowed and knotted, until tears trace arcs along the tops of his cheeks, the laughter the loudest the ugliest erupting out of him with so much force his face should break, as though he were being ripped apart from the inside out.

*

“We go on. Get in formation!”

The voice comes from a far-away projection, bounding back to us from the ruins. Makemin has turned toward the road. We stand there barely breathing; I look from one dirty face to another and every one of them says, “Let’s go back”—but none of us dares to speak, none of us can speak. Makemin has no face.

Saskia shouts, “I suppose you think you can’t be shot just as readily in the back?”

Her voice seems to snap around us like a low swirling wind. I feel a cold splash across the inside of my chest; the circle we had been drawing around us to shut them out, she sets on fire. Cold white flames are consuming it.

“They’ve suffered greater losses than we have—and we’ll find all the help we need ahead!”

She turns to Makemin.

“Won’t we?” she shouts to the back of his head.

Makemin is still waiting for us to obey his order. He doesn’t answer.

Like sleepwalkers something tear loose rattling behind, left there as we leave like a shred of meat glued to a hot griddle we fan out onto the road like sleepwalkers like sleepwalkers. Blankness sleeps again on each staring, leaning face. We go on now like sleepwalkers following the darkness shed by Makemin’s turned back.

A hollow howling noise, like wind sobbing at the mouth of a mine, rises behind us as we near the city’s brink. There are the landmarks I’d seen in the charm, the road to the cemetery curves off to the right, through irregular, soft ridges, and trees bristle pitch black above them. The charm tugs at me and without even bothering to look at it I call to Makemin.

“We have to go into the trees.”

Makemin stops. His head turns slightly, just enough so that I can see the darkness of his profile, his glittering eye.

“The road won’t take us,” I say. My voice is flat, lost. “We’re not wanted here. If you want to get to the cemetery, you’re going to have to detour through the woods.”

With inaudible creak and groan, we leave the road. The trees dart in among us again. Saskia storms back and forth, keeping everyone in formation with rough words, shoves.