Most of the movement was occurring in the ravine, in the oldest part of the cemetery covered in alders. Fortunately, Reynevan couldn’t see what was going on there; not even the lightning revealed anything more than vague shapes and contours in the gloom. But the sounds provided intense impressions—the throng rooting around among the ancient graves stamped, roared, wailed, whistled, cursed, snapped their jaws and gnashed their teeth.

Wirfe saltze, wirfe saltze…

A woman laughed shrilly and spasmodically. A baritone voice mockingly parodied the liturgy of the Mass, accompanied by wild cackling. Somebody was banging a drum.

A skeleton emerged from the gloom. It pottered around a little, then sat down on a grave and stayed there, skull bent forward and resting in its bony hands. A moment later, a shaggy creature with huge feet sat down beside it and began to frantically scratch them, grunting and moaning. The pensive skeleton paid no attention.

A death cap mushroom passed by on spidery legs, followed by something resembling a pelican, but with scales instead of feathers and a beak full of pointed fangs.

An enormous frog hopped onto an adjacent grave.

And Reynevan was aware of another presence, something utterly hidden in the darkness, invisible even in the flashes of lightning. But he knew it was staring at him, and closer examination revealed eyes shining like rotting wood. And long teeth.

“Wirfe saltze.” He sprinkled the last of the salt in front of himself. “Wirfe saltze…”

Suddenly, a bright, slow-moving spot caught his attention. He tracked it, waiting for another flash of lightning. When it came, he saw to his amazement a girl in a white shift, picking large, spreading nettles and laying them in a basket. The girl saw him, too. After a moment’s hesitation, she put the basket down. She paid no attention whatsoever to either the sorrowful skeleton or the shaggy creature still poking between his huge toes.

“Pleasure?” she asked. “Or duty?”

“Errr… duty…” he said, overcoming his fear and understanding what she meant. “My brother… my brother was killed. He’s buried here…”

“Aha,” she said, brushing aside strands of hair from her forehead. “And as you see, I’m here picking nettles.”

“To sew a blouse,” he said with a sigh a moment later. “For your brothers, magicked into swans?”

She was silent for a long while.

“You’re odd,” she finally said. “The nettles are for cloth, to be sure. For shirts. But not for my brothers. I don’t have any brothers. And if I had, I’d never let them wear these shirts.”

She laughed throatily on seeing his expression.

“Why are you even talking to him, Eliza?” said the toothy something, still mostly invisible in the darkness. “Why bother? The rain will come just before dawn and wash his salt away. Then his head will be bitten off.”

“It’s not right,” said the sorrowful skeleton, not raising its skull. “It’s not right.”