Half the village had slipped through Elsbeth’s garden gate with their coat collars turned up. They’d looked around several times, the way men in the county seat turned up their collars and looked around when they opened the door to Gaby’s Erotic Boutique.

After Selma’s dream, those in the village who were not truly superstitious naturally wanted to do everything they could to ward off possible death and reasoned that maybe it could be deflected with a little trinket. After all, you can never be sure. They rang the bell, flitted into Elsbeth’s front hall, and said contritely, “I just wanted to ask if there’s anything that can be done to protect against death.” Elsbeth looked at them the way a priest looks at congregants who only come to church on Christmas.

Elsbeth had something to guard against gout, against unhappy love, against childlessness, against inopportune hemorrhoids and calves born breech. She had several things to ward off the dead; she knew how to cajole their restless souls out of this world and keep them from coming back. She even had something to erase memory and, of course, had a whole bunch of cures for warts, but she had nothing to protect against death itself. Elsbeth was reluctant to admit it, though, especially if people were finally coming to her for help, so that morning she had told the mayor’s wife that leaning your forehead against that of a horse would keep death away, even though it really only helped ease headaches. But then Elsbeth’s conscience wouldn’t let her rest, so she went looking for the mayor’s wife. She found her in the stall, her forehead pressed against a horse’s. Elsbeth had rarely seen the mayor’s wife so relaxed. The mayor’s wife and the horse were standing very still, just like Selma and the okapi in the dream. Elsbeth gently put her hand on the mayor’s wife’s shoulder and said, “I lied to you. It only helps with headaches. I don’t have anything to protect against death.”

The mayor’s wife answered without looking up, “But this is very nice, and I think it’s working.”

Elsbeth’s doorbell rang every few minutes. The three of us sat together on the sofa. Alaska curled up next to Elsbeth’s beige-tiled coffee table on which she’d placed two champagne glasses filled with lemonade, and the doorbell kept ringing. And each time she’d just finished asking how school was or what Martin had lifted that day or if we’d rebuilt our hut in the woods, she’d have to jump up and run to the door. Then we’d hear someone ask if she possibly had something to guard against death, we’d hear the someone leave, and Elsbeth calling after: “I do have remedies for toothache or unrequited love, if you ever need them.”