The wire made a deafening sound when she unrolled it to wrap it around the first post. Her hands shook as if they weren’t her hands at all but hands from a Tatort episode.

And then, above her, someone coughed.

Elsbeth closed her eyes. I’m the one, she thought. I’m the one who dies from Selma’s dream.

“Get lost,” someone hissed from above. Elsbeth looked up and in the hunting blind’s paneless window she saw Palm.

Someone whose life is being saved does not murder his rescuer.

“Good evening, Palm,” Elsbeth said. “I’m sorry, but you have to come down right now.”

“Get lost,” Palm said, “you’re scaring away the pigs.” It took Elsbeth a moment to realize that he was actually talking about the wild boar.

“Night hunting is forbidden,” Elsbeth said bravely, but when he was drunk, Palm was no more worried about laws against hunting than he was about the shrub woman.

She started to wrap the wire around the first sawn post. Some of the glue had dripped down the post like resin and begun to harden.

“Are you out of your mind?” Palm hissed.

Elsbeth considered. “When you’re afraid of dying, you should wrap a hunting blind in wire.”

Palm said nothing.

“Seven times, and never in moonlight,” Elsbeth continued. “Besides, you shouldn’t sit in a hunting blind when you’re afraid of dying.”

“But I’m not afraid of dying,” Palm said, and he was serious. Palm didn’t know that he was afraid of dying, deathly afraid even. He couldn’t know, because he hadn’t experienced real terror before Death came in through the door.

“But Selma dreamed of an okapi,” Elsbeth said.

Palm took a gulp from his bottle. “You’re all nuts. I can’t believe you people,” he said.

Elsbeth kept wrapping wire around the post.

It’s true, I am nuts—this will never hold, Elsbeth thought.

Palm burped. “Here comes another idiot,” he said.

Elsbeth spun around. Someone with a headlamp came running toward her over the meadow. He was tall and coming very quickly. It was the optician.

He had run the entire way from his door, across the village, through the forest, over the meadow, carrying a sack with nails, a hammer, and several pieces of wood. He didn’t even notice that when he was running, his inner voices were silent. For the first time, the voices didn’t constantly want to be scratched and deloused, because such voices step aside with unexpected politeness when you’re running somewhere, determined to save a life.

Out of breath, the optician stood in front of Elsbeth. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

“I’m saving you,” Elsbeth said.