She stood for a few moments when she was done, holding the shovel. The night was so quiet. A breeze rustled the twigs on the branches above her, and whispered through the dry weeds. There was a scatter of cloud, but mostly the sky was clear, the stars bright, the moon lowering to the horizon. She wasn’t shaking anymore. The aftereffects of her adrenaline rush had completely gone, leaving her only tired.

Finally she went back to the car, collapsed the shovel, and dropped it into the trunk. It was a mess in there, pooled blood and dirt, but she wasn’t about to try to clean it now. She got out a rag and the water bottle and washed off her hands, drying them on the rag.

The car still purred, the engine running smoothly. She had a momentary worry that it might run out of gas, but then she realized it probably wasn’t running on gas anyway. She remembered her rescuer putting his hand on the engine to start it up, then saying to her, Now that was magic.

Dream magic.

The car would run until she woke up.

She looked at the elm, but knew she couldn’t go yet. There was still something unfinished. It took her a moment to decide what.

She took her fiddlecase out of the back of the car and laid it on the hood, opening it. Got the bow from the lid, used the frog to tighten the hairs. Ran her fingers across the strings to check the tuning. Finally, she went back across the road to the elm and stood over the little mound of earth with her fiddle under her chin, bow in hand.

What to play?

The first thing that came to mind was a song that the band did. It was about a hare that lost its life in a hunt, not a deer, but maybe that was close enough. She started to play, slowing the tune down so that it was like an air. A lament.

Closing her eyes, she played it through three times, the notes of her fiddle weeping for the dead flesh she’d buried, for the live creature it had been, cut down by the little men’s arrows. The breeze caught the music and took it away, across the fields to where a dark smudge of forest came down from the hills to meet the expanse of dried weeds and leafless bushes that lay between their trees and the road.

She held the last note, lightening the pressure of her bow on the strings until the note whispered away into silence. She tucked the fiddle under her arm and let the bow dangle from her forefinger. Opening her eyes, she regarded the little mound of dirt.

There, she thought. Now that felt right. Nothing should have to die, hard and alone, with no one to mourn their going. Not even in a dream.