“Wait!” he called after it. “Don’t go. I can help you find a voice, and then you can tell me what you need.”

Because when they were left behind like this, spirits always needed something.

Usually, if the will was strong enough to keep them from going on to wherever the dead went when they were done with their bodies, they were also strong enough to give themselves a shape and make their needs understood. But some were helpless. They existed more in the next world than in this, but were unable to move on.

“Come to me,” he said.

He let the knives drop onto the sand and began to gather driftwood and seaweed, shells and whatever other flotsam he could find upon the sand. When he had as much as he needed, he pushed it all together in the rough shape of a man.

“You see?” he said. “You can wear this and tell me who you are, what you need.”

Then he began to use that gift of his, convincing the spirit to enter his makeshift man, the changeling shape to hold that spirit and allow it to take on a semblance of life.

This was an old knowledge he worked with. Normally, one wouldn’t make room for a spirit in the changeling. It was only meant to last long enough to replace the child or human that had been taken away. The poor twig and leaf creature was expected to die quickly, leaving the survivors something to bury.

This was different, but not so different that he couldn’t see the way to bind the two together. Not permanently—nothing could be permanent with a body such as this—but certainly long enough for him to speak with it.

“Yes, yes,” he said softly. “That’s it. There’s nothing to hurt you in this body I’ve made for you. It’s all found debris, washed up on the shore. Natural. No spells on it. Nothing to bind you to it, just here for you to use while you will.”

Spirits like this were such funny things. They wanted to be bound back into the world, but at the same time they couldn’t abide the binding.

“There, there,” he said, as first an arm twitched, then a foot. “See how comfortable it is. Made just for you, and you can cast it off any time you like. You don’t need my promise to know I speak true. You can feel it in the changeling, can’t you?”

It was a thing of his making, but Timony still took a step back when the creature sat up.

Oh, it was a marvel, this calling up magic. Wasn’t it just?

I . . . feel really weird . . .

Timony blinked. He knew that voice echoing in his head.

“Geordie?” he said.

Its two seashell eyes looked down at its body, then lifted to the doonie’s face.

What . . . what did you do to me? Geordie asked.