The hair: that was the easy part. She would start with that. Nessa’s knife moved, sliced; the soft strands fell into her hand, a whisper against her blistered palm. Other hands reached out, ash-pale, and took the strange harvest from her. She stepped across to stand by the dead man’s right arm. In her mind, she pictured the thing that must be made. She lifted the knife, poised it in place, began to cut.

The sky was beginning to lighten by the time they were finished. The folk of the Hidden Tribe bore the hard-won burden forth from the chamber; they lifted Nessa out and set her back on the earth by Guard, and they passed the bones between them until she had packed them all safely away in the bag she had brought. She was feeling very odd indeed, as if she were not really here, as if it were some other girl who did these fearsome things and walked by these beings of story, and the real Nessa were still at home on the Whaleback, tucked up asleep by her sisters in a time when the world was to rights, and no blond giants had come across the sea to set their booted feet on this quiet shore. But she was here; she could feel the burning ache in her back, she could see the circle of shadowy figures in the darkness and hear their whispering. Oh, she was tired; she was so tired, and this was not yet finished.

“Cover up,” she managed. “We cannot leave him thus. The stones, the opening…”

Already, behind her on the mound, there were faint sounds of activity, and yet the strange companions of her moonlit endeavor stood here close by her, the blue light which shone about them fading slowly as dawn came closer. She ventured a glance over her shoulder and blinked in amazement. The Hidden Tribe, it seemed, was not the only force the islands had summoned to aid their priestess this night. Now small creatures of the dark crept forth—some on two legs, some on four; some furred, some feathered; some many-limbed in jewel-bright carapace—and as Nessa stared, the cairn was mended, grain by grain, pebble by pebble, the surface growing smooth and unbroken in the gray of early light. She had not seen the big stones move, but this was a place where the impossible happened every day, folk knew that; what about the woman who had once been a seal, what about the turnip baby, what about the monolith with a powerful thirst for lake water? Nessa looked away. Whatever had moved that weight so quickly, she thought, she would rather not look in its eyes. Still, she could see ferns rustling upward, creepers twining and binding to cover the earth she had bared, she could see spring’s soft blanket moving up again to shelter Ulf’s rest, until she might return to make him whole again.