I. The Town
The town was arranged like a spatter-pattern of wood and stone splashed into order by the brush of a mad god, raised earth caked around the buildings in a rough ring. On the edge of the Forest, the homes and shops were small and dense, walls of thick trimmed pine closing in the hard beds and stove-fires, haylofts, woodcutters' axes, tallow candles, steel silverware – all the little things of home, packed in, compressed. Bright pennants flapped when the wind rode past, baying hollowly as it drove the Forest's fog ahead in swirling eddies.
Now only young ghosts frequented the crooked streets – shallow beds had become shallow graves stained a dreadful red; shutters that once guarded against the chill of night now buried in darkness patterns to match the madness of the town roads themselves. The drafts that seeped in and down around the windowpanes rose back up with the taste of copper.
In some nearby tree a bird sang – soft, beautiful, oblivious to the homes newly emptied of life.