I do not know why I have come to her door. Perhaps one ghost seeks the company of another. I knock.

  The bolt scrapes back.

  Grace stands there, clutching her deep blue wool cloak at her throat. Her black hair hangs in wet strings, plastered to her neck.

  Her eyes lock onto my hands. Old, wrinkled, and living.

  A sound rips from her, a dry, tearing gasp. She lurches back, her shoulder cracking against the doorframe. Her hand, the one not strangling her cloak, shoots out, the fingers splayed.

  The name is barely a breath. "Grace."

  Her body jolts, a violent, full-body spasm that rattles the door in its frame.

  "You are the wrong thing," she says, scrambling backward into the stale dark of the cottage. "The wrong thing came back."

  Her back hits the far wall and she slides to the floor, a frantic, shuddering heap. Her eyes lose me. They fix on the empty air at my shoulder.

  Her weeping is a raw, animal sound in the small, dark room. I do not move. I do not speak. To approach is to threaten. I wait on the threshold, letting the stillness grow around her grief, giving it space to breathe.

  The tearing sobs soften into shuddering breaths. She buries her face in the thick wool of her sleeve, the dark blue fabric turning nearly black as it soaks up her tears.

  Only then do I take a slow step inside. I kneel.

  Her head lifts. Her eyes are red-rimmed and wary, the pupils fixed on me, tracking my every small movement.

  I open my satchel and find a small linen pouch. I crush it gently between my fingers, releasing the scent of lavender and hops as I place it on the floor without a sound.

  "For your sleep," I say. "To keep the nightmares away."

  Her hand, shaking, creeps out from the shelter of her cloak. Her fingers hesitate just above the linen. Then, she takes it.

  "I'm sorry," she says, the words aimed at the floor. "I called you… a wrong thing."

  Grace clutches the small linen pouch to her chest. Her other hand resumes its tormented work, twisting the blue wool of her cloak.

  "The posters," I say. "I saw you helping."

  She looks down at the floor. The muscles in her jaw work, chewing on the words before they are spoken.

  "Elder Gwendolyn came to me," she says, her voice barely there. "She was so kind. She held my hand."

  The corner of her mouth twitches. "She asked me, 'Do you want to keep Rosa's spirit here, trapped in your sadness, or do you want to set her free?'"

  Her attention drifts to the window, to the grey, empty sky.

  "Every poster," she says, her voice cracking, "is a chain. She told me that to free my Rosa, I had to help break the chains on all the other souls too. That my work was a kindness. A release."

  She looks at me then, her eyes wet, feverish with the desperate hope that I will understand.

  "She said I was a good mother for doing it."

  Her thumb and forefinger find a loose thread on her cloak. She begins to pull at it, a slow, repetitive motion.

  "Rosa hated this colour," she says, a strange, bright laugh cutting through the heavy quiet. "She wanted a bright red one. For her sixteenth. I told her no, of course."

  She looks at me, her eyes searching, a plea for me to nod along, to agree that she had been right.

  "'Red is for harlots,' I said. 'A good Greyhollow girl wears a respectable blue.'" She mocks her own prim, scolding tone, then her face crumples. "Gods, the things we say to them. We think we are building them armour. We are just building a cage."

  Her hand stills on the fabric. "I made her one just like mine. We fought about it for a week."

  When she starts speaking again, her voice is quieter, and her thumb has found that thread again, rolling it between her fingers. "It was a strange morning, the day of the selection. The sun was high and bright, but the air felt like it was still deep winter. Like the swamp was breathing on us, right in the middle of the square."

  She pauses, the memory of that cold settling in the room.

  "I made her wear it. She didn't care about the cold. She only cared that it was blue."

  She draws the cloak tighter around herself, bunching the fabric in her fists. "She looked at me with such fire in her eyes. So angry. So alive. And that's the last thing I have of her. Not a kiss. Not a smile. Just her, burning with rage at me."

  Her fingers have pulled the thread loose now, leaving a small hole.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  "They took her, and all I have left is this stupid, respectable blue."

  Her eyes close, shutting me out. Shutting the world out. She is back in the square on that cold summer morning.

  "It wasn't her name they called," she says. "It was little Elspeth. The weaver's girl. So pale. So thin."

  Grace wraps her arms around herself, her fingers digging into the thick wool of her cloak.

  "Elder Gwendolyn looked at Elspeth. And then she looked at my Rosa. My strong, healthy girl." Her voice roughens, the words catching on a sudden, raw grief. "Gwendolyn said the offering had to be worthy. That a weak offering was an insult."

  Her eyes open, but they are not seeing me. Their focus is a thousand yards away, fixed on the memory of the Elders' platform.

  "She asked me. In front of everyone. She asked if I would trade my daughter's strength for Elspeth's weakness. She called it a gift. A mother's ultimate gift to the village."

  Grace falls silent for a moment. Her grip on her cloak tightens.

  Then she speaks again, and her voice is a dead, flat drone. "I saw something in Ursula's eyes as she looked from my Rosa to Elspeth. She wasn't seeing two girls. She was seeing one worth keeping and one she was stuck with. She was about to say something, I know she was."

  A sound tears from Grace's throat. A sharp, broken bark of a laugh. It dies almost instantly.

  "But then Gwendolyn reached out and put her hand on Ursula's arm. So soft. Like she was calming a dog. And Ursula just shut her mouth. They didn't even look at each other. They just decided. Right there. Without a single word."

  Her face crumples. "And then they both looked at me. Waiting. What else could I do? I said yes, Nora. I said yes."

  "Don't you see?" She looks at me, her breath a series of small, tearing sounds in her throat. "After what I did, Gwendolyn was the only one who didn't look at me like a monster. She held my hand. She told me there was a way to make it right. A way to be a good mother again."

  Her eyes lose focus. "She told me what I had to do. For Rosa. To set her soul free. So I do it. I tear down every last one. I have to."

  She finally meets my eyes. All the fight has gone out of them, leaving only the flat, grey calm of a drowned world.

  "It's the only way I can stand to close my eyes at night."

  Her confession ends, but my mind is a scavenger. It picks at the one loose thread of her story, the one name buried beneath her words.

  "And Elspeth?" I ask. "What became of her?"

  Grace's face closes. A door slamming shut. A twitch starts under her eye.

  "Elspeth." She says the name like it is a curse she has just remembered. She stares at the floor. "I don't know. I never asked. Her family live by the well."

  The words are clipped. Final.

  The hazy fog of her grief has burned away, leaving only the hard, clear lines of a new and terrible fear.

  Her hand grabs my arm, her fingers digging in like roots.

  "The well," she gasps, then her words tumble out faster. "Gods, Nora. You don't know, do you? They found something down there. Something terrible. No one will even say his name now."

  Her eyes lock onto mine, and for a second, I feel the weight of her secret trying to crawl from her skull into mine.

  "The boy from Blackthorn."

  "You mean Eli?"

  "Don't say his name too loud," she says, a finger to her lips.

  The sound of her breath is a long, shaky thing in the small, dark room.

  "We thought he was just gone. Another sad story. But then the children, they said the water tasted wrong. We didn't listen. Who ever listens to children?"

  She picks at the wood grain of the table with her fingernail.

  "Then little Molly Miller, playing by the well, found one. She said it looked like a pearl someone had left in the mud. So bright. She put it in her mouth."

  Grace makes a small, choked sound.

  "Her mother saw. And the sound she made…" She leans in, her voice becoming fragile. "It was the sound you make when you find maggots in your flour."

  She stops. Stares at nothing.

  "By nightfall, the whole village knew."

  When she speaks again, her voice is flat. "They drained the well."

  A pause. Her fingers dig into the table's edge.

  "At the bottom, there was a small pile. Even in the dark of the well, they had a strange, soft light to them."

  Another pause. Longer this time.

  "It was his teeth, Nora. Every last one."

  She leans forward, her face the colour of old bone.

  "No jawbone. No skull. Just the teeth. All clustered together like..." She swallows hard. "Like something had coughed them up."

  Her voice cracks.

  "Not broken. Perfect."

  She closes her eyes for a moment, then opens them again.

  "Doctor Mortis looked at them. You know the Doctor's hands. He's a surgeon. Steady as a rock, always. But not that day. That day... they shook. He couldn't stop them. 'Bone doesn't glow like this,' he said. 'This isn't the work of a man or a beast. This is the work of an alchemist. Or a god.'"

  Grace is left trembling, her hand a claw on my arm. A long silence stretches, filled only by the sound of her ragged breathing.

  "It doesn't sound like him," I say.

  She looks at me, confused.

  "The young man Ward described," I explain. "He was broken by grief. A man like that wanders off to die. He doesn't perform a clean, meticulous ritual like that."

  "He wasn't," she says, letting go of my arm. Her hands twist in her lap. "He wasn't sad. Not at the end."

  She leans forward, her eyes bright. "He was smiling, Nora. The day before he vanished, I saw him by the woods. He told me not to worry. He said he'd found a way to become someone new. Someone strong enough to get Teddy back."

  Her words settle between us. Become someone new. The phrase is a jolt. A sudden, sickening recognition. I am finding my own footprints on a path I don't remember walking.

  The well. The neat pile of teeth.

  It is not his story. It is my story.

  I was Eli. I am the Snatcher.

  My throat closes, a knot of muscle strangling a scream.

  The edges of my vision go dark, tunnelling until Grace's face is just a small, distant, and insignificant point of light.

  Then Grace's face swims into view. Her own fear is gone, replaced by a new concern. For me.

  "Nora? What is it?" Her voice is distant. "Your eyes. They've gone somewhere else."

  I am on my feet. I do not remember standing.

  I need an excuse. A reason for this madness. My mind scrambles, grabbing at the tatters of a dead woman's thoughts.

  "The root," I hear myself say. "It will spoil."

  I am at the door. My hands are claws, scrabbling at the iron latch.

  Behind me, Grace calls my name. I do not answer.

  The latch gives. The door swings open. I fall out into the cold, clean air.

  I am running. The motion is a frantic, graceless thing, an old woman fleeing a house on fire. The house is my own mind.

  I collapse into the shadows of the smithy, the cold stone a shock against my back. I focus, pushing past the pain in my joints, and direct my thoughts inward.

  You. I know you're there. Answer me. Five years ago. What was my name?

  Silence.

  Not a void. This silence has a pressure.

  A presence. A vast, patient thing, listening.

  Tell me!

  You ask the name of a meal that has been digested. There is nothing left to name.

  My mind tries to reject the words, but my body accepts them as a simple, biological fact.

  The Echoes. The lives I've worn.

  They are meat.

  My mind becomes a scavenger again, picking through the cold remains of the meal, searching for a single, indigestible piece of him.

  Please, I plead into the crushing pressure in my skull. The name. Just his name. Let me have that one thing.

  No. The name you seek has been swallowed. You shall not have it.

  It is a vault door swinging shut.

  And in the vacuum it leaves behind, a new thought forms. Hard and sharp as a shard of bone.

  If the thing in my head will not speak, I will ask the stones themselves.

  I know where I have to go.

  The well.

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