The first breath I take of Greyhollow air is the same as the last. Woodsmoke and damp earth. But the feeling is different.

  The only sound is the dry rasp of paper tearing.

  No one speaks.

  Even the Broken Barrel has been silenced. Someone has nailed boards across its mouth. It stands there in the pale light, two blind eyes for windows.

  I stare at the windows until they blur, and in their place, another image burns.

  Of him.

  Of skin like polished pearl against the filth of Darkwater. A warmth that had no place in that cold, dead world.

  My hand remembers the strain of my satchel. And then, the act of letting go. Placing it into his hands. No, not his hands. They were too perfect, too clean.

  The exchange felt less like a gift and more like a prayer. A prayer to a creation I'd just met in the dark. A creation who has now vanished.

  Unless he was punished. Taken away by the Collectors for what he learnt.

  Yes, that must be it.

  The thought pulls tight, a knot of certainty in my mind. Then it begins to go slack.

  But what if they didn't take him away?

  What if it was me?

  My mind narrows to the large, square handprint in the dust and my frail hand beside it. The two images click together in my mind. The question builds, one unbearable piece at a time.

  Did I...

  The final part lands with a force.

  Wear him?

  I press my palms to my eyes, trying to force the hideous thought away. It is madness. There is no proof.

  I lower my hands and look at the tavern. A test.

  An empty ale cask bleeds rust into the cobblestones.

  I wait for the wound. For the Echo of the man who kept this place. A phantom ache. Anything. But there is only the damp stillness of the morning.

  And a question.

  Is the silence proof of my innocence, or of something so monstrous it leaves no ghosts behind at all?

  A man's cry cuts across the square.

  "Grandma!"

  A blur of red hair slams into me.

  Strong arms, smelling of sawdust and clean sweat, wrap around my frail frame. James. My grandson. His whole body is shaking.

  Evangeline's hand finds my arm.

  A warmth floods my chest, a cold flask filled with a hot, volatile liquid.

  I feel the dampness of his tears on my neck.

  The pressure of her fingers on my sleeve.

  The frantic rhythm of his breathing.

  I make my arms move. They lift. They wrap around his back. The gesture is a perfect forgery. An Echo of an action performed a thousand times by a woman who is no longer here.

  The path is true. The Echo of Nora strengthens.

  It remains Vivid, but its flame, once a grasping light, is now a hungry glow.

  ??

  He pulls back, his hands tight on my shoulders.

  The hard lines of his face melt away, the relief washing the strength right out of his bones. "Grandma. We thought you were gone. The Snatcher." He swallows hard. "It's been a whole week. Your poster was next."

  He gestures to the notice board. "We were ready. Then the Elders ordered them all down."

  I follow his gesture toward the notice board, but the faces behind him are what hold me. A woman's smile freezes, half-formed. A dropped sack of grain goes unnoticed. Heads turn with the unnerving unity of a flock of crows landing on a corpse.

  They are looking at us.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  No one moves toward us. They are rooted to their spots, their arms crossed, their heads tilted.

  A woman I have known for seventy years, Maud, meets my eyes. She doesn't smile. She flinches and turns to her husband, her hand gripping his arm as she speaks in a low, sharp tone.

  He does not flinch. He just stares, driving a nail into my skin with his eyes.

  It is the look a farmer gives a sheep that was born the wrong colour. A thing to be studied before it is culled.

  I look down at my hands, half-expecting to see them stained blue, or covered in the wrong kind of wool.

  I force the image away and see only the evidence, the things they can see.

  My back is too straight.

  My hands are too steady.

  My face is not the ruin they expected. I am not the Nora they lost.

  I am something else.

  Something new and wrong.

  I ease James's hand from my arm. "Wait here," I say, the words meant only for James's ear.

  Vera stands where the last posters are being taken down. She gives a sharp nod, and the men with her get back to work.

  I walk toward her. "It is good to see the village so orderly."

  She turns, and I see the scar on her cheek for what it is now. A map of this new, harder Greyhollow. "Order is what keeps the wolves from the door, Nora. You taught me that once."

  I glance at the clean, naked wood of the board. "And our grief? Does that have no place in this new order?"

  Vera holds my stare. "You want to know why I'm taking them down? Dead men don't chop wood. They don't fill buckets. They don't stand watch. These posters are a list of failed assets. We're a village, Nora. Not a graveyard."

  She takes a half-step closer. "Elder Ursula believes grief is a luxury we can no longer afford."

  Her stare softens for a fraction of a second. "Find your use, Nora. It's all any of us have left."

  A movement across the square catches my eye. Ward the blacksmith stands by the notice board, holding the last poster as if it were a dead bird.

  The face on the poster is not a stranger's. I know those kind eyes. I know that stubborn set to the jaw.

  It's the charcoal face from the sewer wall.

  I take a step toward the poster, turning my back on my grandson's worried call, and the world answers by dissolving into a grey smear until only the fading face is left.

  The ink at the bottom is blurred, the name almost lost to the elements. I squint, trying to decipher the letters. E... L...

  A whisper reaches me. Grace, huddled with a neighbour. "Such a shame. Young Eli."

  The name is a light held up in the dark, and the boy's guttural cry finally takes shape.

  Eee... Lye...

  I do not know who Eli is.

  I only know that the boy in the sewer wept his name, and this village has been ordered to forget it.

  The crowd parts. The Elders descend into the square as if stepping down from another world.

  Gwendolyn is the first to reach me. Her embrace is a desperate, clinging thing. "Nora," she sobs, and the tears sound real. "We thought the darkness had taken you."

  Reginald places a hand on my shoulder. "Nora," he says, his voice a deep, reassuring bell. "You've been through a great ordeal. The village is concerned."

  That voice.

  That reassuring bell is a lie.

  His real voice, the one he had that day at the wasp nest, was something else entirely.

  I was eight, fearless, my alchemist's mind seeing not a nest, but a formula. He was twelve, and terrified.

  As I crept closer, the swarm erupted. I screamed, I swatted, I ran.

  He did none of those things. He simply curled into a ball, his hands over his head. He became a stone on the riverbank.

  When it was over, I was covered in stings, my face slick with tears of pain and fury. He had only two.

  He looked at my tear-streaked face, and a strange distance entered his eyes. He spoke in a still voice I had never heard before. 'You stirred the nest. I didn't.'

  The hand on my shoulder is heavy with the mass of stone.

  His voice swells to fill the space. "This miracle changes everything." His eyes meet mine for a fraction of a second. "It is our duty to guide the village's understanding. We must go and speak on it."

  He gives me a nod, but it's a gesture meant for the square, not for me. Then they turn and ascend, their backs straight.

  James's hand finds mine. As he pulls me toward home, I glance back at the window of their private chamber.

  The glass is old and warped, making them puppets in a watery play.

  But I see them.

  Reginald, the pillar of calm, is pacing.

  Gwendolyn, the font of warmth, is wringing her hands.

  And Ursula just stands at the centre of the room, her back to them, perfectly still.

  They look less like leaders and more like children who have just broken something irreplaceable.

  They look afraid. And I am the reason.

  The door shuts, and the world shrinks to this quiet room. The bolt sliding across is the loudest sound I have ever heard.

  We stand there, none of us breathing. Their eyes don't hold love, but a cold, dissecting curiosity, tracing the lines of my face as if searching for a crack in a forgery.

  Evangeline is the first to move. She guides Pip toward his room with a light hand on his back. "Just for a little while, sweetling." Her voice is a threadbare blanket, trying to cover a terrible cold.

  When Evangeline returns, James steps behind her, placing his hands on her shoulders. Her hand comes up, covering his for a brief, tight squeeze. Their hope is a fragile, beautiful thing I am about to poison with the truth.

  "Grandma," James says. "What happened?"

  "Where were you, Nora?" Evangeline demands.

  I look at these two people, the heart of Nora's world. I look at the walls of this house, the life Nora built.

  "I was in Darkwater."

  My voice is the steadiest thing in the room.

  "The Collectors are not what you think."

  I look at their faces, and for a moment, I see the ruin my next words will make.

  "They are not monsters from some distant land. They are our own. Our sons, our husbands, our neighbours. They are the ones who were taken for the Flesh Tax."

  Evangeline folds at the waist, her hands braced on her knees as if to keep herself from spilling onto the floor.

  James, however, does not break. He turns his head and looks at the wall, at a crack in the plaster, as if it's the only solid thing left in the world. He breathes out, a puff of cold air in the room.

  "I knew it," he says to the wall. Then, softer, to himself. "This whole time."

  He starts to pace. Three steps to the hearth. Three steps back. "This ends. We tell the village."

  "They'll slaughter us," Evangeline pleads, her fingers digging into his arm.

  "They've been slaughtering us for forty years," he says, his voice cracking. "We just called it a sacrifice."

  He pulls his arm from her grasp.

  He turns to me, his jaw set. But when he speaks, his voice is a raw, pleading thing. "Grandma. You. They'll listen to you. No more selections. Not for Pip. Not for anyone."

  The name 'Pip' lands, and a fierce, protective warmth explodes in my chest.

  I look from Evangeline, her eyes all pupil, to James, his face alight with a dangerous, impossible hope.

  Nora's mind screams. No. This is madness.

  But it is not her choice to make. A different fire, ignited by a child's name, has already caught. And in its sudden heat, I feel the ghost of a grandmother's caution turn to ash.

  As I open my mouth to speak, a shape blurs at the edge of my vision. Evangeline.

  She takes one small, silent step backward, her hand reaching for the latch on Pip's bedroom door. Her face is pale, her jaw set. She has made a choice of her own.

  "Gather the village," I say. "They will hear it from me tonight."

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