The drifting ashes danced in the languid sunbeams streaming through the twisting branches and gnarled boughs of the western glade. A log snapped in two, and the bonfire burst into a renewed, cackling guffaw, but the corpse was still quite dead. She hung from a heavy pole I had driven deep into the earth, and her blackened, shriveled wrists still hung from the iron manacles which I had likewise driven into the pole. It had been good, tiring work, and my shirt was still damp with the sweat of it as the cool hint of night crept up from the brackish pits of the swamp. She had died hours ago, with the faggots, but I had kept piling up the logs over the glowing embers, coaxing the flames higher and higher until the biting tongues stood flickering above the corpse, the chains, above even the tall postāstill, I kept piling. You could see her silhouette in the towering blaze, her dried up corpse head a dark, gaping skull in the flowering, bright flames.
Now I had spent myself. Now the work was done. The ashes of her pyre rose to heaven, but finding no home, settled back down to earth and over the empty village she had so ruthlessly devoured. I watched the settling dust drifting through the dying light and sat beside the warmth of the receding fire.
My home, my world, was gone, and I was tired.
