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I’m so angry my hands have gone white on the wood. It sat in that kitchen while I cut a bell. I keep going.

“You came home Thursday,” Katell says.

“So did he.”

Katell looks at Riwal. He is standing in the door to the shop with his coat on, where he has stood every morning.

“A barred door didn’t stop it,” I say. “Two dogs didn’t stop it. It has walked up this lane twice a week since April. The only new thing in this house since Thursday is the Ankou.” I look at him. “It isn’t afraid of the bar, Riwal. It’s afraid of you. As long as you’re here, it won’t come.”

He does not answer at once.

“Yes,” he says. “You are right. I did not know. I have never seen it. I did not know it could see me.”

He comes one step into the kitchen.

“There is something I have not told you. I can feel the fen from here. Somebody out there died last night with nobody to carry them over. There will be another, and I will feel that one too. I cannot stay in this house and wait for a thing that will not come while I am in it.”

He has stood in that door every morning feeling that and saying nothing. I’m sorry for him. I’m angry at him for not telling me. He can read my face, so I do not bother to fix it.

Corentin opens his eyes. “Then go and be somewhere else.”

It will not come while Riwal is here. So Riwal has to leave, and it has to see him leave. I say so.

“You ride out at noon. Through Morlac, in daylight, where the whole town can watch you go, and on to Trevern, where people are dying and you’re needed. That isn’t pretend. That’s your work.”

He does not say no yet. I keep going before he can.

“It can’t come as me while I’m in the house either. So I leave too, and I’m seen leaving. Then the house looks the way it did in August: an old man in a chair, Katell, and nobody else. That’s the house it’s been walking into all summer.”

“And where are you,” Katell says, “while the house is looking like August?”

“In the hedge at the bend of the lane. It’s thick there. I used to hide from you in it. I go down the lane at noon with a basket, loud, so anyone can see me go. At the bend I step into the hedge, and I stay there till dark.”

I look at Riwal.

“It comes at dusk. It always has. It will walk past my hedge and up to the door, wearing my face. Katell, you keep it out. Nobody in. Nobody answered by name. When it turns round, I’ll be in the lane behind it. And I’m the only person alive who can look at that face and tell it it isn’t mine.”

“No,” Riwal says.

“You said no at Kerlann, and you were right then.” I lift my chin, stare into those black eyes. “You’re not right now.”

“You would be alone in a lane with it. On purpose. And I would be away. On purpose.”

“Yes.” I want to be sick. I say yes anyway. “Just long enough to lure it here.”

From his chair, without opening his eyes, Corentin says, “Do it, lad. She’s right.”

Riwal looks at the shop door for a long time. Then at me.

“Perhaps,” he says. “But I do not like it.”

I’m glad. Under the glad I’m frightened, and the glad does not make the fright any smaller. The plan is made. In my master’s kitchen, in daylight, with the door open and Corentin listening, and all four of us know what it costs: I will be alone in a lane with a thing wearing my face, and Riwal could be miles away because we sent him there.

Then I put my hand inside his coat, on the warm place, and he does not move it.

RIWAL

Before noon she comes out to the shop.