Before I go, I’ll tell Iron Hollow how that story ends. I’ll tell them what I saw as I walked down the mountain that day. The sun had slipped behind the ridge, and the sky was fevered, hectic red. I heard a strange cry and looked up. A pair of hawks circled above me. No, perhaps they were gulls or bats—angels or dragons, or every beast that has ever heralded the end of one world and the beginning of another. One of them was graceful, confident, slipping purposefully from one form to another, and the other was clumsy, as if unused to himself. I heard a woman’s laugh.
