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The silence inside had a body to it At first I thought it like the eerie quiet of dead battlefields, but then I realized the difference This silence was alive And whatever lived in the silence here, it wasn’t lying quiet I thought I could still smell the blood, thick on the air

Then I breathed deeply and thought again, cold horror rippling up ripped Jaone hard under my hand, muscles tensed in wariness Without a word, he detached hiht he truly had vanished, and nearly panicked, groping for hi on the empty air where he’d stood Then I realized that he hadthe paleness of face and linen shirt I heard his step, quick and light on the dirt floor, and then that was gone too

The air was hot and still, and thick with blood A rank, sweet sue Exactly the sa hallucination Still in the grip of a cold grue, I swung around and strained my eyes toward the far side of the cavernous rooraved on ain out of darkness The rope stretched tight fro burden…

A groan rent the air, and I nearly bit my lip in two My throat swelled with a sed screa to ed to call out for hih accustomed to the dark to make out the shadow of the saw blade, an amorphous blob ten feet away, but the far side of the room was a wall of blackness I strainedbelatedly that in my pale dress, I was undoubtedly visible to anyone in the rooain, and I started convulsively My pal It’s not! I told myself fiercely It isn’t, it can’t be!

I was paralyzed with fear, and it took some moments for me to realize what my ears had told me The sound hadn’t come from the blackness across the room, where the crane stood with its hook It had come from soh was still open, a pale rectangle in the pitch-black Nothing showed, nothing moved between me and the door I took a quick step toward it and stopped Every s strained to run like hell--but I couldn’t leave Jauish; pain past the point of crying out With it, a new thought popped intothe sound?

Shocked out of caution, I turned toward the sound and shouted his nah above

"Jaain "Where are you?"

"Here, Sassenach" Jamie’s muffled voice caent "Co with relief at the sound of his voice, I blundered through the dark, not caring nohat hadas it wasn’t Jaroped blindly, and finally found a door, standing open He was inside the overseer’s quarters

I stepped through the door, and felt the change at once The air was even closer, and much hotter, than that in the mill proper The floor here was of wood, but there was no echo toAnd the ser

"Where are you?" I called again, low-voiced this tily near at hand "By the bed Come and help me; it’s a lass"

He was in the tiny bedroohtless too I found the on the wooden floor beside a narrow bed, and in the bed, a body

It was a female, as he’d said; touch told uinating The cheek I brushed was cool and cla, the bedclothes, the h my skirt where I knelt on the floor

I felt for a pulse in the throat and couldn’t find it The chest n of life beyond the faint sigh that ith it

"It’s all right now," I heard one, though in truth there was more reason for it now "We’re here, you’re not alone What’s happened to you, can you tellover head and throat and chest and sto blindly, frantically, for a wound to stanch Nothing, no spurt of artery, no raw gash And all the time, there was a faint but steady pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, like the sound of tiny feet running

"Tell…" It was not so h Then a catch, a sobbing breath indrawn

"Who has done this to ye, lass?" Jaent "Tell reat vessels lie close beneath the skin and found the arm and lifted, thrust a hand beneath to feel her back All the heat of her body was there; the bodice was daht," I said again "You’re not alone Jamie, hold her hand" Hopelessness came down on me; I knehat it must be

"I already have it," he said to ht, d’ye hear

"Tell…"

I could not help, but nonetheless slid ers curve between the lihs She was still warh ers, hot and wet as the air around us, unstoppable as the water that flowed down the mill’s sluice

"I…die…"

"I think ye are ently "Will ye not say who has killed you?"