An stopped and rubbed his eyes. It was already dark - better to watch where he was stepping. Every previous time, everything had been simple. He received a call, went where he was sent, and… returned. His memory had never refused to serve him; it had simply been mostly empty.

  Drawing in the cooled air, he trudged on. The road turned deeper into the forest; off to the side remained a gently sloping, mown field with hay bales and a small birch grove. An clenched his fists. He didn’t want to return to the pce he was heading toward.

  Two turns ter, he emerged onto a fresh clearing. A wall of forest surrounded a vast meadow where three new log houses stood. Resin still oozed from their stripped trunks. Two of the houses were enormous, raised on stilts; the third looked more like an ordinary vilge hut. On the trampled earth burned two massive bonfires, and between them moved dark-skinned, curly-haired people dressed in ornate, garish clothes.

  A wedding.

  Heat and light poured off the fires. People bustled about, moving back and forth between two dense groups of angry men, waving their arms. Children ran past, eyes gleaming, sticks in their hands, vanishing into the thickening darkness. Off to the side of the bonfires stood a freshly driven pine stake. Impaled on its top was an elderly man in a white silk shirt. Bulging-eyed and trembling, he stared straight at An. Blood and something dark stained the fresh wood of the stake. His booted feet had gouged grooves into it.

  Resting his hand on the grip of the rod, An tried to slip through the crazed settlement as quickly as possible. He felt every gaze begin to bore into his back. The main thing was not to run.

  Passing between the bonfires, he felt reality sway. Just slightly. Showers of sparks flew into his face.

  …He remembered. The fire had destroyed almost all traces. No one had survived - but the cause hadn’t been the fmes. It had been stab wounds and sshes…

  The bride’s body y on its side in a dark pool. It was as if no one noticed her. People stopped, shook their fists at him. Just a little more - and he would step into the dark arch of forest on the far side of the clearing, leaving the madmen behind.

  Why was he walking between the bonfires again?

  Sparks rose and rose. He saw the elderly man’s furious stare again. Waving fists. Snarling mouths. Women with disheveled hair. The bride’s gssy eyes. Some child ran up and swung a stick at him. Reflexively, An snatched out the rod and swatted it aside.

  The swing parted the curtain of sparks flying from the fires…

  - and everything vanished.

  He stood on a forest road. The crazed settlement was behind him. The glow of the bonfires rose above the rooftops, but no sound carried over. The rod y solid in his palm, and he hurried to return it to its case. Apparently, this time his “work” wasn’t the deranged vilgers.

  Wiping sweat and soot from his face, An lifted his gaze to the sky once more. The stars had arranged themselves into a new, vaguely familiar pattern. Slowly, he drew the rod from its case and raised it toward the heavens.

  A sudden, shocking realization smmed straight into his mind.