A bent old woman sat on a flat stone bench with a fiddle set to her chin. She sawed a mournful tune while a fire burned merrily within the confines of a circular hearth constructed of the same flat stone used to build the dun. The dun had a door, closed, and three high windows, shuttered, and an air of being entirely deserted, like a corpse whose spirit has fled. Beyond the fire and almost lost in the darkness stood a stone trough and next to it a well ringed by a waist-high wall of white stone and capped with a hat of thatch from whose supporting pillars hung a rope and a brass bucket. The horse whickered, smelling water, and the fiddler ceased in midsong and lowered the instrument.
Without looking around and in a voice that sounded much younger than her stooped form appeared, she said, “Peace to you on this fine evening, traveler.”
Hearing the village speech here in the spirit world surprised me, but I managed a reply to her back. “Peace to you. I hope there is no trouble.”
“No trouble indeed, thanks to my power as a woman. A fine afternoon and a fine day it has been.” She still did not turn around. “How does it find you?”
We ran down through an exchange of greetings until I finally asked, “My pardon, but is there some reason you keep your back to me, maestra?”
“Is there some reason you are unaware it is foolish to look any creature in the face in the spirit world before you are sure what manner of creature it is?”
“It is?” I blurted.
She laughed. “Na! Come. Into the light,” she said, by which I recalled my surroundings enough to realize that night had fallen and the spirit world breathed in darkness while her cheery fire alone lit the world. There was no moon, and there were no stars, yet neither did the haze that blinded the heavens feel like clouds. Here beyond the aura of light, I began to think the forest below the cliffs had begun to breathe and actually move. A twig snapped.
I led the mare out from under the oak and, staying well back, circled the hearth until I came around to stand behind another stone bench. I faced the woman across the fire.
She was old, with a crooked back, and as thin as if she had not had enough to eat for many months. But she held my eyes with the confident gaze of a person who is sure of her authority in the world. Her loose, comfortable boubou, the robe sewn out of strips of gold, red, and black cloth, appeared practical for journeying and easy to wear. Her skin was quite black, unusual in these parts, and a scarf wrapped her head, although it had slipped back to reveal twists of silver hair. She wore gold earrings.