The Gypsys were a travelling people. Once they had roamed half the world in their covered wagons. Emmarelda had some distant memories of those days but she had been young before the convulsions of the civil war made travel unsafe. The Gypsys had retreated into the Carnival becoming a fixture of urban life. Every so often one of the elders suggested returning to the road but there was little appetite for it. Emmarelda thoroughly agreed with the younger crowd. Who would leave a warm house to ride through the night in the rain. She gripped Wil around the middle laying her head against his back to try and keep the rain from her eyes. This strategy did little to keep her dry but it kept the water out of her eyes.

She didn’t quite fall asleep but when she opened her eyes the eastern sky was beginning to grow light. Wil was guiding the horse up a long shale path that wound its way up a bluff. At the top of the hill stood an ancient looking light house. A mirrored beam stabbed out into the rainy darkness but it didn’t rotate as it should. It gave the place the look of a corpse, eyes fixed in death. Emmarelda shiverd as Wil reigned in the exhausted horse at the base of the lighthouse. The door hung open, banging forlornly in the gusty storm tossed air.

“Abandoned?” Emmarelda asked. Wil shook his head and nodded towards a dilapidated stable where a horse lay among a pile of bloody hay. Emmarelda was no veterinarian but she wagered that the cause of death was the giant bite in its throat. Wil slid off the horse and drew his sword, eyes darting around.

“Are we too late?” he asked.

“I’m not sure…” Emmarelda replied, climbing down beside him. There was a fay energy about the place, but it didn’t seem like the energy of a man.

“Let’s climb,” she suggested and followed Wil into the building. They climbed the winding steps till they reached the top where a vast oil lamp guttered on the last of its oil. The view out over the gray sea was breathtaking, white caps rolled out amidst surging storm clouds that flickered with distant lightning.

“We are too late,” Emmarelda said somberly, extending her hand to point down the coast. A quarter mile distant, a ship was run aground on a spur of jagged rocks. Her rigging was shredded and ragged but there was no doubt it was the same ship from the crystal ball. Emmarelda moved to a spy glass mounted on a tripod and turned it the ship. It was a good glass, powerful enough that she could read the lettering on the ships prow: Demeter.

“What do we do now, can you still do your ritual?” he demanded.


“Maybe… maybe something a little different… I need to find a gallows tree and I’ll need you to defend me,” she explained.

“Defend you from what?” he asked. As if on queue a bone chilling howl came from somewhere close at hand. Emmarelda swallowed hard.

“Whatever comes,” she said simply.