and fro, its milky coat stained red and pink by the firelight.
Stumbling with relief, she made her way along the beach and out onto the peninsula. When she was close enough to hear the fire crackling, she stopped, for the saxophone man held a knife and so did several others. They wielded them as they danced and the dance was full of stabbing and slashing.
‘No,’ she choked. ‘No!’
‘There is nothing else for it,’ said a voice and she turned to find the old beggar woman by her side. Her hair shone white in the ghostly light as she went on gently in her cracked voice, ‘The beasts come but they cannot stay here in the darkness and they cannot live up there. To let them go running and running in the darkness until they are blinded, until they starve or founder and fall prey to the rats would be too cruel.’
‘What is it?’ whispered the girl, numb with dread. ‘Where did it come from?’
‘From dreams, like all of the others,’ said the woman. ‘They are the shape of our yearning.’
‘Why do they come? What do they want?’ The girl felt thin and insubstantial, as if she were a dream.
‘To be taken in,’ said the woman. ‘To be known. To be free of those who dreamed them. We let each of them run for as long as we can bear their desperation, and then we hunt and end them. Out of love and mercy. Join us. We saw at once that you were one of us.’
‘Is there no way to save this one?’ asked the girl.
The old woman looked at her then, squinting as if to see her better, and her eyes widened. ‘For most of us, there is no way. But for one who is pure and empty, an unused vessel, there may be a way. If you have the courage for it.’
The girl did not understand what the woman was saying. The wild, deadly dance was coming to a crescendo, and through the faltering movements of the capering figures she saw the beast, white and trembling, foam about its lips and nostrils.
‘Tell me,’ she said, her heart yearning and yearning towards the beast, till she thought she would die of longing. She was astonished to find she was weeping, for she had never wept before.
The old beggar woman took her cold fingers and squeezed them to draw her eyes from the beast. ‘You must go to it and claim it. But there is no going back once you begin.’ The girl nodded, and the woman reached into a battered bag and drew out a garland of dried red roses, regarding it with wonder. ‘I have carried this for long, long years, ever since I came here as a girl. I had not the courage to wear it, but I could not bear to throw it away.’ She set it upon the girl’s head. ‘Do not baulk or flinch or cry out when you face the beast,’ she said. ‘Only courage will avail you.’
The scent of the ancient roses was very strong. The girl thought of the flowers sent by her father, his frowning concentration and big bony wrists as he laid the sheaf of roses in their box.
She thought of her mother, packing the white dress in layers of fine tissue, singing softly in a darkened room. She pitied them and marvelled at their love for her, despite their frailty, their short, short lives.
The dance ended.
‘Go,’ the old woman cried. ‘Before it is too late.’
The girl moved towards the tattered men and women, who stood panting and sweating and gasping from their exertions. But they drew back and fell silent when she came among them, white as a votive candle in their midst.
‘You are mine,’ she told the beast.
Hearing the words, it ceased to sway and its gaze fixed upon her. Its eyes glowed like hot coals in the firelight, fierce and terrible and beautiful. They looked through skin and bone and into her essence. Moving closer, she saw herself reflected infinitely in its eyes; the short life that had been and all that might be and her death as well. She did not turn away from it, because she would never see its like again. Whatever it cost to see it, and to save it, she would pay.
She realised it was waiting and that words alone were not enough. She stopped and opened her arms, and at last it came to her. It lowered its head, it pierced