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What had killed it, and how had the bones been picked so clean already?
    Suddenly I heard the deep grunt of a pig. I flinched, imagining the teeth of the huge flying boar Peter had described biting through my flesh to crunch my bones. Where had the grunt come from? I put down my bag and held out my staff in front of me. It was made of rowan wood, which is a powerful deterrent to witches. It could be used as a club to bludgeon your enemy, but it could also be used to kill. I pressed the button beneath my left hand that made the retractable blade emerge from the end with a click . The blade was made of a silver alloy, which was also harmful to a witch; I just had to hope that it was also a good weapon to fend off a big hungry pig.
    The sound came again—another grunt, somewhere to my left. I whirled around to face it, ready to drive back the creature with my blade. Then there was another noise; more of a snort this time, from another direction. Was it circling me and preparing to charge? I wondered.
    I held my breath, kept perfectly still, and listened. I didn’t know how good a pig’s eyes were. Could it see through the mist better than me? No doubt like most animals, it had a far better sense of smell than a human.
    Finally I was forced to breathe out, but still I listened for any sign of its approach. I must have remained in the same position for almost a quarter of an hour; then I moved cautiously forward again.
    Every ten paces I halted for a moment and listened. After a while I became confused. Even if I’d somehow missed the farmhouse, the barn, and the pigpens, by now I should have reached the other side of the small valley.
    Then, directly ahead, I saw something that was totally unexpected. Rather than a fence, a barn, a farmyard, a heap of straw, a mound of pig muck, or even a farmhouse . . . what I found in front of me was a gleaming white marble pillar.
    A few of the County churches are constructed of wood; most are made of local stone. But Priestown Cathedral is not only made of stone; most of it is lined with marble. That was the only place I had ever come across a marble pillar.
    I recalled my visit to the cathedral. When a County priest dies, he is taken back to Priestown for burial. Some of his parishioners usually accompany the body. When I was about seven, our local priest, Father McMahon, fell down the altar steps, struck his head a terrible blow, and died three days later.
    My dad took me to the funeral, and I was astonished by my first sight of Priestown Cathedral. It was huge, and its tall steeple rose over three hundred feet high, reaching right up into the clouds on that gray, drizzly day. I was also amazed by its interior. The whole floor was covered with a blue, green, and purple mosaic, while the altar and the tall pillars were constructed of white marble.
    Of course, this pillar differed from those in the cathedral. For one thing, it wasn’t supporting a roof and was only about five feet high. But it did support something: a very lifelike carved marble head.
    The head was totally white but for one thing—the eyes were a vivid blue and seemed to be made of precious stones. It was the head of a young girl, with a very pretty face and long, curly hair.
    As I stared at it in awe, I felt the warmth of the sun on my head. I pulled my gaze away and looked up into a blue sky. The mist had started to drift away, but I soon realized that something was very wrong. Previously the winter sun had been close to the horizon, shining into my face without any discernible warmth. Now it was high in the sky, and felt hotter than during the County summer.
    The mist was rolling away more quickly now, and I almost staggered as the scene spread out before me. I was standing on the slope of a hill rather than in a valley. The mud had been replaced by grass—but not the green grass fed by the usual County rain. This was yellow-brown, scorched by the sun, and there were cracks in the dry earth. There was no farm, no