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says.”

Six
    They walked down past the Blood Pond to the ruins of Broomstick Farm. Stanny lit a fire on an ancient hearth in the Hag's Kitchen. He crawled through the weeds and the tussocky grass, cutting with his knife. He filled a bent aluminum pot with water from a slow stream and put the pot on the flames. He started to throw in what he'd found: clover, dandelion leaves, mushrooms. He cut thistle heads open and picked the nuts from inside, threw them in as well. The smoke swirled around them. The soup boiled and bubbled.
    “Nature Stew,” said Stanny. “The world's full of food for them that knows. Springwater, things that other folk think is just weeds.”
    The fire died down, the soup went off the boil. Stanny wrapped his hands in his cuffs and lifted the pot onto a stone. He grinned and showed Joe four little speckled eggs.
    “A speckled surprise,” he said. “Skylarks' eggs. The final touch.”
    He dropped them gently into the soup and they sank, then slowly rose again and floated.
    “Done to a turn. Go on, Joe.” He passed a twisted spoon to Joe. “You're the guest. You go first.” Joe wrinkled his face. Stanny took the spoon back, dipped it in, drank, closed his eyes, chewed the bits. “Absolutely delicious. Even if I say so myself.” He lifted an egg with his fingers and put it in his mouth, shell and all, and chewed and swallowed and smacked his lips.
    “Yum-yum. This is what it's like, surviving. But imagine the stew with a wood pigeon in it, or the leg of a hare.”
    He suddenly stabbed his knife into the earth and laughed.
    “Die, pigeon!”
    Joe took the spoon again, dipped it in, sipped. A weird sour taste. Silt on his tongue.
    “Lovely, eh?” said Stanny. “Go on, again, get some of the good bits this time, Joe.”
    Joe sipped again. Bitter mushroom on the tip of his tongue. He swallowed. Stanny grinned, took the spoon and drank again. Then lifted an egg and held it to Joe's mouth.
    “Go on,” he said. “Shell and all. Yum-yum.”
    He held it closer and Joe let him drop it between his teeth. Held it a moment on the floor of hismouth, then bit. A taste like an egg, but saltier, sourer. The shell brittle and sharp. He licked it from the hollows of his mouth, from the cracks between his teeth.
    “Wash it down,” Stanny said, and Joe sipped again. They each ate another egg. They spooned up the last of the soup. They sat against the broken wall and looked across the motorway toward the Black Bone Crags.
    Soon Joe's body began to twitch. He rolled from side to side. The distant tiny skylarks yelled. He opened his eyes and the sky was filled with them. They darkened the sky from horizon to horizon, a storm of trembling black specks that sang in the vast blue space between the village and the sun. Above the crags, the peculiar winged beasts wheeled across the sky. He closed his eyes again, heard a single skylark singing at the center of his brain, a sweet and frantic noise. Tasted its egg on his tongue, felt it trembling with life inside him. He stood up and crouched forward and gently stamped his feet on the earth. He turned slow circles. He let the skylark sing and fly. He gently stamped the earth. He groaned and let the noises in his throat become sweeter, sweeter, lighter, lighter. He spread his arms behind his back. He gently stamped his feet upon the earth. He sang. He trembled. He felt himself begin to disappear.
    “Joe! Joe, man!”
    Stanny rubbed his eyes, crouched low in theruins, snorted. “What you doing, Joe, man? You do the craziest things sometimes.”
    Joe hesitated, mid-dance.
    “What you doing?” said Stanny again.
    Joe turned to him. What
was
he doing? He had no words for it, for the way his spirit sometimes soared inside him and blended with the earth and the sky. He had no words for the way his body trembled and seethed with such excitement.
    “Just th-this,” he muttered. He closed his eyes, turned a circle, opened his eyes again. He looked upward, to the pale blue