Most of the village had heard, many had been spectators. Spectators who had actually seen nothing, only felt, and half understood. The priests filed solemnly through the hostel, now it was safe, blessing it and sprinkling unguents. They blessed and sprinkled Myal, too. Pale and shaking, clinging to the sling of the instrument, he said to Parl Dro: “I’m sorry.” “You’re not only sorry, you’re a damn fool,” said Dro. He had walked out into the night and the village had borne him away to an accompaniment of shouts and clanking flasks. He was too tired to resist. No, it was not that he was so tired. He wanted to drown something, worse than nagging pain, a nagging doubt. So he sat with the village and tried to get drunk, while they tried to get uncanny anecdotes out of him. Mainly he fended them off; they fell to recounting their own ghost stories–factual or imaginary. They told him the fortress on the meadow was haunted. When he said he had slept there the previous night, they exchanged wise looks.
