The groans and whispers of sleepers spilled from houses that were cut into the hillside and cluttered one upon the other like a stack of precarious cards. Every now and then a door had been left open, and the glow of the fire came from the room within to light the passageway. The distant figure of the girl strode ahead of him, never looking back, as if she danced from doorway to doorway. Mariah gulped his breath and tried to look ahead and behind at the same time, convinced that the red-eyed creature that he had seen in the mirror now followed him in the darkness. He stopped by an open doorway and stared in. There, in the faint light of the fading fire, he could see the tiny front room of the cottage with its drab painted walls and tattered curtains that clung to the damp window glass. A ladder went up through a small hole in the ceiling to a room above, whilst by the fire slept a woman, wrapped in rags and clutching a small child. To her side a small black pot steamed and smoked and filled the room with the fragrance of boiling tea.
