How did I ever let myself, let the two of us get snared this way? Because I was seduced, of course. Because I was lured, because I was lied to. Fog’s insidious. Of itself, it is; it comes like a thief in the night. It sneaks in under your guard, it blurs your boundaries, it’s inside before you know it. And then nothing is safe or certain or reliably there; and if the fog is not innocent to begin with, if it’s been sent, then all bets are off and seduction is absolutely on the agenda. He came striding up the hill, the fog-feller, the creature who had felled us with his fog. I would have called him a wight, I guess – though I know a couple of boys who would instantly have corrected me, that’s not a wight, that’s a wraith, or whatever. They have no idea how annoying that is. Whatever he was – and fog-feller will do it, that’s close enough – he was gaunt and long-legged and made of old, like weathered stone and twisted trees, all grey and cold and rooty. He was humming, I think, under whatever breath he had, whatever more he needed when I thought all the fog was his breath, his lungs, his purpose.
