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The Dark Lady sipped red wine from a tall goblet and considered the actions of the village. She gazed past the constraints of time and space and there communed with the restless dead. She smiled cruelly, and asked them their thoughts. They laughed and continued to do so until she grew weary of them and returned to the senses of her own world, watching in quiet preoccupation.
"The first thing we do," the Scholar muttered, "is kill all the lawyers."
This seemed good to the village, and they gathered round him. And yet he escaped with his life, directing attention to another in their company: the sweet maiden, the nurturing maiden, now wretched with fear.
"Take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers," she cried as the village dragged her forth, "wherever in your sightless substances you wait on nature's mischief! Come, thick night, and pall thee in the dunnest smoke of burning regret!"
When death proved her words to be true, the village caught their breath and felt more sadness than ever yet before. They laid the innocent milkmaid near to the gravedigger, and spoke many praises of her.
And as they locked their doors and asked themselves to sleep through the nightmare of the waking world, some thought they heard a sigh on the wind.
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