You do not know whose child they speak of. You only know that you came from where you were and arrived where you are now.

They are a farmer and his wife, old and worn thin by the years, faces carved by wind and hunger. They speak to you in hushed voices, delicate, as if afraid you might break—or that you might not. They ask what happened. What changed you out there in the woods? Why did you not return for a week?

You tell them you do not understand. They do not, either.

Instead, they call for someone who might. A doctor.

He is not ready for this. His hands were meant for setting broken bones, for measuring out bitter tonics, for telling fretting mothers that their children’s fevers were feigned. Not for this. Not for what stands in the field beneath the wide and pitiless sky.

And yet, Maryanne and Charles are old friends. He cannot abandon them in their grief.

So he comes, walking a wide, careful arc through the trampled grass, past the place where the wheat refuses to grow. His boots crunch over dead stalks as he nears the old farmhouse. He does not look directly at you. He does not want to.

At the threshold, he hesitates, one hand on the doorframe as if steadying himself against some unseen tide.

He steps inside.

"Maryanne," he says, voice dry, cracking like old bark. "Charles." A pause. Then, barely above a whisper:

"What in God’s name is that thing in your field?"