The Willow Wraiths

Fiction by Jalyn Renae Fiske

I study the four figures poised tall and slender in a semi-circle, draped in hooded robes that used to be white. Time has tattered them, the figures and the robes. They have stood there, shadow-faced and quiet, in the immaculate woods beneath the deep night and the simmering sun for as long as I can remember, as long as my mother can remember, and her mother before that. 

“They aren’t statues,” my sister, Diana, says, “made of copper or wood.”

“It’s true,” my brother, William, says. “Cut them with a knife, and they bleed.” He shows me a dark, speckled stain on the hem of one of the robes. “It used to be bright red.”

I don’t remember this myself, but I believe what I’m told.

Mother tells us to hush and leave them alone. The Willow Wraiths are sleeping.

“When will they wake?” I ask.

This is the first night I am deemed old enough and ready to accompany my family into the wooded sanctuary and protect the perimeter, and it is the first night I can see the Willow Wraiths up close. I raise my eyes to look in their faces, but the moonlight shrouds their features. No one answers my question, and we—my sister, my brother, my mother, and I—continue our walk through the woods, looking for signs of intruders. This is the sacred task given to us, the mancer-kind, generations ago, and why we live in a solitary cottage in the middle of a secret wood surrounded by a cold, stone wall. None may ever cross it.

We search for cloven footprints. Scorched leaves. Dead and darkened earth.

The intruders taint all they touch, so they must never reach our sleeping protectors in the heart of the sanctuary. Banefuls, my mother calls them. Long ago, the Wraiths protected the mancer-kind, and now we must protect them. We fortify the blueschist wall that surrounds the woods by hanging pouches of woodchips soaked in cocobolo oil. We carve protection seals into the ancient bark of Weeping Willows, Murmuring Oaks, and Whispering Redwoods. 

William touches each item, each seal, and casts an enchantment of Repel that causes outsiders to flee. Even so, once every fortnight, a Baneful manages to get through.

We walk and search for signs, but we also check the traps.

I hear whimpering, and I know a Baneful is caught in a spike trap William set with his second skill of Lure. He likes to keep them alive. I don’t know why. They don’t speak our language, and we don’t speak theirs. William smiles at the sight of the large, wolfish creature, limp upon the ground. Obsidian spikes pierce its beastly hide; some have staked it all the way through. Its blood is storm-cloud grey, the same color as its eyes.

I want to reach out my hand to touch the creature. There is a question on my lips, a question I have wondered many times before: Mother, what is a Baneful?

But it’s locked away.

Mother turns to Diana. “Kill it quickly, but do not touch.”

My sister steps forward to the dying Baneful, hovers her hand above its blood-streaked face, and closes her eyes to concentrate. Diana has the magic of Harmony and Break. She can make things peaceful and rhythmic, but she can also send them into disarray. In a few moments, the creature’s breathing falls out of sync, and its heart quickens, falters, then ceases to beat the slow, deep-toned drumming of their kind. Weak from the Breaking, Diana stumbles away from the stilled corpse of the intruder. Mother draws her close and pulls her back into the fold, back into the safety of her arms.

“Well done,” she says. Now it’s her turn, and Mother hums a tune with the power of Disappear. She can make all kinds of things vanish. Sometimes when I wake from one of my nightmares, she sings softly in my ear, and the shadows and monsters are whisked away. But she can sing other songs, too; ones that Create. The tune she hums now crumbles the corpse into ash and carries the feathery powder off on the wind and over the wall into whatever lies beyond.

The area where the Baneful’s blood seeped through is black and hollow. Nothing will grow there again, unless the one with the magic of Cleanse can wash the poison from the soil and the seeds. All look to me. I am the third child, the one who can return things to the way they once were, but when I close my eyes and look inside myself, there is a creeping darkness that frightens me.

“You must try, Cora,” Mother says.

I summon my skill, but the earth remains black and hollow.

“Try,” Mother repeats. There is a sharpness to her voice that makes me flinch.

For an instant, I think I see star-shaped leaves of green clover where the poisoned foliage had been. I blink, and the earth is black once again. 

“I’m sorry,” I whisper.

A sharp sting comes to my side, and I gasp for breath.

Mother frowns. She looks around the garden, searching.

“What’s wrong?” William asks.

“Nothing,” Mother says. “Time to go.”

“Perhaps tomorrow,” Diana says to me as she helps me up, but I don’t think so.

Tomorrow is the same as today, as yesterday, and all the days that came before.

#

I can barely see the stone wall that separates us from the outside world, so covered with ivy, creepers, and leaves. I wonder who built it. Who laid the very first stone? A glittering light dances across my vision, a globe of gold shining through the ivy of the wall, and I walk towards it. Mother says to never go near the wall, just as we are to never go near the Willow Wraiths, but I’m alone. And I want to know.

The foliage feels slippery, like fish skin, as I push it aside. It feels like a mistake. I see an open fracture in the stone, small as a keyhole, that opens to the other side. I peer through, but something blinds my vision black. Whatever lies beyond is too harsh to see. When I return the foliage to hide the keyhole, it feels prickly instead of slippery, as though my fingers are pierced by thorns or nettles. I suck on my thumb to stop the bleeding. I taste the iron but see no blood. 

It’s a strange sanctuary, but it’s ours, and we must protect it. Only Cleanse can stop our little paradise from slowly charring and wilting away. I sit by a cluster of trees, fingers splayed before a patch of blackened undergrowth, once the most vibrant emerald green. Cleanse, I command. I imagine a surge of clear, cold water rushing through the earth, pulling the black from the roots and the rocks and the weeds. Washing all the bad away. But no matter how hard I dream it to be, my hands feel more like fire than water, and the green refuses to return.

Many minutes pass in vain before I finally lower my hands. The burning on my fingertips tells me I summoned a skill, but nothing has changed. As I stare at the poisoned earth, everything becomes shaded and cool. I think the sun must be hiding behind the clouds, but it isn’t the clouds that tower over me. 

It’s the Willow Wraiths. 

They encircle me so close that their scratchy robes flutter against my shoulders. The dark stain on one of the hems catches my eye, and I’m afraid to look up. I feel their stony stares bearing down on me: cold, accusing, as if I’m doing something I shouldn’t. I want to scream for help, but the only sound in the entire forest is the rushing of blood in my ears.

“Cora?” My mother calls. I gather the courage to look up, to search for her. When I do, the Wraiths are gone. The sun shines through the leaves, glittering the underbrush with golden specks of light.

“The Willow Wraiths were here,” I say, my side once again throbbing. Aching.

Mother appears with my siblings. She looks around the trees. “That’s not possible, little one,” she says. “Our protectors are asleep.”

William scowls. “Don’t you know anything?”

Diana whispers, “I heard your heart beating. So fast it scared me.”

Mother shushes them and says to run along. Then she sits down against a large Murmuring Oak and beckons me to come sit in her lap. “You were always the willful one. When I said follow me, you ran away. When I said bedtime, you played.”

“I don’t remember that.”

She cradles my head and rocks me back and forth. “Some things are best not remembered. But I keep them for you, tucked away.”

I feel the locks loosening, and a question floats to the tip of my tongue. “Mother, what is a Willow Wraith?”

“How clever you are,” she says and sings a song to make the nightmares go away.

#

The woods are dense where I walk, empty of birdsong. I know William is hiding somewhere because the air is dreamy and sweet. I see the twining vines of honeysuckle just a few steps ahead. As I get ready to run toward them to pluck some pistils and taste the nectar, William jumps out from behind a tree and yells, “Gotcha!” I look longingly at the orange blooms as they shimmer like a mirage, fading. In their place are sharpened spikes.

“I’m getting good with Lure, aren’t I?” William says.

“I wish I could get good at my skills, too.”

“You have to practice.” William wanders over to the sharpened spikes. I follow him, hoping to catch any clues, but he isn’t using Lure anymore, just whittling the wood with a knife.

“Maybe if you tell me how Lure works…” I begin.

He doesn’t turn around, sighs heavily. “It’s not that hard. I just close my eyes and concentrate on what someone wants to see. You apparently wanted to see a dumb flower. And then they walk or fall right into the trap.”

“What do Banefuls want?”

“The Willow Wraiths, of course. Now leave me alone.”

I head to the lake, where Diana practices her Harmony, and wonder if William made the Willow Wraiths appear earlier as a trick to scare me. It reminds me of something that has happened before, but I can’t quite catch it.

At the lake, the thrush and warbler welcome me from every direction. Diana sits on a log near the shore, gazing out into the water. She senses things that I cannot. She can hear heartbeats, even beneath water and high up in the air. I worry that I’m disturbing her, but she turns to me and pats the log.

“Are you practicing?” I ask.

“Not really. I’m just—listening.”

“Is it hard to listen?”

Diana hugs me against her. Even though she’s only three years older than me, she acts much wiser. “You can’t turn your ears off, can you? Well, I can’t turn my Harmony off, either.”

“You’ve always been able to do your skill? Without even trying?”

“Harmony is very natural to me, but I had to work hard to learn to do the opposite—to Break things instead. That’s what is needed of me, so I do it.”

“Cleanse is what’s needed of me.”

“Maybe Cleanse isn’t your natural skill. Try your second one.”

I stare at the dark lake and ask, “I don’t know what mine is.”

“Oh—it’s—it’s…” Diana frowns, then laughs uneasily. “I think I’ve forgotten, but Mother knows.”

I return to the little cottage where we live and where Mother stays during the day, tending to the hearth. She is sitting by the fireplace and warming a cast-iron pot of rabbit stew. 

“Mother, when did you know I had a skill inside me?”

She stops her stirring, but she doesn’t look at me. “You have a knack for questions.”

“Was I a baby?”

“Yes, you were just a baby. I held you in my arms, and I simply knew what you would be able to do one day. That, and you are the third, Cora. The third always performs Cleanse.”

I want to ask what my second skill is, but I feel the locks inside me clicking in place. I fear that I have time for only one more question, an unexpected one, so I say, “Who will Cleanse the earth after I grow up and leave one day?”

“Leave? No, my darling. No one leaves.”

The way Mother says—my darling—sends a chill down my neck. The questions keep churning in my mind: Why are we the only ones in the sanctuary? Where did the Banefuls come from? What is outside the walls?

“You’re having nightmares again. William and Diana outgrew them many years ago, but yours still linger.”

“I’m sorry.”

“That’s why you can’t summon Cleanse. You’re… burdened. Come here, and I’ll sing you to sleep. Things will be better in the morning.”

I go to her and sit in her lap. I love the feel of her cool hands on my forehead, and the smell of rabbit stew in the air. As she sings, I think: Tomorrow will be better. It always is.

#

We walk the perimeter of the sanctuary, checking for signs that the Banefuls have slipped through. I gaze up at the top of the ivy-covered wall towering above. I remember I once knew something special about this wall, something about glittering light, but I can’t quite grasp it.

Diana hands me bundles of oil-soaked bark to hang from tree branches.

“Where should we put it?” she asks. I select an old Whispering Redwood. I have to climb up to get to the best branch, and when Mother sees me so high, she shouts for me to come down. I feel as though I’ve always been climbing down from this tree.

When I reach the ground, she says, “I know this is your first time joining us, Cora, but you’ve got to be careful.”

Mother says it’s my first time, but I’m not so sure. As we head to where the Willow Wraiths sleep, I feel a presence lurking behind me.

“Keep going,” Mother says, so I don’t stop to look at what is there among the trees. But I hear the twigs snapping. Ahead of us, we find a Baneful caught in one of William’s traps.

Then it is Diana’s turn to Break it, and Mother’s turn to make it Disappear.

All eyes fall on me.

“Cleanse the earth, Cora,” Mother says.

I feel like I’m in a dream, as if I’m watching a story play out. I kneel down before the blackened moss and leaves and soil, hover my hands, and close my eyes. The magic is like fire in my hands. The lurking shadows grow thicker and stronger the more I try to use my skill. I can almost see their shape in my mind, closing in on me, and I hear the howling of Banefuls. Claws on stone as they climb the wall.

“What are you doing?” William shouts.

Banefuls manifest near us, limp, dead, bleeding.

“Something’s not right,” Diana says.

The creatures rise up, immense. Flickering.

“Cora, stop!” Mother yells.

Then they are gone.

Before I can answer her, to say I don’t know what I’m doing or where I am or when I am, I have a question: What if it all needs to be Cleansed? 

Mother sings in my ear, and the nightmares retreat at the sound of her voice like smoke dispelling when a candle dies.

#

Mother tells us to sit down at the table for dinner. She is always at the head, with the eldest sitting on her right and the second sitting on her left. I sit opposite Mother, for I am the third. The fire crackles warmly in the hearth, crackles like snapping twigs. The sensation that something or someone is approaching nearly swallows me, but I hold back my fear. I’m at home, eating dinner with my family. Nothing can hurt us here.

As Mother pours rabbit stew into our bowls, we pass around a basket of crusty bread. When it comes to me, it’s empty. 

“You took it all,” I say to William. 

He scowls, grabs the breadbasket, and looks inside. “Are you blind? There’s half a loaf.”

The same happens when Mother pours the stew. The ladle is dry, the bowl barren.

“Eat up,” Mother says. “Tonight, we walk the garden.”

In the quiet that follows her words, the crackling of the fire grows.

Diana smiles. “Cora, you get to come with us this time. Aren’t you excited?”

But I have walked the perimeter before, haven’t I? I sense that asking would disturb Mother, so I don’t ask anything. Not about the missing food and not about the déjà vu.

William speaks through mouthfuls of invisible bread, “Look at her. She’s afraid.”

I am afraid, but I don’t know why or of what. The only way to find out is to walk the woods and look for clues, so I say, “I’m just hungry,” and reach for my spoon and pretend to scoop out something hot.

“There’s plenty to go around,” Mother says, offering the empty basket to Diana.

I can’t look any of them in the eyes.

#

As we search for signs of Banefuls, I touch the trees we pass to check if the leaves feel like leaves and the bark like bark. Detail is lost to the moonlight, but I rely on my fingers and palms to tell me if something is wrong. The leaves are too rough, the bark too smooth. Slippery as fish skin. Has it always been?

We approach the spot where the Willow Wraiths sleep, poised in a semi-circle and taller than I imagined.

“They aren’t statues,” my sister, Diana, says, “made of copper or wood.”

“It’s true,” my brother, William, says. “Cut them with a knife, and they bleed.” He shows me a dark, speckled stain on the hem of one of the robes. “It used to be bright red.”

I reach out to touch them, as I touched the leaves and the bark.

Mother grabs my hand. “Don’t get too close, Cora. They’ll wake.” Her words are strained, empty, as if she has said them countless times over countless years.

And a question comes to my lips. “Why should they never wake?”

“They prefer to dream,” she says, more to herself than to me.

I stare into the shadowed face of the Wraith closest to me, its stony features obscured by its hooded cloak. It reminds me of the empty bread bowl.

“I like dreams,” William says.

Diana nods. “Nothing bad happens in them.”

But they aren’t real, I think to myself. I look at my siblings, and I know that if I’m to learn the truth of what is happening to us, I’ll have to find it on my own. Mother walks farther into the woods, and I resist the urge to follow. I watch Diana and William go on without me until they blend with the trees and the twilight.

The truth, I think, must be just beyond the wall, through the keyhole that glitters.

#

I stand at the stone wall and locate the small crack I saw before. Glittering light dances around the opening. I lean in and gently place my cheek against the stone like before and line up my eye to see what is on the other side. It looks so bright and teasing from a distance, but when I try to see—still, only darkness.

I place my hands on the wall and search for something to hold on to. Somehow, I must see the other side, even if that means I must climb over. My hands instinctively warm, and the stone quivers beneath my touch. It seems to fade away. Faintly, I hear shouting somewhere on the other side. Twigs snapping, boots thudding, as if someone is being chased. The wall flickers, and I briefly see a large stretch of meadow. Golden stalks of grass. A wooden structure. Then the wall returns.

I step back and think. Is there a wall?

Instead of trying to Cleanse a small patch of poisoned grass, I place my hands once more on the wall and ask for it all to wash away. The willows, redwoods, and oaks. The wall, the house, the stone-still Wraiths. Cleanse it all. Whatever is blocking me from seeing what the sounds belong to, I clear it away like water rushing down when the winter snows begin to melt. My life has been frozen, and I’m ready for spring.

The first to melt is the stone wall itself. 

No longer is it ten feet high, stalwart and ominous, but toppled low from ruin. 

I can look over. 

The way out is revealed. 

I see the open meadow and a red-tinged sky beyond.

Like layers of cobwebs veiling my sight, Mother’s other illusions are pulled away. I see that our wooded sanctuary is not immaculate. It’s not pristine. It’s dried up and dead. Parched vines encroach on every tree, wrapping them in brittle robes ready to break. 

The decay doesn’t surprise me. I think I’ve always known, buried deep inside. I was forced to forget and believe in Mother’s dream-weaving songs. The sensation of rushing water is replaced with a raging fire as my anger grows at the deceit. 

She lied to us. She caged us. 

My magic rushes out, whether Cleanse or something else, something darker, I don’t know. The illusion is burned away, no longer melted as snow in spring. It is seared. It is scorched.  

“Cora? What have you done?”

Mother is suddenly beside me. I don’t know how to answer. I look at the wild and rotting underbrush, the blackened earth. The smell of decomposition is overpowering. 

“I Cleansed the earth,” I say, my anger simmering. “Of your lies.”

Mother looks at me, her eyes admitting to it all. They are dark with shock and panic. She says with a tremble in her voice, “Yes, I hid the death and the decay. You see it now, don’t you? It’s a garden of death, but I made it beautiful. I made it home.”

“It isn’t real.”

She shakes her head. “Come along, little one. It’s time for bed. I’ll sing you to sleep.”

I step back. I don’t want to sleep. I don’t want to forget. In my anger, the burning magic sparks at my fingertips. This is the one I use when Mother tells me to Cleanse the poisoned patches of grass, but it was never Cleanse that I summoned. I feel the difference for once. Cleanse is a melting of snow, the waking of spring. But what is this one?

When she reaches for me, I reach back. If our sanctuary is dead and rotten, what is Mother?

I grab her wrist and let my second skill flow.

She winces and pulls back. Her hand and wrist flicker in and out of existence.

For a moment, her clothes are drenched in blood, and then they’re not.

My side stings and throbs. I can’t breathe. And then I can.

I think of running away, but a howl consumes the sky. In the distance, I hear Diana’s scream, William’s shouting, and the Banefuls’ growling. Mother scans the meadow beyond the wall, her wrist flickering all the while.

“That’s not of my making,” she says. “But it isn’t real, either. It’s from your second skill, the one I tried to keep asleep.”

I hear it now. The sharpness in her voice. It was never anger. It was fear.

The back of my neck tingles. The air is charged and murky. 

I ask, “What is my second skill?”

Mother leans down and holds my hands. She doesn’t flicker out of existence anymore. She isn’t covered in blood. She brings my hands to her lips and kisses them. “Corrupt.”

I study her, the trees, my hands. That can’t be true. 

The howling grows closer.

“My illusions keep us as we were, hidden, before it was all taken away.”

Twigs snap all around us.

“Unless it gets Corrupted,” she says. “And then I must start over. I must sing our sanctuary into being again.”

I ask, “Who took it all away?”

The beasts’ talons dig and claw into the earth. 

Mother speaks quickly. “We need to leave, Cora.”

“Tell me,” I say, letting go and stepping away.

Her eyes are strained, pleading. “We are the mancer-kind, and we are hunted. That’s all you need to know. Now, come home with me, and I’ll Create our dream anew.”

I hesitate. The howling and clawing scare me, but something inside me wants to know. I want to know it all.

“You don’t need to remember,” she says with a broken voice. “You don’t want to remember.”

The Banefuls are on the brink. I hear them climbing.

“I think I do.”

The whole garden flickers between life and death, vibrant and wilted. The wall, too, rises up before crumbling apart, and then rising up again. I command it all to Corrupt even more. The Banefuls howl mere feet away. Claws upon stone, sparks flying. 

“This is only a memory,” Mother shouts over the raging sounds. “They can’t hurt you.” And yet her eyes say different. Her eyes are wide with fear.

The first beast makes it over the wall and lands a few feet from us. Its weight doesn’t register on the earth. It steps forward, silent, wispy as a ghost.

Mother covers her eyes against the vision. I think she’s sobbing. 

The Baneful is not a beast. It is a man.

The wind-chimes of bone go wild as the wind picks up. Bloody, murderous shouts erupt as more people emerge over the walls. I am frozen in place, my eyes wide as I watch them jump down. I hear the dull slosh of flesh being pierced as they fall upon the obsidian stakes. But one gets through, and then another, and with knives and ropes and clubs in hand. They don’t see Mother or me. It is a memory, like she said. That much is true. 

I follow their twig-snapping charge deeper into our sanctuary until we come to the heart of the woods. A ghostly form of Mother is there with three ghostly children—memories of us. While Diana and William cast their magic to fend off the attack, the smallest child, the third, clings to Mother’s dress. 

I remember this.

The memory-of-Mother sings in deep-throated tones, casting an enchantment upon four large rocks she arranged in a semi-circle. Rippling, they transform into the robed statues of the Willow Wraiths. 

The flood of Baneful grows.

Diana can only Break so many; William’s Repel is too slow to stop them all. And I? What good am I with only my Cleanse? I watch the memory-of-me stand by Mother as she finishes creating the Willow Wraiths. I remember thinking back then that she made warriors to protect us, but they never moved. They never lifted a finger. 

I watch it all happen, powerless to stop the past, as a man with rage and frothing teeth tries to stab Mother. The memory-of-me lets go of her dress and moves in front like a shield. Just in time. If the Willow Wraiths wouldn’t protect Mother, I would. 

The wound from long ago still echoes in my side, stinging. 

I watch the memory-of-Mother cry over my bleeding body, trying to sing the wound away. Blood streams down my side, my legs, my feet, my toes, and drips on the Willow Wraith statue, silent and still. I remember it all.

We are overcome, and they drag us through the woods, over the wall, and out into the meadow. They’ve built a large pyre to burn the mancer-kind. Their torches crackle, hungry. I seem to feel the rope tighten around my hands and feet. The blazing air is too hot to breathe.

Behind me, I hear Mother, my real mother, say, “Have you seen enough?”

My magic falters, and the vision of our deaths fades away. It doesn’t make sense. We died. “How are we still here?”

“The Willow Wraiths anchor our souls in this place,” Mother says, her voice catching. “I made one for each of us. Our bodies died, but we still live.”

The trees become deathly quiet, as do I.

Mother takes me in her arms. She holds me tight, hugging me, rocking me.

“Don’t,” I say, but she begins to sing.

#

The glow of the hearth stirs me to awareness. I’m back in our home, seated at the table. Mother tends to the pot of stew, softly humming.

Diana sets the table with our wooden bowls and spoons.

William plunks down in his seat, whittling a piece of wood into the shape of a Baneful, wolf-like and talon-clad. “I’m starving!”

Mother laughs, content with the fire and the stew and the presence of her children in the house. The sound nestles in my heart, lulling me to forget. But this time I don’t forget. My mouth waters at the growing scent of mushrooms and roasting meat, but when the food is ready, the bowls are empty. 

Mother says, “Let’s eat and be glad for what we have.”

My tongue is free, and a new question emerges, one never composed before. “What do we have?”

Her voice is heavy when she speaks, as if burdened with the barrage of unspoken words it holds back. The ones that she releases say: “A kinder world than what really exists.”

The door is ajar. The garden outside is beautiful again, overflowing with bright honeysuckle and clover and rose bushes, but I can also see the underneath. The decay. The death. I could leave, now, and walk past the illusion, over the crumbled stone wall, and out into the fields. How far can a ghost walk from its resting place? 

It could be painful. It could feel like nothing at all. 

Mother passes the breadbasket, warm yet vacant. I take the basket and stare into its void. I tell myself to imagine bread, crusty and crackling. Nothing. I only see what is real. 

“Bread?” I say as I pass the empty basket to Diana.

A question. A test. I don’t want to leave alone.

She takes it and reaches in, pulls out an unseen roll. “My favorite.”

My heart sinks. The chair scrapes on the floor as I stand. Even now, the fire feels cold. The room smells rotten. I leave and walk through the woods, past the Whispering Oaks and the Murmuring Redwoods, to the heart of the sanctuary. 

I study the four figures poised tall and slender in a semi-circle, draped in hooded robes that used to be white. Time has tattered them, the figures and the robes. They have stood there, shadow-faced and quiet, in the immaculate woods beneath the deep night and the simmering sun for as long as I can remember, as long as my mother can remember, and her mother before that.

That is the lie I was told.

The Willow Wraith assigned to me has a large fracture slicing through its face and down to its feet, threatening to break it in half. Perhaps it’s new. Perhaps it’s always been there. I watch it widen to a deep abyss.

I remember Mother’s words, “Don’t get too close, Cora. They’ll wake.”

The abyss splits into infinite cracks as I extend my hand closer.

I think of green meadows and scarlet skies, of walls crumbling down.

END