You're a madman!" he said. But he grabbed the unopened bottle by the neck and headed for the door immediately.
I was right behind him.
When he came out of his house with the violin, he said:
"Let's go to the witches' place! Look, it's a half moon. Plenty of light. We'll do the devil's dance and play for the spirits of the witches."
I laughed. I had to be drunk to go along with that. "We'll reconsecrate the spot," I insisted, "with good and pure music."
It had been years and years since I'd walked in the witches' place.
The moon was bright enough, as he'd said, to see the charred stakes in their grim circle and the ground in which nothing ever grew even one hundred years after the burnings.
The new saplings of the forest kept their distance. And so the wind struck the clearing, and a
