![]() Her breathing is accelerating, its condensation settling on her face. She tries to cover herself with her hands, and is not allowed. Her body is white in the pale red light, solid against the wisps of fog and the tracery of reed. It is easy they have put her into a loose tunic. Others follow, wrapped against the cold, dark figures processing into the dusk. Chanting rises, the drums sound slow, unsyncopated with the last panic of her heart. They lead the fearful body over the turf and along the track, her bare feet numb to most of the pain of rock and sharp rushes. From deep inside her body, from the cord in her spine and the wide blood-ways under the ribs, from the emptiness of her womb and the rising of her chest, she shakes. ![]() No need to be rough, everyone knows what is coming. The last cold bites her fingers and her face, the stones – not the last stones – bruise her bare feet. Not blindfolded, but eyes widened to the last sky, the last light. An excerpt from Sarah Moss’s Ghost Wall, published by Granta Books. ![]()
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