The mist of the graveyard rolled far over the horizon.

Skeletal trees clawed towards fading sun, a glorious, burning orange seeping over the land like spilt ink, clinging longingly to the bruised purple of dusk.

Influenza had added countless more headstones, packed generations of kin into stone family mausoleums.

Fresh dirt mounded new unmarked graves, and inside the small church, at the centre of it all, a single candle flickered in the stained glass window.

The chapel had become a halfway—a morgue—for the unfortunate souls waiting to be buried. Useless to the dead, the candlelight offered a way for the living to feel better about leaving the deceased all unattended and alone.

I put all of this onto my canvas. Sorrow and grief, my Muses, and my hand swept as my eyes wept, my brush flowing freely through the paint.

“Here you are!” Footsteps crunched over autumn's fallen leaves, and the figure of Billie staggered into the ring on my candlelight. “I've been looking... for you... for hours,” she panted.

“Wish you would go look for a little longer,” I muttered.

“Come, the demonstration is about to begin any moment.”

“I’d prefer it if I could stay.” I wiped my paint bush on my woollen pinafore. “For I am almost done.”

“But you’d said you come,” Billie whined. “You promised.” Her lips pouted, the candle flame flickering over her rosy cheeks, and she tucked a strand of brown hair behind her ear—a small artist's impression on me.

“I never said those words.”

“But I need you to come.” From the fold of her cherry cloak, she pulled out a slip of paper, one I’d seen posted all over town.

Pyres. Fires. Blasphemy. Curses and death.

Witch burnings.

“Mindless propaganda,” I muttered.

“Participants under the age of sixteen must be accompanied by an adult. See,” she read, “so you have to come. Charlie, please!” She slammed the pamphlet on the easel’s small adjacent table... Where I kept my brushes... Where I kept my palette.

Assassin’s blade quick, red paint splattered, vandalising the left side of my canvas. Thick globs oozed from the sky, dripping like tears of blood from the setting sun.

My fuse blown, I shoved her back. “An odd notion,” I snapped. “Since there should be no children in attendance at all. Or anyone, for that matter.”

A soft whimper escaped her as her pink slippers stumbled, and she slipped, tumbling with a slap into the mud.

An ounce of guilt tightened my gut at my fallen sister, but it was soon forgotten at the sight of the red paint, bubbled proudly like a boil on the tip of a nose. I grabbed a small spatula and began to scrape off the worse of the damage.

“They’re looking for someone to blame!” Billie blurted, her voice catching as she scrambled up. “If you come, they might for—”

But it was too late.

For through the woods behind, flames danced through the trees, their eager movements supported by chants of anger.