The Gloam Folio The Weathervane On the hill above Ashcombe stands a stone pillar, and on the pillar an iron reaper turns with the wind. Nobody in the village remembers who put it there. Wherever his blade points at dusk, a door is hung in black by morning. Ashcombe learned to read it the way other villages read the clouds. Matthis dug the graves. For thirty-one years he watched the blade from his cottage window, and for thirty-one years it pointed at other people's doors. One evening in October it swung round and pointed at his. He climbed the hill that night with a ladder, a lantern and forty feet of rope. He bound the reaper to the pillar, turn upon turn, until the blade faced the empty fields. "Not my house," he said. "Not this year." That night, not a breath of wind stirred. In the morning they found the ladder lying in the grass and the rope hanging loose. At the foot of the pillar was a fresh grave, neatly dug, the way only Matthis ever dug them, and on it a single red rose. The blade pointed straight down at it. Matthis never buried anyone again. The reaper never needed wind. Only a direction. The Gloam Ledger #Gothic #DarkArt #TheGloamLedger #TheGloamFolio