Drawn by the sharp scent of pickles and the yeasty tang of fresh bread, we stand at the side of the road, toes at the boundary. Head bowed, face veiled, toenails overgrown into talons that dig into the gravel up to that line but no farther.

The night is ours. The land is ours. The air. The insects. But not the road that cuts through our valley. An ancient thoroughfare, our valley holds more bones than stones, something easily forgotten when the warm sun shines down on fields of wildflowers. We lurk, bound within that tranquil daylight beauty, freed only by the argent moonlight that turns the land gray and cold.

The wind carries the aroma of sweet jasmine, heady and intoxicating, and always beneath it, the smells of humanity. Tonight, the air’s human tone is undiluted and immediate.

A dark shadow walks the road, dim lantern in outstretched hand drooping, feet stumbling in exhaustion.

We raise a hand for help. Our victim sees the soft countenance of youth behind our eyes. When the hand is taken, we pull. We clutch him close, drag him into the wild, and slash with nails long and calcified into claws.

Blood, black in the moonlight and already festering, stains the dusty cloth that cloaks this body from head to foot. For a moment, the hunger is sated.

I don’t recognize my own body, hair tangled clumps, corpse-gray skin that hasn’t felt the sun’s touch for a lifetime. My once fine dress shredded to tatters.

These brief post-feeding digestions are all I have now, my only differentiation from the others, united as we are in subservience to the one.

I was one, once. I remind myself. A prayer I pray while our body devours the latest unwitting traveler. I was one. A wealthy woman of consequence, a life of luxury and ease. I wanted for nothing. My husband loved me, my children sought my council, my community revered me. I’d been blessed with all one could ask for.

These blessings meant nothing when the only thing that mattered was taken from me. News of my husband’s death washed my world into monotone. I raved, lost in grief.

They confined me to my rooms and the garden. Meditations. Concoctions. Potions. Nothing helped. The winds blew through the garden and the world went round in circles. I grew thin and gained stamina from restless pacing. One day the garden gate was left open.

The road to the university passed by my garden and my feet led me down it. A hope that the scholars there might ease my suffering. My body knew the way even if my mind could not always follow.

That I made it to Almaya Valley was nothing short of miraculous, for it is a five-day journey by foot from my home. I must credit divine intervention, and so I can only accept this as my fate. Though I have no recollection of the night that I became we, I have some idea of it, knowing what I have done to others.

Moonlight shrouds Almaya Valley. The souls of the dead gather, visible as fog and mist. I wonder why a traveler would cut through it at night. I wonder why I attempted it.

Two cozy inns, one at each end of the valley, control the supply of travelers. How did I slip by unaware and unwarned of the danger? The kind and generous innkeepers are willing to trade a destitute traveler an hour or two’s work for a night’s rest to keep them from crossing the valley at night. I know these things because we know these things.

Tonight’s satiation wanes and my awareness of the others grows. Victims from long ago. Remnants of personality inhabiting this world I have been banished to.

There’s a man, a regal, venerable man. A king, I think, or a sage. His long hair and trailing beard are the purest white and he gives the impression of a golden throne and crimson raiment, though all I see is gray.

We spoke long ago. I asked question after question, but his answers revolved around himself, no clue to the details of my fate. That I had to work out for myself. Nor would he say anything about the others.

His voice has faded. Now, he wears a hollow expression and hunkers in place like an old tree. Gnarled and steady. He does not move. I dare not touch him for fear of breaking him open and finding a shell around nothing.

The others are women. Laid out in a vast line of marble biers, each one as fresh in death as in life and draped in the finest silks and cloth of gold. They look as though they will blow away at the slightest breeze and have nothing to say. Long ago, the last in line spoke, sobbing. She does not respond anymore. The next bier in line is reserved for me.

Perhaps one day I will be at peace like them. Time has become meaningless and there is only this compulsion to consume.

I hope for the rarest of rare, a woman traveling unaccompanied, that I might take my place among the others. Let my thoughts dissolve into the collective and not have these agonizing post-feeding memories of my former life.

There is relief in the sustenance, something akin to pleasure in the fresh, metallic spurt of blood across my lips. But beneath that is the pervasive taste of my own death and decay, cloying and rotten. There’s another smell among the sweet jasmine, a perfume of citrus and salt and sea that reminds me of home.

We lift our head, fluids still sticky on our skin. Approaching footsteps plod the road. The ubiquitous hunger pangs propel us into the hunt. We bound to the roadside to lure our next victim.