Blackfeather Woods Birds are singing to calm us down.

You killed them, hissed the wind. One by one, dead and done, ate their hearts and left their heads -

He didn't mean to, countered the trees; a whisper in the dark.

HE DID HE DID! SHE MADE HIM DO IT! Bellowed the underhenge as the ghost drifted before the open gape of Wolfskull.

The maw trembled and the stones shifted as if carried by unseen forces, turning the cave mouth in to something canid; eyes gleaming in the dark.

The unsettled dust was like a noxious cloud belched from below, rising like dry and crusted bile to the cave's grimacing lips as the ghost slipped by. The wind called, Should be dead -- it IS dead, look at him roam, ghost boy, bodiless and free.

Wolfskull glared after him, drank the voice from the wind and shouted, DISEASED! FILTHY! VERMIN! UNCLEAN, UNWORTHY!

The trees shivered, quaking to the voice as it swept to them. They scrambled to free it before it tangled in their boughs and was left to fester; their quaking opened a path to the ghost and as he slipped through he heard them promise, come boy, you are not safe here - come - hurry -

The boy's delirious mind had finally reached a limit; he ducked in to the black of the forests fretful shadows and was unmade, becoming a shifting smoke that dissipated, vanishing, scattered among the trees.