In the lands where mushroom rings dot the land like plague, where iron hangs in every doorframe and saucers are left out on new-moon-nights, where children are always indoors before sunset and everyone who goes into the woods has a blade, where Names are a currency more valuable than gold, there is a man who knows he is going to die. Something cursed and rotted is eating his soul, and he is feeding it the only way he can.

On the other side of a mushroom ring, but not for very much longer, a woman is smiling, too many teeth. Something hungry and yearning is clawing at her throat, and she intends to keep it satisfied.

The first makes it two days. When he stares down at her blue body he starts to laugh, unbelievably relieved. He stows her in the nearest closet he can find, and as the flesh of her slips from his grasp he knows by the tremor of his hands that he will do this again and again and again.

She has never tasted what we would call wine, but to her, his blood is similar in cadence. There is as much delight in the kill as there is in the cleanup; her fingers move with poise, depositing the glistening morsels of his musculature into her provisions bag and the squirming organs into the swift river behind the house. It is time for her to find another town.

The fourth of his wives lasts the longest. They dance about it for days, and he doesn’t mention the closet at all. He removed the doorknob after the second one found her way in despite his warning and learned after the third that curiosity could kill them before he got the chance. He has dinner with his fourth wife for a full week before he poisons her. She is the only one of his wives to compliment his cooking, so he thought it only appropriate. It turns out that watching her die from across the dining room table is far less satisfying than the feel of a neck snapping in his hand, or a windpipe crushed by his thumbs.

She has remained in this town for too long, and after the third man is dispatched, she slips out under the cover of night. She eats the bones of this one while the marrow is still warm. The rest of the body is intact when they find it in the morning; she cuts around the flesh with the sharpest knife she carries. The ex-living tissue settles in her stomach pleasantly, and the pressure in her throat is relieved, momentarily.

The seventh one is a husband, and he is very pleasant company until they are married, at which point he purchases more pets than the both of them can care for, including a dog, a cat, a parakeet and a bad-tempered mynah bird. It is the last one that tells his husband about the skeletons in his closet. He gasps in his grip, panicked, scrabbling, sobbing. The parakeet watches dispassionately.

The woman she faces knows she is about to die. She has spent the last few months in killing, in trying to keep herself from falling apart into dust. The woman’s skin is pretty and soft, and melts in her mouth, yields gently under her teeth. She puts up a fight, which she appreciates, but only to a point. When she tires of playing, she places her hand on the woman’s chest and clenches her fist around the woman’s heart.

The eighth wife kills him. She never smiles, which is something he finds odd, and she asks no questions. Her voice is demure, kept on a leash, and he is determined not to be frightened of her. She passes the closet full of bodies every day, and when he thinks she thinks he isn’t looking, strokes the door. She unnerves him, and he cannot work up the courage to crush her throat. They dance for a fortnight, and just when the hunger pangs threaten to override his sudden cowardice she reaches one hand for his face and the other for his neck, and in one motion tears both from his body.

She knows he will try to kill her when she marries him and makes sure to never give him cause. She knows she is off-putting, but does not risk a smile. She keeps her voice low and watches him while he sleeps. It takes her only moments to figure where he keeps the corpses, and when she knows he thinks she thinks he isn’t looking, lets her fingers kiss the wood, a promise. She isn’t one to fix what isn’t broken. Her throat sings like a lark at the scent of him, and after a fortnight of waiting, before he can reach up and grab her, the curse in her throat snakes up to her eyes. She lunges.

When the smell is enough to drown the fear of the townsfolk, they enter the house and find eight corpses in the closet.

The footprints lead from the garden and over the fields, and they vanish on the other side of a mushroom ring.