Chapter 20

By this time, it was getting to dawn. The dawn was approaching. The exact moment of greatest felicity for the preparation for the market day. Sunday. The people of the town can never afford to browse through the market day morning’s blessing of delivering their goods as early as possible. Most of these people, those who arrived at the market very early, were elderly men who wanted to tie themselves to this old tradition.

Most of them no longer slept well and fretted the whole night long, guarding their houses against the witches and demons they believed were responsible for the unusual death and missing of people recently that they could not wait for the dawn to release them.

So even as Mark set off to seek help, some were stepping out of their houses, readying themselves for the market day. So he was able to break the news to them.

He found two young men huddled half-asleep against the restaurant doors. They worked there and were waiting for it to open, clinging t