![]() ![]() Raising the dead isn't evil, but it does require darkness. In the bright spring sunlight I couldn't work my. There was something faint and far-off like a whiff of perfume, but it was no good. I knelt and put my hands palm down on the ruined earth. ![]() There were a few splintered coffins, their broken halves spilling out into the air, but mostly it was just bones. I saw them all, studding the ground like hands reaching up through a river of rust. It was like one of those magic-eye pictures where you stare and stare and suddenly see what's there. Once I'd seen one bone, my eyes found more to look at. ![]() The bones were slender and still connected by a dry remnant of tissue. There was an arm bone sticking out of the dirt next to my feet. This hilltop had probably been just as pretty as the rest once. The raw, wounded earth filled the mountaintop. My black Nikes were covered in rust-colored dirt. A few dogwoods had started to bloom, adding their white to the lavender. Redbuds are such delicate things that if they came out in the height of summer they'd get lost in all the leaves and flowers, but here with nothing but naked trees the redbuds were eye-catching. But the thing you noticed most was the lavender color of redbuds through the dark trees. That first blush of green was more pronounced here. We stood in a circle of forest that showed no hand of man as far as the eye could see. ![]() Trees stretched out and out to the horizon. The view from the top of the mountain was worth the hike. ![]()
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