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A thousand unblinking eyes watch from a group of curious white birches as the blood drips, drops, drips, drops, from a coursing black river which paints the gold-cracked shoulder of the dusky fiend. Each droplet folds into itself against the earth, and the earth accepts its sacrifice thirstily: it wells then sighs, then veins itself deep into the rich loam, wherein the worms and the beetles have hungered for countless ages. The roots feed. Cherry-white blossoms, dotted in vibrant red, bob their heads in giggling rows.

Long behind, in a thick overgrowth of thistle and thorn, curious vines gnarl beneath the weight of a body as its warmth gives and gives until there is only cold.

A lake forms at the pit of his collar bone, a boutonniere fragrant of metal and salt. Its tributaries dry and its stream is dammed, until the drips, drops, drips, drops, become patters, pats, puts, pits, then silent needle-prick blots veiled in the thickness of moss and lichen. The forest opens to him as he breaks a line of ash saplings: a garden that sways to a choir of locusts, sphagnum whispers dripping from green webs among the willows, the drumbeat of a creek paddling pebbles down its bed. In the distance, violins swell and counter the rhythm, swooning and felling into the echo of crickets and chorus frogs.

His tongue, smooth and feline, flashes to slake a gloss across the gleam of his fangs. They catch a glint of the moon reflected against smooth river-rocks, flashing impishly then gone. His horns rake the hanging moss as he passes beneath the cathedral of sallows and caress the bulbous blossoms of a blooming cherry – pinks and bone-white, their centers a blushing red. They remind him of hunger again, and of roses and hyacinth and silver lilac, but the choir calls him on.

A wall fettered with bluebells winks at him with devilish couture before nodding in the breeze. The castle, its gaping arch ghostly in its emptiness, grants him a note of ethereal pleasance. Moonflowers nestle in crags. Honeysuckle waits at the gates like lounging gargoyles, sickly sweet. Primrose buds between bricks, phlox in the eastern corners.

Though Erasmus darkens the silvery gate of the castle, the tiger-lilies dance in the weight of his shadow like sprites. He enters with all the grace and poise of a wolf in winter, feral lines and roving shoulders, lean and smooth and virile, predatory. Passing between the guests like a dark eidolon, he roams to the end of the hall, where moonlight spills into the rose-edged veranda. There, he closes his eyes as a group of blood-red roses brush against him hungrily and listens deeply to the music of the night.