She watches. Watches as her boys are cut, as they are wounded and torn.
The man who did it is known to her, but at the same time he is a stranger. Did she know him once? She can't remember rightly. No matter.
She watches from shadow as the man finishes his work. He has cut off their heads, the heads of her three poor boys, but it seems that isn't enough for him. One at a time he walks to their bodies, plunges one of his blades into their chests, and carves until he can withdraw his prize: one heart from each body.
The hearts are black and shriveled, coated in a yellowy bile that drips thickly to the ground and splashes and splats with the music of death.
She listens to the music. Sing to me, my children, my poor poor boys, she thinks. Sing to me of death, and of dying, and of revenging.
But they do not sing to her. The bile sings its song of falling and droppling, but the boys are quiet. It's bedtime and the singing must be done.
The man who did this, the man who killed her boys and stole their singing songs, flicks his swords. The black ichor that passed from the boys' veins to this man's blades is flung free with another musical spattering, a tippling song that ends far too quickly.
The man gathers up the hearts. He puts them in a bag, and she wonders for a moment who made the bag for him. Was it she? Did she make it for him, once upon a time? Did she sew it for him?
She thinks about asking, but decides not to do so. He looks busy, and she knows she is. So she just waits like a good little girl until his work is done.
He looks around, but does not see her. That's one of her gifts. She can stand still, and hold her breath just so, and no one can see her. She stood in a mall once and did her trick. She pulled the arm off an old woman, then stood still right next to the body (still holding the arm, no less!), and no one so much as blinked at her.
She's holding her breath like that right now. Holding her breath just so, and no one can see her. Not even this hunter of boys, this stealer of hearts.
The man moves away. He is gone.
She waits a moment or an hour – time is so hard to tell these days – and then lets her breath out. She appears to the light, though no one is here to see her. Only the dead, only closed eyes on severed heads.
But the eyes won't stay closed. She knows that.
"Tsk, tsk," she says. She gathers her skirts about her and moves to the bodies, withdrawing her tools. "We must fix you, must mend you and set you to rights."
The boys do not answer her. No one ever does.
She begins to work.