When the old man died, his widow returned to earth his bloodstone ring. She sat down upon the exact place under which he rested and drew her knees up toward her heart. And she slept. She would learn to do this well. Mood and ritual became everything as she slept just above him. It was like this for years. She would wander the earth for him as though god called in a slow half-tone. And she would return, drawing both legs inward, until from far away she appeared to be another gravestone, hovering.

Her love for him became a separate thing beside her. She no longer went to sleep just to see his eyes close in the ground. Each time she curled her body, knees to eyes, she slept so that she might keep breathing, until it was possible to breathe on her own. She built a landscape around the grave, manicuring juniper trees and dwarf oaks with extreme ceremony. She managed to conjure up diminutive firs to plant about her mound of soil. Nothing grew unless she breathed there; flowering plants and infant sycamores appeared only inches above the soil.

She remained sometimes for days or weeks at a time, breathing that slow animal breath of winter. It is possible her heart might have stopped at times but a breeze would kick in and lift her head to the sky. Then she would move, go home for a day or so and return. The ceremony of cutting and fixing trees would begin again. It's just the trees and her slow breathing, the shape of all that rise and fall; the bloodstone in her hand. The dream of the house inside the house.