She felt a faint trembling in the ground. It was like standing on a log that’s fallen over the creek, that rhythmless thrumming droning underneath. She could feel it in the soles of her feet all the way up to her head. When she turned, Drusilla saw a herd of heavenly deer bounding through the woods and toward the clearing of the village. They moved almost in slow motion. The impressions of them trailed along after they disappeared, like the fading tails of shooting stars. Drusilla was enraptured with the wonderful spectrum of the herd. They were tinted in blues and greens and silvers, lustrous golds and transparent whites. In each of their pelts Drusilla could see the patchwork of an unfathomable magic. A wave of them descended upon the druid’s daughter, and for a moment she was afraid, but then the tide of them divided around her and continued to run without touching a hair on her head. All that could be heard were the hooves.

It started with snapping branches, tumbling boulders and hissing bushes as the herd plowed through them. Drusilla stood at the edge of the wood and watched them mold the forest back into their tramping ground. And it was with such mesmerized admiration that she watched that Drusilla hardly heard the screams. What a terrible magnificence to hear all those lungs wrung out with fear! Oh, but not even the ringfort could stand a chance! The little hill collapsed, and everything inside shrieked with protest. All of it was crushed underfoot so easily, the rocking chair and the satchel on the highest shelf and even her father – everything in such fabulous ruin! A thousand years of settlement turned to dust and ash! Drusilla thought it was the most miraculous sight she’d ever seen.