Maren had rung the hollow bells over six hundred graves. Each toll dragged a dead soul up just long enough for one last word. She'd done it so long it bored her. But tonight the bell rang before she touched the rope. One cold iron note rolled across the frozen yard. She opened her casebook to write it down, and the page was already full, in handwriting that was not hers.

Maren slammed the casebook shut and marched to the bell tower to find the prankster. But the rope hung still, gathering frost, and no footprints marked the snow but her own. The iron note still hummed in the air. Then a voice came up from under the ground, polite and patient. "Thank you for finally listening, Bellkeeper."

Maren laughed, sharp and scared. "I bury the dead. I don't take orders from them." The polite voice sighed. "You misunderstand. I am not dead. I am the thing that makes your bells work. Stop feeding me names, and I will stop. But then so will they."

Maren made her choice fast. "Then we stop," she said. "No more waking the dead. Let them keep their last words." The voice went very still. "You would give it all up?" "Yes." The humming faded from the air. One by one, six hundred bells fell quiet, and for the first time in years the graveyard was just a graveyard.