Mirren had tended the Briar for nine winters. She knew which graves to leave alone. The whole forest had grown over an old war, with bone under the roots and rust under the moss. That morning the thorns wept sap the color of a bruise. Under a hawthorn she found a grey hand pushing up through the dirt. It twitched, then grabbed at the air, reaching for her.

Mirren caught the cold wrist and hauled. A man came up out of the dirt, gasping, his eyes blind and white. "The bell," he rasped. "Someone rang the bell. The army is waking up." He clutched her sleeve. "You have to stop it before nightfall, or they all rise."

"What bell?" Mirren demanded. The blind man pointed east with a shaking arm, toward the ruined watchtower she'd been warned never to climb. "They hung it for the last war," he said. "To call the soldiers home from death. Someone is ringing it again." She sat him against the hawthorn and started east.

The watchtower stairs were slick with the same dark sap. At the top, a girl in a soldier's coat was hauling on the bell rope, crying, ringing it over and over. "My brother's down there," she sobbed. "I'm calling him back." Each toll shook another grave loose in the forest below.

Mirren held the rope still. "Your brother won't come back as your brother," she said. "He comes back as a soldier, and soldiers obey the bell, not you." A figure was already climbing the stairs, wearing the brother's face. Mirren held up her rowan bundle. "He's not yours now — but he can still choose to lie down." The dead man looked at his sister, trembled, then turned and walked back to his grave. One by one, the others followed.