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Show -300 people had hacked it out with chainsaws and then laid a ribbon of blacktop over the exposed soft gray sand. I heard Alice calling to us, but I kept a tight grip on my little brother's arm and urged him deeper into the trees; they grew taller the further we went and soon came together overhead, shutting out much of the light. "Where are we going?" Carlo said. He was in a peculiar state, excited and sad at the same time, I thought. "I want to talk to you privately." "About what?" "Let's go on a little more." Somewhere on our right, far down and out of sight behind that close-woven vegetable tapestry, was the sea; we could smell it and sometimes we could hear a wave larger than the rest beat against the rocks. "Here we are," I said. We had come to a clearing: a cement picnic table, two dented trash-barrels painted forest-green, a circle of worn stones surrounding pieces of charcoal, bits of burned bone, a rusty iron grill. Underfoot a kind of sawgrass, fibrous and tough, grew in thin clumps. Over our heads a near-perfect circle of foggy-blue luminous sky was cut out of the treetops, "What kind of place is this?" Carlo said. He bent down and poked under the grill with one finger. "Looks like human bones. Hey I know, I bet it's where the witches come |