Netherton braced his right paw on the column and leaned over Lowbeer’s bear, until he could see around the corner. A sizable throng of small, gray, predictably horrid figures squatted, around the upright corpse of the boss patcher. He was hollow now, Netherton saw, membrane thin, like the island’s architecture. Eyeless, the cavern of his mouth agape, he appeared to be propped up with slender lengths of silvered driftwood.