'Kishimo-jin, the divine protectress of children. It was her revenge on Ludmila for the death of the children. That's one version, there's another that — ' I picked up Ortega's mutinous expression out of the corner of my eye and hurried on. 'Well, anyway, the Tengu tore her apart, but in so doing it locked itself into the spell and was condemned to remain imprisoned in the carcass. And now, with the original invoker of the spell dead, and worse still, betrayed, the carcass began to rot. A piece here, a piece there, but irreversibly. And so the Tengu was driven to prowling the streets and mills of the textile quarter, looking for fresh meat to replace the rotting portions of its body. It always killed children, because the parts it needed to replace were child-sized, but however many times it sewed new flesh to the carcass — '