Delia had a demon. Everyone in the hamlet knew it and one after another they'd tried with varying success to exorcise it. Clel had gotten rid of it completely once, but the result was so horrendous that the townsfolk ended up praying secretly in their hearts for the devil's return. Its absence was worse than its visitations. Pots boiled over and burned. Pictures fell from the walls. Even the chapel crucifix turned slantways on its moorings. If it fell to the floor, they all agreed, the hamlet would die.

Meantime, Delia hummed Elizabethan folktunes as she sewed. Tears melted with paint in the tint of watercolor oceans nobody knew. In the evenings, she danced barefoot on town streets screaming half-sentences, disjoined words at the stars and moon. She cursed the exorcists and the preacher. She swore the demon was a priest. Once they found her fully clothed in their square's fountain, hands raised to the waterfall, laughing as jets hit her eyes and rained down pale cheeks into her open, upturned mouth. Her family was appalled. They called the city primate to help them and to cure her.

The bishop sang Latin chants and wove an ancient cross of the Essenes between her breasts. Into her forehead he wrote the sign of the fish. Delia yelped and meowed like a cat, stretched her arms wide toward East and West and fell chest-forward toward the primate, who declared her healed and left. Delia laughed and called her demon's name.

Grateful of peace from black magic in their space, the townsfolk left Delia to her possession and returned to their work.