She lived where the waters smelled sweet and foul at the same time, where the cypress trees rose from the black water like old fingers, with beards of Spanish moss hanging from their branches as if the forest had left its mourning there to dry. Her house was not exactly a house. It was a wooden structure built on stilts, half shack, half wound that had learned to remain standing. Around it hung little bottles filled with mud, dried herbs, feathers, bones of small animals, pieces of mirrors, beads, and small iron bells that rang on their own whenever the damp changed too suddenly.