Robin wanted to laugh. He'd been wrong, wrong the same way he'd been so many times before.

No one in town listened to the cries of an orphan. He'd been wrong about Jimmy. The town mayor had only come because he was afraid of future death. He'd been wrong about Helga. She might smile in his direction, or defend Cat, but it was all for her own safety. The murderer in the villagers' minds was dead, gone, never to bother the village again. The mood was nearly festive with the jubilance of the others. It oppressed Robin, bringing him down to his knees in front of the jail.

It was the same as before, the villagers running quickly from the site of death. Robin huddled on the ground, his hands coming away from his face wet with tears, the salty taste of them creeping into his mouth and the drops splattering onto the ground. The soil devoured the water.

It wasn't cold. The sun had risen and parted the smoke. It wasn't windy. A soft gust ruffled Robin's hair and weaved through the woods, but it was nothing.

But Robin was still cold. He was the same boy who had crouched at the village well two years ago, wind lashing at him, tears coming and coming and coming, the cold seeping into his body and into his heart. Except this time, Cat wasn't here.

The laughs came now, low, hoarse, painful. Cat hadn't been the murderer. The real murderers would keep slaughtering the others, Robin knew, and the villagers would live in fear until an axe brought their short, miserable lives to an end. What was the point — what had been the point of accusing Cat, of never seeing him as an equal just because he hadn't been raised in the village?

Robin crawled towards the iron door, towards the iron bars that he'd seen Cat behind. It hadn't been right, seeing Cat in the harsh gray cell. Cat and his blue eyes and his blue overalls belonged in the woods with him, in spring, with the flowers blooming around and Robin asking, "Where are we going?"

"Straight to hell, buddy."

Robin knew the iron door was locked. He shoved against it anyway, and pounded the metal with his fist. The village? It was gone, and beyond saving. It lacked what the people needed: acceptance and understanding. That had all died with Cat.

The door suddenly creaked, and swung inwards silently when Robin pushed again. Perhaps the lock had broken, perhaps someone had let Robin in. Robin didn't care. The gray stone beneath this hands and legs was too smooth, too clean, with barely a trace of dirt. He laid on the floor, pulling his knees to his chest to fit in the cell, and stared at the rectangles of blue sky through the bars.

And Robin started to laugh again. They wracked his body with pain, as if he'd been beaten up, and his throat was parched. There was no god watching over them, as there had been in the stories his parents had always read. And if there ever had been, they were gone now. All that was left was a broken village that finally lived up to its name: Not a Very Good Town. Robin would die, and the others would die, and die, and die, and nothing would be left standing.

Straight to hell. Straight to hell. Straight to hell. He repeated the words in his head, heard Cat recite them over and over in his deep voice, listened to that melody until the sky grew black and full of stars. He could hear Helga's yells resume in the night. The cell was warm, as if Cat was there with him, and Robin let the thought lull him into sleep.

He awoke from people rapping on the bars.

"—why we shouldn't have orphans. All they do is cry and shit, cry and shit." Helga's nasally voice wrapped around Robin, pulling him back to the still-warm floor of the cell. His throat was throbbing, and Robin coughed from the itch and reeled from the pain.

The rap on the bars sounded again and Robin looked up to see Helga's face peering through. Her face was hard, and she spoke quickly. "Hey, pal. Listen. There's some murderer here, and if you don't say shit, you're gonna fucking die."

Robin blinked, and Helga's sudden change vanished like the sun piercing through the smoke. Had he been hallucinating? Then the villagers were all cramming around the cell, staring at him.

"Who do you think it was, orphan?" Miles demanded, the gold of his hat flashing.

The village was beyond saving, of course. Robin was beyond saving. But he'd been thinking all the while, and he slowly turned to face Jimmy. The town mayor.

He'd been the first to show up at the scene of crime, the first to accuse Cat, the one who had separated Robin from Cat. Through the sound of the villagers' arguing and the numbness, Robin felt a hard anger flicker before it was put out again. It was useless to place hope in a village that had gone mad.

Robin heard the cell door click as it locked. You may now join Corpse in heaven, he thought he heard. It made him smile. He was wasting away, hallucinating a conversation with a god or some outside force that wouldn't even matter. He envisioned Cat sitting next to him, brown hair windswept, blue eyes as soft as the worn blue overalls. He imagined himself asking, "Where are we going?"

Corpse has always been Cat to me. And we are going straight to hell.

Robin was bitterly, bitterly cold, although the warm stones surrounded him. The floor would fall beneath him, and it would be painful.

But it would also be like falling asleep. It would be an escape from the village, and that was all Robin had ever wanted. Robin smiled as he felt the floor tilt away beneath him. The villagers had lost, and he had won.

Robin burned. By dawn of the next day, the village was bathed in blood, red glowing as the sun rose. Bob stood with his axe, sleeves rolled as always, staring at the village well. Jack cradled his potatoes. The village had been long gone, they both knew, lost as soon as the hard winter hit. It was why they had taken action. In time, they both withered away as well, leaving behind nothing but crumbling stones and a fairytale.

Next to their names in his journal, Karl Jacobs wrote: murderers.
Next to Robin's name, Karl hesitated, then wrote: jester.