A man was walking along the riverside, when he met a girl sitting forlornly beside her corpse. He wanted to keep walking, but it seemed very rude not to say hello.
     "Good morning, miss." The girl looked up morosely. Her corpse was white and bony, and she looked far nicer than it did. The man reflected that he wouldn't judge people's appearances by how they looked in their coffins. He had thought his cousin was plain when he saw her for the first time at her wake, but perhaps she had been a very pretty girl.

        "Miss," she repeated pensively. "I miss my sister. Do you think she misses me?"
"I'm sure she does, if you miss her," said the man, startled.
"Her....It hurts. Very much. On the inside."
"What?"
"It feels as though my heart is being pulled out by all its strings and the strings are stretching, tearing, almost about to snap."
     "That can't be comfortable," said the man, not very comfortable himself.
     "I'm not. I shouldn't be here, you know." The man could think of nothing to say of this. They sat in silence for a while, and the man felt increasingly awkward.
     "I need to get going, miss, but if there's anything I can do-"
     "Miss," savored the girl pensively. "I miss my mother." The man was getting a bit annoyed.
    "Look-" he began, than reconsidered. "How did you die?" he asked curiously.
    "Can't you see?" she said scornfully. "There's a hole right here, and here." She pointed to the head and ribs of her corpse. The man saw this was so, although he hadn't noticed before because the wounds weren't bleeding.
     "I say-" the man started, then broke off awkwardly. "Do you- that is, if you need any help..." The girl settled in a crouch, hands wrapped around her legs, head planted between her knees.
    "No. Nothing you can do,"
    "But who killed you?" asked the man helplessly.
    "A woman and her husband. But they couldn't see me when I died, so they dumped it in the river and I followed the banks till it washed up. It was a perfectly good body - it wasn't fair to just leave it." And she stared owlishly at the man, as though he had suggested she abandon her body to the cold. "If I had had arthritis or a limp," she added as an afterthought. "It would have been different."
"Just so," said the man vaguely, wondering what he was going to do with her.
      "Just-IS," said the girl with certainty. Seeing the man's bewilderment, she elaborated. "Justice. It's why I'm here. My poor body is all chilly, washed up on its own, and the people who poked holes in it are having a good time."
    "So what should I do?"
   "Keep my body safe, and then make the pokers say sorry. And maybe poke holes in their bodies too."
"Now see here," said the man feebly. "I'm not poking holes in anyone." But he fetched a spade and dug the girl's corpse a cozy grave by the riverside, with the girl looking on solemnly.
"Thank you. I'm sure it will be very warm."
"You're welcome." And the man walked home, his back tingling with the knowledge the girl was watching him go.

The man's wife was a cheery, golden woman. Thatch and stone and a warm supper encircled him, held him close, drove off possibilities of rivers and fog and little dead children. He lay on a starchy white mattress and burrowed his hands in his wife's warm, fleshy curves. She was everything that was safe and right and well with the world, and as every joint settled and he sighed into sleep, he was sleepily convinced the girl was a phantom, a hallucination, or in the very least a dream.
How wrong he was.
The morning was gray and brisk and tinged with lemon, and the man whistled cheerfully as he set off to hoe his fields. The whistle died with a squeak as he saw the girl again, now sitting complacently in his toolshed.
"What are you doing in my house?"
"I followed you home because I had nothing else to do." The man scratched his neck nervously. He did not much like the idea of a tiny girl walking noiselessly behind him in the dark. "Your sister is a bad woman."
"What?" asked the man, thrown off track.
"Your sister." The man was befuddled.
"I don't have a sister."
"Your mother, then."
"My mother's dead."
"The woman who served you supper."
"That was my wife. And nonsense, she's the cheeriest wife I know."
"Then she's not your wife only. She's the tall man's wife, too. I saw them." The man felt weak around the knees.
"What?"
"The tall man with glowing white teeth and the thick bristles," repeated the girl matter-of-factly. "I saw them, and they saw me, and your wife screamed and looked at him, and he stuck me with a pitchfork, and then she hit me on the head, and then they tossed me in a river. It wasn't me anymore when they tossed me in the river, of course, but I was nearby and watching."
"It's not true," the man said faintly, reeling.
"True, true," scolded the girl. "Of course it's true, you ass, why would I lie?" The man considered this and realized, with a sinking heart, that there was no reason for a dead child he had met yesterday morning to break up his marriage.
"Are you sure? Absolutely sure?"
"She's the only lady I've ever seen with golden hair. It was the golden haired lady who threw my body into the water, and your wife is the golden haired lady," said the girl imperiously. With every word, the man's heart sank. His wife was the only golden haired woman he had ever come across...

The next few days passed in a haze of horror and headaches and tears and tantrums. The man staggered to his wife and confronted her in the marketplace. She wailed in outrage when he accused her of adultery and murder, and village wives rallied around and demanded proof. The man called the girl and she was nowhere to be found. He dug up half the foamy riverbank and found nothing of her body. His wife met the man accused of being her lover and decided that she'd rather be married to him than her husband, jealous and controlling he was. The villagers were disgusted enough that they wouldn't look at the unhappy man if they passed him on the street.
  The end of the week found him dead-faced, slumped in his now dusty cottage. He never saw the girl again in his life.