They say you can't buy your way into heaven. The person who made that saying up must've been poor--and religious. I've never been either.

Now, don't get me wrong, I make my own living and I don't mooch off of others, so to speak.

I don't count my blessings in gold though--not that I've ever counted my blessings.

What I do know is that death comes to everyone, rich or poor--and I should know.

We leave them at the tangled forest's edge: our first-born, the fruit of new-made marriage beds. We give them, wailing and pink and small, to the hungry gods, the nameless masters of the wood.

They are gone by morning.

From the moment this village rose from the earth, we have offered up our dearest to the wood. For we take our very lives from the venison of its deer, from the warmth of its firewood, and from the clear, cold rush of its streams.