“Be careful walking to school,” Vimala says, a mantra that is common in their mornings. Her daughter Chinni has to walk half an hour to get to school, and while she is always accompanied by her friends, Vimala still worries. The road is more of a dirt path, and she knows how easy it is to be tempted by something off the path. People with safety and security could dream of paths less taken and find whimsy in twisted, poorly maintained routes. For people like Vimala and her family, the well-worn paths were the easiest and the shortest paths to the destination.

“Yes, Amma,” her daughter says, and Vimala wishes that she could offer her daughter more than just words of advice and warning. Her husband owns a bicycle, but he is off to work at the break of dawn. In the evenings, he leaves the fields for the local bar, spending half his salary on cheap liquor and fried snacks. Vimala does not know what he finds in the sordid, dirty place. The few times she has visited to bring back her inebriated husband, she found a place filled with grimy men, cheap string lights covering a thatched shed, some delusion of being something more than the place actually was. It was a place of vice, a place where dreams died, a place where men withered and finally let go of their hopes of leaving the village behind for something grander and greater.

Chinni is well-behaved, and she comes home with report cards with high numbers and comments from her teachers that Vimala reads with pride. But she is alone in her pride. Already, she is hearing from her in-laws about the eventual day when Chinni will be taken out of school. The only thing keeping Chinni in school is the free lunch given by the government and the free childcare provided by the teachers. But the colleges that come after school will ask for tuition, and there is no college within a traveling distance from their home. Chinni will have to be kept in a hostel, and Vimala knows that in their family, such things are unheard of.

In their village, daughters are treated like yearly crops. They are raised to harvest and then sold. Sons are trees, watered and cared of, expected to provide shade. Daughters are never treated as one’s own. Vimala sees that thought in both men and women. She remembers the sting of her own childhood, of never belonging. Her mother’s home became her brother’s, and this new home she has with her husband is her husband’s. But it seems she is alone in remembering. Everyone else around her seems to understand and accept that it is the way the world works, and it is the way the world must continue to work. They want her daughter to repeat Vimala’s life. When Chinni is a girl still too young, she will be placed like a doll in front of some strange family and their son. The family will appraise her value and demand a dowry, as if they are doing Vimala an enormous favor by taking her daughter away from her.

Vimala wants to say she will never partake in the ritual, but her life is evidence that she has done everything just as other people have. She will live the same life as the people around her, and perhaps the only inheritance she will leave her daughter is the same fate. A transactional marriage with a man that others deem appropriate, a lifetime of domestic chores and simple living, a life devoid of dreams. Vimala wishes that her daughter could live any life other than her own. Anything would be better than a life so barren of love, so bereft of hope, and so destined for an inconsequential life and death.

But she cannot offer anything more to Chinni. Instead all she can offer her are the smallest of pleasures. Vimala takes out two candies from the knot she’s made at the end of her saree. They are hard mango candies, sweet and sour, wrapped in thin paper. She presses them into Chinni’s hand.

“Come home right after school,” she says. “Don’t hang around the school field.”

Winter is coming, and the days are growing shorter. The path from the school to their home is too narrow for cars, but people travel on bicycles and motorbikes, and she knows the recklessness of men when they are given anything that can go fast. “Chinni” means small, and her daughter has always kept to her namesake. She is a bird-like thing, thin and gangly, easy to miss.

“And walk on the side of the road,” Vimala warns her.

“What if I don’t?” Chinni asks, a joking tone in her voice.

“Then the Boochodu will get you!” Vimala yells, tickling her daughter’s sides. It is a frequent joke in their house. A threat of a mystical bogeyman who will take her daughter away. Vimala had received the same threats from her mother when she was a child, although the tone had been different. Vimala had thought the Boochodu to be a real person, some shadowy figure in the night who came and abducted unruly children. For her daughter, the Boochodu was a character restricted to bedtime stories. Chinni knew he wasn’t real nor a real threat.

After Chinni leaves, Vimala sets out to complete the day’s work. She is considered a housewife, but the house is much to maintain. She hears of women in the cities who have maids or machines to do the dishes and the laundry, but in their little village, all she has is her two hands. They are rough and calloused now, and she resents the day Chinni’s will be the same. She feeds the chickens in the yard and cooks lunch for her and husband. With the steel lunch box tied up in cloth, she walks to the field to join her husband in working the land.

It is difficult labor, under a sun that does not relent, but it is the only work available in their land. She sets out to leave earlier in the evening than her husband. Someone has to be home when Chinni returns. A train passes through the edge of the farm land, and she imagines the journey of the train, all the people traveling inside of it. The train makes the same journey every few days, but it has seen more of the world than Vimala has. She has never been to a city, and the little television in their home is a relic of the past, with a screen that curves outward and where everything is too colorful, too artificial.

In the evenings, after Chinni comes home from school and before her husband comes back, she watches a soap opera for a half an hour while Chinni does her homework. It is the one little pleasure in her otherwise mundane life. The woman in the show is belittled and humiliated, overworked, and Vimala sees parts of herself in the woman. Granted, the woman lives in a palatial house, wears jewelry even to sleep, but at the core, their problems are the same. A bad husband, a sad marriage, and a life that seems devoid of hope. But in those soap operas, hope does sprout eventually. All the problems are resolved by magic. The woman’s husband changes into a romantic hero, and the heroine herself discovers she is special and talented. After thousands of episodes and countless misunderstandings, there is a happy ending.

But Chinni is not home yet, and the soap opera episode ends on another cliffhanger. Vimala goes out of their little house to see if she can see a little figure walking on the road in the dusk. There is no one, and the light is rapidly diminishing. Soon, she will be able to see nothing. She lights the kerosene lamp and heads out beyond their compound fence.

It is only a half-an-hour walk, a route Chinni has taken for over a year. Sometimes she does come home late, disregarding Vimala’s warnings to play with her friends in the dusty school field. From her home, Vimala ventures out on the path to school, but she sees no one. She goes to the homes of Chinni’s classmates, but they tell she left the school on time while they stayed behind to play. She comes home again, hoping that she might find her daughter in the house, but it is empty.

At the bar, her husband is too drunk to be of any help, and so she walks the path between their house and the school. She checks behind the school building, where there are always abandoned beedi butts and broken bottles of liquor. She checks the fields and the bus stand and finds nothing.

She continues her search, poring through the streets of the village, knocking on every door that she can think of. Chinni is light enough that most adults can carry her with one arm. There are so many places where a little girl can be hidden. So many ways to hurt a child so fragile.

Finally, she makes her way to the bar, where her husband is sitting with friends. His face is slack with drink, his words slurred. It takes him a minute to register what she is saying, and when it does, he is not as worried as her, not nearly as concerned. The men start from the bar, each armed with heavy steel flashlights and lanterns, searching through the fields and the nearby forest, calling out her name.

The other women come to Vimala and escort her back home. Her home is relegated to waiting, to wailing in silence while the sky gradually lightens into morning. The day passes and another, and a week goes by. Her house remains empty. The police are informed, but there is little they can do. The truth is that village lives do not hold much value, and Vimala herself knows that it could be a freak accident. There are old wells in the village that have never been filled up or closed. As more of the forest is being converted to farmland, kraits and cobras are beginning to crawl through the rice paddies and the village alleyways.

After a week, there is an unsaid acceptance of Chinni not returning. Her husband stops his search and buries himself in half-hearted grief and alcohol. The police ignore her gaze when she goes to the police station for updates. Vimala is not angry with them. There is nothing to search for. The old films she sees on television have crimes with clues, with pieces of fabric left for detectives to find, with motives and money to be gained, but in her case there is nothing.

Vimala continues her search, scouring the fields and shining lights into open borewells, venturing further into the surrounding forest and calling out Chinni’s name and getting no response. She stops going to the fields and stops cooking their humble meals. Their house gathers dust and she gains the feral appearance of those on the fringes of society.

She goes out earlier and earlier on endless searches in the same area, seeing if there is some new hiding spot in her old village she will discover. Hope is long gone, but she wants an end. She wants an answer. One morning she leaves for the rice paddies far beyond their village. She has scoured the land multiple times before, but soon it will be winter and the mornings will be too cold for her to walk for long periods.

She spots small footprints in soft soil, and she thinks of all the times Chinni has walked and played in the village. Her one pair of shoes were things to be saved and sparingly used, polished every morning before school and kept neatly outside the door of their home.

Vimala follows the footprints. It cannot be Chinni, but it is perhaps some other child lost in the fields. It is early enough that the snakes will still be out, and their village rests at the foothills of mountains known for leopards.

She follows the footprints and goes into the forest, to where the trees are so densely packed together she has to squeeze between them to pass. The footprints are now dirty marks of mud, and she gets the feeling the child was running. Vimala notices the increase in the length of the gait, but it takes her minutes before she sees how the footprints are different now. They are an adult’s footprints now, and the forest is no longer filled with the morning birdcalls or even the sounds of her own footsteps.

The footprints disappear, and when Vimala stops, she sees she is lost. It is a simple thing most days to get back to the village. It is only a matter of heading downhill, where the forest meets the edge of the fields. Now the land is flat where it should not be, and the trees are strange and gray.

Vimala hears footsteps, slow and deliberate. When she turns, there is no one and nothing.

“Who’s there?” she asks, hoping it is not a leopard or a bear.

Instead, it is a young woman dressed in rags. She looks like Vimala, yet is taller and wilder. Her hair has ribbons streaked through it, and her feet are not barefoot but bound with cloth. It is Chinni, but not so small anymore. Instead, she is a changed thing. She is a wild and free thing, unhindered by responsibilities and untethered from the rules of society.

“Amma,” Chinni says, and her face is filled with joy but devoid of childhood. She has seen things, this young woman, and survived things. She stands straight in a way Vimala can never stand. In her life, she was expected to bow to the world, to the people around her, to her husband. But the young woman in front of her does not slouch to hide her body or wear a veil to cover her hair.

“Chinni?” Vimala asks.

It is a mirage or a delusion. Vimala has finally succumbed to the madness, and she welcomes it. It is a pitiable thing to be half-mad. To embrace the madness fully is to no longer see the concerned and critical looks of the people around her. It is a madness in which she can be with some form of her daughter.

Vimala embraces her daughter. She ignores the changes in the temperature, the way the sky is red, and the way her daughter’s form flows and changes shape like water within her arms. The way something is not quite right, because something wrong is better than nothing at all. Because the monster who steals disobedient children away may be spiriting them to a place where they belong. And for all of her effort and all the ways she shrank and bent herself to fit into the roles she was given, she never felt she belonged.

In the village, a little girl returns to an empty home. She keeps her shoes to the side of the door, and calls for her mother.

“Must you pluck all the flowers?”

“Hey prabhu! Must you always startle me so?”

“Have you completely given up on sleep? Even the sun is yet to rise.”

“It’s the thieving neighbours. I must get them all before anyone is up.”

“The gods don’t need so many every day. I’m sure they’re tired of the same old flowers.”

“You and your tirade against my gods! For once, just stop wandering and go get some rest.”

You see, for the last twenty years or so, I have hardly slept a good wink—let alone rest—around the crack of dawn. As far back as I can stretch my unreliable memory, I cannot remember a day of our shared matrimonial life when the stubborn woman has not woken up at these ungodly hours. Even before the next-door rooster has cleared his throat, the entire house rings with a pandemonium of noises big and small—the ear-splitting creak of the rusty bathroom door, the rhythmic swoosh of the broom in the courtyard, the urgent jingle of her bangles attune with the dull thuds of her footsteps. Who can sleep around such a circus, not to mention the routine lowing of the neighbour’s cattle all night?

A lone owl’s hoot pierces through the thick, wintry silence of the dawn. The cool dew soothes my callouses as I struggle to put one foot in front of the other. They say wintertime makes old wounds come alive, reminding the body of the many shocks it has survived through the years. It has been a long walk though getting used to the distance is entirely another thing. I try blowing away some glistening cobwebs from the tagar tree—how beautifully it has grown! In full bloom, the small tree has morphed into a constellation of its own, its milky white flowers sparkling like tiny stars in the dark. I still remember the blazing summer afternoon when I had received my first salary; it was not much but so was the work of shuffling files in a government office all day. Proud as punch, lugging a gunny sack stacked with saplings of several flowering plants, I had walked home from the village bus stop. My mother and little sister, waiting by the verandah and probably expecting a freshly caught mirikali or a big ripe jackfruit, were unable to mask their disappointment.

In the soft blur of twilight, the peeled paint on the front wall resembles a furrowed bark of an old tree. I should have seen to its repair in time, when the place was yet to become a warehouse of unsightly cracks and clutter. I was fortunate to be left as the sole caretaker of this house since my younger siblings chose to prosper and grow old in the only big town in the district. They rarely visited the village. My mother, who refused to move, handed over the upkeep of the house to my wife after we got married. Reduced to a functional ruin now, the four close-packed rooms—the smallest doubles up as the kitchen and utility space—and a sizable backyard served us well over the years. With the little money I had saved up after a decade of employment, a small sitting room adjacent to the verandah and a pucca bathroom were added later.

My eyes rest on the big blob of seepage on the bedroom ceiling, giving it the appearance of a poorly drawn map by a child. Even the window curtains—the only remaining pair that match—have doubled in weight from gathering months of dust, the beige altered to a moldy brown. The steel almirah that once safekept the few valuables we owned, is now a dedicated shrine for junk of all kinds. Over the past few years, it has been piled with plastic boxes, paper cups, disposable spoons, wooden combs with missing teeth, utensils that have lost both their shape and purpose, and what have you. What started as a memorabilia collection in her younger days has ballooned into a ridiculous compulsion. I want to pull my hair and scream into the void, but I fear her sharp tongue.

“Tell me, what is so fancy about these plastic food trays? When will this habit stop?”

“Baah! Don’t you start now.” Almost hissing, she continues, “How do you keep wearing that same soiled shirt every day then?”

“How can you even bring me into this? As if I have an option.”

On the few occasions I secretly convinced Dhulia to dump it all by the banks of the Brahmani, her detective senses would sniff me out, and the entire matter ended up in a heated argument. One time she even went so far as threatening to jump into the river herself. Just like her gods, all that bric-a-brac too is sacrosanct; naturally, Dhulia is not allowed anywhere near them. His odd jobs, like weeding the vegetable patch and unclogging drains, are strictly restricted to the outer periphery of the house. My mother, who lived for less than a decade with us before she succumbed to a massive heat stroke, had taught her well. Despite their continuous bickering that would often drive me to the panchayat office for some quiet, they bonded well over pettiness and pakhala.

She sprinkles the remaining puja water on straggly clumps of yellow and pink tuberoses that have sprouted around the rim of the well. A few stubborn ones have broken through the cracks in the concrete, attracting small butterflies and dragonflies. In a fruitless attempt to draw her attention, I circle the drying well and pretend to gauge the level of the water. Following her—more out of habit than purpose—I hobble all the way to the verandah and try stretching my bad leg slowly against the broken stairs. The winter sun washes over me, rekindling the memory of a warm compress on my useless limb. As she approaches the sitting mat, her pet parrot Rupa throws a sudden tantrum, flapping its wings in a demonic frenzy. I won’t lie, it is the most nagging bird I’ve seen in my time though it is not hard to guess who it mimics. I tried to free it more than once but every time the rascal would fly its way back after teetering on the guava tree for a bit.

Every morning after she is done with her chores, a large part of which includes the daily puja, she would sit on the verandah floor with the newspaper spread under her nose. Ignoring the pressing concerns of the world, she would turn the pages in a haste and stop at the Daily Horoscope section. Quite a self-proclaimed expert of the zodiac, she has always stood firm on her hypothesis that people born under the Kanya rashi suffered the most trials and tribulations. Neither material prosperity nor good karma smiled upon her lot, as if the goddess Laxmi herself had some personal beef with them. She would often lament this astrological inheritance from her mother, grumbling over the generational wealth passed down to her.

Reaching for her customary mid-morning tea, which is saccharine to the point where ants circle the teacup in minutes, she clicks her tongue in dismay.

“Bad news?” I swat a fly circling above her head.

“If only you had been this attentive always! It’s a pity how men become so desperate in old age.”

She casts a sideways glance and continues running her index finger along the prediction. “My planets have not been in sync for some time. The full moon too is approaching in a day.”

“Hmm… Did your planets never warn you about me?”

I smirk; it always infuriates her.

A gust of cool wind carries a shower of tagar flowers across the verandah. While some land on her lap, caught in between the creases of her crumpled cotton saree, few rest on the bold newspaper headlines as if on a mission to block out the world’s ugliness. Disinterested in the floral intervention, she smooths away a few wisps of white hair from her eyes. With a singular focus, she surveys the crisp blue sky which does not carry a single trace of cloud. A pale, almost full moon waits patiently for its last sliver to complete yet another full circle. How I envy the moon, its ability to resurrect itself from the pit of darkness every month.

Years ago, her pantheon of the sun, moon and planets failed to foretell the fate of a dying man. They did little to caution her about a ravenous lump, the size of a lemon, gnashing through my left femur. I shudder recalling those days of wait and despair when, lying awake for hours, I could hear the inevitable shrinkage of my body, witness its gradual emaciation to the form of a skeletal child. During such sleepless nights, drenched in sweat and delirium, I’ve seen her throw up in the backyard. My poor brinjal plants! I know, it was a lot to stomach, the stench of my festering bedsores. The very thought still makes my insides churn, that brown, fishy discharge of pus melded with betadine.

It has been seven long winters to that fateful night. I remember there was a full moon that night as well. A thirsty blood moon, you see.

Annie nudged the lizard, her companion, to climb higher onto the rock for a better view. The lizard’s tail dragged behind as it inched its way up. It was weary from their afternoon of exploring, chasing, and eating bugs. It shook its head, and her concentration wavered.

She watched the road from the rock outcrop. The sun was getting low in the sky as the rider rounded a steep bend in the road. Shoulder-length hair flowed out from under a sweat-stained sombrero that concealed his eyes. A scruffy, gray-streaked beard shrouded his lower face. As his horse struggled up the grade, he dug rusty spurs deep into his horse’s flanks. He smirked. Annie could feel each twinge of pain and wheezy gasp from the poor beast.

That man is broken.

As he passed her, his eyes flitted from side to side as if searching for something. For the briefest of moments, his eyes locked on her. Could he see her? Her concentration faltered as the lizard companion exerted its will and forced her out.

_Blink_

The darkness of the other side enveloped her, and the lizard’s silver light moved away. She felt how relieved her scaly companion was to be rid of her. Annie’s lesson that day was to recognize each creature’s different lights by sight. Instead, she had chosen to play, stayed out too long, and was dog-tired. The shining thread that bound her to the world of flesh grew taut, demanding her return.

_Blink_

She lay still, eyes shut, her breathing shallow, and waited. Her arms and legs were cold, heavy, and tingling. Annie wanted to sleep, but she had to get up and move.

She was in trouble; she knew it, if not from Mama, then from Grandma Ochuca for skipping her chores and the lesson. Of the two, she would accept Mama’s any day. Annie had been training for years, but Grandma was never satisfied.

Annie was four when the dreams had begun. Dreams, sometimes nightmares, of being one creature and then another. It wasn’t until she was six that she had discovered the truth. They were not dreams. One night, she had a dream about their cat, Espina. She had watched through Espina’s eyes as the cat stalked a mouse in the kitchen. When Espina pounced, Annie had felt her claws and teeth tear into the mouse’s flesh. She had awoken screaming.

The following morning, Espina had sat at the bottom of the stairs, proudly displaying the mouse she had killed the night before. Slowly, the veil between the waking world and the other side had parted. Annie had learned that she could move from creature to creature and bend their wills to her own.

One day, while exploring the other side, she had strayed too far and had got lost. She had panicked and flown in one direction and then another. The silver thread that had always led her home had stretched and faded. Adrift in the cold blackness, she had felt her connection with her body slipping away. That was when she had encountered Ochuca for the first time.

Ochuca had come like four horse-drawn wagons hurling down a winding, steep switchback trail. Her light was brighter than all the creatures’ lights combined. Annie had tried to flee, but her strength had left her.

A giant, shining, slithering rattlesnake had circled her. Its scales were as white as snow. Its glittering gold eyes were the size of dinner plates. When its fanged mouth had opened, a blood-red tongue had flicked from it and cracked like a whip. Her hiss was louder than a rushing river, and her rattle was like thunder.

It had circled her closer until she could almost touch the white scales. Annie had screamed a soundless scream, choked with panic and fear. And then a sense that no harm would come to her had washed over her.

The great rattlesnake’s thoughts had formed in her head. She said to call her Ochuca, which meant “grandmother” in the language of Mama’s people. Ochuca had returned her to her body and waited until she had woken up before leaving. As she had sped away, she had hissed and told Annie she had much to learn.

She had been afraid to tell Mama right away. When she finally did, Mama had made her promise never to tell anyone. Ochuca was the people’s guardian spirit, and few could hear her, much less cross over to the other side. Ochuca had saved her, so Annie was indebted to her. The thought had terrified her so much that she had stopped traveling to the other side for a while.

Soon, Ochuca’s rattles thundered in her head and commanded Annie to come to her. Grandma taught her the other side’s ways, and said that in time, Annie would become ‘Kukini’ —a respected one. Grandma gave Annie the name Waheia, which meant troublesome because that was what she was. Five years had passed, and Grandma Ochuca taught her the old ways, but she was not always the best pupil.

She was so cold.

Squinting against the sun’s setting rays coming through the stable doors, she sat up. Straw stuck to her hair and clothes from lying in the hay. There were times she wished she never had to come back. There were no chores, no parents to badger her, and no little brother to watch. Mama kept saying she was special. But if that was so, why did she still have to wash and mend clothes, collect firewood, and clean the guests’ rooms?

It was not fair.

Annie rubbed her legs and arms to get warm. She walked stiffly into the sunlight, picking bits of straw from her hair. In the courtyard, her brother Sean chased chicks in circles until he was so dizzy he fell over laughing. He was only six and still allowed to play, but soon, he would have help with the chores.

Papa was the roof of the smokehouse, nothing more than a pile of old timbers hammering on a board. He was constantly fixing things to keep the old inn from falling apart. From inside the Inn, she could hear Mama’s singing. Annie knew, regardless of the time of day, that Mama’s smile would be waiting for her. Well, possibly not today because she had skipped her chores.

A chill wind blew off the desert, promising a morning frost. Ochuca would give her heck the next time she summoned her.

“A rider is coming,” Annie rasped hoarsely.

Papa looked up from his work toward the gate. “I don’t see anybody,” he said, shaking his head. “Annie, darling, where have you been?”

“Just playing, Papa,” she said, giving him her sweetest smile as she passed.

Papa shook his head and got back to work.

She leaned against the gatepost and gazed out at the road. Papa knew she was different but refused to acknowledge it. More than once, she had heard Papa argue with Mama about Indian superstitions. Mama said he believed in the white man’s God. And that their ways belonged to the evil spirit the whites called the Devil. Mama was happy that the inn was far from Capistrano. Any closer and Papa would have forced them to go to the church and school of the Black Robes.

The minutes passed, and she heard the faint clop of a horse’s hooves, and the stranger came into view. Papa looked up from his labor at the sound of the approaching rider and glanced at her as the man rode through the gate. The stranger pulled up the reins as he stopped in front of Papa.

“You look done in, friend,” Papa said, staring from the stranger to the horse. Fresh red spur welts crisscrossed old scars on the horse’s flanks.

The stranger took in the courtyard and the open door leading into the inn. The sun settled behind the mountains to the east, and the air began to cool. Annie could feel a cloying heat radiating off him.

The stranger spoke, but without looking at Papa, “Nice place.”

“I am Timothy O’Malley,” Papa said. “You’ll not find a better inn between Capistrano and San Diego if you don’t mind my saying.”

“A room, food for me and the nag,” said the stranger, as he eyed Papa up and down, “and mezcal if you got it… Timothy O’Malley.” He swung from the saddle with a loud grunt.

“We have all three,” Papa said, grabbing the skittish horse’s bridle and stroking its neck. “Anne darling, show our guest inside.”

The stranger untied his gear from the horse and followed her. His Spanish-style spurs jingled out a cheerless tune. He was a big man, as big as Papa, maybe bigger. As they reached the door, Sean ran up and skidded to a stop. He stared up at the man and smiled.

The stranger glowered at Sean until his eyes became slits and snorted, “Boy, you’re a breed, aren’t you?” he whispered.

He dragged the back of his dust-encrusted hand across his mouth. A toothy snarl showed through his fingers. He rested his free hand on the butt of his pistol and tapped the hammer with his thumb. Sean’s eyes followed the stranger’s hand, and his lower lip trembled.

“No English, little breed?” he growled and squatted so they were eye to eye.

Sean winced and blinked, his eyes widening in fear. A single tear wound down his dirty cheek, leaving a swath of light brown skin in its wake. A satisfied chuckle rumbled from the stranger’s throat. Annie stepped between them, shielding Sean from his taunts. She could feel Sean’s fingers grasp her leg like tiny fishhooks. She kept her eyes on the ground, not wanting to meet the man’s gaze.

“Now, what do we have here, an Indian lover? Wait, don’t tell me, is this breed your kin?”

Annie was about to reply when he took her chin in his hand and pushed her head back. She twisted loose, and their eyes met. The hard lines on his face softened, and he chuckled. Ochuca’s rattle echoed in her head. She felt his emotions from that one touch like a black fog, wanting to swallow her. He smiled, patted her head, and pushed past them into the inn.

Annie wanted to grab Sean and run and hide. Instead, she turned, placed her hands on his shoulders, and told him everything was all right. Sean grinned, wiped his cheek, and hugged her around the waist. She pried him off and shooed him away to help Papa.

As she entered the great room, the smell of roasted chicken, rice, and beans wafted in from the kitchen. The stranger stood with his back to her. He surveyed the room until his eyes fixed on the bar and liquor bottles. He tossed his gear on the nearest table, walked behind the bar, and helped himself to a bottle of mezcal. Annie heaved the heavy steel-hinged wooden door shut with a loud creak. Then she stepped into the shadows, her back pressed against the cold adobe wall.

Mama’s singing drifted in from the kitchen. He uncorked the bottle, sniffed, and crossed the hall to sit near the stone fireplace. He yawned, then lifted the bottle to his lips and drank deeply of the amber-colored spirit.

“Muy bueno!” he bellowed and smacked his lips several times. “Girl, tell the cook your guest hasn’t eaten since this morning. Be quick about it.”

He acted like the Spanish tax collector, Señor Del Anza, as if the inn were his personal property, not Papa’s. She wanted to tell him to leave, but she obeyed and headed to the kitchen. Mama met her in the doorway. A tight-lipped look of concern creased her face.

“What is all the yelling about, Annie?” she asked, having caught sight of the stranger.

“Mama, we have a guest, and he’s hungry.”

Mama studied the stranger. The crow’s feet around her eyes deepened as she squinted. She wiped her sun-darkened hands on her apron. Then touched the leather pouch hanging around her neck.

Does she sense it?

“Light the evening lamps, Annie,” she asked as her hand dropped from the pouch.

A chill ran down Annie’s spine as Grandma’s rattles echoed in her head. Mama turned her back and walked away. He spat on the clean tile floor. Annie imagined that she saw tongue-like, dark wisps follow her as she retreated to the kitchen. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them, they were gone.

His eyes followed her around the room as she lit the lamps. She smelled of liquor and stale sweat as she lit the lamp on his table. He smiled oddly at her, and his face flushed with color. It reminded her of the smiles Papa and Mama traded on those nights when they went to bed early.

“That Indian, your mother?” he asked, leaning across the table as if to snatch the answer from her.

She lurched back and almost stumbled into Mama, carrying a steaming plate of food. Mama stopped short of the table, set the plate down, and slid it toward him, careful to avoid his eyes. His head rocked from side to side, taunting her to look at him. Then, he tilted his head back and laughed. Annie stepped in behind Mama.

“Do I scare you, woman?” he slurred. His gaze was as vacant as a dark corner in an abandoned house. “Are you Serrano or one of those tamed Gabrielano, maybe?”

“No, señor,” she said, but her eyes said otherwise. “My people are Juanero, from near Mission Capistrano.” Her hand searched behind her for mine.

The stranger slapped his thigh, chuckled, and mumbled something about ignorant Indians. Mama turned and gently pinched Annie’s cheek. A shiver ran through Annie as Mama gestured with her eyes toward the kitchen.

“What did I tell you about getting underfoot? Go now and tell Papa that supper is ready before it gets cold. Hurry,” she shouted, pushing her away.

Her shoes thudded dully on the tiles as she ran through the kitchen and out the back. Espina slipped inside as the door swung shut. A sparrow dangled by its wing in her mouth.

Sean’s laughter echoed in the courtyard as Papa burst from the stable. Sean rode on his shoulders, yelling, “Giddy-up!” Papa galloped across the courtyard, dipping and rearing like a wild stallion. As he barreled toward her, he let out a whinny that turned to laughter. Sean slid from his back as he stopped before her and ran ahead.

Papa took her face in his rough hands. “Darlin’, your skin is like ice. Get inside before you catch your death from the cold.”

Annie grabbed his hand and said, “Mama says your supper’s ready.” She whimpered and blurted out, “The stranger is drinking.” She wrapped her arms around him and began to tremble.

Still so cold.

Papa pulled her close and said, “Darlin, there’s nothing to fear. Our guest is just tired and needs some company.” His shoulders hunched as he walked away with her.

Don’t trust him, Papa—he’s broken.

As Annie set the table, she could see the stranger stuff food into his mouth between sips of mezcal. Mama seemed relieved when Papa placed his big, calloused hands on her tiny shoulders. They whispered to each other, and Papa glanced at the stranger.

“I’ll speak to him after supper, Sesia,” he said, scooping up Sean, and they went to wash up.

Annie placed a clay water jug and cups on the table. Grandma’s rattle rumbled louder in her head and would not stop. Grandma, please—what do you expect me to do? She stepped closer to the stove but could barely feel its warmth.

“Mama.”

“What is it, Annie?”

“Mama… can you hear Grandma?”

She closed her eyes and mumbled in Juanero. The corners of her mouth turned down. She clutched the medicine bag around her neck tightly, then, after a moment, released it. “I felt something earlier, but now…” For the briefest moment, Mama’s eyes seemed far away. She shivered as if a cold breeze swept through the kitchen. “Annie, are you sure?”

“Yes, Mama!” she said, grabbing hold of her skirt.

Before she could say more, Papa and Sean crowded into the kitchen. They sat, and Papa asked for Christ’s blessing on the food and their guest, a bit louder than usual. As Papa broke a loaf of bread in half, the stranger’s shuffling footsteps drew their attention.

He stood a few steps back from the doorway, his upper body hidden in shadow, supper plate held in one hand. Gravy dripped from the chipped earthenware like rain on the toe of his boot. He stepped into the light. A disarming smile hid who he was.

Annie’s breath caught in her throat.

“Missus, may I have seconds?” he asked, his words slurred from the drink. Mama got up from the table in a flurry of motion and served him. His smile changed briefly to a snarl, like when his spurs dug into his horse.

He shifted his gaze to Annie and stared into her eyes. Her vision blurred as if a cloud of smoke obscured him.

Papa looked up and said, “Forgive me. I have been a thoughtless host. I will join you for a drink and a smoke later.”

The stranger nodded and accepted the plate from Mama. “Thank you kindly, Missus O’Malley,” he said with exaggerated respect. “I look forward to that, Mr. O’Malley.” He winked at Annie as he turned to go.

Annie began to tremble. Her stomach knotted up something terrible. It became hard to breathe. Ochuca’s summoning rattle roared. She covered her ears, squeezed her eyes shut tight, and prayed it would stop. But it did not… So cold.

_Blink_

_Why have you summoned me?_

_Look, Waheia_

Ochuca’s rattles shook high above her scaly head—she hissed. Beyond her wall of scales, Annie saw a bloated shadow enveloping the stranger’s light. Dark red pulsing tendrils stretched toward Mama, Papa, and Sean’s lights.

_What is it?_

_See what I see, Waheia_

She peered into Ochuca’s golden eyes, and she knew. It was a Soul Eater. An evil spirit that stole the light of the living, extinguishing them forever.

_Grandma, save us_

_I cannot pass between our worlds_

_Then let me go_

_Waheia, you will all die… Stay, and I can protect you_

_No, please let me go_ Annie pulled away. Her silver tether became her lifeline back to the world of flesh.

_Blink_

“Annie, wake up,” Papa said. “She’s ice cold.”

“It’s all right, little one. Mama’s here. Annie… Annie, open your eyes.”

She could sense Papa lifting her off the tile floor and carrying her away. The pounding of Papa’s heart drowned out their voices as her head rested on his chest. Then, her bed’s familiar embrace welcomed her as Papa laid her down.

She was so, so cold.

Mama chanted in Juanero, and her voice faded into the fog. Annie shivered so hard that she thought it would never stop.

“Husband, fetch a bucket of hot coals from the kitchen. She is freezing,” she continued to chant.

Mama stopped her chant and pressed her hands to her ears. It was the thunder of Ochuca’s rattles demanding her return. It felt like it would shake the inn to pieces.

It took all her concentration to breathe. Mama stroked her cheek and whispered her name. Her breath was sweet and warm on Annie’s face.

She opened her mouth, and she tried to speak.

Mama whispered, “I hear Ochuca, Waheia. What does she want?”

The shiver worsened as she spoke, “Sss—ssss—sssss,” hissing over her tongue.

Mama jerked away and let go of her hand. The hissing grew louder in the back of Annie’s throat. From downstairs, Sean screamed. Papa and the stranger shouted at each other, and a pistol shot exploded. The last thing Annie saw was Mama’s back as she ran from the room.

_Blink_

 _No_

Ochuca’s coils squeezed her. Annie strained against them, trying to break free. The more she struggled, the tighter they became and the sadder Ochuca was. She could feel Ochuca’s love and desire to save her from oblivion.

She watched as Sean and Papa’s lights flickered. The stranger’s dark shadow hovered over Papa, smothering him. Mama’s light came into sight and merged with Sean’s, and they fled.

_Then let me go_

Once more, she tried to follow her silver thread to her body, but it flickered and went out.

Sadness radiated from Ochuca as she released her.

_Why had she wandered so far today? Why had he not done as she was told?_

_Go Waheia_ And she turned to face the Eater.

Annie searched for a light that could serve her needs. A quivering pinprick of light hid in a corner of the great room. It was Espina, their cat. With regret, she dove into Espina’s flesh like a thief. Espina shrieked in agony as Annie took her. The cat’s soul shattered into pieces like a clay pot.

_Blink_

She could feel the hair on Espina’s back rise. Her spine arched, and her claws extended. Through a forest of table and chair legs, she saw Papa on his knees. The stranger held him by his collar—a knife to his throat. Blood dripped from between Papa’s fingers where a bullet had ripped through his side. A throaty yowl came from Espina’s mouth.

_I am coming, Papa._

“Hey, stay awake, Mr. O’Malley,” the stranger yelled, slapping Papa across the face. “Or you’ll miss all the fun once I find your Juanero whore and half-breed brats.”

“No, please, I have money. Take it,” Papa begged.

“You are stupid, Indian lover,” he growled, waving the knife in his face like an accusing finger. “I don’t want your money.”

Annie took a few cautious steps. She had done this so many times with Espina when stalking prey. Her vision narrowed and sharpened. The taste of the sparrow Espina had eaten earlier was still on her tongue. She had new prey now.

The stranger whispered into Papa’s ear. Tears flowed down Papa’s sunburnt cheeks. He fumbled helplessly for the stranger’s pistol.

The brass pommel of the stranger’s knife came down on Papa’s head, and he slumped forward. The stranger slapped him again and said, “Stay awake.” But Papa lay on the floor unmoving. “Eh, oh well.” His hand rose, poised to plunge the knife into Papa’s chest.

Espina’s instinct took over. Her ears flattened. The hair along her spine bristled higher. A snarl formed in her throat. Her claws flexed in and out of their sheaths, scratching the tile floor. Annie’s rage thrust her onto a table and into the air.

“Yyyeee-Ooowwwlll.”

The stranger’s head snapped to the side as she landed. She smelled his fear. Teeth and claws labored against his soft, yielding flesh. The hot, salty taste of his blood filled her mouth.

The stranger dropped his knife and tried to pull her off.

I got you!

They spun like drunk dancers. Crashed into the bar and tumbled to the floor. He grabbed her head. She sank her fangs deep into his thumb. He grabbed a hind leg and yanked her off, tearing away flesh as he did. Her claw raked across one eye. He shrieked in agony and held her at arm’s length. She clawed at empty air. He grabbed her neck, twisted, and bones snapped, and tendons tore.

_Blink_

The pain of Espina’s death left her dazed in its grip.

She could make out Ochuca’s white scales stained black in places. The Eater lashed out with blood-red tentacles, slashing her. She struck back, burying her fangs into its shadowy body. Ochuca reared up and struck over and over. With each bite, the Eater shrank until Grandma’s jaw opened wide and swallowed it whole.

_Go._

Annie searched for the nearest knot of bright lights. She moved from one unwilling creature to the next, searching for the one that could make a difference. Fragments of sound echoed around her. She smelled dung. The shrill shriek of hens. The tortured bray of their donkey. The squeal of the pigs as they tried to escape the madness of her passing. Then, one light larger than the others was before her, and she crashed into it.

_Blink_

“Come out; you can’t hide from me,” the stranger screamed from the courtyard.

The sound of the stranger’s voice made this body tremble with terror. Four powerful legs held her up. She had taken his horse. The horse’s will melted away, and all its tormented memories at its master’s hand poured into her.

A pistol shot rang out.

Annie could see the stranger drenched in moonlight through the stable’s open doors. A red halo surrounded his ruined face. He swayed drunkenly, moaning. He fired his last shots at an imaginary attacker. He dropped the pistol, unsheathed his knife, and strode toward the stable.

“If you don’t come out, squaw, I’ll finish off that husband of yours,” he growled.

Annie reared up on her hind legs and smashed her head into the thatched roof. Then she rammed the stall’s gate. It creaked and splintered but held.

“I hear you in there,” he shouted. “You thought you’d get away?”

He searched each stall and lunged at shadows. Finally, he reached hers. Annie tried to control the horse’s trembling and her fury.

He gazed into the stall with his remaining eye and gripped the latch pin. Annie shifted from hoof to hoof and backed up, as he would expect. He grasped the latch pin, cocked his head, and listened. From outside, she heard Sean’s muffled crying. A look of glee spread across the stranger’s tortured face as he turned to leave.

Annie sprang forward and drove her muzzle into his chest. He staggered back and pulled the latch pin free. The gate swung open, and she charged. He looked confused. She guessed he could not believe his horse would ever dare to challenge him.

Annie bit his shoulder. The stranger slashed and stabbed with his knife. Annie reared up, and her hooves rose and fell again and again.

Papa shoveled dirt onto the stranger’s shallow grave beyond the outhouse and spat into it.

Favoring his wounded side, he walked to where Mama sat under a big oak, Sean beside her. She cradled a lifeless, shroud-wrapped child and sobbed. Not far from the tree was another grave.

Papa didn’t say a word. Tears filled his eyes as he stroked Mama’s hair and pried the body from her unwilling grasp. A small, pale, delicate hand slipped from under the shroud as he lowered her into the grave.

Mama got to her feet and swayed unsteadily. She drew Sean into her arms. A purple, swollen bruise marked Sean’s face from jaw to brow, and a bandage circled his head.

It was becoming harder for Annie to see. She, like Mama, swayed unsteadily on the horse’s legs. Warm blood trickled down the horse’s chest from the deepest stab wound.

She could no longer stand and rolled onto the horse’s side. Mama gazed from the grave to the coral. Her hand reached out to Annie, and she began a sorrowful chant.

_She knows_

The horse’s breathing became ragged, slowed, and stopped.

Annie could hear Ochuca’s rattle call her home. Annie shook her rattle in reply and joined Grandma in the eternal night.

_Blink_

I turn over on the couch, where I’ve curled into one corner. In the middle of the night, I didn’t have the energy to move Lena’s laptop. Instead, I just slept around it.

The couch smells like dried-up white wine in one spot, something I never realized until I started sleeping here. We must have spilled it a long time ago. We haven’t had wine in the house for two years, since before the IVF, before the cycle-coded calendar in the kitchen and the evenings we’d giggled and clinked together the matching self-insemination syringes.

Cheers! We’d said.

I squint into the living room, listening for the baby’s whimper as I look at the time. It’s 5:30, which feels like a blessing. Four hours of sleep. I’m sure Lena got less.

The baby sounds rise and fall, closer. Under them, I hear Lena’s slow footsteps padding down the hallway. There’s a sear of guilt as I consider, split-second, whether to pretend to be asleep still. But then they’re here in the room.

“Good morning, mama,” Lena murmurs, more to the baby than to me.

“Good morning, mama,” I say back, smiling.

As always, when the baby is actually here, in front of me, with her tiny wiggling shrimp fingers and her face squashed up in the huge effort of crying or gurgling or smiling, I melt.

What’s happening to me? I’d said to the delivery nurse, when I felt my eyes overflow all at once, nothing like the crying I was used to.

Welcome to parenthood, she’d said. It felt practiced, tailored to the bewildered men she was used to seeing in the delivery room. Not to me, who could have been in Lena’s place if it had gone that way.

“I’m going to make some decaf,” Lena whispers to me. The baby is settling into her chest, little face slack over the edge of the wrap Lena wears to hold her close, to be one being. “Will you do the bottles?”

I nod and roll out of the throw blanket that I’ve gotten used to sleeping under. Lena sways toward the kitchen, her soft hums keeping the baby quiet. As I turn to fold the throw—a semblance of the normal, neither of us want to talk about how I’ve been sleeping out here—I see them.

Four wet shapes on the floor in front of the coffee table.

Smudged half-circles I can only see because thin light through the living room window catches them.

I gaze around the room, trying to identify the source. My face feels slack with sleep and confusion. Maybe I spilled a glass of water as I moved the coffee table in the night, half-awake? But, no, it rests on modern, square legs. Too heavy for me to have shoved it semi-conscious, and the wrong shape to leave those marks. And there is no glass of water.

“Did you move the crib last night?” I whisper to Lena when I’m in the kitchen, rinsing bottle rings as she clicks on the coffeemaker.

She frowns at me over her shoulder.

“From our room?” she asks.

It stings to hear her say our room. It is ours, but I’m on the couch now and she’s with the baby. I wonder if that’s what she means, even by accident: her room and the baby’s room. Ours.

“Yeah,” I say. “It looks like something got moved in front of the coffee table.”

“What do you mean?”

“Marks on the floor,” I say. “Did we spill something?”

Lena shakes her head in the same gentle cadence that she approaches every movement, now. Back and forth, quiet and smooth. Serene. I feel like I can’t keep up with it.

“Maybe we have a leak,” she says, handing me a mug.

The baby makes a quiet little sound and a fist emerges from her onesie to curl toward Lena’s hair. I take a sip. Decaf coffee tastes the same as regular, to me.

It takes almost until evening for me to remember to check the living room ceiling. The baby is restless today, a continuation of last night. Lena tries to open her laptop for the third time only for the baby to wake and squeal again.

“I thought you were on maternity leave,” I say, trying to tease gently. I worry it comes out shrill.

“Just a couple of emails,” she whispers, reaching for a bottle as she pulls the baby into her arms, balancing the open computer.

“They should know better than to email you,” I say. “Let me take her.”

Lena hesitates a millisecond too long.

“Thanks.”

The baby is always warmer than I remember. Even though I touch her dozens of times a day—when Lena showers, when she wants to change her clothes or stretch her arms–it’s as though my skin forgets. And my nose forgets her smell, which up close is overpowering, the raw scent of brand-new flesh, of being completely alive. I kiss her forehead and try to ignore how immediately she returns to fussing in my arms. I whisk her away into the kitchen to defrost the 4pm bottle. I try to replicate Lena’s soft sway as I walk and it feels clumsy in my hips.

Lena takes a half hour to frown over her laptop. The baby, meanwhile, naps fitfully in my tired arms. I don’t know what to call it when, dozing, she turns her sucking mouth to my breast. I know that I scowl and then turn red, ashamed.

When Lena joins us, a thin crease has appeared between her eyebrows. It’s the face of the old Lena, the Lena who would stride through the front door promptly at six, who would lean in to kiss me at my desk, who would regale me with complaints about her coworkers over dinner, to my delight.

Her reading glasses are still on, giving her eyes a slight distortion that makes me love her with such violence I’m surprised at myself. I lean over the baby’s head.

“You’re so beautiful,” I whisper.

Lena rolls her eyes.

“Never prettier than when I’m wearing nipple guards,” she says.

But she kisses me anyway, lingering in a way that weakens every joint in my body. Her mouth tastes like the syrupy tea our doula gave her. I watch the crease smooth itself as she nestles the baby onto her shoulder. And then they both are gone.

The new Lena, born with the baby, floats on something I can’t see, a buoyancy in her movements that gently bobs her away from the shore, out of reach.

I pull out the stepladder and haul it to the living room.

The ceiling is dusty. Cobwebs form tracery against the stucco. I find several things I need to do—fix a piece of crown molding that’s coming loose, replace the batteries in a smoke detector, repaint—but I don’t find a leak. I even check around the casing of the ceiling fan’s motor, wiping lint from its blades which falls like snow. But the ceiling is unblemished, and there are no signs that anything has dripped through it and onto the floor.

From the stepladder, I can barely see the smeared shapes, but when I climb back down, the light hits them again. Four sloppy curves, evenly spaced. They’re not water stains, I realize, or not just water. They’re greasy, like oil wiped by a rag. One of them is crusted with a thin rind of mud, as though tracked in and left there, but there is nothing in any other direction.

I sweep up the lint and spray down the smears with cleaner. When I come back with a handful of paper towels, I can’t even see them anymore.

That night, I make soup for Lena with as many beans and vegetables as I can. My body feels hollow from lack of sleep, and I can only imagine the wear on hers. It’s hard not to compare how I think I’d do in her place.

There were pros and cons for each of us, but we’d agreed it was lucky that Lena had conceived instead of me. Her company’s maternity leave was generous, whereas my freelance work was spotty at best. And so that was the reason we clung to, along with little things: the year difference in our ages, Lena’s family a few hours closer than mine. But we both knew the real reason: that she was better at hard things.

It was my hands that had gone numb as she pushed through the tenth hour of labor, and it was me that the nurse handed a cup of juice to, saying I looked pale.

When dinnertime comes, Lena doesn’t eat the soup because the baby can only settle when she’s bounced on tiptoes. I offer, half-joking, to feed Lena spoonfuls as she bobs.

“I’ll get a bowl in a bit, when she’s down,” she whispers. “Smells amazing.”

Much later that night, I awake in a panic.

Before my eyes are open, I’m thrashing to get my legs untangled from the couch throw. The baby has screamed louder than I’ve ever heard her, and my heart pounds in my throat. But as I struggle to sit up on the couch, I realize the house is silent. I stiffen and wait for the next round of cries. I listen for Lena. But all I hear is the soft click and hum of the refrigerator’s compressor and the faraway whir of the white noise machine that Lena plays for the baby. I must have dreamed the scream.

I blink into the dark living room, waiting for my breath and pulse to calm, trying to make out the bleary shapes around me.

And then, one shifts.

Just slightly. An adjustment. The rise of a spine with a breath.

I do not move.

I know I am mistaken. I must be. My eyes dart to the curtains that I forgot to pull closed all the way, so that they billow in the air from the vent. When my eyes slide back, the shape has resolved itself—a heaped blanket with one of the baby’s slings sprawled on top of it—and I’m alone.

I squint at the heap through my lashes, trying to recreate what I thought I’d seen. But it stays gone, the objects insensate. They do not breathe again.

I fall back asleep. It takes a long time. The baby sleeps through the night.

“You can always just get her flowers,” my mother says through the phone.

I am loitering in the detergent aisle. We don’t need detergent, but I’ve already put the fruit Lena asked for and all the other things on the list into the cart, and the conversation doesn’t feel finished.

“They’re nice,” she’s saying, almost defensive. “It’s a cliché for a reason. That’s what your father did, and I always loved them. Keep it simple.”

“That’s true,” I say, trying to remember Lena’s favorites. Lilies? “I guess… I don’t know, for her first Mother’s Day I want it to be special.”

“Sweetheart, you’re going to do this every year. Next year with a toddler, and then the macaroni art starts to come home from preschool and that’ll be better than anything you could buy her.”

She’s doing something in the kitchen. I can hear cabinets opening and banging shut. I picture her pinching her cell phone between her shoulder and ear, like I’m doing.

“Bottles every four hours, still?” Mom asks.

“She slept almost seven hours last night,” I say proudly, like I’m supposed to. My mother is excited to hear this.

“Isn’t it so sad when one stage is over?” she says. “You miss it, even though you couldn’t wait to be done.”

Mom promises to text me a website that has the kind of lilies she remembers Lena ordering for our wedding.

“And get yourself something, sweetie,” she adds. “You’re a mom, now, too.”

When I get home, Lena is asleep on the armchair with her feet up on the coffee table, the baby napping on her chest. They’re beautiful together, matching in soft beige without meaning to, dappled in the afternoon light. I feel for my phone to take a picture. Something to send to my mother, though I realize it’ll mean keeping the picture myself. I don’t think about that. One of the grocery bags rustles in my hands and Lena opens an eye.

“How’s the world?” she murmurs.

“You’re not missing anything,” I whisper, snap a picture, hit send.

I stare at the ceiling fan. Dim light filters in through the curtains from the street lamp. A shred of lint that I missed hangs off of one of the blades.

I had promised myself, locking eyes with my reflection as I brushed my teeth, that I wouldn’t check the time. I remember the deep breathing exercises I’d learned from an online video years ago, and resolve to try them instead, letting breath fill my lungs and press against my taut diaphragm. Hold for a moment. Then out in a hiss. The video had dissolved into slow-motion footage of waves crashing against sand, and I close my eyes, trying to picture them as I breathe in and out.

As I slide into sleep, the sound of my breath twists and doubles into a sound like the rush of water at the edge of my consciousness, filling the room.

In the morning, my hands are still clasped to my ribcage where I’d placed them to measure my breaths in. On the floor, the prints, greasy and caked with thicker mud, are back.

“Have I ever sleepwalked?” I ask Lena.

I’m picking up each of my shoes, looking for grime. She’s feeding the baby in bed, a curved pillow wrapped around her like a cloud. She looks up at me and I see the bliss drop from her expression slightly.

“No,” she says. “Why?”

“These marks keep showing up on the floor,” I say. “It’s not a leak. I checked.”

Lena shakes her head slowly.

“Maybe you tracked something in when you shopped yesterday?” she said. “I bet we’re just too tired to notice. Things are going to fall by the wayside for a while.”

I nod, but I don’t agree. She doesn’t seem tired at all. She is doing so much. The least I can do is keep the house together.

“I’m going to mop again,” I say. “Do you need anything?”

She smiles at me, looks down at the baby who swallows softly and grips the bottle in her tiny fist.

“I’m all set.”

The marks on the floor are clearer. This time, before I spray them down and fill the mop bucket, I examine their shape. They are heavy on one side and delicate on the other, as though whatever made them was leaning off-kilter. And there are small splits down the center of each that remind me of something I can’t place right away.

When I’m filling the mop bucket, I remember the summer in my early teens that I spent at a wilderness camp, where we earned points for correctly identifying animal tracks from a chart. Graceful crescents for whitetail deer, skinny cat-paws for red fox, cloven lobes for bison.

I stare at the prints now, bottle of cleanser in hand, blinking. In the split-seconds between my eyes opening and closing, I try to conjure whatever creature I imagine leaving these tracks. Do I see afterimages shimmer behind my closed eyes? Gnarled legs, jet-black and dripping, thick-knuckled and long. I know I am imagining them, but they are clearer than anything I’ve imagined before. Images shift and warp in my mind, usually. These stay. I close my eyes as long as I dare. A few seconds, and then my pounding heart forces them open. I spray the floor down again and leave the mop there.

At five, I take out the package of frozen ravioli, but I forget it on the counter. When the washing machine chimes, I gasp and realize I’ve been sitting on the couch for almost an hour. I rush to switch the laundry and start a pot of water boiling before Lena and the baby wake up from their nap.

When Lena comes in, her hair is tied back in a bun, her glasses pushed to her forehead, and her phone in her hand. The baby is wriggling in her sling.

“You’re not going to believe this,” she says. She doesn’t whisper. She’s right there.

“What?”

“I swear,” she says, “They can’t do anything.”

Pacing with the baby as I chop an onion for sauce, Lena details the disaster unfolding at her workplace. The someone or someones assigned to cover Lena’s HR management role in her absence have fumbled their jobs so badly that a former employee has filed a lawsuit, throwing the company into crisis.

“Unbelievable,” I sneer, gleeful. The gossip feels precious, the laughter between us at others’ expense a balm. I’ve missed this more than I can bear.

“But,” she grins, “You’ll never guess what else.”

I widen my eyes. I am her audience and my attention on her is rapt.

“They offered me half-time to help organize everything for the lawyers. They’ll pay me for full-time, plus overtime, plus they’ll grant me additional leave.”

Lena caresses the baby and talks on about the timeline of the suit, the benefit to her resume, the validation that she is indispensable to the company. I smile approvingly. I ignore the heat in my face and the spikes in my throat.

“It does mean,” she says, “That I’ll need to leave the baby with you while I’m at work for a few weeks. Just a couple hours a day. I hope that’s okay. They’re offering so much money. It has to be worth it.”

I nod vigorously, blinking water from my eyes. I wince at the tang of onion and the taste of salt.

“Of course,” I say, and then the lie tumbles from my lips. “What could be better than more time with my favorite person?”

That Wednesday, the house sounds different.

Lena is up early, and all the lights in the kitchen are on. The radio reports the news, and she pulls out the stepladder to get the regular coffee pods out of a cabinet.

“I pumped already,” she says, winking. “There’s more than enough milk in the fridge for today.”

She pours coffee into a tumbler, grabs her keys, and is gone.

The baby frowns up at me from her bouncer, squinting in the bright light.

From the kitchen, I can see the tracks on the floor in the living room, in front of the coffee table.

The baby cries almost all day. I do not go into the living room. The prints are still there that night.

I sleep with my arms folded around my head, covering my ears. All night, I keep waking to the sound of something very loud, but very far away, a crushing roar like a waterfall.

At dawn, I peer under my forearm and think that I see an eye, huge and black, glistening and soaked.

I do not breathe until Lena bustles in to hand me the baby and kiss me as she breezes out the door.

Nothing is there when I look back.

“Have a good day,” I whisper, but the door is already closed.

Today the baby screams at me nonstop as I try to give her a bath. I give up, shaking and sobbing, and pat her down with baby wipes while she howls. Her little face contorts and turns red, then nearly purple. I back away.

“I’m sorry,” I plead. “Please, I’m so sorry.”

She purses her lips when I try to give her a bottle, later. She kicks me when I change her. I’m sweating through my clothes by the time Lena comes home.

She takes the baby from me without a word.

I scrub the living room floor until my cuticles bleed. The tracks do not disappear.

The baby cries throughout the night, and I lose count of how many times I hear Lena get up to soothe her after the first dozen.

It is darker than usual, and I realize that the streetlight has gone out. I stare across the living room and do not flinch when it appears.

All of it.

Skinny, contorted legs lead up to a body twisted with jutting bones, at once heavy and emaciated. An angular head with one bleary eye that sees nothing and another that gazes at me, shining, wet, and huge. Whether the thing drips with water or some greasy tar I can’t tell, but the whole of it is a smear, dribbling down limbs to the floor below, as if oozing from the pores beneath the thick, dark fur.

The baby’s cries echo down the hall and the creature opens its blurry mouth. Water gushes out, more and faster than can be possible, as though draining an entire sea. I am drenched, and it is not cold but boiling and salty, and it blisters my skin and the raw flesh of my throat as it pours over me in waves. I feel pieces of myself dissolve and then I wake up for real, gasping as I wipe thick sweat from my eyes.

I rush to check on the baby, but Lena already has her.

It is the weekend, and Lena shakes her head at me as I stumble into the kitchen well after ten.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I overslept.”

“You look terrible,” she says. She feels my forehead with the back of her palm. “You’re warm.”

Panicked, I fumble for a face mask from the junk drawer, but Lena waves it off.

“You’re probably just run down,” she says. “I can’t imagine how hard it is to take care of her all on your own.”

She points me into the bedroom with strict instructions to take acetaminophen and rest. When I lie down, the bed smells like Lena, but it is not familiar at all.

I am small in my fever dreams, shrunk down to half size or less. I wander around our house for what feels like hours, dream-time stretched out and disjointed. I’m looking for someone, but not for Lena, and I can’t figure out who it is. When I call out, I find my mouth doesn’t form words, and my voice sounds absurd. Our house bobs up and down as though it is floating on a river. I hear the roar of water everywhere.

On Sunday afternoon, my fever breaks. Lena brings me a plate of leftovers from the takeout she has ordered.

“We miss you,” she says. She’s not carrying the baby. Sensible, in case I’m contagious. I wrap my arms around her and squeeze her tight.

On Monday, Lena lingers in the kitchen, her keys in hand.

“You’re sure you’re okay with her?” she says. “You’re feeling up to it?”

“Of course,” I say, smiling. I’m bouncing the baby, who wiggles in her sling in my arms.

“Call me if you need anything.”

I walk around the house all day with the baby wrapped tight against me. I get the laundry done, then re-organize the kitchen and clean the bathroom. Whenever I walk through the living room, the creature stares at me and drips.

My mother calls, and I pinch the phone between my ear and shoulder as I throw silverware into the dishwasher.

“Sweetie, what’s wrong with the baby?” she asks, alarmed.

I hadn’t realized she was crying. I drop a handful of spoons and get a bottle out of the fridge.

“Gosh,” my mother says, more to herself than to me. “She sounds like how you did when you were that age. Blood-curdling, that’s what your father used to call it, when you cried.”

I don’t know what to say. The baby whimpers a little as she sucks down the bottle of milk, as if she’s angry with me.

“It’s so hard at this age,” my mother continues. “But it’s really not forever, sweetheart. You’ve just got to get through the first year, really.”

I don’t know what time it is. I can’t even think past the next hour.

“You know,” my mother says, “I sometimes used to run the faucet in the sink and turn the shower on at the same time when I couldn’t get you to settle down.”

My breath catches.

“Something about the noise of running water seemed to help,” she says, and then laughs. “Or maybe it was just that I couldn’t hear you and Lord knows I needed that little break sometimes.”

I don’t register what else she says. I’m running water over the dishes in the sink, and it’s deafening. The sound is all around me, and then it concentrates in the living room, drawing me to it. I drop my phone and it splashes on the floor.

The creature turns toward me. Its mouth is open down to its knees.

Lena is shaking me. With a sting, I feel her slap across my face.

“What?” I shriek, “What?”

“Where is the baby?” she screams, her face flushed with rage. “What’s wrong with you?”

“She’s—” I flounder, looking around frantically. “She’s here—”

I’m soaking from head to toe, my hair dripping into my face and onto the living room floor.

Lena has left the front door open and I hear her crashing through rooms down the hall.

“Why?” she screams, “Why is she in the bathroom by herself?”

I don’t hear what she says next, so I don’t know where it is that she says she is going with the baby, who she has wrapped in a towel and is hugging close while she throws things into the diaper bag and clutches her keys. I can only hear the roar of water. I feel the look she gives me though—heartbreak, sorrow—like a knife to my stomach.

I turn to the creature as the door slams behind them.

It looks back at me, eyes streaming. I hear something, now. Beneath the water’s roar, I hear the whimper at last, a little cry of terror and anguish. It’s been there the whole time, an urgent pull. Please.

I open my arms.

“Come here,” I whisper.

It climbs into my embrace, its sickly legs trailing down into the pool of water beneath us. It is light and fragile, and I feel the tiny warmth within it, the fluttering of its heartbeat. I smell the wet scent of its skin. It trembles against my collarbone.

“It’s all right,” I whisper. I rock gently back and forth. I move to the couch, and we nestle as one into the soft cushions. I find a blanket and dry us both.

“I’ve got you,” I say, over and over. “I’ve got you.”

Callum stamped his feet and hugged his arms. A sigh curled away from him. He guessed he was now only four taxis from the front. A relief, but a problem of its own: he lacked the funds to get home to Kilmaurs, supposing the driver agreed to take him out of the city and across the moors. Worse weather was to come.

Over the road, people kept arriving, lifting their heads and stopping short at the gates, and from the line would come the cry, “Trains are aff! Buses as well. You’ll need to join the back of the queue.” In a cruel quirk of nomenclature, the back of the queue—always emphasized—now snaked round the corner onto Hope Street.

Callum had joined their ranks an hour ago praying an idea would occur, that money would magic its way into his account. But it was the night before payday and his partner, Siobhan, still on mat-leave and now receiving only statutory, had even less to spare than Callum did. And his father wasn’t answering his phone. Likely he’d fallen asleep in front of the game. Rangers were winning handsomely away to Aberdeen; Dad was a Celtic fan.

Callum slipped his phone from his pocket. No messages.

Fuck it. He had thirty quid in his wallet. Thirty quid was half a taxi.

“Right,” he shouted, turning on his heel. A few dozen heads snapped to attention. “Anyone else going to Kilmaurs? Might as well share if you are.”

Those same heads shook, minutely, almost in unison. Then, agitation halfway up the queue. A purple bobble hat, double-pommed, the owner too small to establish eye contact, so she stepped out the line.

“Did you say Kilmaurs, son?”

Callum nodded. “Aye.”

She was in her mid-fifties. Furry white coat. Platinum blonde under the hat. Heavy mascara. A day’s drink sloshing around inside her. Not that Callum was entirely sober.

“Right,” she said, “that’ll dae us.”

She bent to pick up some bags and Callum spotted her companion, tall and teenaged and looking to the skies like she wanted the storm to entomb her entirely. That’d be the daughter, then.

Callum smiled. Could have been worse. The mum would likely demand his life story and the names of every living relative in the village, but his baby chat—right now, his only chat—would charm her well enough.

One place behind him, an arm cut through the air. “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Wait a wee minute here.”

Ah, Christ.

Baldy head. Barbour jacket with the logo on the outside. Probably fancied himself a Jason Statham lookalike but his jowls were on the slide.

“There’ll be no queue skipping while I’m about, so you just haud your horses, love.”

She stopped in her tracks, now out the queue, shopping bags in hand, teenage daughter wraithlike behind her.

A trill of fat fingers. “Back you go.”

But she just stood there, threw a stricken glance at Callum, as if torn between disappointing an Ayrshire-man and angering a maniac.

“Look, mate…” said Callum.

The baldy head swivelled round, all mad eyes and raised brows.

Callum pressed on. “It’s hardly skipping if they’re getting in the same taxi.”

“Hardly skipping? Hardly skipping?” He gestured towards the length of the queue. “Look at all these folk she’s about to hardly skip!”

“But it’s…”

He pointed at someone in the line. “Here, mate, you want to be skipped?” Someone else. “How about you?” Another. “You, mate. You look like you’re freezing your nuts aff. You want somebody going afore you?”

More tiny head shakes; a mumbled, “No.”

“Naw, didnae think so. And she’s sure as fucking fuck no skipping me, so I suggest you shut your face or lose it. Capiche?”

Jesus. “All right,” said Callum. “Erm, capiche. It’s just…”

But the eyebrows were on the rise again and the mum was shaking her head while the queue moved to absorb her, a hen hiding a precious egg. The daughter only smiled, momentarily cut adrift until a purple glove snuck out and snatched her back in.

Callum sighed.

“Aye,” said Jowly Jason. “Thought not.”

Callum’s hands were fists in his pocket, but he knew that’s where they would stay. He kicked a ridge of slush into the road. How was he supposed to get home now? Fucking gammon-faced prick. Into his collar, he mumbled, loud as he dared, “Fuck’s sake.”

Jowly Jason cleared his throat, somehow put a challenge in there, and it was enough. Too much.

Callum spun to face him.

“Haw!”

A shout from somewhere, accompanied by a strange creaking. All eyes in the queue were on the train station gates, so Callum looked too.

A moustachioed face peered back at him through the railings.

“You want to get to Kilmaurs?” he asked. “I can take you. You girls too.”

“Erm, right,” said Callum. “Okay.” But he hesitated, sensing a scam, or some strange joke. Jowly Jason would surely delight in refusing him entry back into the queue if he left it. But the guy was behind the gates. Staff. Likely leaving for the night and, overhearing the commotion, trying to do right by his fellow villagers.

Callum looked for the mum and daughter but they were hidden from his view. Probably waiting for him to move first.

Well, it wasn’t like he could get a taxi now anyway. What did he have to lose?

“M’on then,” said the man, and that strange creaking sounded again as he eased the gate open.

Callum stepped into the road and as if in response the snow thickened, an instant blizzard, its flurries so dense he had to work to keep the giant gates ahead of him, and when he turned to see if the mum and daughter had followed there was nothing at all to look at. Even the queue had vanished.

Callum pressed forward, hands out in front of him, inching through perfect white and infinite silence, until his fingers found iron and rust and a gap to squeeze through.

Callum shook the snow from his coat, ran a hand through his hair, stepping away from the moustachioed man so as not to soak him.

“Cheers,” said Callum. “Really appreciate it. You going to be able to drive in that?”

“Hang on.” The man poked his head out the gate, beyond which the snow hung like wallpaper.

But from it he pulled the mum then the daughter, and with them came a great buffet of powder that swirled around the entranceway then seemed to dart forward, an invading army claiming new ground.

The daughter pinched her jacket under her armpits and gave it three shakes while the mum dumped her bags and waggled her hat in front of her. The invading army inched forward.

“Christ’s teeth!” said the mum. “Thought we’d tummelt into the netherworld there. You ever seen the snow dae that?”

Callum smiled, flexed his toes to combat the pinch of his dress shoes.

The mum balled her gloves into her hat and dropped the hat into a bag. “Cheers for the rescue, pal. And no a moment too soon, eh?” She pointed to Callum. “This one was about to get his head kicked in.”

Callum shook his head. “Not really.”

“You were,” said the daughter, and she smiled wistfully, like she’d missed out on some exquisite spectacle. “You were gonnae lose your face.”

Callum made to object but she wandered away, taking in the station like it was her first go round.

“What’s the story, then, handsome?” said the mum. “You taking us home?”

Callum looked again at their rescuer. He was good-looking, no doubt about it, despite the moustache. Or possibly because of it. The eyes, too, had something about them: gentle, tricksy, maybe a touch sad.

He produced an overstuffed keyring, twisted a key in the lock, and squinted through the bars. “Well, I’m no miracle worker. But mibbes it’ll ease off.”

Then he spun round and grinned like some hidden director had shouted for action. “But I think we’re a bit better aff in here, aren’t we? I’m Wee Johnny the Train Driver. Let’s get some names aff you.”

“Right,” said the mum. “I’m Laura and this is ma niece, Fia. We’re fae Kilmaurs, but I guess that’s old news.”

Callum recalibrated. Okay, not the mum. The mad auntie.

“Nice,” said Johnny, and he pointed at Callum.

“Callum,” he said. “Kilmaurs.”

“Fantastic!” Wee Johnny strode forward onto the main concourse, arms wide like some arsehole off the telly. He wasn’t even that small. “Welcome,” he said, “to Glasgow Central… after hours.”

It looked the same as always. Back before the pandemic, Callum had been through twice a day.

Fia spied the public piano and veered towards it, still twenty yards away but already taking her jacket off.

“That’s it,” said Wee Johnny. “Get some tunes on the go.” To Laura, he asked, “Can she play?”

For a long moment, Laura’s face communicated only fucked if I know, before she gathered herself and rebooted into auntie mode. “Course she can. What a question! Ma wee Fia can do anything she puts her mind to.”

Then she was off up the concourse too, leaving Callum at the gates with her shopping bags. He bent to lift them.

“Watch that one, son,” she said, over her shoulder. “It’s got a ham in it.”

“Right,” said Callum. “Fair play. A ham.” And suddenly he was so tired he could have laid down and used the meat for a pillow. This had been his first proper day out in eight months, since the baby came. She was a delight, little Cora, but she slept like a relapsing coke fiend and so her parents did too. Why wasn’t this day done?

Some of this must have shown on his face, because Johnny wheeled back towards him, head cocked in empathy, still with the TV arms.

“Callum, my man! How’s it going?”

Callum nodded.

“What do you think of the place?”

“Erm, aye, fine. Good.”

“That it?” asked Johnny. “Just good? Ach, well, you don’t see what I see.”

Callum looked again. In truth, he’d always loved Glasgow Central: the vaulted steel and glass roof that seemed to stretch to the horizon, enclosing what once must have been the external façades of Victorian buildings; the curved wooden concessions that lined and dotted the concourse, at least a century old and too small to comfortably host the newsagents and bars and patisseries and coffee shops that did a roaring trade anyway, everyone squashed in together.

At the piano, Fia fumbled through the opening bars of Chopsticks. Callum stifled a sigh, caught Wee Johnny mid-eye roll.

Fuck’s sake. Callum made a show of looking one more time at the station, widened his eyes some. “It is a great place,” he said. “It really is.”

Johnny winked. “Heart of the city. Hang on.” He strode off across the concourse. “All of you, hang on. I’ve got something for youse.”

Up ahead, Laura collapsed onto a chair and waved him off, eyes already half shut. She sighed and a “Sounding good, my love,” escaped with it, like a squeak from a deflating balloon.

Callum placed her bags beside her and sat opposite, trying to relax even though Fia had moved on to Merrily We Roll Along and was giving it a stilted, unsettling cadence, possibly satirically.

“Right,” shouted Johnny, reappearing from some shadowy corner. “Thought youse might be hungry.”

The piano stopped; Laura’s eyes shot open. Johnny brandished a large paper bag, its logo unfamiliar but the smell instantly recognisable.

“Burgers,” he shouted.

“Aww, Wee Johnny,” said Laura, “you shouldn’t have.”

“Aye, I should,” said Johnny. “Course I should. Dig in.”

They did so. The burgers were wide and warm, their paper wrappings translucent with grease. Casey Jones Burger, they read.

“Mmm.” Fia grinned, eyes closed, brows raised in pleasure. “That’s good.”

“Too right,” said Laura, already angling bodily towards her next bite. “Thanks, Wee Johnny.”

“Nae problem. What d’you think, Callum?”

Callum took a bite. Jesus Christ was it good. “Fuck me,” he said, and the others laughed. Between mouthfuls, he asked, “What’s a Casey Jones burger? Never heard of them.”

Johnny elbowed Fia. “Ha! He wouldnae know a Casey Jones burger if he was eating one.”

Fia laughed. “Aye,” she said, “but where do you get them, though? Is it boutique or something? They’re so nice.”

“Haud on,” said Laura, “I mind ae Casey Jones. Wasn’t there a Casey Jones burger place in the station?” She pointed towards the platforms. “Right where that wee Starbucks jobbie is now?”

Johnny grinned.

“This is going back some, mind,” said Laura. “Mibbes thirty years ago.”

“Forty,” said Johnny. “It’s forty years.”

“Hell, I’m no that old, am I?” asked Laura, and she laughed.

Callum stopped eating. There was some strange, clanging note in Johnny’s expression, an odd streak of satisfaction that bordered on the perverse.

“Sorry,” said Callum, “what’s actually the deal with these burgers?”

“They’re forty years old,” said Fia, and she grinned conspiratorially at Johnny.

“Aye,” said Johnny, smiling too, grease from his own burger staining his lips, “that’s right enough. What I did was, I went and bought these four decades ago and hid them away all that time ’cos I wanted you guys to enjoy them tonight.”

“Lovely thought,” said Laura. “I’m made up. Tastes amazing.”

Fia was still grinning at Johnny. “But you’re never forty. How old are you, would you say?”

“I wouldn’t.” Johnny winked at her. “But young enough.”

Ick. The answer was: thirty, at the very least, although you never could tell with these ironic moustaches. Johnny’s clothes, too, were confusing. He was dressed like a train driver all right, but not in the modern fleecy jacket and polyester trousers. Instead, he wore blue overalls, like somebody off Thomas The Tank Engine, like his duties might include shovelling coal. The logo on his chest read British Rail.

Johnny caught Callum staring at it and raised an eyebrow in challenge. British Rail had been privatised and broken up decades ago. It no longer existed. It was ScotRail up here now.

“You get dressed in the eighties as well?” asked Callum. He tried to put some levity in there, but he didn’t feel it, and it didn’t make it back out.

Johnny sighed. “It’s fancy dress, mate. Bit ae fun, if you’ve ever heard of that. Supposed to be going to a party later. Dressed up the burgers too, if you must know.”

“Oh,” said Callum.

“Aye,” said Johnny. “They’re home-made. Printed aff the labels, whole fucking lot. Took me forever, so I hope you’re enjoying them. Waste ae time, turns out.”

“No,” said Fia. “They’re amazing. And I think you look really nice.”

Johnny winked at her again. “Thanks, doll.”

“Whit else was there?” Laura cast her eyes round the station. “Was there no a wee restaurant?”

“Aye,” said Johnny. He pointed down the concourse slope. “Over there. The Caledonia, it was called. Big Mary and Brenda ran it. Had all the train times displayed in the windows above it.”

“Oh, I remember that,” said Laura.

“Aye,” said Johnny. “Every platform had its own window.”

“Seem to know a lot about the eighties.” The words were out Callum’s mouth before he could stop them.

“Do my research, mate. If I’m gonnae dress up, I do it properly. What’s your go-to? Bin-bag Batman?”

“No,” said Callum. Not even. He took another bite of his burger. “So, just to be clear, you’re a train driver… dressed as a train driver?”

Johnny rounded on him. “Well, you’re a prick dressed as a prick, so what’s the difference?”

“Hey,” said Laura. “Be nice, the pair of you, or I’ll knock your heads together.”

Fia wandered away again, smirking, fishing her phone from her pocket.

“Aye,” said Johnny, and there was a note of contrition in there. “I’ll away and see what this snow is up to.”

When he had retreated, Laura whispered, “What are you playing at? This guy’s your only chance of getting home, and you’re bamming him up?”

“Aye,” said Callum, “but he’s strange, though. Do you no think he’s strange?”

Laura’s eyes flicked to Fia. “Strange I can deal with. But I’m getting in his car tonight, and ma wee niece is getting in his car tonight, and we’re getting home, and you’re no gonnae muck that up, you hear me?”

“Yeah,” said Callum. “All right. Sorry. I’ll just go, erm, text my partner. Give her an update.”

“You do that,” said Laura.

Fuck’s sake. What was wrong with him? That was twice now he’d gotten into an argument, almost a fight. He thumbed his phone and tried to tamp down, yet again, that most insidious of fears: that fatherhood was turning him into his father. In a quiet corner of the station, he tapped out a message.

Possible lift with other folk from Kilmaurs. Don’t wait up. Sleep when she sleeps!

He put his phone away and spied, on a distant platform, a train with its carriage lights left on. Odd. He moved closer.

It was an ancient thing, and done up in the wrong colours. Grey and light blue. Along its side, the logo read British Rail. It had three windows at the front instead of the usual two. Above the middle one a destination was displayed.

Kilmaurs.

When Callum turned round again, Johnny was marching back up the concourse. “Right. Weather’s still a bag of shite, so it looks like we’ve got some time to kill. Who fancies a tour?”

Fia raised her hand. “Me! I’ll go.”

“Isn’t that a nice idea?” said Laura, and she side-eyed Callum while she said it.

“Callum, pal,” said Johnny, “what do you say?” Again, he flung his arms wide, and again there was something off about his expression, that same clanging note that this time put a hitch in Callum’s throat and a shiver up his spine.

“Right,” he said, “a tour.”

“Fantastic!” And Johnny winked at him.

Wee Johnny unlocked a door marked No Unauthorised Persons Beyond This Point, beckoned everyone inside, then paused, stuck by some thought, or at least affecting to be.

“Oh, wait,” he said. “Forgot the drinks. Youse must be thirsty.”

“Parched,” said Laura.

Another smile from Fia. “I could drink.”

“Wait here.” Johnny ran off, back into the station proper, leaving the door to swing shut behind him.

Callum put a foot in it, arresting its progress, then peeked out, almost hoping to see Johnny lurking there with a key poised, awaiting the return of the lock, but he was gone.

Laura and Fia took no notice of this; they were busy on their phones.

Fia flashed her screen at her auntie. “See what my mum wrote? Telt her I’m stuck in the train station wi’ two randoms and all I get back is take care. Thanks, Mum.”

A tut from Laura, half an eye roll, then back to her own screen.

“Right,” said Callum, “do you no think there’s something a bit weird happening here?”

Fia looked him up and down, took in his foot in the door and raised an eyebrow.

“Hilarious,” said Callum. “I mean with him.”

“He thinks you’re a prick.”

“Yeah,” said Callum, “’cos I’m not buying into his bullshit. Plus, there’s an actual, honest-to-god British Rail train out there, from fucking yore, lit up like a fair and ready to go.”

Laura didn’t look up. “Well, we are in a train station.”

“You know its destination? Kilmaurs.”

“Naw,” said Laura. “You cannae get a train that terminates at Kilmaurs.”

“I know.”

“Probably just read it wrong,” said Fia, now regarding him like he was some snot-nosed schoolkid from two years below, like he was stood before her on a dare. “Probably drunk.”

“Now, Kilmarnock,” said Laura, “aye, could be.”

“It wisnae Kilmarnock, okay?” said Callum. “Right, how about this? This Wee Johnny is in his mid-thirties—I’m sorry, Fia, but he is—and he hasn’t once looked at his phone. Pretty odd.”

“You,” said Laura, “are clutching at straws.”

The door moved and Callum flinched away. Johnny was back, clutching a Presto carrier bag bulging with cans. A smile, then a glance at Callum.

“What’s he been saying?”

“Thinks you’re weird,” said Fia, “’cos you’re no on your phone all the time. You doing a detox?”

“A whit?”

“I know, it’s social suicide.” Fia smiled. “It’s fine if you’re a bit older, though. I mean, if you’re a bit older, it’s totally fine.”

Johnny cocked his head. “Cool. M’on then.” He led them down a staircase. “And you be careful wi’ they daft shoes on, Callum. Don’t want you taking a header over the railings, now, do we?”

Daft shoes? They maybe pinched a bit but they were fucking Italian. Prick.

On the landing, Johnny cuddled into Fia, gave her a squeeze. Creepy fucker. What age was Fia, really? Sixteen? Seventeen? A kid. And Laura didn’t seem to care. She was back on her phone again, for some reason shaking it up and down.

Momentarily defeated, she pocketed it, burped, then shouted ahead. “Not to take the wind out your sails, son, but me and Fia have already done the tour. The official one. Wi’ the disused Victorian platform and the dead soldiers and all ae that.”

“Aye,” said Fia, “and the ghosts. There were some brilliant ghosts he talked about.”

“That does make it a bit mair difficult, aye,” said Johnny. “But what if I telt you I could make this place come alive in a way no regular tour ever could?”

“Dunno, like,” said Laura. “Thon guy was pretty good.”

“Aye,” said Fia, “he was. No as much ae a wee ride, though.”

“Fia! Control yourself.”

“Sorry, Auntie. Just having a laugh.”

“Well, find something else to laugh about.”

Thank God. Some parenting. Callum caught up with Laura and walked astride, eyes on Johnny. I’ve got your back.

“Oi, Mr Man wi’ the bloody cans,” Laura shouted, “you keeping them all to yourself? Getting a fair drooth on over here.”

Callum sighed. That didn’t last long.

“Aye, aye,” said Johnny. “Let’s just get where we’re going first.”

The tour hadn’t gotten off to the most enthralling start. They were in a small underground car park with concrete floors, red and white painted brick walls and too-bright fluorescents shining overhead. Callum prayed one of the half-dozen cars left was Johnny’s, but they all looked too modern. Jesus, Callum. Get a grip. He’s only dressing up.

“It’s doon this way,” said Johnny, and out came the keyring again. He unlocked another door, this one a dull grey and bearing only the warning, Mind your head.

Behind was a narrow breeze-block passageway with hanging wires, a fluorescent light propped up vertically beside the door, and darkness in both directions beyond.

Opposite, the breeze block had been ripped out to create an opening. A modern metal staircase led down into darkness; foetid air rose up to meet them.

Fia scrunched her nose. “Boak.”

Beyond the staircase, just visible, a grooved, cast-iron column supported a riveted metal superstructure familiar from train stations across the country.

“This’ll be the Victorian platform, then,” said Laura.

“It stinks,” said Fia, turning away.

“Aye,” said Johnny. “But wait till you see what we’ve come to see.” He produced an ancient torch and shone it down the hole.

“Did it smell this bad last time?” asked Laura.

Fia gagged. “No! Jebus Crisp. Who died?”

“Somebody wi’ halitosis and a shitty arse,” said Laura.

Fia sniggered. “Aye, and a giant fan to waft it all aboot with.”

Johnny rounded on them, torch in their faces. “Enough about the smell, okay. Just… enough. It’s no that bad.”

It was that bad, but something else was upsetting Callum. He could hear, faint and echoing, the squeal of brakes, the rickety clank of train wheels over tracks. Impossible.

Johnny stood in the opening, and out came the TV grin and the TV arms, and all mysterious he said, “Are youse ready to experience what life was like in Glasgow nearly one hundred years ago?”

Laura and Fia glanced at each other. A shrug from the teenager.

“Sure,” said Laura, finally. “Be happier if I had a drink to experience it with, but, aye, what the hell?”

“Fine, fine,” said Johnny, and he reached into his Presto bag. “There you go.”

Four cans of Tennent’s Lager appeared, with an old-style logo on one side and pictures of coyly posed young women on the other, all big hair and plunging necklines. The Lager Lovelies. Jesus.

Laura grinned. “Oh, you’re some man, Wee Johnny. They look bang-on.” She fizzed open her can and chugged a mouthful.

“Lovelies for my lovelies.” Johnny winked, jerked a thumb at Callum. “And one for this grumpy prick too. Right, get them necked and on we go.” He descended the stairs with Fia at his back, a skip in her step to keep up with him.

Callum examined his can, tweaking the old-school ring-pull before flipping the thing over and reading the expiry date. Sept 86.

“Laura,” he said. “Take a look at this.”

Laura looked at the date. She stopped short, horror in her eyes. Finally.

“Callum,” she said, “do you think ma ham’ll be all right upstairs? It’ll no freeze in the cold, will it? It’s bone in.”

“Jesus Christ,” said Callum. “Your ham’s fine. Get out the way.”

He bundled past her, down the stairs, trying to pick out Johnny and Fia in the gloom. He couldn’t see them directly, but Johnny’s torchlight swung erratically from behind a nook in the wall up ahead.

What Callum could see was a ruin. Nothing beyond the skeletal remained. No trains, no tracks, just slick bricks and warped wood, and debris all around.

As Callum’s foot touched the platform, Johnny’s torch went out. The darkness was near total, just a sliver of light from the opening above. The echoing clang of Laura’s shoes on the stairs punctuated deathly silence.

“Fia?” said Callum. “Johnny?”

Nothing.

And then a whine, distant and mechanical. A train was coming. That couldn’t be.

But it was.

Callum could see nothing, but beneath his feet a great rumbling took up, steam hissed and popped and screeching brakes reverberated off the bare walls. The thing was coming along the platform.

Callum scrabbled for his phone, fumbled for the torch.

But suddenly a light was on him. It must have been Johnny’s torch but was much too bright and way too close, and among the hissing and screeching and shaking came Fia’s voice.

“Johnny, I said no. I told you it was just a laugh. Fucking pervert!”

And then something hit Callum’s face, something heavy and soft and awful that sent him sprawling to the floor and left a streak of wetness all across him.

The darkness and the silence returned.

Johnny’s torchlight flicked across the ceiling. From somewhere, dripping. Water? Hopefully water.

“Aw, fuck,” Johnny was saying. “Aw, fuck me.”

Callum sat up, rubbed at the wetness on his face. Liquid matted his jacket, cooled at his throat. Too dark to see its colour.

“Has something happened?”

Laura. Her voice floated down the stairs, childlike, thin as a memory.

“Johnny, you there? Somebody tell me what’s happened. Fia? Is it ma wee Fia? What’s happened?”

Callum had dropped his phone when he fell, but there it was, mercifully, at his feet. He picked it up and Siobhan and Cora beamed out at him, the lock-screen picture now bisected by a great crack in the glass.

“Callum,” said Laura. “That you? You need to tell me what’s going on, son.”

Johnny was a long way up the platform now, his light erratic, receding, allowing only brief snapshots of a bricked-up tunnel entrance behind him. No way a train could have come through there.

Callum thumbed his torch app and lit up his hand.

Blood. Of course.

He scrambled to his feet, fighting some urge not to face Laura, not to let her see, because this wasn’t his own blood. He was sure of it. But there was no point in delaying.

He swept his torchlight towards her and illuminated a severed arm on the ground between them.

Fia’s. Ripped away above the elbow.

Laura screamed. “Ma Fia! Ma wee Fia!”

She was off down the platform, into the darkness, Callum running to keep up. Oh fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck.

“Aye, but it was an accident.” Johnny shouted. Only his legs were visible. A great swathe of inky blackness lay between the torchlight arcs. “I thought she’d see it,” he said. “I thought…”

“Help us,” Callum shouted, but Johnny stayed put.

“There,” Laura scrambled down onto the trackbed, shoe half off, the Tennent’s can falling from her hand and rolling away.

Fia was alive, sitting upright. She stared at the stump of her arm, then at Laura, then at Callum.

Then she passed out.

Dark blood gushed from the stump, glistened on the floor as it followed the phantom train.

A tourniquet. Callum jumped onto the trackbed, already reaching for his belt as Laura rushed to Fia, kneeling in all that blood and holding her niece’s head, and looking back at Callum like he could fix all this.

He couldn’t. But he had to do something, so he set his phone on the ground and tightened his belt around Fia’s ruined arm, trying not to see the ragged skin flaps, the pink flesh studded with bright white bone fragments, the viscous, endless blood.

“Oh, Fia.” Laura fussed at Fia’s hair, stroking her too-pale skin. “Oh, ma wee Fia.”

Callum had to wrap the belt three times before it was tight enough but, mercifully, the flow slowed.

“Laura,” he said. “We need an ambulance.”

“Right. Of course.” Laura fished for her phone, turned the screen to Callum. “No bars, son.”

Fuck. “Okay.” He checked his own device. “No bars.”

Laura nodded at Johnny, still at the far end of the platform, his torchlight now unnaturally still. “He’s not going to have a phone, is he?”

Callum shook his head, and in the same moment Johnny put his torch out and was gone. A ghost, spirited away.

“Jesus Christ,” Laura whispered.

“Laura,” said Callum, “I’m going to have to run back upstairs to phone for help. I’ll be as quick as I can. You’ll need some light.”

“Right,” she said, but she only stared into the darkness where Johnny had stood.

“Your phone, Laura. It’s in your hand. Turn on your torch.”

She turned her gaze to Callum, hardly seeming to see him. “Right, son. My torch. Don’t be long.”

Callum climbed back onto the platform, skirted the arm, up the stairs, turning back only momentarily to see, in tableau in the darkness, like a snowglobe on a distant shelf, auntie and niece in terrible embrace.

“Come on, baby,” Laura was saying. “Come on. Oh, ma wee Fia.”

Callum moved on, out through the opening, through the dull grey door and into the underground car park. He killed his torch and held his phone high above him, spun a slow spiral on his heel with eyes on his screen until he heard a key in a lock.

What the fuck?

Johnny, at the grey door. Locking it.

Callum took three steps backwards. “What are you doing, Johnny? They’re still in there. They need… Her fucking arm’s off.”

Johnny grimaced. “I know, I know. It’s fucking dreadful. And her a piano player too. Bloody tragic, mate.”

“She needs an ambulance.”

Johnny just shook his head. “Nah. These guys… Aye, I made a mistake there. Thought they’d loosen you up, help you get into the spirit of the place. But, aye, mibbe best to pretend they just didnae happen.”

“What? They’re…”

“A distraction. Especially that big spooky wan.” He shook his head. “I shouldnae have bothered wi’ them, but you might no have come otherwise. They don’t see what I see. But you do.”

What was he talking about? The train?

Callum took another step backwards. “Fuck off.”

A smile from Johnny. “Aye, you see it.”

Callum had no time for this, so he just turned on his heels and ran. Now he needed the police and an ambulance. Fine. They’d sort him out.

There was no reception in the underground car park anyway, so he raced upstairs, back towards the modern station. Johnny didn’t follow.

The access door was still unlocked, thankfully. Callum battered through it, eyes on his phone, waiting for it to reconnect.

How can there be no reception in Central fucking Station? There was always 5G.

But something felt different. The lights… Had they changed colour? Callum looked up.

The lights were the least of it.

Twenty yards ahead, where the Starbucks should have been, a kiosk: Casey Jones Burger. What the fuck?

Giant advertising hoardings hung from the rafters. Benson & Hedges, one read, and Bring your cheque book in for a free tune up, and, Order by phone.

Callum staggered forward. This was wrong. All wrong. The concourse chairs were gone, the floor now bare concrete and dotted with stubby black litter bins.

The electronic departure board was away too, but Callum knew where he’d find the train times: in the upper windows of the main concession building. Only one train was scheduled for departure. Its destination: Kilmaurs.

Movement in the doorway underneath. Callum flinched, squinted into the shadows between orange gingham curtains, beneath the glowing sign for the Caledonia Restaurant.

Johnny hadn’t followed him, but all the same he was here.

He stepped forward and spread his arms wide. “Welcome to Glasgow Central, Callum.”

“You see it, don’t you? What I see. You’re here. Tell me you’re here, Callum.”

Callum blinked. No point denying it. “I’m here.”

His phone was still in his hand. Subtly, he angled the screen towards him. Still no bars. Oh, hell.

“Callum, pal, naw,” said Johnny, nodding at the phone. “Look about you. It’s 1983. Outer space disnae chat to fancy rectangles here. Put it away. Embrace what’s happening.”

Callum took a step backwards. 1983? His voice was a croak. “What’s happening, Johnny?”

“Magic! Or, I don’t know, something like that. Point is, I’m going home. And I’ll be honest wi’ you: I’m no really a train driver.”

Callum’s stomach fell. Somehow this admission was worse than anything else. Johnny had been lying from the off. “Uh-huh.”

“Or not anymore, at least. Was a train driver, had a bit of an accident, more of a caretaker now. And I cannae fucking leave.” Johnny shook his head. “But it’s somebody else’s turn now. It has to be.” Into the rafters, he shouted, “Surely to fucking goodness!”

Callum swallowed. “Yeah, but not me. It can’t be me. I’ve got a baby. A wee girl. She’s… Please, Johnny. I’m no interested.”

“And you think I was?” He pointed to the timetable above him. “Train to Kilmaurs leaves in ten minutes. That’s my ticket out of here. I’ve arranged it all. Scheduled it up.”

“Okay, but not me.”

“Has to be, mate. Plus you owe me. You owe me.”

“Johnny, I don’t.”

“Aye, you do. Time is weird here, Callum. You’ll find that. You cannae leave, but you can slip through time, forward and back, at least for a little while. I’ve seen this place getting built. I’ve seen it fall. And I’ve seen tonight, many times.” That sympathetic head cock again. “And I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but usually by now you’re lying deid out the front.”

What? No.

“Aye. Sorry. You get in a fight. I think you know who with.”

Callum laughed. No way was this real. No chance. He’d never been in a fight in his life. He wasn’t his dad. He wasn’t. “Bullshit.”

Johnny shrugged. “Lucky punch, shit shoes, down you go. Sorry, pal, but there it is. You don’t get to go back to your wee girl. That’s out of the equation.”

Callum looked at the gates, like the answer might be out there. From his angle, it was impossible to see much beyond them, only that the snow was gone. Orange street lights reflected off slick, powder-free tarmac. Another impossibility.

“And I am sorry about all this, Callum. I know it’s hard to hear. But on the other hand, I did save your life. I intervened. So, aye, you owe me.”

“I don’t believe you. I…” Callum swallowed. “I have… I…”

“I’ve got kids too, you know,” said Johnny. “Or at least I did in 1983. That’s why it has to be now. Why I’ve worked so hard. I know you see how hard I’ve worked. How much I’m fucking concentrating. And the thing that’s holding me here will see it too and just let me go. Just let me go. That’s all I ask. Has it no been long enough?”

A new chill swept through the station and Callum had to adjust his stance, faltering like a weight had been lifted from his back.

“Ha!” Johnny pointed at him. “It’s working. It’s fucking working!”

Callum looked down. His jacket was gone. Underneath, blue overalls. His hand went to the stitched-in logo. British Rail.

“I knew it would work. Fucking yass!”

But Callum was barely listening. He had to get out of here. He sprinted for the main gate, nearly going over on his ankle as he turned. His shoes had changed, replaced with clumpy work boots. Oh, shit. What’s happening?

Callum rattled into the iron gate, pulled at it with all he had. Locked. The street outside was deserted. No people, no taxis, no snow. No body.

Okay. There were at least a half dozen ways out of here. Back inside, round the corner and down the steps onto Union Street. Worth a try.

Johnny watched him go, without bothering to give chase. “You know why it’s working? ’Cos you love this place, Callum. I know you do. You’ll look after it. I’d see you in here all the time. That’s why it had to be you.”

Locked. Where next?

“Always sitting in the Costa Coffee. Or you’d be coming in aff the train and you’d be the only one—the only one out of everyone—to walk through wi’ your head up, taking it all in.”

Hope Street. Back across the concourse, clomping across the concrete, but Callum could see from halfway that the shutter was down. Fuck!

With sudden clarity, he knew the whole place was locked up, as sure as if he’d locked the doors himself. He knew too that Johnny had the keys and that he didn’t have much time.

Johnny had quietened. A smart leather bomber jacket had materialised over his overalls and he was marvelling at it. He fingered its hem, grinning. Fuck.

Callum had never been in a fight in his life. But he thought of Cora, her smile, her smell, her tiny hugs. And he thought of never seeing her again, and of her never seeing him, and of leaving Siobhan to raise her on her own. And he thought, no.

Between Callum and Johnny: Laura’s shopping bags. They still existed, here in 1983. Did that mean Laura and Fia did too? Were they still down there, waiting for help to arrive?

Callum eyed Johnny again. Still distracted by the jacket. If Callum was going to do something, it had to be now.

Something caught his eye, sticking out of Laura’s shopping bag: a ham. Bone in.

That’ll do.

Callum ran at Johnny, picked up the ham leg on the way past. Cold to the touch but still soft. Not frozen. Shit.

He raised it high anyway, now at a full sprint, and Johnny saw him coming.

“What the…”

Callum didn’t slow down. He swung the ham, twisting with his full body, aiming for the head, his feral scream echoing through the station.

It wasn’t enough to knock Johnny out—he’d got a hand in the way at the last second—but it sent him staggering backwards, his fall near arrested until Callum stepped forward again and with his great clompy work boots sent him through the Caledonia Restaurant’s gingham-curtained window.

He landed in a shower of glass, head scudding off a table corner on the way down.

Was he dead? Was that even possible? Callum didn’t wait for an answer. He searched Johnny’s pockets, found the keys. Fled.

Callum smashed through the access door, flung himself down the stairs, through the underground car park, caught his breath at the door marked Mind your head. He didn’t have to guess which key would open it. He just knew.

They were still on the trackbed, held in their distant arc of light, Laura hunched over Fia, who was still unconscious and now deathly pale.

On seeing him, Laura flinched and held her niece closer, but said nothing. There was fear there. Terror. She thinks I’m Johnny.

Callum raced down the stairs. “It’s me, it’s me. It’s just Callum.”

“Callum? Christ. Did youse swap clothes?”

“No.” He ran the length of the platform, readied to jump down, but hesitated. That terror was still there. Laura gripped Fia’s remaining arm so tight it was sure to bruise.

“Are you one as well? Of whatever he is. A demon? Oh, tell me you’re not, Callum.”

“No,” said Callum. “I promise.” I hope. “But we have to get out of here. Now.”

Laura glanced at the exit. “No ambulance?”

Callum shook his head. “Johnny’s locked all the doors. But I’ve got the keys now. I can get us out. We can carry her together.”

Laura took Fia’s hand and clasped it, fingers threading together. She didn’t get up.

“Please,” said Callum, “just trust me.”

Laura took in his boots and his overalls, then looked him square in the eye. “I’ve no got much choice, have I?”

Quickly, they moved, placing Fia on the platform edge while they clambered back up and picked her up again. Laura took the feet, moving backwards until Callum suggested she turn around. Callum grasped Fia under her armpits, her head lolling on his shoulder, while with phone in shaking hand, he tried to light their way.

At the bottom of the stairs, Laura stopped. “The arm. We need her arm. I’m no leaving it.”

“Right,” said Callum. “Of course. Her arm.” And he fought an unseemly stab of impatience that seemed to surface then dissipate in the same moment. What was his hurry?

“They’ll stitch it right back on,” said Laura. “Good as new.”

“Aye, good as new.” And, regardless, there’ll be another tour group down here tomorrow. Can’t have an arm lying around.

Shit, where did that thought come from?

Callum found the arm and grabbed it, though they had to set down their cargo for him to do so, then reload, rebalance, then slowly manoeuvre up the stairs, Callum now with the added awkwardness and ick of the severed hand, which he lay across Fia’s belly and held secure by interlocking its fingers with his own.

An ambulance. Somehow Callum knew there were payphones in front of platforms one and nine, that three of them were properly out of order and one was awaiting cleaning after being doused with beer. If Laura’s phone didn’t work—if it really was 1983—the payphones surely would. But Callum didn’t want to spend another second in the station. Not the way his thoughts were turning. Plus there was a body up there, needing to be cleaned away. A glazier to book.

No, no. That wasn’t right. Concentrate. Callum had killed a man—a ghost?—and his body was lying in plain view. Did they have CCTV in 1983? He needed to get out of the station now.

“Just to warn you,” said Callum, “things look a bit different upstairs. Johnny’s… done things.”

“Aye, and I’ll do things to him,” she mumbled.

“No,” said Callum. “We should just leave. Maybe there’s a doctor in the taxi queue.”

“Right. That’s a plan.”

The main concourse was as he’d left it—the wrong-coloured lights, the concrete floor, the kiosks and adverts from Laura’s youth. If Callum had expected a reaction from her, he didn’t get one. She barely glanced up. Yet for some reason, he wanted her to be impressed.

“You seeing this, Laura?” he asked. “Look—it’s 1983.”

She looked. Nothing. “Right,” she said. “Okay, son. 1983. How are we getting out?”

Callum bristled. She couldn’t see what he saw. And she’d spoken to him like he’d gone mad, like she was humouring a lunatic out of fear and necessity. But why did he care? She was only interested in Fia. Of course she was.

“Main gate,” he said, then regretted his choice. It took them too close to the Caledonia Restaurant, and with Laura at the front, Callum wasn’t steering the ship. Would she be able to see Johnny’s body? Would it still be there?

“Jesus Christ!” she said. “There’s ma ham.”

Right. The ham. “Yep,” said Callum, and before he could conjure an explanation, they were upon the smashed restaurant window and Johnny’s mangled body. Still there.

Laura slowed. Her shoulders slumped. Callum didn’t know if she was seeing the Caledonia or the Marks & Spencers the building had become, but she saw Johnny, all right.

“Just keep moving,” said Callum.

And she did, faster than ever. Callum wanted to explain that in killing Johnny he’d saved her life and—hopefully—Fia’s, but he knew she would nod and agree and not believe him. She’d fallen in with demons, and this was the outcome.

Beyond the gate, the snow had returned, as thick as ever. Maybe good news. And maybe not thickness at all—was it instead a void? Callum had a sense of the station detached from the world, somehow moving through time, in a sort of flux. Could he return to 2025? Was that what Johnny was able to do?

In silence, they set down Fia once more, and Callum unlocked the doors. That squeak again.

“Can’t even see the taxi queue.” Laura avoided Callum’s eye, seemed to be speaking only to herself.

“They’ll be…”

“Is anybody there?” she shouted, cutting across him. “I’m needing help.”

No reply.

“Let’s just get out of here,” said Callum, and they lifted the body again, Laura leading the way with the legs and Callum following until, in an instant, he wasn’t.

He’d stopped dead against the snow, but Laura—already out of sight—kept going, pulling Fia from his arms. If Fia fell, if Laura fell with her, landing in the snow, Callum had no clue. He could see nothing, hear nothing at all.

What the fuck? Callum pressed his hand flat to the void. He felt no cold, no wetness. Only a gentle resistance that grew as he pushed.

“Laura?” he shouted. “Anyone?”

Nothing. And the echo was wrong, like shouting at a wall. What had Johnny said—he could never leave?

Callum stepped back, tripped on something underfoot.

Fia’s arm, forgotten on the floor. Shit, she needs that.

He picked it up, pushed it through. The fingers disappeared, then the wrist and forearm, with no resistance until Callum’s own fingers brushed against the void, whereupon the arm simply vanished.

Okay. Dealt with. There was little point, but Callum wanted to shout after them, to apologise for their ordeal. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he was responsible, that he should have taken better care of them.

But they’d left the station. They were on their own. His job was done. Ah, no—one more thing. Laura’s bags. They were still on the concourse.

Callum gathered them, stuffed the ham back in—it didn’t look too bashed, would likely cook just fine; she’d been worried about that—then gently kicked them out the gate and into the void until they too disappeared.

There. Callum wandered back up the concourse, eyeing the seats. There was more to do, but fuck was he ever tired. It had been a hectic day at the station: the snow, the cancellations, the impromptu tour and murder.

He sat, sighed, smoothed down the bristles of his heavy moustache. A moment, then he’d deal with the body and the glass. After that, back down to the Victorian platform to mop up Cora’s blood.

No, not Cora. Fia. Who is Cora?

Fuck! Callum shot to his feet.

Cora Jane Galloway, eight months old. La Bambina, Cora Menora, Professor Partytime. Lady Shenanigan Nonsense. Five teeth and an urge to use them. Resolutely bald. Big hat fan. Her mother’s eyes.

Callum raced for the platforms and jumped the gate, towards the two-carriage Class 303 scheduled for special departure to Kilmaurs in just a few minutes’ time. No, no, none of that jargon: the train home.

Cora’s mother. Siobhan Annabel Galloway. His partner in exhaustion. Two years his junior but the adult in any room. So empathetic she’d root for pocket lint if you named it. A sneeze like a dying elephant. Needlessly profane. A survivor of too much already. But not this.

Instinct took Callum not to the passenger doors but to the driver’s cab where, inside, the controls fell into his hands like an impatient lover.

Johnny thought this a way out, worked hard to arrange it. But he wanted 1983, not 2025. What had he said? Time was funny here—you could slip through it, forward and back. You just had to concentrate.

Right, then. 2025. Cora, Siobhan, Dad. Mobile phones, WhatsApp, Signal, Insta. Digital fucking marketing. Brexit, the pandemic and a cost of living crisis. Climate collapse.

Time to go.

Callum peered out the cab windows. Was the void thinning? Did it look like snow again? Hard to say.

But impossible to delay. Leave the station late without just cause and he’d get written up. The time had come.

Callum took a deep breath, flexed his toes one last time against the pinch of his fancy Italian dress shoes, and accelerated.

Some hour not long after, he is roused by the hostile wailing of his landline pulling at the cords at the back of his eyes. He answers with a dry, strained cough and rubs the soft spot over the missing rib on his side. The voice on the other end is Bernice, years of menthols since he’s last heard her. She tells him, in a depleted sort of way, that she can no longer care for him. Him who Saul never even knew existed.

He drives into the Dust Bowl town as the sky turns a wilting grey, and raps on the remaining bits of aluminum between the rusted-through holes on her screen door. She doesn’t answer, and he enters into a cluttered mess of beer cans, pizza boxes, burger wrappers, chicken bones, flies, beetles and maggots. There he finds him, but not Bernice. An ugly and sickly-looking child. He is pale, small-mouthed and weakly, with those blue veins around his temples joined to large, frightened eyes. Saul thinks there’s a healthy chance this thing staring up at him isn’t even his, but he takes him anyway. They drive back to the farm, and he gives the boy a burger they stopped for on the way. Then he coughs some, rubs his side and takes the bottle back to the couch. He doesn’t know what to do with him, so he does nothing.

It’s not long after that, with a yelp, the rustlers get Benji, not even leaving the dog’s body for Saul to bury proper.

He litters the night with booming flashes of gunpowder as the boy watches, wide-eyed and unblinking. The rancher then takes to his couch and his bottle, and weeps until he’s unconscious. It’s only the night after that he’s pulled from the couch by what he thinks is the sound of his friend crying in the distance, and he runs out with his shotgun, unloading shell after shell, screaming into the void.  He curses the poachers for taking him, calling them wetbacks and spics and filthy goddamn motherfucking cocksucking beaners and demands that they give him back his dog. He bellows and hollers and expectorates, until he coughs and wheezes and gasps for air. Finally, he catches a sliver in his palm and realizes he’s been holding himself up against the railing.

With Benji gone, he begins to lose cattle. Their wailing as the poachers rustle them wrenches Saul from his drink and his couch, and he rushes to the porch with his gun, but never gets there in time. He attempts to care for the boy, who sometimes he sees and sometimes he doesn’t, but never speaks and only observes. He fries eggs and hot dogs and goes into town for pizzas, cereal and instant noodles, but finds them in or beside the garbage or dropped outside the window with only a half-hearted bite or so missing. He shouts at the boy and threatens to strike him and curses him, and coughs harder and harder for longer and longer. One morning he goes to collect eggs and finds the coop empty and curses the poachers for being plain mean bastards on top of criminal ones. He loses more cattle, and his side begins to hurt something awful. At the store, he thinks he hears a noise somewhere between a bark and a yelp and turns half-expecting to see his friend come back to him, but instead finds a teller with a palm held over her mouth, looking in his direction. Staring. At home, in the mirror, he sees he’s lost weight, his cheeks hollowed and his eyes yellow and sunken, and there’s a wet sore on his side that hurts to the touch and sticks with a bite against his shirt. He continues to chase the noise of Benji and his cows, and the couch gets harder and harder to leave.

The cattle all but disappear in number, and Saul begins to stop leaving the three cushions when he hears them. His cough gets worse, his side hurts more and his knees shake when he stands. He asks the boy to bring him his bottle, but never receives the slightest noise in return and he wonders to himself why he can never find the tracks of their tires or the marks of their boots. He dreams of Bernice, of the other men she’s had and the feeling that she chose him because he was a sucker. After a while, he stops leaving the couch altogether and lets the uneaten food pile into the garbage or out the window or onto the floor, and finally lets the boy fend for himself. He shouts out at the rustlers, day and night, whether he hears the calls of his cows, his chickens, his only friend, or not. He can no longer tell when he hears them or imagines them or cares. At some point, he is roused suddenly from his sleep by the voice of Bernice, and desperately searches the room, begging she take the boy, only to find the pale, voiceless child watching him.

One night, Benji barks for the last time, and Saul is pulled off the couch with what seems a sudden and driven purpose. He calls the boy, his voice hollow and depleted, and finds him already at his side, and they step outside and enter his truck together. They drive down the highway, through the darkness, as it begins to rain. Saul doesn’t turn on the headlights, and after a time, they’re pulled over. The officer recognizes the cantankerous old rancher in the dark cabin of the old pickup and greets him with a patient and humored smile. He ignores the foul smell and asks about the boy, and in an empty sort of way, Saul tells him he’s his, and he simply can’t watch ’im anymore. The officer glances at the child looking back at him, and with a sudden sense of wary and aversion, gives Saul the suggestion to drive more carefully and takes his leave.

The headlights of the police car pass through the truck’s cabin as the officer pulls away and disappears into the night, then Saul’s meagre frame collapses into the steering wheel, his eyes and mouth hang open and desiccated, and finally he is dead.

Then with a sudden twitch, he sprouts back up. His jaw drops and his head jerks to face the boy. And with another twitch, his jaw begins to rattle and move free of his lifeless eyes and sallow, wilting skin. And as the undulating bumpy appendage emerging from under the boy’s shirt and entering the wet sore in Saul’s abdomen twitches again, the boy produces a near-perfect imitation of Saul’s voice through his mouth, repeating that they’ll have to find somewhere else for the boy to live, as Saul can’t care for ’im anymore. And back at the farmhouse, the radio plays a show about aliens abducting cattle, a light flashes between the tops of the hills, and lying among the pile of hot dogs, cereals, chicken bones, flies, beetles, maggots, fur, feathers and ear tags, is a dog collar with an inscription that reads: If found, return to Saul.

My office is on the corner of North Hampton and 56th, what some people might call Hampton Heights, and others consider a slice of urban decay. I call it cheap rent, and I share the building with shadows and silence. The neighborhood thrives on secrets, its inhabitants and the patrolling cops alike keeping their business to themselves. Not a place a young girl should loiter in the small hours of morning. Which is why I was more than a little surprised to find a 14-year-old Asian girl sitting outside my office one chilly Friday morning.

“A little early for a visit,” I said.

“It’s 10,” she said. She was a slight girl, a hair over five feet with long black hair and the ramrod straight back of a teen trying to make a good impression on an adult.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” I slid the key into the lock and opened my office door.

“Winter break.”

“Huh.” I walked inside. “Come on, it’s freezing.” I waved her to follow me. She did.

I’m pretty sure my office was zoned as a studio apartment, but the owners had been too excited about having a tenant to put up much of a fuss about how I used the place. It smelled as musty and old as it looked. I put my coffee on the walk-through kitchen counter, hung my coat on the rack, and crossed uneven hardwood to sit at my desk. She was still standing near the doorway.

I wondered what I must look like to her. I was stocky, shorter than average, but still a head over her, with the wide-shouldered build of a linebacker. My hair and beard were long, tangled messes because I had skipped the morning shower. I would have smiled at her, but I’ve been told by more than one woman that my smile is more off-putting than my stern face. I had no clue how to put her at ease. For someone whose job it is to find kids, I’m pretty damn bad at talking to them when they find me.

“Do you want a coffee or something?” I asked. “I don’t have any of that Monster or whatever you kids are drinking these days.”

She smirked. “It’s Celsius now. But no, thanks.”

I nodded. “Take a seat. Might as well tell me why you’re here.”

She took a seat in the padded accent chair in the corner. It was an awkward several feet from my desk, but it was the only chair in the room. I’d meant to purchase actual office chairs but hadn’t gotten around to it in the last few years.

The girl sat primly in the chair, like something might jump out of it and eat her. She was trying her hardest to give an impression of someone professional and unbothered, as if any teenager ever could. There was desperation in those eyes. If she had a hat, it would be in her hand. The poor girl was terrified.

“Let’s start with your name,” I said.

“Chee.”

“Hmong?” I asked.

She nodded, surprised.

“I have a doctor colleague who helps me out on occasion. He’s Hmong.” Truth was, Fong was a good friend. He was also my cultural bridge to the neighborhood Hmong community. Being white had its advantages in many areas; communicating with minority community in-groups was not one of them. He helped me pick up a few words and understand the culture where I wouldn’t otherwise. That being said, after doing this for a few years, I had picked up a few things myself. Like common names.

I rummaged through my desk drawers for a fresh notepad, settled for a half-used one, and wrote Chee at the top.

“Okay, Chee,” I said. “Tell me why you’re here.”

“My sister’s missing and no one is looking for her.”

Chee laid it all out for me, and I scribbled the pertinent bits on my notepad: 16-year-old older sister named Bao, went out after dark two nights ago, hasn’t come home.

“What about the cops?”

“We tried. They say she is probably a runaway. But she’s not.” There was more desperate fear in her eyes than before. Maybe Chee was better at staying proper than I gave her credit for.

“I believe you.” I did, for the most part. At least, I didn’t take what the cops had to say as proof of anything. It was a rare day the boys in blue made an appearance here. Even rarer was the day they would help find a near-grown Hmong girl. “What about your parents?”

She shook her head. “My mom is too old to do anything to help. And my dad… Well, he’s gone.” She said it with the uncertainty of someone still trying to figure out how to tell people. “I don’t know where else to go.”

“Nobody else in your family will help?”

“My dad was the clan leader. Without him, no one has any obligation to me or to Bao.” She paused.

A teenage girl whose dad recently died loses her sister and has nowhere else to turn. Call me a sucker, but how could I say no?

“Any idea where to start?”

She beamed. It might have been the first genuine smile I’d seen on her. “My uncle. My mom and I live with him. I overheard him saying he saw something to the police, but I couldn’t hear what. They didn’t let me out of my room.”

“Your mom’s then.” I stood up. “You coming?”

She blanched, started to say something, stopped, and finally said, “Yeah.”

I grabbed my coffee and coat.

“I can’t pay…” she said, then added, “much, yet.”

Of course not.

Chee’s mother’s house was a few blocks away, but we still drove. The sky was a clear blue and the sun hung up there like a big lie. Not a single ray of heat reached the earth today. It was early enough in the morning that the temperatures hadn’t climbed above single digits. They likely wouldn’t all day. Even with the heater blasting, my fingers were numb on the steering wheel.

I stepped out of the car and the air bit at my cheeks. Why did I live where the air hurt my face?

There were no cars in the driveway, and the garage door was open to an empty workshop. Did she walk to school every day?

Chee’s mother was a stout woman who appeared to have had Chee later in life. She wore her age with the bearing of someone who had earned every wrinkle and spot. She greeted us at the door and, with a fuse equal in length to her height, began yelling at Chee in Hmong.

The conversation flew past me like I had front row seats at the racetrack: loud and fast. I tried to keep up, but the few words I recognized were “Bao” and “meeka”, which had something to do with being white. Hang around enough Hmong folks and you’re bound to be talked about.

After a while, I started to shiver, the cold creeping into my bones. The mother-daughter yelling match was oblivious to the cold, however, and blocked me from entering the door. I considered returning to my car and wiping my hands off the whole business. But I’d already promised Chee I’d help. Damn principles. I really needed to work on those.

A stooped, elderly man appeared in the doorway, appeared to scold Chee and her mother, then turned to me.

“Come in before you freeze your asses off,” he said. That I understood.

The inside of the house was bare, save for a large and comfortable couch. There was a large empty space on the other side of it, as though the room was meant for hosting many guests who hadn’t been seen for some time. Once we settled in, and my teeth had stopped chattering, the old man, who Chee explained was her uncle, spoke again.

“You’re supposed to be in school.” He was a tall man, bent under the weight of his age. Still, he commanded a presence of authority in the room that the women deferred to.

“It’s winter break,” she said under her breath.

The old man scoffed. “It’s January. I’m not that old.” Boy, did I feel dumb. He turned to me. “We’re very sorry for the trouble our niece has caused you. Thank you for returning her to us. However, I have to ask you to leave so we can address this family matter as a family.”

“Wait…”

The old man stood up. “To your room Chee. Sir, I can escort you out.”

Chee stood. “He’s here to find Bao.”

Her sister’s name blanketed the room. Everyone fell to silence. Chee’s uncle flushed. That interested me. It was one thing to be shocked by the mention of your missing niece, another to get angry.

“The police are looking for her,” Chee’s uncle said.

“The police are doing nothing,” Chee pleaded. “No one is doing anything.”

Her uncle snapped at her in Hmong.

“He will help,” Chee said. “He finds people. That’s his job.”

“It’s also the police’s job,” her uncle said. “Go get ready for school.”

Chee opened her mouth to protest some more and looked at me. I nodded my head towards the hallway that I assumed her room was down. Finding no allies, Chee stormed away. I felt a little bad for the kid, but I needed her uncle alone.

“If you’d please leave now, sir,” her uncle said. “I have to call the school to see if someone can pick her up.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that quite yet.”

“Excuse me?”

“Chee’s a child, you’re right about that. But she’s right about something else.”

His eyes narrowed.

“I told her I’d help. As far as I’m concerned, she’s a client and I don’t abandon clients until I’ve done my part. Right now, that means trying to find Bao. Chee doesn’t know much, but something tells me you know more. So you’re going to spill and then I’ll save you a call to the school and drop her off myself. Fair trade?”

The man studied me for a long moment, features hard. Maybe bursting into someone’s house with their teenage niece and yelling at them wasn’t the best for building rapport.

“Thov, kuj xav pab koj.” My Hmong was not perfect, but even the attempt softened his features. He continued his study of me. Whatever he found, he appeared satisfied with.

“What did you say your name was?”

“Owen. Owen Ashton.”

“You’re Fong’s friend. He talks about you. Says you found his cat.”

I sighed. “A long time ago, yes.”

He nodded. “Do you have a business card?”

I paused.

“I’d rather not send my niece off with a stranger. I’m sure you understand, given everything.”

“Sure.” I reached into my pocket and produced a business card. It was plain beige with my name and contact info under the words Private Investigator in bold lettering.

He took it and sat down.

“What do you know?” he asked.

“Bao was out late two nights ago. She never came back. That’s about all Chee told me.”

He scoffed. “Of course it is. Did Chee tell you Bao was a little whore?”

“No, she didn’t.” I held my poker face.

“She was all around town with these boys. Not Hmong. Not even Asian. Whites, Blacks, Mexicans. Everything but Hmong. She was trying to shame our family. Mao and I,” he gestured to Chee’s mother, “we tried to stop it. Scolded her. Grounded her. Forbid her from seeing them. But she was so determined to ruin us.” He spat the words like rotten milk. I got his meaning.

“I get your meaning,” I said. “What happened to her?”

“What do you think?” he said. “A damn boy. I went to check on her one night and she was gone, her window open. It was two days ago now. First night of this cold. I couldn’t let her be alone out there, so I went looking for her and found her. Then, I saw her.”

“Bao?”

“No,” he whispered and leaned in. “Poj Ntxoog.”

I didn’t recognize the name.

“A little ghost girl,” he added.

“How did you know?”

“Her clothes. She was wearing rags, almost nothing, but she didn’t look cold. It was below zero, but she wasn’t shivering at all. And she wasn’t wearing shoes. Her feet were bare and they were…” He choked up. There was honest terror in his eyes. “They were backwards,” he said when he had gathered himself. “There wasn’t anything else it could be.”

“What did you do?”

“I ran. I didn’t know which way I was going but I just ran.”

“And what about Bao?”

He shook her head. “Bao isn’t the first girl to go missing around here. There’s been five children in the last three years who haven’t come home. All girls. All around Bao’s age.” He looked up at me, his eyes red and watery. “All of them turn up dead sooner or later. And the Poj Ntxoog is there every single time.”

I drove Chee to school. When I parked out front, she paused and looked thoughtful.

“Not embarrassed by your old private detective, are you?”

She looked at me, uncomprehending. No one gets good humor these days.

“What’s on your mind?” I asked.

“Uncle was wrong,” she said.

“About what?”

“The first girl, Mai Neng. I didn’t know her that well, but I know people who did.” She looked at me. “No one saw a Poj Ntxoog around her.”

After I’d dropped Chee off at school, I made a phone call. Fong was a doctor, which meant there was as much a chance of him being on rotation as not when you called. Thankfully, he picked up.

“What can you tell me about Poj Ntxoog?” I said.

“Hello to you too, Owen. I’m well, thanks for asking.”

“Hi, sorry. I’m on the job and need some quick info.”

He sighed from the other side of the line. “We have to work on your people skills.”

“After I find the missing girl.”

“There’s always a missing girl.”

“Fong…”

“I know.” I pictured him raising his hands in defeat. Fong and I had been friends since middle school when we bonded over our love of detective stories. We were cool, okay. Though only one of us ended up following the path. “What was it you needed?”

I let out a strained breath. “Poj Ntxoog?”

He laughed. “I just like making you pronounce it.”

“Fong!”

“Yeah, yeah. Poj Ntxoog. It’s like a little girl ghost. Long hair, bad clothes, whole Asian ghost girl nine yards.”

I scribbled some notes.

“Supposed to have backwards feet,” he continued. “Can I ask why you’re asking?”

“Missing girl,” I said. “Hmong. Uncle who saw her last says he saw Poj Ntxoog there too. Says a bunch of girls have gone missing and this thing is there every time.”

“Weird.”

“Why weird?”

“I mean, Poj Ntxoog is sort of a trickster. Like in the stories, men will be walking alone in the forest, run into one, and fall victim to her. She’s not usually associated with missing kids.”

“That is odd.”

There was a long pause as I wrote some notes. Then Fong spoke up.

“Owen, you don’t think there’s a serial killer or something going around, do you?”

“I can’t say the thought hadn’t crossed my mind. But it’s too early to say. Could just be coincidence.”

“You don’t believe in coincidence”

“I don’t believe in ghosts either, but I know better than to rule them out.”

Milwaukee Public Library’s Capitol Branch is a small, one-story brick building across from a McDonald’s that gets a lot more traffic. I was never much of a library guy myself; I sourced most of my cheap romances online, but this particular branch was home to one of the best resources in this part of town I had — Doug Shirley.

Doug was a middle-aged black schizophrenic. Which meant he was also homeless, on and off medications, and in and out of jail. He never kept a phone number for more than a month. When he’s not in cuffs or a locked unit of one of Milwaukee’s hospitals, Doug can most consistently be found at the library.

When I walked into Capitol Branch, Doug was in his normal corner chair by a window with a large stack of books beside him.

On his meds, Doug was one of the most articulate, well-read, and well-informed people I knew and trusted. He read everything, talked to everyone, and heard every bit of gossip the Hampton Heights homeless community had to offer. And he liked me, which was a plus.

Days he was off his meds, though, Doug was as unpredictable and scatterbrained as his criminal record would suggest.

He was bald up top except for the sides. When he’s in bad places, he keeps his hair about as well as a bird’s nest. Today, the sides of his head were cropped short, the white-gray hair almost a layer of dust. A thick five-o’clock shadow was apparent even though it was noon.

I sat in the chair beside Doug and plucked a book from the pile: Disappearance at Devil’s Rock.

“What’s the theme this week, Doug?” Doug’s reading spells always had a theme, though they could range from as simple as dinosaurs to as esoteric as written by a Sagittarius.

He grunted a greeting but didn’t look up from The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon to answer. I hazarded my own guess.

“Missing girls?”

He raised an eyebrow at me. I was close. I took a peak at a third title. The Adventure of Johnnie Waverly.

“Missing kids.”

Doug smiled. “How you doing, Mr. Ashton?”

“I’m great, Doug. How are you?”

“Perfect. Weather couldn’t be better for some mysteries.” The wind was howling. Goosebumps rose on my skin. Sometimes cold was a mindset.

“Speaking of,” I leaned in. “I’ve got one I could use some help on. In fact,” I tapped the top book on his pile, “I think it fits your theme.”

“For real?”

I nodded. “What have you heard about a little Hmong girl? Went missing maybe 3 days ago, lives on 54th.”

“Hmong?”

“Asian.”

“Oh.” He thought about it for a moment. I let him. “I don’t know nothing about Asian, but I know a girl was supposed to have been out too late by the creek a few nights ago. Damn cold.”

“Lincoln Creek?”

He nodded. “Richie saw her. Said it was damn cold out. Too damn cold for a little girl. Said he wanted to help her, get her home, or warm or something. Tried to go up to her, but…”

“But what?”

“But Richie got spooked.”

“Spooked?”

Doug shook his head. “Says he saw a ghost.” Then he shrugged. “I figured he was off his meds.”

“What happened to the girl?”

“Don’t know. Richie says he got so scared he ran off and forgot all about her ‘till he was at the tent.”

“Thanks, Doug. I’ll let you read some.” I slipped a ten into the book I was holding and put it back on top of the pile. “That’s a good one.”

I got up to leave. “Oh, Doug.”

“Yeah?”

“How’d Richie know it was a ghost?”

Doug shook his head. “Said something about long black hair and dirty clothes. Sounds like he’s watched too much J-horror to me.”

Sometimes being a detective is about following people, sometimes it’s about talking to people, and other times it’s walking through the freezing cold along 21 square miles of urban watershed looking for clues.

From where Chee’s uncle and Richie had seen the girl, I managed to narrow my search to the few miles near Hampton Heights. In the hours it took me to search, the sun descended below the horizon. As soon as it did, the cold crept deep into my bones. I was wearing a heavy wool overcoat and a sweater underneath. Even still, I could not stop my teeth from chattering. My nose stung as if the cold was its own scent.

Without the sun, a few streetlights lit the neighborhood in a dull fluorescent glow. It was not the best to search for clues under, so I pulled out my phone’s flashlight. My fingers, numb even through my gloves, struggled to keep the light stable.

The ground was a frozen block of snow. Nothing fresh had fallen in the last few days and, even with the wind, the snow was too frozen to have shifted much. Which meant, after a few hours of looking, I noticed what I would not have been able to if there had been fresh snowfall or even low enough temperatures to melt: two sets of footprints headed into a dense cluster of trees at the water’s edge.

That’s where I found the body.

I was far from the streetlights, so I only had my phone light to see by, but I could tell he was not Bao.

He was a young man, maybe mid-twenties, white, slight of frame, with large eyes. He had been dead for a few days. How many was hard to say. The temperature had preserved him and his wide-eyed, mouth-agape expression. His pants were down to his knees. A set of frozen imprints in the ground suggested he had been kneeling when he pulled them down.

A girl goes missing three days ago. She’s last seen near a park. A boy, dead for about that many days, is found in the same park. There was a chance this dead boy had nothing to do with Bao; that he was a coincidence. But Fong was right. I didn’t believe in coincidences.

I wasn’t a woodsman by any means. I wasn’t about to track a deer through the forest by tracks and tufts of fur. But what even I could do was see there were three sets of footprints here: two sets of boots walking into the trees, one set of boots walking out the other way and ending by the road. Beside it, another set of bare feet walking towards the trees. Three people here? The wind rattled the branches above me.

I looked back at the boy and grimaced. A dead body is a little above my paygrade. With a surge of good decision-making that often eludes me, I took out my phone and dialed the number of Sergeant Laity, my usual source of insight into Milwaukee PD. He picked up on the 5th ring.

“What do you want, Ashton?”

“Nice to hear from you too, Laity. I’m doing swell by the way.”

“It’s fucking 11 at night. I left my pleasantries in my dreams.”

“Old man much?”

“I work odd hours. Look. Why are you calling?”

“Dead body in the woods by Lincoln Creek. Looks like it might have been here a while.”

“Jesus Christ, Ashton. Call 911 with that stuff, not me.” He was awake now.

I shrugged, even if he couldn’t see me. “He’s dead, Ashton, and not going anywhere. Didn’t seem like much of an emergency.”

“For fuck’s sake, stay put. I’m calling it in.”

“No can do.”

“What do you mean no can do? You found a dead body, Ashton. Stay by it.”

“Can’t. Missing kid might not have the time.”

“God Damn it, Ashton…”

I hung up the phone. I’d already started to follow the boot prints out of the trees and towards the road. The bare footprints stayed beside them the entire way.

The footprints faded away much before they neared the road, but I followed the direction they pointed me towards: to an old, single-story apartment building with boarded windows. It looked how I imagined my own office building would once I left.

One window was shattered inwards into a pile of glass and snow. I glanced around. No one was out—too cold and late—and slipped through the open window.

Inside was not much warmer than out as the wind howled in behind me. My breath still puffed out in front of me. The tips of my ears burned, and I wondered if I was dumb enough to have given myself frostbite. I pulled my jacket tighter and walked deeper into the building.

Whatever the layout had been before, the building was now stripped to its skeleton. Gapped hardwood floors groaned under my weight. Beams and the remaining dry wall shrieked in protest as the wind outside threatened to rip the building apart. The boarded windows offered little light. I pulled out my phone’s flashlight again. It cast dark shadows that moved as I walked like the figures at the edges of my vision. The moist scent of mildew itched at my nose. The air was heavy with dust and who knew what else. My skin crawled with the imagined grime.

Maybe I should have waited for Laity. Hell, I’d settle for Doug right now.

I turned one corner, holding my breath, praying not to see a dead little girl, and found empty space. It happened again and again as I moved through the labyrinth of indiscernible rooms until I was sure I had been mistaken and the girl was not here.

I came to a wide, high-ceilinged room that I figured was the lobby. Where there should have been a staircase down was a gaping, black hole in the floor. I stepped away from it.

I passed my light over the room one more time and froze. A dozen feet away, in a shadowed corner of the room that still managed to elude the light, a figure was curled into a ball. A young girl. It was hard to tell from where I stood, but I thought there was a faint rise and fall of her chest. I let out a sigh I hadn’t realized I’d been holding.

I took a step forward, but stopped.

At the edge of my phone’s light, a length of black hair shuddered as if blown by the wind, and vanished back into the darkness. My mouth went dry. Blood thundered through my ears. My breath came short and shallow. My legs tensed like springs ready to burst at the slightest movement.

Whatever it was remained cloaked in blackness an inch out of sight. I crept the phone light over, unable to keep it from shaking, to reveal another figure. Another girl. Short. She stood still and silent. Her features were indistinct under a blind of long, black hair. Her arms hung limp at her sides. She wore clothes so filthy, they may as well have been wrapped in rags. Pale skin betrayed scars and bruises over most of her body.

I told myself this was a normal girl, a scared girl, maybe even an abused girl. She was probably just as scared at that moment as I was.

I almost believed it.

“Are you alright?” I took a step forward. The girl did too, her backward feet landing toe first before flopping onto her heels. Nope, not normal.

Bao was still in the corner, shivering and taking shallow breaths.

“I’m not going to hurt her.” I said. “I’m here to help.” I took another step towards Bao. The Poj Ntxoog took another step to stay between us. It was silent the whole time, save for the sick slap of sole against floor.

Whatever it was, it did not look strong. I thought I could take it in a fair fight. But I also remembered the boy, dead in the park. Frozen in place mid-movement. I had never put too much stock in ghost stories, but I wasn’t an idiot either. Still, Bao was in the corner, shivering and presumably starving. For all I knew, she had moments left.

I began to take another step forward.

“Wait!” a girl’s voice said from behind me. Chee’s voice.

I didn’t take my eyes off the Poj Ntxoog. “Aren’t you supposed to be at school?”

“It’s almost midnight,” she said. “I saw you outside and…” She trailed off, her eyes wandering towards the Poj Ntxoog.

“Looking for your sister? Didn’t you hire me for that?”

“Is now the time?” she said and walked forward toward Bao.

“Wait.”

She didn’t. “Mai Neng?” She whispered. The ghost girl said nothing. Chee advanced. “It is you.” Chee spoke to the Poj Ntxoog in Hmong. Though the ghost didn’t speak, it relaxed. Chee walked past it to her sister and shook her awake. Bao stumbled to her feet and put her full weight on Chee’s shoulder. They staggered towards me. I didn’t dare move until they were past the Poj Ntxoog and had reached me. I put my coat over Bao.

“Can you make it outside?” I asked.

“I think so,” Chee said.

“Good. Go. The police should be here soon. There’s something I have to check.”

Chee gave me a questioning look. Her sister moaned and shifted on her shoulder. “Be careful,” Chee said, and she half-carried Bao out of the room.

I looked at the hole in the floor where the stairs should have been. It held wide like a gaping maw eager to consume. I felt eyes staring back at me from within. The Poj Ntxoog still stood where Chee had spoken to her. I couldn’t see any eyes under the mop of hair, but I felt her regarding me.

I didn’t believe in coincidences.

The Poj Ntxoog did not move to stop me when I approached the hole. Within the hole, I made out the tops of washers and dryers against the wall. This must have been the laundry room. I could fall on top of them without too much trouble. Probably. I gripped the edge, slid over, and toppled onto machine tops.

What I found there was a matter for the next day’s paper.

I stood outside, coatless, and shivering after I had given my statement. A lanky cop strode over to me from the abandoned apartment complex. He was about a foot taller than me and, even with being rail-thin, cut an imposing figure.

“Laity,” I said. It was all I could do to keep the shivering out of my voice.

The sergeant nodded. “Ashton.”

“And didn’t make a single dime on it.”

“Another pro bono?”

“What can I say? I’m a bleeding heart.”

Laity looked over to the ambulance where Chee and Bao huddled together under a paramedic’s blanket and my coat. Chee was crying. He sighed.

“I don’t think I can give you shit for it this time,” he said. “But keep it up and we’ll see.”

“I’m not in any danger of getting evicted,” I said.

He nodded. We stood in the cold for a long time.

“They called the cops, Laity.”

He grimaced. “I know.”

“They talked to the same Uncle I did. The footprints were right there for everyone to see for days. All they had to do was look. And now five dead girls, going back who knows how long.”

Laity’s wide, mustached face was set in deep thought. He was silent for a long time. “The guys did what they thought was best with the information they had.”

“When the hell did you get so political with me? It’s Owen. Don’t bullshit me.”

Laity went stern. Anger flashed through his eyes. For a moment, I wondered if my friend was going to hit me, or worse, arrest me for condemning cops. My chest tightened.

I was saved by another cop I didn’t recognize approaching us. “Sarge,” she said to Laity. “Kid’s mom is here. She won’t let us take her to the hospital.”

“God damn it.” Laity made to storm away.

“Wait,” I said. “I might have a way to help with this.”

When Fong had finished examining Bao, we stopped by my place for a nightcap. Or a morning cap. It was nearly six by then. My place was small and a mess, but Fong didn’t say anything. He was short, bald, and had gained a lot of weight since graduating from medical school, but Fong was good people.

“How was she, if I may ask?” My curiosity was burning.

Normally, I would expect my friend to stonewall me with some spiel about doctor-patient confidentiality. Today, however, he sighed. “She’ll be fine. Malnourished and dehydrated, obviously. Some bruises on her wrists. But other than that, she’ll live.”

“Nothing else?”

“No sign of other injury. She wasn’t raped, Owen.”

I let out a tense breath.

“Cops figure out who the dead boy was?” he asked.

I nodded. “Boyfriend. Ran off one night for a romantic evening, only he wanted it a little more romantic than her. Things got rough. Report will say Bao defended herself, knocked him out, and he froze to death by the creek.”

“And what do you say?”

I thought about it. “Boy didn’t have any bruising to suggest how he was knocked out. He was bigger and stronger than her. She was too disoriented to even make it home. Something else knocked him out.”

“Poj Ntxoog.”

“I don’t think it was that either.”

“Come on, Owen. You’re telling me you don’t believe? After all this?” He gestured around the room with his whiskey glass.

“It’s not that. I don’t think it was a Poj Ntxoog. I think it looked like one. You said Poj Ntxoog isn’t associated with missing kids, right? They’re tricksters. Which goes to reason they wouldn’t be protectors either.”

He nodded.

“Chee didn’t call it Poj Ntxoog when she saw it,” I continued. “She called it by name. Mai Neng.”

“The first girl.”

“Exactly. And there was something about the bodies. What this guy did to them. He turned their feet around, Fong. Turned them backwards.”

“Jesus christ,” Fong said. “This is fucked.” He downed his whiskey, and I poured him another one. He stared at it thoughtfully. “They’re going to catch him.” It sounded like a statement, but it felt more like a question.

“I don’t know.” We sat in silence, waiting for the sun to rise on Milwaukee.

Those stripes brought me here. They kept me here for months. And now they are about to make me famous.

I pluck my phone from the console and check the signal. One bar. I might get lucky. I touch redial and listen, tongue on the roof of my mouth, for any sign of a connection. Ahead, the road twists right, then left, around turns blind even in broad daylight. It’s nearly midnight now, with the moon a sliver that does little to aid navigation. I want to press harder on the gas. Instead, I tap the steering wheel with one broken, dirty nail.

“Come on, come on,” I mutter at the phone. After a minute, I glance at the screen again. No signal.

“Damnit.” I thumb the screen to sleep and drop it in the console, then shift my attention back to the road.

The gleam of eyes in my high beams throws my heart into overdrive. I slam the brakes, and the dark woods spin around me until the stag is racing toward my door instead of my bumper. My hands drag the wheel toward him just as he leaps to fly into the right side of the windshield. The impact rolls his body until his flank presses through the demolished glass, half passenger, half hood ornament.

Tires skid, rubber squealing, then crunching gravel and low brush on the downhill slope as I leave the road.The ground drops into a steep bank and the car tilts, two wheels in the air before it rolls, leaving the stag behind. Airbags before and beside me explode, thickening the air with the smell of burnt rubber. Rocks, shrubs, and trees somersault on the other side of the blood-spattered windshield. I bounce in my seatbelt, arms flopping and head joggling to some macabre beat I cannot hear.

The car slams into something—a tree? a boulder?—at the edge of the precipice, that loud metallic crunch echoing as my head whips to one side. The sudden stillness, broken only by the falling of loosened debris and the distant bawling of the injured stag, reaches numbing fingers to drag me into its depths as the woods around me fade to black.

I wake to bright agony, the reek of gasoline, and whispered voices. Someone found me?

“Help!” I whimper and turn my head in excruciating increments to see who has come to my rescue. The slope above me shines pale, brighter in the waning moon’s light, which gleams on the silvered fur of animals gathered there, staring at my predicament. Humans stand among them with long mussed hair, willowy forms, wide eyes… and wings.

I blink, rub my face, which burns with gritty powder. When I look again, the animals and winged people are gone. Trees above the slope stretch shadows down the scrubby incline as if to push or pull my wrecked car from the ledge.

What’s left of the windshield sags toward me like a hammock, its surface spider-webbed and perforated. Glass pebbles lay scattered over me, the seats, the floors, the dash, even the ground around the car, their surfaces winking with moonlight. They look as cold as I feel. I reach for my phone. Its usual cubby sits empty save for the glass. My lifeline is unreachable, lost inside the vehicle or lying somewhere between me and the road that I left so unexpectedly moments—or was it hours?—ago.

I push the button on my seatbelt. The catch ignores my fingers, snugs me tight against the seat cushion. I press harder, struggle, and the car shifts, groaning against the rock.

The drop before me wobbles. I freeze. A chill beyond the night air pumps gooseflesh up my neck, down my arms, across my chest.

Movement on the dark slope draws my attention, head and neck throbbing in protest. Halfway up the hill, a figure makes its way toward me. Another motorist saw the deer, maybe. I close my eyes and breathe a sigh. Help, at last.

“Oh, thank god.” The sound of my own voice is like a knife in my head. “Did you phone for help?”

My rescuer continues down the slope in silence until she nears my car. Thick white hair falls over her shoulders, casting darkness across her eyes. Her cheeks are shriveled like a plum left out too long. Her nose and chin protrude into the moonlight, her puckered mouth lagging in the valley between them. The woman’s shoulders hunch forward, rounding her back with the weight of years. One gnarled hand holds a long, knobbed staff, a useful tool on this uneven ground. Dark clothes hide the details of her body.

Outside my window she pauses, takes in the scene. Looks my car—and me—over from end to end, inside and out. She sucks her teeth. Shakes her head. Puts her free hand on one hip.

“Got yourself in a pickle, I think,” she croaks.

The throbbing in my head muddles my thoughts. “Yeah. Can you help me out here? My seatbelt’s stuck. I need a knife or scissors.”

She stares a moment longer, her eyes still obscured.

Her inspection triggers an itch deep in my chest, beyond the reach of fingers that might dispel it. But something else stirs beneath the itch, an unnerving sensation, as if she is reading my soul. Head trauma can cause all sorts of hallucinations.

Soft footfalls whisper outside my door, and I look up just as the old woman grasps the handle.

“Careful,” I warn. “My balance is off.”

“More than you know,” she says. She opens the door while muttering something beneath her breath, reaches across me, and releases the belt with a light touch. The strap zips back into its sheath, and she takes my hand. “Out with you.”

I try to be gentle. She looks as aged as the woods around us. But the power in her hand and arm, strong as the rocks beneath our feet, catches me off-guard. She pulls me upright as if I were a toddler.

“Thank you,” I say. “You don’t know how glad I am to see you. I’m Caitlin.”

“I know who you are.”

Her nose points toward me, but I still can’t see her eyes. I frown. Maybe she found my wallet on the ground? I didn’t look for it in the car. I peer down at her hunched form as it moves back toward the wood.

“Come.”

Strange how I hear her command so clearly, even though she did not raise her voice from a near-whisper. I glance back at my totaled SUV, teetering there on the edge of a precipice so deep-set in darkness I cannot see the bottom. I shudder and scurry uphill toward my savior. Aches erupt down my back, as they have in my neck. Twice, I almost fall.

“Do you have a car on the road?” I call. “A phone, maybe?” Probably not at her age. “What’s your name?”

Her silence makes me wonder if she’s heard me, so I shout my questions again. The effort makes my teeth throb.

“You’ve already roused the forest,” she says without looking at me. “No need to wake the dead, too.”

“But I—”

“Shh.” She nears the tree line, her steady pace devouring the rugged terrain like she could do it in her sleep.

A soft peripheral glow draws my eye. Only shadows meet my gaze. Another, ahead, pulls my attention back to our path. Again, there is nothing to see but leafy boles and the last of the moonlight as it slips behind the crags above the treetops.

We follow the path of destruction wrought by my crash. The canopy’s cover mostly shades our passage. I hurry to keep up with the woman’s form, even though a blind person could find their way back in this trail of vegetative carnage. I look around at the gouged terrain, gaps in the kudzu, saplings splintered or ripped from their foundations, and shake my head. How I avoided every mature tree, how I managed to ram against the one boulder at the edge of the crag, how I remain upright and breathing are puzzles I cannot solve. Any landing you can walk away from, as they say.

Ahead, a snuffling grunt accompanies feeble tremors to one side of the trail. The old woman slogs through uprooted shrubbery and broken branches toward the sound. I follow until I see the catalyst of this near disaster.

The stag lies on its side, blood visible along its flank, belly, and face, even in this light. The angle of its head belies the rapid, trembling breaths that still flutter in its chest. It should already be dead. It will be. Soon.

Ah, hell.

My lungs heave for both myself and this innocent bystander. Stupid mistake. I should have been going slower. I should have waited to call Jonah. I should have been watching the road. My knees tremble. My chest shakes. I clap a hand over my mouth. This wasn’t part of the plan.

It hurts to move and I mutter a curse. Climbing and digging will be difficult for a while. Healing, not to mention finding a new SUV and tools, will slow me down. Such a nuisance, this interruption. Innocent or not, if it weren’t for this deer, I’d already be in town, having a beer with Jonah and telling him about my find.

The old woman reaches the stag’s side. I stumble closer.

She squats, lithe as a teenager, touches her hand to its head, mumbles words in a soothing tone I can’t quite place, and the animal quiets. Settles. Its last breath frosts the air around its head, and the woman stays there long after, her lips moving in a litany I cannot hear. At last, she strokes the beast’s head one last time, pulls herself upright, and looks at me.

“Such a shame,” I say. “He was a beautiful stag.”

She stares, expectant. Her hair gleams in the dark.

“What?” I point at the animal. “I didn’t mean to kill it. He was just there, on the road. It was an accident.”

She watches. Says nothing.

“Surely you don’t think this is my fault. If anyone’s to blame here, it’s the stag. He almost killed me.”

The woman shakes her head, a subtle motion in the surrounding darkness. Again, a glow appears off to one side but is gone when I look that way.

“He volunteered,” the woman murmurs.

My attention swings back to her face. “What did you say?”

“I am Baba.” She steps into the trees, gestures for me to follow. “You should see.”

“What about the road?” I can’t seem to help the whine in my voice. Every muscle in my body burns. I touch my face and find crusted blood there. “I need medical attention.”

Baba stops just inside the wood amid a subtle glow, as if dozens of fireflies surround her. One hand on her staff, she watches me. Waits in stillness.

“I appreciate you helping me, Baba, but I need to get out of here.” I wave toward the road. “I think I’ll try to flag down another driver.”

She tilts her head, a slight cant to the white glow of her hair. “Suit yourself.”

I turn toward the road…

… and awaken still belted in my car.

I blink. Frown. Look around as if I have awakened to a dream. This can’t be right, can it?

No. No, I was out. I was, if not safe, at least not wedged against a boulder on this escarpment, teetering at the precipice of my new life. How did I—

I pinch myself. Hard.

Nothing changes, except that the sky seems lighter now. Stars have faded. Without my phone, I don’t even know what time it is.

I look outside at the ground next to my car. No footprints mar the dewy sparkle there. My head falls back against the seat’s restraint. Baba was a dream?

Whispers, soft as a sigh, tickle my ears like a blade of grass drawn along the skin and I start, jerking my head to the side harder than I’d intended. Pain slices into my head and stabs down my neck into my shoulders. I suck a breath through gritted teeth and wait for it to pass. When my vision clears, I see no one, but I feel them.

“Hello?”

The whispers fall silent. Even early birdsong and morning crickets break off. Morning mist lends an otherworldly haze to the setting.

Then, between one blink and the next, I am back in the path wrought by my car’s passage. Baba waits among the trees while I stand calf-deep in a gouge ripped into the ground, neither of us moved so far as a pace.

“Changed your mind, did you?” She sucks her teeth, a glimmer of light twinkling where I imagine her eyes to be.

“What—” I frown and point at my surroundings as I gape and stutter. “How did—”

Baba plucks a weed, chews it a moment before she moves on. Her footfalls make no sound among the clutter of leaves and twigs, as if she levitates. Her passage sets the sparse weeds swaying and soon she is almost out of sight.

“Are you coming?” Her voice is a whisper carried on an invisible breeze.

Like the murmurs I heard in my car. I was back there. I was. And now I am here. How does that even—

“Don’t dawdle,” she calls back. 

I jog to catch up, stumbling over the clutter, my ankles twisting in their own discomfort. Here, beneath the trees, fluctuating patches of shade and pale light dance and shift across bole, ground, and rock. I stop at one particular stone, the size of my fist, with spangles that gleam like burnt amber in a sunbeam.

I’d know it anywhere, now. Metathracite. Or that’s the name I’ve used. I hope it will serve as a foundation in medical cures for something like cancer one day—the tests I ran in camp indicated its enormous potential—but if it finds a worthwhile home in the tech arena, that will serve just as well for my purposes. My name and career ride on the bet that this is a heretofore unknown mineral, that I am in fact its discoverer, and that its unexpected and unique properties will ensconce my find in a position of high demand. I pick it up.

“Nice rock,” Baba says from beside me.

Startled, I leap almost a foot downhill. I stumble into a tree, one hand pulled back to lob the metathracite in defense. I whoosh a loud, long breath. “Baba, don’t do that. I could have hurt you without meaning to.”

“Could you now?” She squints at me, then nods at the rock. “That ain’t worth what you’ll pay.”

“What does that mean?” My head throbs and I squeeze the back of my neck with my free hand.

She steps away, beckons.

I follow, hefting the stone, valuing it in my mind. If it’s as unique as I suspect, metathracite might even revolutionize entire industries. My mind wanders along that pleasant dream as I traipse after Baba, our steps carrying us farther from my vehicle until I’m no longer certain I could find it again. Maybe she’s taking me to her own car? No. That makes no sense. The road lay closer than this, and the path to that destination needed no breadcrumbs up the hillside. Not after my passage.

Maybe Baba lives nearby and heard the crash?

I glance around. This wood seems best fit for animals and trees and birds. What kind of house might Baba have here, so far from the city’s civilized services? My most primitive campsites may not have running water, but they at least have satellite.

Usually.

The tightness in my shoulders and back make continued movement a chore. I should have swallowed a few aspirin before I left my car. Assuming I could find them in the wreckage. “Where are we going?” I call.

She stops a few yards ahead, in the liminal space between light and dark. I make my way to her side.

Baba points to a carpet of blue threaded between and around the gnarled roots of nearby trees as far as I can see. Sun sparkles in dewdrops on tiny velvet caps where the light breaks through the canopy. In the shade, spidery veins of turquoise glow across the mass fungal growth, peering out from within like lights behind curtained windows.

“Spritefoot,” she says. “Catena civitatis. Guter nachbar. Ffrind y coedwr. No matter its name. As essential to this wood as neurons are to your brain. Watch your step.” She leads me on a narrow path between the vivid beds.

I look behind, where our feet have passed, and catch a glimmer of light as it dissipates behind a tree. Just like the others. What is that? I stop, go back, swing around the tree into a cloud of Lilliputian rainbows, wings aflutter all at once, patches of morning sun reflecting their iridescence. The diminutive buzz of one pair multiplied by dozens, hundreds, hums loud as a swarm of hornets. I gasp, then close my mouth, hopeful I’ve not swallowed one of these creatures.

“Ostanovis’, ty uzhe poveselilsya.” Baba speaks from beside me. She waves at the insects, her tone indulgent, even amused. “Begone. We’ve work to do.”

The tiny wings scatter and Baba resumes our trek. “They’ll be back. Curious creatures.”

I hurry to catch up. “What are they?”

“Fae.”

Images of childhood fancy dance through my mind, complete with enchanted forests where time passed differently than in the human world and where winged beings made their home. “Fae? Like faeries? That kind of fae?”

She tosses me a glance past the white hair on her shoulders, the kind of look my grandmother used to keep wee me silent in the midst of company when I rambled too long. I am no longer small, and I open my mouth to say more, but think better and shut it once again. Baba is my exit plan, though I’m starting to think I would have been better off hiking to the road and hitching back to town.

“You tried that,” Baba calls back. “Didn’t work like you expected, did it?”

I stop dead, my shoulders pulled up tight toward my ears like someone poured ice water down my back. She heard my thoughts?

Ahead, she reaches up into the lower branches of a tree, murmuring words I can’t make out. Her hand comes back down slowly, slowly, and she approaches me, still speaking to something on her palm. When she’s close, I see her little friend.

Little: not the right word in this case. The spider Baba holds is larger than her hand.

If I wasn’t frozen already, this would be the catalyst. I stare at the enormous thing, its body and all eight legs covered in fine, glistening hairs that sway in a breeze I don’t feel. Peacock blue cephalothorax and green abdomen stand out in the verdant gloom of the wood, their luminous color capturing light like insects in its web. Red leg joints make every movement look deadly, and its black eyes shine out at me as if I am a juicy offering at its altar.

I back up a step, and Baba stops. “Lady of the wood,” she says. “Nothing to fear. Say hello.”

I nod, babble some inane greeting to the spider, but keep my distance.

Baba pulls the Lady closer to her face. “Sometimes, if I ask nicely, she donates drops of venom to dry infections. Her silk then seals the wound. She and her sisters eat those pests who would carry disease to me or the other mammals in the woods.”

The spider crawls up Baba’s arm. If it gets tangled in the crone’s hair, I’ll have to help her get it out and I can’t do it, I can’t—

Baba coos to the spider and takes it back to its perch, then continues in her original direction. I follow, veering off the side to pass far from the Lady’s nest while keeping Baba in sight. She treads no discernible path. If I lose her, I will never find my way out.

The silence of this place presses against my ears, my chest. I hug myself as I walk. This is all wrong. If not for my eagerness, if not for that deer, I would be in the city. Jonah and I would be having coffee, or maybe breakfast, at that cable car diner he loves so much. Has he missed me yet? Probably not. Wouldn’t be the first time I’d gone off-grid for weeks. When last I saw him, he tried to give me a job in his department, as if I could ever take root in one spot instead of seeking my fortune out here, under the sky and on the land.

Baba stops. Light falling through the canopy still shows me nothing of her eyes beneath the crown of her hair.

She tilts her head. “Look around.”

I blink. Frown. “I don’t—”

Baba gestures with her chin, left and right. “What do you see?”

Past the wooded shade, a patch of green glows in bright sunlight. Tall spikes of blue flowers bow and waggle with the weight of butterflies and bees that flit between blossoms. A hummingbird, all gleaming iridescence, zips in from the side, spearing flowers one after another.

Above us, crown-shy trees mark fractals against the morning sky, their boughs moving in unison. A small red-and-black bird climbs one bole, moving in jerks and stops, probing the bark before its face with a sharp, long bill. A rustling sound to my right pulls my attention. There, a wild sow shuffles through the undergrowth, her snout scouting the ground before her feet. Behind her, grunting, follow five small piglets, their dark fur spotted and blobbed with random white. They take no notice of us and are gone so quickly I could almost forget they were ever there.

Baba waits, still and quiet.

“Trees,” I say. “Birds. Bees. Flowers. Pigs. Bushes.” I shake my head. What does she want from me?

“There’s your problem. You see the bricks, but not the house.” She gestures. “Those flowers grow only in these forests. They are the only source of food for that hummingbird. The spritefoot and the wood lady who frightened you so are connected. Without the fungus, the spider couldn’t survive. Without the spider, the spritefoot would not grow. The sow and her offspring eat a mushroom native to these mountains. If they did not, the fungi would invade the forest floor, crowd out other native species.” She resumes our journey and speaks over her shoulder, her voice accompanied by the occasional thump of her walking stick on root or stone. “Not just trees. Not just flowers. Not just pigs. Together, they make the Forest. If you pull at even one thread of that tapestry, you damage the whole.”

I follow her footsteps, but her words make no sense.

“Your plan will kill it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“We have been watching you. I know what you intend.”

Aw hell! Just my luck to be rescued by an aged greenie, living off-grid in the woods. Yes, she pulled me from my car. Yes, she appeared to be leading me to safety. But she was also trying to stop me from pursuing a dream.

To hell with that.

“My plan will create medicines,” I say, unable to keep the snark silent. “My plan may even save millions of lives.”

“And what of the billions in this forest, and in its brethren all along these mountains?” She shakes her head, but her voice is as quiet now as it has been all along. “Your actions will trigger their fall and affect lands far from this spot. Is that not too high a price to pay?”

“It’s a patch of trees. It’ll grow back.”

She snorts, shakes her head. Mutters something I don’t catch.

“What?” I say. “We’ll only dig the minerals we need, then we’ll move on. Your precious forest will be fine.”

Baba stops so suddenly I almost collide with her hunched form. She peers at me. “You care nothing for the millions. You care only for the one.”

She moves forward again. I wish I had stayed in my car. I wish I had made my way to the road. I could be in town by now, clean and fed. It occurs to me how thirsty I am.

“You need tea.” Baba starts uphill, her aged body taking the incline better than my own.

I’m not surprised that she heard my thoughts. Hear this one, I think, with an imaginary rude gesture.

Baba laughs, a raspy cackle like the sound of ragged fingernails on sandpaper.

“Where are we going?” I cough, one hand to my mouth, then stare wide-eyed at the rosette of blood on my palm. What the—internal injuries? There is pain, yes, but…

“Almost there.”

Baba’s voice and a squawk ahead of us drags me back to the moment, to my surroundings, in time to see a raven swoop toward us. I duck, throw my arms over my head, and shield my face.

“Glupaya zhenshchina.” Baba’s voice reaches me as she moves forward. “Ne obrashchay na neye vnimaniya.”

I peek between my arms. The bird—enormous against Baba’s head—sits on the crone’s shoulder and eyes me as if I am some strange new prey. It chatters and croaks in a near growl while Baba walks on ahead.

“Almost there,” I say, “where?”

Baba points her staff up the hill.

There, a rickety house perches between two trees whose spreading bases and sprawling roots look like large chicken feet that grip the forest floor beneath the dwelling. Beside and behind its exterior walls, the trees rise like guardians, their leaves whispering in a breeze far above the ground.

“That’s where you live?” I say.

Instead of answering, she ascends the steep slope with ease on footholds only she can see. I clamber after her, finding traction where I can until we stand just before the structure. Beneath, branches stretch between the trees, their massive boughs woven together so long ago their flesh has melded one into the other. At the side, Baba climbs a stair that winds around the trunk. I follow, taking in every tiny detail. Each riser bears pads of soft green moss, thin in the center where Baba treads, plush at the sides out of the reach of foot traffic. There, in the thickness, delicate stalks support pale pink cup-shaped flowers so tiny I must stoop to see their forms. Moisture beads along the surface of these tiny worlds, and I wonder if creatures live therein.

As I start up the stair, a breeze wafts some heady fragrance past. I glance around. There, upslope from Baba’s home, a swath of blue flowers hang teardrop heads that nod and bob along curved stems, their leaves swaying like long blades of dark grass. I sniff the air.

“Deòir na baintighearna.” Baba’s voice distracts me. “Officially Dominae lacrimae, though no one gave them the honor of a formal name until they were thought extinct. Once, they covered the floor of these woods and those in similar landscapes. Now…” She sighs and looks over her domain. “They grow only here.”

I step up to the next riser and fall to my knees and Baba is there, her hand on my arm. She lifts me as if I were a child, as if I did not tower over her hunched form. I peer into her face. Shadows gather where her eyes should be.

“You are weak. You need tea.” She speaks to the raven who still rides her shoulder, and the bird is off, croaking a response in flight. It ascends into the shafts of morning sun breaking through the canopy, its wings blotting out the light, and I am falling. Baba says something in a tongue I don’t recognize. Then… nothing.

The world twists around me, all its facets bathed in hues of murky green. Noises and murmurs filter through the confusion. I squeeze my eyes tight, fight the nausea that rises in my throat and threatens to eject my last meager meal. My fists close around something soft. Something crisp. The green swirling slows, and the voices grow louder, crystallize. One stands out among the rest.

Jonah.

Jonah!

I push against the lethargy and struggle awake.

“Well, hello there.” Jonah’s voice sounds beside me.

His short hair is mussed, as if he were dragged from his bed at a wee hour. But he’s smiling, dimples in stubbled cheeks, thin lips surrounding bright white teeth. Concern deepens the brown of his eyes. Instead of his usual loosened tie and button-down shirt, he wears a wrinkled polo shirt, its logo old, unrecognizable.

Above and behind him hangs the white ceiling of a hospital, and it all comes rushing back. The stag. The woods. The slope. The boulder.

Baba. The fae. The watching animals. The delirium that followed the accident.

I roll my head on the pillow and rub my face, clean now of the burning powder from the airbags. My mentor leans on the bed rail, which creaks. I know his expression without looking—bushy brows pulled together in the center, dark gaze scrutinizing me through the lenses of his spectacles, critiquing my actions as if I am still the prized student who hasn’t quite achieved academic superiority.

I lick my lips.

“You are hereby on notice,” he says, “not to ever worry me like that again.”

“How bad?” I croak. I sound like Baba’s raven friend. The one I dreamed of.

“Well,” he pauses, “you will mend. Your car, however, is toast.”

“Yeah.” In a blink, the woods are rolling around me again. The metallic crunch of car versus boulder echoes in my head.

“Do I need to ask what you were doing up there?” The resignation in Jonah’s voice matches that in his expression.

“No. But—”

“Cait.” He shakes his head. “At least don’t go on these goose chases alone. You could have died.”

“A partner wouldn’t have stopped that buck from jumping in front of my car,” I say. “And then I would have been responsible for someone else being hurt.”

“Let me guess.” Jonah peers at me. “You were on your phone.”

“Trying to call you.” I look into his eyes. “I found it, Jonah.”

He pushes upright, runs fingers through his hair. He shoves his hands into his pockets and mutters something under his breath.

“I didn’t catch that.” No doubt, it wasn’t complimentary.

“We’ve had this conversation before,” Jonah says. “Though admittedly this is the first time we’ve had it in the ER. Don’t make me play it out solo in the morgue, Cait.”

Of course, he’s right. But he’s also wrong. “It’s different this time. I really found it.”

His stare holds mine, peering into me, searching for the truth in my demeanor, my words, my resolve. Well, maybe not that latter. I’ve always been resolved, even when chasing false leads. I like to think of it as my superpower.

“What makes this time different?” he asks, his voice tired.

“I found a mineral layer I’ve not seen before. Anywhere.” I don’t tell him I’d stumbled across it by accident when I fell into a shallow ravine and got stuck there for two days while the swelling in my ankle cleared enough to climb back out. “Took a lot of samples back to my campsite, ran chem baths, extractions, the works. At least as much as I could do in a rough lab.” I grin. “The powdered stone showed amazing properties. I believe it’s catalytic. Everything I added it to changed in unexpected ways.”

Jonah frowns. “Explain ‘unexpected.’”

“I’d rather show you.” I stop. “Wait, did they get my things from my car? All my samples were in my field case.”

“I don’t know. They managed to retrieve a few items, I think, but there wasn’t much left. Getting you out was dicey enough. They can’t get your car out yet. They need special equipment to reach it.”

Damn. My belongings must be flung out along the gouged terrain. In that mess, they may never find my field kit. I’d need another. “Oh well. We can go back for more. It looks plentiful in the gorge walls above the tree line in those mountains, and hints of more farther along the range. Now that I’ve found the markers, we can track it.”

Jonah shakes his head. “Cait, I don’t think I can convince the university to back you again. You’ve had too many false leads.”

I stare at him. This man has supported my endeavors without fail ever since pre-doctoral studies, when I took one of his undergrad classes. Okay, yes, I’ve followed a few trails that petered out, but this—

Metathracite is real. I knew it even before I found proof, and now the rest of the world will see, too. He has to believe me. I won’t accept anything less.

The machine beside me begins to beep with a will. Jonah glances at it, then at me, a frown on his face. I breathe deep, slow. The machine still beeps.

He pats my shoulder. “Calm down, Cait.”

“I’m perfectly calm,” I say. “But you need to listen to me. This isn’t like the other—”

Another machine joins the first, and the door sweeps open to admit two nurses and a doctor. Jonah backs away from the bed.

“Step outside, sir,” says the doc.

Jonah moves toward the door.

“No!” I shout. “Jonah, wait!”

“All right, Ms. Banks.” The doctor injects something into my IV line and smiles at me. “Let’s calm things down, shall we? You need your rest.”

I peer past the doc at Jonah, outside the closing door. “No! Jonah—”

The door clicks shut, blocking him from my view. Hospital sounds blur, fuzzing into the texture of my consciousness like moss on a tree root until I can’t tell reality from fantasy.

The doctor speaks to one of the nurses, her voice drawn out and inhuman. “She gets no visitors until…”

Lights dim, greying into twilight like the forest around Baba’s house. My body grows heavy, pushed down into the mattress as though it were weighted with stones.

I try to speak, to tell the doc that I need to tell Jonah… something… I can’t…

A pungent aroma awakens me. The lumpy bed beneath me and the dark, smoke-stained roof timbers above are not those of a hospital. I try to sit up. When that fails, I try to move my head. Nothing works like it should.

“Hello?” I call.

“Good. I wasn’t sure you were coming back.” Baba’s voice comes from my left, followed by a rasping sound.

“Baba?” Stupid. Who else would it be? Except… I was in the hospital. Jonah was there, and—

Baba appears above me, her figure silhouetted by the light behind her.

“Why am I back here?” I try again to sit up. “And why can’t I move?”

“You never left. I gave you a tincture to stop you hurting yourself.” She tilts her head. “Why this stone?”

I blink. “What?”

“The world is full of rocks and pebbles. Why must you destroy these forests to take ours?”

That again. “This mineral is special. It could help to make groundbreaking medicines. Maybe even cure cancer. But I haven’t found it anywhere outside these mountains.”

“Ah. So, you’ve searched the world over then?”

“Well, no. But I’ve done the research, read papers by geologists in every country. None have reported this mineral.”

She stares at me, or at least I think she does. It’s disconcerting to not see her eyes.

“Your work will kill this wood and others like it, wherever you crumble the mountainside.”

“It’s a few patches of trees, Baba. They’ll grow back.” If I could, I would shrug. “It isn’t like I’m hurting the entire planetary ecosystem or anything.”

She moves out of view. Something clatters, metal on metal. Then she returns and lifts my left foot to slide a thin tray beneath it, one with a trough at its edges. I feel nothing, but the image of my foot on a tray disturbs what remains of my calm.

“What are you doing?”

Baba disappears, then returns with a small bowl, the source of that smell that awoke me. She dips a cloth into the bowl, then swabs a sticky brown substance around my ankle and across the top of my foot.

“What are you doing?” My voice carries a shrill tone. The foreboding that began with a thin tray swells to outright concern.

Again, she moves out of sight. Another clattering sound and she’s back, balancing another tray on a stand beside my foot, close enough to see what it holds.

Knives. Scalpels. Saw. What the actual—

“Baba! What are you doing?”

She turns to me and finally, I see her eyes. I wish I hadn’t. Around the lids, her brown flesh is carved into wrinkles that stretch out to her hairline and down onto her cheeks. In the gap between the lids, deep green irises pierce my soul, their color so dark they appear almost black. No white field surrounds them. If I fall into that gaze, I’ll never crawl out again.

I manage to squeak.

“I’m going to take off your foot,” she explains, her voice calm, soft, as it has been all along.

“What?”

She holds up her instruments as if to examine their edges.

“Why?” I ask, my voice still small. “Is it damaged?”

“No.” She wipes the scalpel with the same cloth from her bowl. “But I can use the marrow from your bones in my tea.” She looks up. “Good for my aches.”

“What?” I shriek. “No, you can’t do that!” I struggle. Or, rather, I try.

Baba faces me. “Where’s the harm? It’s not like I’m hurting the rest of your body, right?” She goes back to cleaning and disinfecting her implements. “You can survive with one foot.”

I babble for a moment, scrambling to find words that will stop this horror from taking place. “Okay! Okay, Baba. You’ve given me a lot to think about. Can you wait and let me consider what you’ve said?”

Baba stops, staring at me like I’m a bug beneath a microscope. “I need that marrow.”

“I know,” I say, too fast. “Just let me think this over. Will you do that?” If I can delay her long enough for this… this tea or whatever to wear off, I can get out of here. I’ll find my way back to the road, somehow. And I’ll do it on two healthy, attached feet.

My insides squirm, as does my brain inside its bony shell, like she’s in there rooting around, searching for the lie I know I’m telling. Oh, she’s going to know. She’ll know, and then she’ll suck my marrow, and—

She looks away. “Don’t think too long.” She drops the tools on their tray and shuffles out of view. Seconds later, a thump and a creak tells me she’s grabbed her walking stick and left the house. Her raven friend croaks to her as she goes.

When I can no longer hear either of them, I try again to move. I strain as hard as I ever have for anything. Nothing happens. I stop, panting. A trickle of sweat rolls off my face. I can’t even wipe it away or scratch the itch it left behind. What the hell did she give me?

Breathe, Cait. Stay calm. Be patient. It won’t last forever.

I pass the time by going over my site tests, checking my process for mistakes, anything that might trip me up when I finally get to Jonah. The realJonah, not some hallucination conjured by mushroom tea or whatever Baba gave me.

It seemed so real, though. His hand on my shoulder, the expressions on his face, the fear that he would leave me there. That he wouldn’t push the University to back yet another Caitlin Banks shenanigan.

A grunt escapes my throat. At least there is some consolation in the fact that it was an illusion, that no one at uni waited to say, “There she goes, chasing rainbows.”

Again, I try to move. Baba’s tea still holds me fast. Geological tables, mineral properties, and hardness scales run through my head. I recite their numbers and figures to myself one after another before attempting to turn my head, shift my arm, lift a finger. When it fails, I start over. And over.

And over…

My finger twitches, scrapes against something soft and crisp with a rasping sigh. I roll my head on the pillow and lick my lips. Thirsty.

A rustling off to my right jolts me. My head whips back to confront the sound. Baba?

But no. White acoustic tiles appear where smokey rafters hung before. A disembodied voice sounds on a P.A. system in the hall.

And Jonah’s face appears above the bed.

Wait, what—

This can’t be real. But if I can move, I can flee. I struggle to sit up.

Jonah presses me back onto the bed. “Calm down, Cait, or they’ll sedate you again. I had to threaten to bring the University in on this matter to get back in here.” He raises an eyebrow. “Don’t make me look bad.”

I peer into his face, waiting for it to switch to Baba’s. When it doesn’t, and he smiles, I frown. “Jonah?”

“Last I checked.” Reflected light gleams in his gaze, bright spots in the shadows like those in Baba’s face. Back there. In the cottage in the woods.

Where I probably still am.

I close my eyes. “Tell me something only Jonah would know.”

Silence greets my demand, and I look up into his frowning face. The awkward pause draws out while I rote-quote mineral properties in my mind. The machines remain quiet.

Jonah blinks. Shakes his head. “You got drunk after your dissertation defense.”

“Who doesn’t?” I peer at him. “Anyone could guess that.”

“You showed up at my house naked at four in the morning.”

Oh. Okay, he’s probably Jonah. Except even if I am imagining it, I know that event. Well, I sort of remember it.

He leans on the bed rail, his face coming closer as he props on his elbows. “This is about more than finding rocks. More than a car accident. Wanna fill me in?”

I open my mouth, and he holds up a finger.

“If,” he continues, “you can do it calmly.”

I take a slow breath. Press my lips together. Stay calm. Right. Okay. I can do that.

“You won’t believe me.”

He cocks his head, shrugs a little. “Try me.”

My body feels solid, the bed beneath me soft, the smells in the cubby where they’ve stashed me the same as any hospital anywhere. Maybe this is real. I welcome the noise in the corridor in place of forest sounds and raven squawks and, after a pause, I tell him everything—the accident, the lights that looked like people, the animals, the raven, Baba, Baba’s house—except the foot part. I leave that out. Too creepy to think about.

When I stop, he is nodding, a minute movement of his head, as if he is trying to convince himself that this conversation is not the result of a blow to my head.

“Okay. Give me some time to absorb that,” he says. “What about your find? Tell me everything you can. Give me coordinates and describe this clue you found about how to spot the mineral. I want to send a team to confirm your finding while you’re incapacitated. Maybe, by the time you’re back on your feet—” He stops, hesitates, stands upright. One hand goes to his hair, his usual nervous shuffle. “I mean, once you’re all healed, you can join the mining team. If you want to.”

I frown. “Of course, I want to.”

“Details.” He smiles, both hands in his pockets now.

I describe the slender, dark amber- and honey-colored layers between the otherwise blue-grey shale, how to look for the milky scars where the stone had been broken or chipped, and the natural flaw that sent light back in multiple shades of brown. How, unlike most stones of similar color and texture, it breaks off in small, pebble-sized chunks when I chip it away from the surrounding bedrock.

Jonah stops me, pulls out his phone to record, then has me repeat everything I just said.

“Good.” He glances from his phone to my face. “And what was the clue you mentioned? The one that will help you find it again?”

I remember spotting it the first time. Down in that ravine, a quick downpour puddling around my seated body, rising almost to my chest before the rain stopped and it drained away. A chance sunbeam gleaming off the surface of the puddle to shine on the wall of the ravine. That’s what I thought it was, at first. A shine from reflected sunlight.

“The shale layers go from grey to that ruddy brown on both sides of a vein, but as it gets close to the metathracite, it pales to almost pink, as if the color has leached out of it into the mineral between its layers. It’s not a big swath, mind. But that’s a pretty big contrast. It should be easy to see even at a distance.”

“Where, exactly, was your campsite?”

“Coordinates are on my phone. If you can find it. Search the area between where I left the road and where the car landed.” I flash back on that night, the rolling of boulders and trees outside my windshield. I blink the images away. “The university should be able to find it using the geotracker. Look, whoever you send…”

I trail off, stopping myself before I say more about the strangeness of the place. My left foot itches, and I move the right one to scratch it.

It meets only blankets and otherwise empty space. My leg twitches, trying to bring my feet together so I can scratch the itch. I look down at the other end of the bed. There is one hump in the blanket.

One. Not two.

I raise my eyes to Jonah’s and find a grimace on his face.

“It was too mangled, Cait. They couldn’t save it,” he says, reaching toward me.

“No,” I say, my voice sharp, shrill. “Baba did this.” The walls behind him waver, the ceiling shifts from white to sooty to white again. Baba’s soft whisper hovers at the edge of my awareness, teasing, torturing.

Jonah sucks air through his teeth.

“Look,” he says, “you’re safe. You’re in the hospital. Whatever you think you saw wasn’t real. It’s the drugs, Cait.”

“Listen to me, Jonah,” I hiss, pushing all my fear into my words. They tremble with its weight. “There were samples in my car. Look for those and look for my site. It’s important. But whatever you do, don’t let anyone go there alone. They should work in packs, keep watch on one another—”

A machine beside me begins to beep.

“—make them keep watch. Those woods are strange. I told you.”

Jonah squeezes my shoulder. “Cait, calm down. You’re safe here.”

“No.” I shake my head so hard it hurts. Another machine’s alarm joins the first. The wall behind my mentor flickers between Baba’s house and the hospital white. For a moment, Baba’s disinfectant permeates the air. I grab his arm with both hands. “Don’t let them sedate me, Jonah. Don’t let them send me back there!”

He looks alarmed now. He pulls at my fingers, clasped tight around his arm. “Cait, stop this.”

“Jonah, please.”

A third machine joins the chorus, and the duty doctor comes close. His lips move, but the raven’s cries drown his words. The doctor pushes a medicine into my IV and—

The noise stops, replaced by a ringing in my ears and a soughing in the trees behind me. I stand near the edge of a cliff, balanced on one bare foot and what remains of my lower left leg. The stiff breeze of an approaching storm lifts my short hair. Across the gorge, a blob of color wraps around a huge boulder at the opposing cliff’s edge.

My SUV.

Such an odd perspective, this distant view of the boulder that stopped my descent. From here, I see the cracks in the boulder’s foundation. Their fingers reach out into the surrounding cliffside, softening the boulder’s hold on the precipice so that it leans out over empty air. A strong wind could take it down now.

I hobble-turn to face my surroundings. To either side, rough ground edges the precipice, scattered with boulders jutting from or settling into the ground beneath them. I stand at the edge of a twilight forest. Trees crowd this slope all the way up to the ravine where I found the metathracite.

This is Baba’s doing.

I close my eyes. Is she here? Watching? I listen.

The wind.

Birds, far distant, as if they want no part of me.

Traffic. Or, more specifically, trucks. Big ones. As in heavy equipment.

Jonah?

My head goes up, looking for my dig site, but all I see are trees. I take a step back toward the clearing behind me—

Except I can’t. My foot, or rather my stump, won’t move. I look down.

My leg is merging with the ground beneath it. My flesh stretches out and down past rock and stone and bone, rooting itself in the earth. I pull, twist my body, push against the ground with my remaining foot until my toes stretch longer, thickening as they go. They dig past the tendrils of my other leg, reaching toward the marrow of the mountain, anchoring me to this spot.

A tingle spreads from my ankle and lower leg up onto my shins and calves, and I shout. My breath comes faster, noisier. Before me, animals peer around boles, creep out into the open. Two bobcats stand near a lynx. A wolverine hunkers at the base of some nearby scrub. An owl flaps in to land on a branch.

The itch spreads up my legs and I look down. Skin and clothing have thickened into scaly brown. As I watch, my legs merge. I breathe hard and fast, lungs keeping time with my racing heart.

What did Baba give me?

What did the doctors give me?

A grizzly joins the animal audience, rises to its full height, and looks down on me as if I am a morsel too small to consider. An elk, majestic in its size and beauty, ambles into the scene, followed by a small pack of coyotes and a fox pair.

The thickening itch is in my torso now. I twist my shoulders, flailing against this change.

The fae arrive, standing in full view among the animals, all of them moving closer as the wind rises, keening up the cliff face to lift my hair, which thickens and stiffens and won’t fall back into place. I raise my hands to touch it, and my arms freeze, extended toward my head. Twigs, then leaves sprout from my fingers, my forearms, my elbows. My skin thickens into the brown scale of my legs. The bark spreads up my chest, my neck. Even as my hair stretches out into branches thick with foliage, the bark covers my face.

I can’t breathe! My lungs—do I still have lungs?—suck at nothing, like someone has stretched plastic over my face.

But I still hear and feel.

Murmurs, whispers, the electrical sensation against my skin regardless of its new form. The presence of the fae. Close. Touching me. Murmuring some magic. Did they do this?

Over all, the growl of heavy equipment digging into the cliff above the wood. Jonah’s crew, come for my metathracite.

But if I was never in the hospital, if that wasn’t real, how did he know? My thoughts tumble over one another like ants trying to escape a flood and realization slams into me. I am now part of these woods. Will it survive the dig?

Baba’s voice carries on the wind.

“Now we will see,” she whispers, “if the bones of one foot will take the whole body with them when they go. Taste the fruit of your labor. You will feel it all.”

White hot fear races through my veins like sticky sap. I inhale, draw air through my skin, my leaves, and scream. The sound that emerges is the thundering wind of a hundred wings as a whole flock of ravens take flight from my branches. Then they are gone, and the canyon echoes with the grinding of metal on stone as the diggers begin their work.

– National Ukrainian song

When the Vasylkovs’ willow dried out, the family decided to leave.

The Vasylkovs lived near the forest, where the houses were new and extravagant. Few people liked them because Oleg, the father, worked in the town, and their mother never bought anything from the local shop. The kids were like everybody else though: bruised knees and elbows, grimy faces, funny laughs behind jagged teeth.

Zhenya knew they were lucky. Their old but sturdy house, built by her great-grandfather, was at the crossroads far from the Vasylkovs. Her father was neither a policeman nor a rich man, but the news came to him first, like gifts. People brought their words, pains, and fears to him. Perhaps because he had plenty of others’ dreams, her father had never had his own. He had a tanned, sharp, and noble face — as a kid, Zhenya often imagined all knights in fairy tales with his chin. And not a single person dared call him a rascal.

Zhenya’s father had always been the head of the village, though power had never tempted him. Maybe that was the reason everyone liked him so much. The habit repeated itself: the news about the Vasylkovs’ willow was brought to them first.

“Talk to him,” said Maria, nervously studying the window. “Olezhka’s ready to leave. He’s not completely insane, is he?”

“He isn’t local,” answered Zhenya’s father. “Hard to guess what’s in his head.”

Zhenya saw the doubt on his face. That was why no one wanted the newcomers in the village: they lacked the guts to sprout here, and their trees were weak too. Far worse: the Vasylkovs had almost cut down theirs when they moved in! They would’ve been refused their house deal had her father not intervened. It was strange, in a way. The willow near their house was watching them from above every night, and they didn’t even know. It was watching, without averting its gaze, and it knew where everyone slept.

“I’m coming with you,” Zhenya caught her father’s sleeve as soon as Maria left. “I’ve got to learn, after all.”

He gave her a small sort of smile. Their family had only one child, and it would be only Zhenya who would listen to the future people’s grief. She already knew them — saw them in her dreams. She was visiting everyone head by head, like houses. Zhenya was her mother’s daughter, after all; it had taken years for them to get used to her.

“Just don’t make them too uncomfortable,” her father said softly. “We need them to stay.”

Spring was cool, as if it shied away from the village, kissing it lightly and stepping back. Her light touch was barely audible in the air. The motionless branches looked dead when Zhenya and her father went outside the yard. It felt like bad weather. Moribund.

While they were walking to the Vasylkovs’ house, Zhenya saw frightened faces in the windows: children and adults who did not want to go outside and join the talk. They didn’t want to look at the willows in their yard, like a person with cancer who would not want to know their diagnosis. But they watched anyway. Tall, strong silhouettes, like elongated figures, were waiting for them.

It seemed to Zhenya that those peeking at them from every yard were not only people. The willows, leaning forward, almost climbing out of the ground, reached out to them, bent their long, delicate hair-like branches, and almost touched the road. Scratched their heads with catkins. Zhenya jumped over the puddle, slipping on the dirt —

The wood creaked right next to her. Above her ear.

She turned sharply and raised her head. The dark crest of the tree kept looking at her, peering into the depths of her pupils. A chill slowly crept up her spine. The thin fingers of fear.

“Zhenya,” her father called, “Don’t look.”

She ran after him. Ancient, wise, hungry creatures these were. There was something predatory about them, as if this motionlessness, this being stuck in the ground was an artifice. As if they were playing a game: look away — and they will catch up.

Everyone in the village had hoped that her father would persuade the Vasylkovs to stay. Zhenya looked uncertainly at the high fence, the new car, the dry twigs near the roof of the house and muttered:

“How did they last so long? Did you look after their tree yourself?”

Her father stayed silent. He probably had something to say because he was gentle, weak towards his wife and daughter, never saying a rude word to them. But he did not say anything this time because Oleg opened the gate and went out to the car. His face was sweaty despite the weather, and his hands held the boxes too tightly. His fingers were whitened from the power of his grip. Her father looked behind him, but Zhenya already knew everything herself; she moved aside, hid her hands behind her back, and stood up like a guard. She was always a bit of a wild child, slow in her movements, but something about her, despite all her attempts to appear nonchalant, scared people. While her father got people’s respect, Zhenya… Zhenya was needed so that they did not run away. Sometimes, they joked about it at home when no one heard. Mother always laughed the most.

“Ivan,” said Oleg gloomily, and then to her: “Hello, kiddo.”

They always spoke to her like that, as if the name did not belong to her. Zhenya did not even blink. Her father took Oleg by the shoulder when he put the box down and faced him. He was strong — stronger than most — but his fingers were relaxed. Calm. Oleg was standing like a statue; his shoulders shook like twigs in the wind.

“You don’t have to do this,” said her father, “you know, Olezhka. Just plant a new one.”

Olezha had the face of a wounded dog. Zhenya knew that he would die soon. It was similar to an apprehension some people possessed when they guessed the weather in the evening.

“Your Katya should have told us,” Oleg spat on the ground. “And now what?”

Something passed between them. Zhenya stared at the grass. She hated people attacking her mother, but she knew there was no use arguing. Her father cleared his throat, and his courage almost broke.

“She is sick,” said her father, “she can’t guess anymore. The Kovalchuks’ tree is already dry. Old Liuda’s, too. Don’t take that on your conscience. Plant a new one. Stay.”

Instead of eyes, Oleg had bottomless wells.

“It has already infected those houses, Ivan. I have two children.”

Zhenya kept looking at his shoes, at the old sneakers, green from grass and paint, and thought: who will catch up with him? No one plants willow trees in cities. There is no need. But Oleg would bring his disease into the world, and they would find him, and he would not rest. She had dreamed about it, but dreams, like tree seeds, had a tendency to scatter everywhere. Not all of them sprouted.

“At least close the windows,” said her father, “and they won’t get in on the first day even without you inside.”

Because willows were about home. About people on the other side. What climbed from the dead trunks did not spread to other families until it opened the house like a shell. And it was the duty of everyone who lived in the village to be a bank that could not fall. An obstacle.

“Well,” said Oleg, “I’m not a complete asshole.”

He didn’t look at them anymore.

On the first day, they loaded the car. On the second, they left. On the third, twenty people gathered, all of them with seedlings. Zhenya was among them, holding two pieces. But she had to do everything herself. People always dropped stuff when she was around.

She slowly dug a hole, stroked the tiny leaves like they were puppies, and urged them to grow. She listened to the noise of people while the sky above them slowly darkened.

In the morning, before the fog had lifted, they found the Kovalchuks on a willow. Father, mother, son, swaying. It was a high tree, protected for generations. The legs barely rocked without the wind.

“Don’t look,” her father told her, “Zhen’ka.”

But she did anyway. She noticed that the Kovalchuks’ son, Kolya, had rather tiny feet.

Her father covered her face with his wide palm, and the dry hand softly hid everything from her.

“Turn away. Stop! No. Find their cat. The black one, remember? Take it home.”

They knew the cat would be alive because it was not human. Zhenya remembered it: small and weird-looking, a little cross-eyed. Cross-eyed cats sometimes wander into the wrong places. So they say. Zhenya knew that such creatures had better intuition, and she rushed to the Vasylkovs as soon as a black tail appeared behind the fence. Her father also saw that and did not stop her.

Strange, Zhenya thought, crawling through the hole in the fence, and the house was still standing. If they broke into it, there would be cracked windows and broken doors, not a home but merely a box. And this one looked as if nothing had happened.

Zhenya went around the house, not looking at the tree trunk. She had heard that they were climbing out from there after the tree had died. Where there was an old hollow, something slowly moved and shuffled, and the noise grew.

Something blew into her ear, like her mother in childhood, and Zhenya turned her head a little and felt the cold slowly flowing under her feet from the dry roots. It was as if something slowly creeped out from there, pulled out of the ground like rot. She never looked. The cat didn’t look, and she wouldn’t. Animals are smart. The wet grass tickled, said sorry, sorry, and rustled sadly. All the windows looked at her with black eyes, barely catching the sun’s rays. Dead, the house stood still, deceptively friendly. Like a trap.

Zhenya stepped aside and made an arc around the house. She went out into the backyard, which was littered with old things. She looked at the windows behind. They were closed tightly.

Except a window into the basement.

Zhenya felt a damp fear slide down her neck.

There was no need to break the glass or the door if at least one way was open. They climbed into the house and studied it, felt the walls, penetrated the floor, the ground, and furniture, and the place was lost. And then they attacked the neighbors.

“Prick,” hissed Zhenya.

Oleg had propped up the window with books, leaving it wide open. He did not protect his own house, and in taking his barrier down, he had let the putrid current from the dead willow’s heart flow through the Kovalchuk’s house. His house was a lost cause, and it didn’t stand its ground, the barrier disappearing instead of resisting the attack. Oleg gave the Kovalchuks up to the creatures like a badly wrapped present.

If the families’ willows didn’t die out and continued to grow, they weren’t found on the branches. Everyone knew it, and everyone was ready. But such families were few.

From morning till the evening, the children collected catkins around the lakes and near their houses, passing them from hand to hand, from palm to palm. And put them on the windows and around their homes. Little by little, the smiles disappeared from their faces, something empty nesting in their eyes. House after house fell like dominoes. The cemetery, which had known no deaths for years, was expanding, and the smell of damp earth hung in the air. That’s why they didn’t hope anymore.

Within a month, the Hudymchyks’ willow tree also withered. They were neighbors. Zhenya was playing with Liza, their youngest daughter, in her yard, but the girl kept turning her head, looking back at the dead tree. Zhenya didn’t look. She believed that it could feel and get inside.

“Can’t your dad do something?” asked Liza. “Anything at all?”

Zhenya counted her own fear through the beats of her heart against her ribs. She had already thought everything through. Everything she could. She considered offering Liza to stay at her place for the night, but the shadow on Lisa’s face stopped her. Anguish had already left a mark on her; you couldn’t hide that in the house.

So Zhenya knew that Olezha and his family were dead. She heard the Vasylkovs’ willow breathing heavily with strained dry branches and felt its sad murmurs when she watched the family’s house and its closed door. Good riddance. Not Liza, though. Not all the others.

Words got stuck in her throat, but she did not cry. Zhenya restrained herself, knowing that if she revealed her alarm, it would only rot Liza’s mood. And the willows needed to be believed in.

“Listen, Lizka, my folk’s the same as yours,” said Zhenya, “and you planted the new ones. They started to grow, didn’t they?”

Liza looked at the thin trees, caressed by the weak spring’s warmth. A crinkle passed between her eyebrows. She thought intensely.

“They did.”

At night, after closing the windows and hiding the cattle, Zhenya and her father listened to the night. Zhenya looked into the living room, coming into the pale light of the TV. Her mother was silently crying, covering her face with her hands. She fell ill and could no longer hear the willows. Zhenya thought that she also heard them sometimes. Their rustling of leaves, their hungry sh-sh-sh-sh-sh-sh, like a creature lulling a child to sleep before suffocating it. But her mother was like a radio station, and instead of music, she heard the tongue of trees. Zhenya sat beside her and patted her shoulder awkwardly, like any daughter trying to comfort her mother. She heard her father enter the room and listened to his soft steps approaching. He surrounded them with such peace and warmth that even Zhenya’s tears stung her eyes.

“This has happened many times before you, and it will happen after you,” said her father into her mother’s hair. It was thick, curled at the tips, and it tickled Zhenya’s cheeks. It looked a bit like the catkins. Zhenya could feel how calmly her father’s heart was beating and wondered: was he telling the truth, or had he learned to lie calmly?

They went to sleep. Tears always made her fall asleep better.

The thump was quiet and stealthy, and the hair on Zhenya’s arms rose up. The house was asleep, but they had woken up outside.

If she didn’t listen, she could imagine rain pounding on the walls and roof, sickeningly beating its rhythm. She could open the window, place her palm under the drops, and catch one.

Or they would catch her.

It sounded like hundreds of paws running on the Hudymchyks’ house.

A few passed right along her bedroom wall, jumped on the window, and Zhenya pressed herself against the bed, petting the dog. It twitched a little, and Zhenya felt the animal’s pulse racing against her fingers, fearing that it would now snap, revealing them, and the creatures would turn their heads to the two imposters, catch the glance of them through the curtains, absorb their fear.

All sound vanished from the street.

Zhenya kissed the dog on the nose and smoothed its ears, mentally asking: be quiet, oh pretty please, don’t whine. Her heart pounded in her throat, and she didn’t know whether they were noisy because she couldn’t hear anything underneath the static in her head.

Slowly, very slowly, the dog fell asleep. Fear left Zhenya’s body in waves, leaking from the sweat, and she started to dream, wrapping her arm around the dog. It seemed to her that this way, she could control it till the morning.

Just before dawn, she heard the glass outside cracking. At first, it was a tiny, barely audible sound, like the distant buzzing of a mosquito, then an explosion, as if someone had yanked it with all their might. Zhenya sat up sharply, forgetting all about caution, and her consciousness was going away with the sound of the glass breaking. The dog was nowhere to be seen, and Zhenya slowly stood up, burning her feet against the cold floor. Now, it was no longer quiet. It was complete chaos.

She pulled the curtain aside.

The moon was full, and everything around was gray and flat. Hundreds of bodies, black as nothing, fell through the window of the Hudymchyks’ home. The creatures were as flexible as water. There were many of them, and they crawled and covered the house with themselves.

Liza shouted, then stopped. Zhenya got up to go to another window, pressed her face against the glass—

The window was barely open, like the mouth of a half-sleeping beast. There was a shadow right next to it. Zhenya froze next to the glass, her eyes leveled with the eyeless, mouthless face. Its face was nothingness. It clung to the house like a piece of cloth, and its head spun from side to side.

It did not breathe or make noise, but the space around it seemed incredibly loud. It was looking for an entrance. It was listening.

Zhenya took hold of the edge of the window and pulled inaudibly, not breathing.

She knew that it came from the Hudymchyks and didn’t get lost — the creature was looking for more. There were many of them against her wall: bodies in a negative photograph. They pressed against the glass on the other side so the sky vanished.

Zhenya pulled again. Her fingers barely found the thin handle. She was shaking. She tried again, but her fingers did not obey.

Zhenya swallowed. She made a movement so rash and quick that she almost slammed the window. The glass began to crack from the pressure of bodies. She stopped a second before making a sound.

She bit her cheek from the inside, slowly rocking her whole body, coaxing herself to calm down, and with that movement, slowly, centimeter by centimeter, she closed the window.

Her wet palm froze in front of a creature’s face. It poked its face into the glass. Let me in, asked the creature silently. Zhenya sucked in air through her teeth and froze. She could no longer feel her fingers.

Someone shouted — and the creature jerked away. They all ran, and their stomping rang through the house for the last time.

Liza’s mother screeched. The sky became visible again.

By the end of the month, the bodies hung like bells in front of almost every house. The willows were no longer protecting them, only letting more and more creatures out. Children were not allowed outside, and their thin parents were trudging and collecting the remains of catkins, boarding up windows and doors. The streets became empty.

Zhenya went downstairs and saw two silhouettes, her father and mother, against the background of a foggy window. Everything was gray and melted in the air. And they? They were as if carved from wood. But Zhenya stepped forward, the board creaked under her feet, and they slowly turned their heads towards her. They did not retreat, did not run away. Her parents had always loved each other simply and honestly, and it was the best truth about her life, the first she had learned after their love for her. The same was happening right before her eyes. She was made of their faces, their bodies, woven from their emotions, and everything they felt, she also knew.

“No,” said Zhenya, “no, no.”

The light did not pour but slowly flowed through the curtains, threadlike, not the enemy of darkness, but its lazy, attentive brother. Her mother patted Zhenya on the cheek as she took a step towards her, and they hugged. Zhenya’s thoughts, except for this one, were slowly decaying, but then, something was unfolding inside her, clinging to her throat, like Zhenya to her mother’s shirt.

She started to shake and cry. There was the same dead light under her eyelids. The village was slowly dying; she knew they would be the last. It should be so.

She and her father took axes and kindling. Only Zhenya cried. While Zhenya was clinging to her mother, she leaned over and kissed her daughter’s forehead. She smelled like spring, sun, and leaves.

“Sometimes it doesn’t work out, no matter how hard you try,” said her mom, “But it’s alright, little one.”

They cut down and burned all the willows in the village, both healthy and diseased. They went around all the houses, walked through every road to the forest. Few people helped them because they knew it was none of their business. Such things stay in the family.

Leaves with flowers covered the ground like a carpet. The catkins stuck to the skin, the droplets and dry branches hid behind their ears and fell into their pockets, and her father and Zhenya did not look at each other. They did not listen to the slow crackling of the fire. Like families destroyed from the root, dozens of lights emerged all over the village.

Scratches and calluses bloomed under Zhenya’s fingers, and her eyes were blinded by tears and smoke.

In the evening, when not a single willow tree remained, they walked home to the joyous, drunken shouts of the survivors. Zhenya saw small children, pregnant women, and tired men waving to them. Only the faces of the old people were sad. They did not congratulate Zhenya and her father; they mourned.

The infection passed, but the payback was theirs.

Zhenya and her father entered the house; the warm light of the corridor caught the black eyes of the open door from the shadows. No one came out to them. How difficult it was for her to take at least one step! To break this silence!

They went into the room where her mother was. It was dark there, although the moon was visible through the open window. Zhenya looked at the bed, feeling the taste of ash on her tongue. Her father allowed himself the first sob and took a step forward. His tired hands touched the bed.

They collected everything left: burnt bark instead of skin, leaves instead of braids. They took it all in their palms, kissed it, and burned it in the backyard.

She doesn’t know why he’s here. Her eyes dart to him every time she takes a sip, but he doesn’t seem to want anything. His face is as she’s always known it — round and open with enormous mud-brown eyes — only a little bit paler, and lacking completely in life. The man sitting before her is dead, definitely, but he’s also not a figment of her imagination.

Krish Three is sitting beside Krish Two with his face turned away from her, his mud-browns fixed on the cereal cabinet. No shame in loving coco puffs, he’s said before, but he can’t say that now. And he did love them, sometimes more than her, but never more than the pills, which are also stashed in there. He can’t eat them and will stare blankly when she will take them out later and empty them into the bin. She will then scoop up some coco puffs with her fingers and shovel them into her mouth even though she hates chocolate.

Krishes Four and Five are in the kitchen, both wearing his favorite t-shirt. Urdu letters scream khanabadosh in lemon yellow against their black chests. One of them watches the stovetop when Noor cooks her meals — chicken curry, mostly, in defiance of mourning protocol because who’s going to stop her? When she eats, she eats for him too. Krish Five squats next to the fridge because that’s where the rum is, wedged between the vinegar and the sticky bottle of Rooh Afza. This, she doesn’t drink for him.

Krishes Six and Seven are standing with their backs to each other in the bathroom. Each time she comes in through the door, she finds Krish Six looking at his vial of attar, now nearly empty because he left its mouth open when he used it for the last time. Gill 1460, which made him smell like the rain, now makes the bathroom smell like the monsoon. Krish Seven, looking the other way, stares at his splintered reflection in the mirror — once shiny and whole, now webbed like a windshield that’s been hit by something hard enough to crack, but not break it. The narrow shards of glass lodged in his knuckles glint darkly in the LED light.

Krishes Eight and Nine appear on the sofa the next day. She positions herself between them and watches a mushaira for Krish Eight, who is facing the wall-mounted television, letting Ghalib’s poetry mist over the 4K display and perfume the room like incense. Krish Nine sits on the other side of her with his hands clapped to his ears, his eyes squeezed shut, and his mouth thrown open in a silent scream.

On some nights, curled under the dohar on her chosen patch of carpeted floor outside the bedroom door, she thinks about how all of this is Ghalib’s fault.

کوئی ویرانی سی ویرانی ہے
دشت کو دیکھ کے گھر یاد آیا
There is a desolation more desolate than all others:
a desert reminds me of home.

Pulling the dohar over her ears, she tries to hear the sound of her husband’s voice reciting this sher. But a different couplet curls vapor-like into her mind, dragging up with it her first real memory of him. In a classroom where Mathematics was taught in the mornings and Urdu in the evenings, he had offered it to her like it was a rose.

ان کے دیکھے سے جو آ جاتی ہے منہ پر رونق
وہ سمجھتے ہیں کہ بیمار کا حال اچھا ہے 
When she looks at me, my face becomes so awash with light 
that she thinks I — an ailing man — am well.

Krish Eighteen is looking at a wheelie bag in the closet. A black American Tourister, hard-shelled and reliable. It holds the clothes he carried on his last business trip. Fancy dress time, he would joke every morning while putting on his office shirt, aware of how ridiculous he looked in it. The fit was never quite right, no matter how many sizes and cuts he tried on.

Noor took the bag down from its shelf yesterday, thinking she’d empty it over the next few days. Now Krish Nineteen is curled up in its spot with his face to the wall. She remembers this from last year, when rum and employment were distant memories and the pills weren’t killing pain like the pharmacist had said they would.

I want to be a father, he said in that evening’s haze and something he saw on her face ignited him. There was some shouting, a dinner plate hurled at the wall, a chair smashed into the floor and kicked a few times, finger-shaped bruises on her neck, a brief blackout, hours of worrying and calling former friends, before she realized he’d never left the house.

In the morning he said, I should never be a father.

درد منت کش دوا نہ ہوا
میں نہ اچھا ہوا برا نہ ہوا
The pain is not indebted to the medicine,
as I am neither better nor worse.

Krish Twenty-four stands facing an empty dust square on the living room wall. There are many others like it, but the one his eyes are fixed on previously held a picture of their wedding. The two of them outside the registrar’s office, him in a cream kurta pajama, her in a red-and-gold Banarasi saree, looking happier than they’d ever be again. The former inhabitants of the other dust squares — their families — had chosen not to attend.

A few feet behind him, the carpet covers a black smudge marking the spot where he started the fire using the photographs he took down. Krish Twenty-five sits cross-legged on top of it, his face turned up toward the patch of soot still suspended from the ceiling.

جلا ہے جسم جہاں دل بھی جل گیا ہوگا
کریدتے ہو جو اب راکھ جستجو کیا ہے
Where the body has burnt, the heart, too, must be charred
As you scrape through the ashes now, what are you looking for?

There are too many of him, blighting the house, crowding every room but one, against whose door she now stands clutching her dohar. She searches behind her back for the doorknob and hears it click against the enormous silence of his everywhereness.

Inside, there is only one of him — the very first, who appeared by himself on the night of his disappearance. She spotted him in the far corner of the room, a few hours into her routine of searching the house and calling people, and knew what had happened before the police called.

She spent the auto ride to the hospital trying to decipher what she was feeling because she really couldn’t tell. The closer she pushed herself to how this was supposed to feel, the farther she felt from everything she knew. It was like trying to fit Krish into a shirt — grief was a piece of clothing she looked ridiculous in.

When she stood before the stretcher, the morgue assistant looked away so she could weep like all the other young widows who came in every day. But all she could do was stare at Krish’s open eyes, which held a strange look of wonder, like he had witnessed a miracle in his last moments alive.

At the crematorium, the scent of rain wafted up to her as he lay on the trolley, a white bundle on the whirring metal belt, restless to be on its way. The cremator swallowed him before she was ready, and in the deafening echo of its mouth slamming shut, days and days and days had passed, soaked in the surprise and unreality of it all.

Every other Krish who had appeared in the house was one of two truths, black and white, and choosing one while denying the other was as easy as breathing. But this one — he was too many truths at once. Desert and home and light and dark and ailing and well and medicine and pain and worse and better and body and heart and she loved him and hated him and wanted to remember him and wanted to forget him and she thought her head would explode. So she slept on the floor outside the bedroom door and never came in.

But now she’s here, with nowhere else to go, and there is only one thing to be done. She walks up to his corner, stands in front of him, and looks into his eyes. They look back at her and begin to fill with wonder, like she remembers from the morgue — like they’re witnessing a miracle. The room feels warmer than before and the floor, cooler. She becomes suddenly conscious of how hard and smooth the granite is, how solid beneath her feet. As she lets the weight of what she’s been trying to wear leave her, he begins to crumble until all that’s left is a pile of grey ash on the floor.