If I’d been in Beauty and the Beast, the hot water would have been waiting for me. I found the sight of the empty tub reassuring. But there were towels in the cupboard, soap in the dish, and I didn’t even have to pump the water up by hand. Of course not — the inverter was fixed, the pump was running. There’d been a hand pump in the kitchen, so that even when the electric one was down, no one would have to haul water from outside. One cassette deck and the place would be a pretty supportable prison. I braided my wet hair and went downstairs.

The kitchen was deserted, but there were signs that someone, singular or plural, had already had breakfast. I found some leftover muffins and carried them with me as I wandered.

I wouldn’t explore the house; it would look as if I were hunting for company. I went outside again instead. Hidden in the gardens beyond the garage, I found the chicken yard, the rabbit cages, and the beehives. There was a wooden shed that I knew from the sweet hickory smell was the smokehouse. Past that, down a wooded trail, in the center of a broad ring of old trees, I found a circular one-story building that I couldn’t identify at all.

Half the building didn’t have walls; there were only the roof pillars, peeled trunks maybe six inches thick, to mark where the walls would be. The floor was dirt, packed smooth, and featureless as if swept. On one side, where the wall started, there was an empty raised platform. There was a center post for the roof, rising out of a cement footing. Beyond the center post, at the back of the circular room, it was dark; but I made out another platform, with a squarish bulk on it like a table or a chest, and irregular points of light. There was nothing to indicate that I ought not to go in.

The center post was painted. It reminded me of the stair railings in Sherrea’s apartment building, the colors twining one after another, yellow, red, black, green, and white. The walls were painted, too, with murals. They were simple and stylized, angular and almost abstract — the antithesis of Sherrea’s cards. A muscular young black man, smiling, wore a red cape and carried a curved sword, and seemed to be walking through fire. A naked woman, wide-hipped and heavy-breasted, her curly blue-black hair falling to her ankles, poured water from a jar under her arm. An old, fat black man sat cross-legged and grinning, as if his erect penis were the best joke in the world. Two snakes twined upward, facing each other, as if dancing on their tails. Between the figures, tying them together, explaining and keeping secrets, were the veves.

The square bulk was an altar, draped in scarlet and purple, and the changeable lights were candles. They reflected off the rest of the altar fittings: glass bottles, a mirror, strings of beads, a silver bowl, two tall vases with flowers in them.