By the middle of the fourth section, I seemed to have missed some essential act of communication. I had lost the thread of the narrative, I suppose. Actors dressed in deep red uniforms identical to those favored by the Kalif’s soldiers began to appear on the stage, to much clapping and cheering from all of us. Finally, some real costumes! Some spectacle to satiate our lust for pomp. They poured onto the stage in a tight pool, almost as if a bottle of wine had overturned and leaked across a table. In their midst, we saw the white turban of a Kalif’s commander as he fired his guns across the stage with a great crack and recoil. The audience roared once more, for he presented a fine sight on that stage, singing or not singing, with his dark beard and mustache, his piercing gaze.

He aimed at a singer and s/he fell—Sophia again, poor Sophia, so fated to fall. The leak of blood, miniature mimic of the soldiers’ progress, that spread across the front of Sophia’s white dress, had the effect of renewing our love for the opera. Such melodrama! Such an authentic battle scene!

From the rising screams and shouts onstage, we naturally expected one clear soprano or alto would rise above, drawing together the threads of chaos. The Kalif’s men would drop their guns and swords. They would become part of a great chorus of voices, or a powerful counterpoint. The lovers would reunite. The houses would reconcile. The curtain would fall, then rise again, that our applause might become more specific, rewarding our favorites.

But none of these things happened. Not a one of them.

Instead, the music began to lose its harmony, become discordant, and momentarily returned as strong as ever as a section of foolish woodwinds held their ground. It then dissolved into individual horns and violins before falling away into silence, leaving only the sounds of struggle.

Silence from the audience, for a moment. (Some of us were just glad the musicians had stopped playing.) Finally, we began to understand. We did not know it to be true all at once, and each of us reached our conclusions separately. But understanding did come to us, some with gasps, some with shouts or screams, others in a silence born of dread or amazement. Under the green light, anything was possible, even an invasion.

When the white-turbaned commander drew his sword and cut Sophia’s head from his neck and held it, dripping and white, by one gloved hand, we knew any performance had ended minutes before. As we had sat there, watching the opera, the Kalif’s troops had invaded Ambergris. (For me, it was a few seconds later, when Sarah Gallendrace appeared onstage, her belly cut wide open, her impossibly pale hands trying to stanch the flow. That’s when I unfroze.)