With these thoughts in my head, I got up to give Elizaveta some space and to check in on Lucinda. Her condition hadn’t changed. She was alive but corpse-like, pallid, unresponsive, fading inward. Even her hair seemed flat, lifeless. Her rapid deterioration bothered me all the more because I was helpless to prevent it. I could not provide her the medicine or assistance she needed. I could do nothing but hope she pulled through until morning, or whenever the storm moved on. Frustrated, I was about to leave when her eyes fluttered open.

I knelt next to her. “Lucinda?” I said softly, quickly.

She stared at me.

“Lucinda?”

“…muñeca…”

“What?”

Her eyes closed.

“Lucinda?”

She didn’t reply.

6

When I returned to the main room Elizaveta was exactly as she’d been, sitting cross-legged, staring at the floor. The candlelight cast a gentle chiaroscuro pattern across her features, making her appear statuesque, ageless. When I sat down, she came out of whatever trance she’d been under and looked at me.

“Lucinda opened her eyes,” I said.

“Yo-moyo!” Elizaveta swiveled her head toward Lucinda’s room. “And?”

“It was only for a couple of seconds. She’s unconscious again.”

“Did she speak?”

I nodded. “She said, ‘Monica,’ I think. Something like that. She mumbled it. But that’s what it sounded like.”

Elizaveta frowned. “Monica, like person?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it was ‘munica?’”

“Munica…” She sat straighter. “Muñeca?”

“Yeah, maybe,” I said. “What does that mean?”

“Doll,” she said.

7

“Are you shitting me?” I said.

Elizaveta shook her head. “Muñeca is Spanish for ‘doll.’ This island, it is called, Isle de las Muñecas.”

“Ah, right,” I said. I pondered this, examining the possibilities, the implications, then added, “I wonder if she thinks she’s in a hospital or something. She wanted to tell us where she was attacked.”

“Hmmm.”

“What?”

“Maybe she thinks doll attacked her.”

I chuffed. “Come on, Eliza.”

“I said she thinks. She is injured. She is dying. Maybe she is… What is word? Sees make-believe? Del…?”

“Delirious?”

“Yes, that.”

I nodded. “She might not have been fully conscious. Could have been speaking from a dream.”

“Should we try to wake her again?”

“How?”

“Shake her. Or pour water on her.”

“On her face? I don’t think that’s a good idea, Eliza.”

“But she could tell us what happened.”

“Or go into cardiac arrest.”

Elizaveta frowned. Thunder resounded. “Earlier,” she said, “before Nitro…before what happened to him…you mentioned a doll. It disappeared. Do you think Solano took it?”