Elizaveta watched as Jack opened the front door to the cabin cautiously. She didn’t know who to expect—a hulking axe-wielding maniac?—but the woman in a poncho and torn jeans standing on the threshold definitely wasn’t anything she had imagined. She was petite, perhaps Pita’s height, but skinny as opposed to curvy. Her hair, like Pita’s, was long and wavy, though it was not only wet and knotted from the storm but festooned with dead leaves and twigs. She wore some sort of mask, what appeared to be the face cut from a doll. It was strapped to her own face with twine. Where the doll’s eye would have been were two holes through which a pair of very real eyes, brownish-red and intense, peered out.

In one hand the woman gripped a doll by its hair, and in the other, a long knife.

“Who the fuck are you?” Jesus blurted.

“My name’s María,” she replied in a shrill, clear voice, eerily mechanical. Elizaveta couldn’t see her mouth moving behind the doll face, and she almost believed the voice to be a recording.

“She has a knife!” Pita said. “She killed Nitro! Shoot her!”

Jack, who had already taken a couple of steps backward, aimed the gun at the woman. She stared directly into the bore but showed no fear.

“Tell her to put down the knife,” he said in English.

Elizaveta stepped beside him. Holding out her hand, she said, “Can you give me the knife, María?”

“It’s my knife,” she said.

“Yes, I know. But can you give it to me for now?”

“It’s my knife!” she snapped viciously.

Elizaveta raised her hands, palms outward. “Okay, okay.”

There was a brief lull. Then the woman—María—said, “I’m hungry.” She sounded perfectly pleasant again.

“Jack, she’s hungry,” Elizaveta said, translating for him. “Give her some of your vegetables.”

He dug a carrot from his pocket and held it out for her. “Last one.”

She simply stared at it.

“Don’t you want it?” Elizaveta asked her.

“Where should I put my doll?”

“Why don’t you give her to me?”

“She’s my doll!” That viciousness again.

Hands up, palms outward. “Okay, okay!” Elizaveta considered. “Why don’t you put her on table then?”

María looked at the table. “I’ll put her on the table.” She went to it, moving in a flat-footed staggerstep, her back stooped, and set her doll in a chair. Then she returned, took the carrot from Jack, and stared at it for a long moment.

“Are you going to eat it?” Elizaveta asked.

María pushed the doll face up her forehead.

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