Now Paul was gone. The babies looked lost. She should pick them up. She went for the boy. His eyes got wide at her hot hands. He toddled away. She went for the girl. She toddled away. It was like when you dropped a piece of paper on a windy day and it grew a mind bent on eluding you. She stood still. The babies drifted back. They wanted her. But she had the hand problem. She went for the boy. Who toddled away. She went for the girl. Who toddled away.

Then it happened again.

And again.

For like a hundred years.

A stump appeared. At some point.

At least now she could sit.

She sat, trying to figure it out.

It seemed she was meant to admit that she was wrong. But she wasn’t. If she was wrong about this, there was no right.

Maybe she could fake it.

“Okay, okay,” she said aloud. “I was wrong. The whole time. About everything.”

Hands still hot.

The stump began rising. Lifting her above the babies. Then: a terrible bark-cackling. The other beings were back. With big old teeth.

Here they came, scrambling hyena-like across a vast plain.

Real baby-eaters.

Lord, so fast. She’d have to hoist the babies up. She reached down, grabbed the boy, singed his little arm.

How to do it, how to do it, how to get her hands to cool?

“Whose fault was it?” the girl baby asked.

“His!” Alma cried. “His, his, his!”

Her arms went hot right up to the elbows. Big bully! Whoever’d made her this way, unable to lie, was jerking her around now because she wouldn’t lie.

The hyena-beings were closing in, all meat-breath and yellow teeth.

“Whose?” the girl baby said. “Whose fault?”

“I don’t know,” she cried desperately. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I really don’t! Mine? My fault?”

“No,” the girl baby said.

What the hell? Fine, forget the babies, she’d keep the hot hands. She was what she was. No one could blame her. As long as she was Alma, she’d be mad. She had a right. Did she want to be mad? No. What she wanted to be was her, younger. Her, non-mad. Her, not yet mad. Pre-Paul. Smelling lilacs, swinging that diploma. No, even before that: so young she wanted nothing yet, liked nothing, disliked nothing. No, before that: before she was even Alma, because Alma would always find Paul, love Paul, and Paul would always be Paul.

It came to her, and then was happening: it would be fixed when she stopped being Alma.

Her arms and hands went cool and pale, perfectly normal.

She reached down, hauled the babies up.

“Who do you want to be?” the girl baby whispered into her ear as the stump rose just high enough to keep them safe from the hyena-beings bark-cackling below.