She laughs at this, and drinks more cider. A single, small cloud is above her head, so low she feels like she could touch it if she reached out her fingers to it. The cloud is thin, ragged, like it has been torn apart by the sun’s fingers; a mere tendril in her vision, blurred by the blank in her eye.

‘Are you in love with this mare?’

She looks to Colca, and he doesn’t answer. Over his shoulder, she can see the man’s head peering at her, and in her vision it is like Colca has two heads.

‘This is a very quiet town,’ she remarks. ‘You have made this a very quiet town, you two. I will not have it.’

‘My love,’ the man calls. ‘Put down the cleaver.’

Mary takes another drink.

‘Once little children played in this street,’ she says. ‘They threw water from the fountain on one another, and danced amongst the old people who loved them, and you took it all away.’

There is a sucking rush above her head. Pigeons are circling the little cloud, unsure of where to land their unified body.

‘I had a daughter once and you took her,’ Mary shouts. ‘Colca, do you love this horse? Do you love it?’

Colca does not say anything.

‘Answer me on my daughter’s life,’ she says.

‘You have no daughter,’ the man growing out of Colca shouts. ‘You never did. We have discussed this, many times we have discussed this. Would you put down the cleaver now, my love?’

‘Do you love her, though?’ Mary says. ‘You two-headed man. Do you love her like I loved my own daughter?’

‘I love her,’ Colca says.

Mary puts the jug down and begins stroking Emota’s haunches.

‘And what of my love?’

She puts both her hands on the cleaver and drives it into the mare’s guts below the ribcage. The mare shrieks and kicks, dragging the blade through itself. The motion hurls Mary down and the cleaver falls from her hand. From the mare’s cavernous, open belly she feels a wave of clammy heat expelled onto her face, imbued with the thick stench of fresh excrement. The mare, snorting heavily, trots a few steps and a bright sliver of grey intestine emerges from the thin wound. The intestine is thick and glistening, curled in on itself; it has the slippery quality of fresh fish.

Mary crawls backwards out of the horse’s way. She glances to the side and sees the man stepping over Colca’s prostrate, slouched form.

The man runs towards her, grabbing up the cleaver from the ground, and approaches the horse cautiously. The mare, in a frenzy, kicks at him, forcing him back. It kicks again, and its exertions force a long loop of intestines out of it, hanging so low they drag off the ground, picking up dust.