“Vish?” Nallo’s voice drifted down to her, but she might have been a hundred mey away for all it mattered.

Flies crawled in and out of the gaping mouth. Her fingers had been eaten away, and her eyes were gone, two empty pits. Abruptly, her belly stirred, the skin rippling. A bloody face popped out of the cut. Black eyes stared at Avisha. She shrieked. A small animal darted away into the brush.

“Vish!”

Her throat burned. Her eyes stung. She backed up, tripped, fell rump-first into a tangle of bushes. Her hands brushed a trailing branch of prickleberry, and blood bubbled up on her palm. Scrambling back, she found the washtub. But as she climbed the slope, dragging the washtub behind her, she kept losing her footing and slipping backward. The ghost of that dead woman was trying to drag her into the shadows. Claws bound her ankle, tugging at her. She whimpered, but it was only a vine caught around her foot. She wrenched the vine loose, and climbed. After an eternity she reached the road. She was scratched, soaked, caked in dirt. Blood dripped from her palm. She wiped her hair out of her eyes.

Nallo wasn’t even looking at her. She was staring up at the sky, mouth open, rain washing her face.

A huge eagle swooped low over them. Avisha ducked. Jerad wailed. Zianna hid her face in her hands, sobbing. The creature banked around and, flaring its wings, struggled to a landing in an open space above them, beside the path. It stared at them with eyes as big as plates and a beak large enough to rip open a poor girl’s belly so every manner of vermin could crawl in.

“Is that blood on its feathers?” said Nallo. “Look how it’s holding its wing. It’s injured.”

“Look at that beak!” sobbed Avisha. “Those talons! We can’t walk past it.”

“Have you ever heard of a reeve’s eagle killing a human being?” Nallo picked up Zianna and began walking up the path.

“Nallo! I’m afraid!”

Jerad burst into tears. “Won’t go. It’s so big!”

“Stop it, Vish! Look how you’ve got him blubbing! That bird isn’t going to hurt us.”

That bird was staring at them, deciding which was plumpest. “How can you know?”

“Stop shrieking! Look how it gets your brother and sister scared.”

“C-Can’t we just wait until it leaves?”

“No! No! No! No! No!” sobbed Zi.

Nallo set the little girl down roughly. “We’ll stand here in the rain until the cursed bird flies off and we’ll all be dead by then anyway.” Abruptly, horrifyingly, Nallo, too, began to cry.

The rain pattered over them as they wept. Avisha’s clothes were wet, her feet were cold, and her face was muddy, smeared with dirt. Her hand hurt, and that girl down there was dead and mutilated and abandoned, just like she was going to be. Everything was the worst it could be. She wished Papa was alive because he could have fixed it all but he was dead. Why did Papa have to die? Why did everything go so bad? Why couldn’t they just all be at home in their good little house all dry, sitting on the porch like they always did when the first rains came and watching the wet over the other houses and over the fields and woodland and sipping on the last of the year’s rice wine that Papa always held over for the first day of the rains and the promise of a new year? Now there would be a new year without Papa in it, nothing good at all, everything torn and broken and bloody and hopeless.