She returned it to the litter basket and looked across Second Avenue to the place where her idea of how things worked had changed. Maybe forever.

Took my shoes. Crossed the street and sat here by the turtle and put them on. Kept my bag but dumped the Times. Why’d she want my bag? She didn’t have any shoes of her own to put in it.

Trudy thought she knew. The woman had put her plates in it. A cop who got a look at those sharp edges might be curious about what you served on dishes that could cut your fingers off if you grabbed them in the wrong place.

Okay, but then where did she go?

There was a hotel down at the corner of First and Forty-sixth. Once it had been the U.N. Plaza. Trudy didn’t know what its name was now, and didn’t care. Nor did she want to go down there and ask if a black woman in jeans and a stained white shirt might have come in a few hours ago. She had a strong intuition that her version of Jacob Marley’s ghost had done just that, but here was an intuition she didn’t want to follow up on. Better to let it go. The city was full of shoes, but sanity, one’s sanity—

Better to head home, take a shower, and just … let it go. Except—

“Something is wrong,” she said, and a man walking past on the sidewalk looked at her. She looked back defiantly. “Somewhere something is very wrong. It’s—”

Tipping was the word that came to mind, but she would not say it. As if to say it would cause the tip to become a topple.

It was a summer of bad dreams for Trudy Damascus. Some were about the woman who first appeared and then grew. These were bad, but not the worst. In the worst ones she was in the dark, and terrible chimes were ringing, and she sensed something tipping further and further toward the point of no return.

STAVE: Commala-come-key
Can ya tell me what ya see?

Is it ghosts or just the mirror
That makes ya want to flee?

RESPONSE: Commala-come-three!
I beg ya, tell me!

Is it ghosts or just your darker self
That makes ya want to flee?

4TH STANZA
SUSANNAH’S DOGAN

ONE

Susannah’s memory had become distressingly spotty, unreliable, like the half-stripped transmission of an old car. She remembered the battle with the Wolves, and Mia waiting patiently while it went on …

No, that wasn’t right. Wasn’t fair. Mia had been doing a lot more than waiting patiently. She had been cheering Susannah (and the others) on with her own warrior’s heart. Holding the labor in abeyance while her chap’s surrogate mother dealt death with her plates. Only the Wolves had turned out to be robots, so could you really say …