He’ll come after me, too, she told Mia. And you should ’ware him, woman. You should ’ware him very well.

I’ll do what I need to do, Mia replied. You want to see the woman’s papers. Why?

I want to see when this is. The newspaper will say.

Brown hands pulled the rolled-up newspaper from the canvas Borders bag, unrolled it, and held it up to blue eyes that had started that day as brown as the hands. Susannah saw the date—June 1st, 1999—and marveled over it. Not twenty years or even thirty, but thirty-five. Until this moment she hadn’t realized how little she’d thought of the world’s chances to survive so long. The contemporaries she’d known in her old life—fellow students, civil rights advocates, drinking buddies, and folk-music aficionados—would now be edging into late middle age. Some were undoubtedly dead.

Enough, Mia said, and tossed the newspaper back into the trash barrel, where it curled into its former rolled shape. She brushed as much dirt as she could from the soles of her bare feet (because of the dirt, Susannah did not notice they had changed color) and then put on the stolen shoes. They were a little tight, and with no socks she supposed they’d give her blisters if she had to walk very far, but—

What do you care, right? Susannah asked her. Ain’t your feet. And knew as soon as she’d said it (for this was a form of talking; what Roland called palaver) that she might be wrong about that. Certainly her own feet, those which had marched obediently through life below the body of Odetta Holmes (and sometimes Detta Walker), were long gone, rotting or—more likely—burned in some municipal incinerator.

But she did not notice the change in color. Except later she’d think: You noticed, all right. Noticed it and blocked it right out. Because too much is too much.

Before she could pursue the question, as much philosophical as it was physical, of whose feet she now wore, another labor pain struck her. It cramped her stomach and turned it to stone even as it loosened her thighs. For the first time she felt the dismaying and terrifying need to push.

You have to stop it! Mia cried. Woman, you have to! For the chap’s sake, and for ours, too!

Yes, all right, but how?

Close your eyes, Susannah told her.

What? Didn’t you hear me? You’ve got to—

I heard you, Susannah said. Close your eyes.

The park disappeared. The world went dark. She was a black woman, still young and undoubtedly beautiful, sitting on a park bench beside a fountain and a metal turtle with a wet and gleaming metal shell. She might have been meditating on this warm late-spring afternoon in the year of 1999.

I’m going away for a little while now, Susannah said. I’ll be back. In the meantime, sit where you are. Sit quiet. Don’t move. The pain should draw back again, but even if it doesn’t at first, sit still. Moving around will only make it worse. Do you understand me?