My lantern cast weak light on the small room I’d never seen. It was a crypt. Bones of every description were stacked against the walls—cow horns, sheep skeletons all attached, and human skulls, too. There was Pear. I recognized her teeth.

I spooned out the clear sticky jelly. It never occurred to me to disobey. I’d made up my mind way back at the start, when Bay had burned my hand and I’d traded that pain for a kiss. Or before, when I hadn’t gotten on the plane. Or before, when I didn’t know if I would ever find what I was looking for. You just have to throw yourself into it.

The fuel dripped off my spoon like honey, so slow. I didn’t know if I was laying the fire right, not to spread. The barn had lasted through a century of lanterns and lightning. It was a strong barn.

The room was filled with parents and children, stacked up against the walls or loose on the floors. I just had to get it all covered, quickly, quickly. I took out the long sugar fuse and put its tail on my honeyed stack of skulls. I lit the fuse and watched it crackle. But it was no good: it did not lead the fire, slowly, in the right direction. The old dust and straw on the floor whipped into flames, which shot up the walls in white-gold threads, then curtains. In no time the room was red with smoke.

I wouldn’t be able to get back into the hayloft, I realized. I could see Queen standing above, a shadow waving, before the flames swallowed her up. The room rippled as though submerged in water, so I couldn’t be sure of what my burning eyes were seeing. In desperation, I pushed the door open—and it was unlocked. I jumped in among the pigs. They turned toward the unexpected warmth. I leapt over them. I could feel the flames behind me. Then I started to hear the squeals.

Choking smoke followed me as I fled into the frosty night. I crawled, heart throbbing, under the hickory. It didn’t seem possible that the whole barn would catch, but I heard the windows shattering under the fists of heat, and I watched as the flames reached their arms out of the sheep stables, the chicken houses, and grasped upward. The left side of the barn looked like a jack-o’-lantern, exhaling terrible windy moans and breaking into red.

The lights went on in the bedrooms of the long house. I heard shouting behind me, and wailing, and I watched as the dark shapes of people—my family—darted past me. Was it Gemini? Was it Sara? Several people rushed to open the door of the dairy and ran into the tumbling smoke. Others ran to open the large door of the stable. But I was rooted into the ground.

* * *