Again, Rainer nodded. I had the knife in my hand and felt the world curving around me as though through a fish-eye lens.

“Harmony and I want what’s best for you,” said Dice, and in an instant he drew my right hand and knife up along Rainer’s hard-beating neck.

“Control over life and death allows us to move past them,” said Dice.

In that moment, I had no idea what he meant. Yet I knew I wanted to learn the truth about the world, and I expected to struggle to get there. And I felt Dice’s body against me; I knew he wanted something and then I wanted it too.

I could have cut Rainer’s throat. But I didn’t.

It would have been so easy—a moment of fearlessness; like Isaac had taught me, you only need a moment. At times I convinced myself that I had carried it out, so that when I saw Rainer at dinner, it seemed like he was haunting me.

But that day, I lowered the knife. Dice whispered in my ear, “Good girl, Harmony.” I wasn’t sure why this made me good, though I hoped it meant I had earned a reward. An ice cream cone, a role in the next protest, a night alone with Bay by the fire, with his lips on mine.

Dice gestured to the lamb. “You’re ready, Harmony,” he said, and it was true; my heart juddered as if I were approaching a jump. The knife moved with a frictionless snickering sound. We hung the lamb up and puffed off his skin and slit down his front and threw the useless parts to the dogs.

Dice took my hands and used the hem of his blue shirt to blot them. I could see his hard stomach, its tangle of hair. “Nature is this way, too,” he said.

Rainer hadn’t moved. He gazed out at the forest and I could only see the back of his head. I walked around him to see if he was crying and I was startled to see he was smiling.

“Should we head back?” Rainer asked.

I felt sorry for him now. I’d held a knife to his neck. I’d never felt so much power, which meant I’d never felt so much mercy.

“Okay,” I said. We walked through the tomato patch. Mindless of spiders, I plucked sungolds for both of us, and fireworked them in my mouth.

I could hear owls, but not mine, and a million insects. Insects don’t have hearts and blood like ours, just a general, sloshing fluid held inside their carapaces that churns back and forth, back and forth.

CHAPTER 15