The creature took a breath through the incision for the first time in its life: its lungs filled with the cold morning air. Then it screamed. It was the most horrifying scream human ears could ever hear, a scream of pain, of grief, of terror. It took another breath so it could scream and scream again, but Gergő was no longer paying any attention to it, as he was busy cutting up the next larva.

‘They don’t have eyes,’ Andrea noticed, but by the time she had said the words, Mama had already bent over the screaming creature and cut two incisions above its nose with a smaller blade.

‘Now they do,’ she said, wiping the black blood off the blade. The next creature started screaming, and then the next one.

Men poured pálinka for themselves and congratulated each other on the successful harvest; the women set out to cook a celebratory meal. Only Emese cried along with the screaming of the creatures.

‘Which one is mine?’ she asked through her tears, bordering on hysteria.

‘What’s wrong, honey?’ Andrea asked. She understood the question but wanted to stall for time.

‘Which one of them is mine in? Which one has my soul?’

Andrea looked down uneasily, as if looking for the answer on the ground.

‘I don’t know. They were all in identical containers.’

Hugó caressed his daughter’s head like she was still six years old.

‘That’s only a piece of your essence, not your soul. There’s no reason to cause a scene.’

Emese tore herself away from her father’s embrace; it was an embrace that meant her harm, she knew that now. She was much wiser than yesterday.

‘But why are they screaming?’ she asked.

‘Every birth is painful,’ Andrea said sweetly. ‘You cried too when you were born, didn’t you?’

Maybe because I didn’t want to be born either, Emese thought, but she kept the thought to herself.

The creatures looked at Emese from the other side of the cage through their freshly cut eyes; some of them were still crying, but most were only whining. No hair grew on their bodies, their skin was stone-like, their arms long and muscular. Their eyes were brightly colorful; three of them had blue, three of them red, and there was a single one with black eyes, so black they seemed infinitely deep.