Finally, it was my turn to sneak out alone, to leave the other two, if they were awake that night, to wonder where I was going, and why they weren’t going along. I waited until the room was silent. I showed Magda my tongue. I shut the dormitory door. I kept my eyes on the trees as I climbed to Serena’s tent. I was used to the forest at night by now, but not alone, not like this. I had the sensation of walking on a tongue, spongy beneath my feet. I had the sensation of magic. Could a certain patch of ground turn you from girl to bird? Could one misstep take you sideways, to an identical mountain in an identical world? You would never know, if it did.

But no. I’d walked this path many times, and I knew where it led.

Halfway up the mountain, I came across Ava, who had nestled herself between two bushes about a foot from the path. I would never have spotted her if I hadn’t heard her yowl. When I held up my lamp, I saw that she was curled around three tiny kittens, each one sucking busily at its own personal teat; she looked smug, smugger than I would have thought possible with only one eye. I knelt, and the kittens all turned to look at me too. One of them had two perfectly enormous blue button eyes, and I gasped involuntarily (destroy destroy destroy). His brother, though, had only one—his right eye was crusted over and red. But the worst was the third kitten, who looked blind, both eyes raw and ruined. He looked as though he had no eyes at all, only little pink blisters, ready to burst. I recoiled. The three kittens struck me even then as symbolic. (But who—? And who—?) I had always assumed that Ava had lost her eye in some violent way—cat, mountain, hawk, hunter—but now it seemed that it was a sickness, a genetic flaw that had half blinded her, and this seemed worse somehow. I reached out to pet the two-eyed kitten. I couldn’t force myself to touch the disfigured ones. Beauty moves us, after all. This we know. But ugliness moves us too.

Serena unzipped her tent as I approached, letting the flaps fall open. Inside, a carton of cigarettes leaned against the tent wall. A box of chocolates lay open on the ottoman, its little paper doilies strewn around like wandering ghosts. She had kicked all of her luxurious blankets and pillows and sheepskins onto the floor. She had her shoes on.

“What’s going on?” I said.