He remembered the rush of blurred images. The doubled stones, the silent beings in white cloaks. He wondered if she'd seen the same, but his ego demanded answers first.

"Are you blaming me?"

"I'm not blaming you for anything, Martin. It just happened. We can't take it back."

"Do you want to?"

She met his eyes. "It shouldn't have happened," she said again.

He nodded. The throb in his groin subsided. A cold trail of semen oozed uncomfortably down his thigh. They both looked up at the stones and stepped out of the circle anxiously.

"These stones," she said. "There's something strange about them."

"Gee, you think?"

She glowered. "I've been down here before, Martin. I've jogged the whole island. These stones weren't here before."

Martin said nothing. He didn't know what to say.

"You don't believe me?"

"I believe you. None of this makes any sense, Sheila. Unless the survivors of the Ruby made this circle, these stones shouldn't be here. They're anachronistic. Out of place."

"No," she said. "They were here when the boat washed up. I felt it. When I touched them."

"I did too."

"Like someone was waiting for them. Or something."

"Something," Martin agreed. "Things. There were others, I—"

He turned to look at the wooded path. Sheila followed his gaze. She seemed to see something in the trees, narrowing her eyes to make it out.

"They watched from the forest when the survivors of the Ruby washed up on the shore," she said. It wasn't what Martin expected to hear. But he knew she was right. They'd shared the same vision. "They waited until the men fell asleep. Men with shiny clubs made of wood and iron—rifles. Then they took the children. A girl with red hair and a baby. Her little sister. Their mother died of cholera on the ship."

"The survivors searched the whole island," he said, sharing her memory of an event neither of them could possibly have had any knowledge of. "They came back to the beach at night to wait for them, sitting around a bonfire. They were so hungry. After three days and nights, the girls finally returned."

"Only something was different about the baby," she said. "The captain saw it right away. He called her a 'changeling.' The child of fairies, disguised as human."

"They smashed poor little Violet's head on the rocks," Martin said. "The captain did it. A man named Ledbetter. They argued for a while about what to do with her body, but they were all so hungry. Three days without food, who knew how long they went without proper sustenance on the ship. It didn't take much persuasion for Ledbetter to convince the others it was only right to eat her. So her precious little body wouldn't go to waste."

Tears spilled down Sheila's cheeks. "They ate her while her sister watched. She was screaming at them. I felt her pain."

"Me too," Martin said. For an instant, when he first entered the circle, it felt as though his heart had been torn right out of his chest. "She ran from them in the middle of the night. Ran into the forest and hid. She lived there while the others built their houses from the same trees the original inhabitants had made their home. The survivors of the Ruby called them the Chadrach. They were the first beings to inhabit this land, long before humans."