He can't hold it in any longer. The pain is too much. He cries.

She runs to him. The scissors are burning his hand and there's black smoke rising from his fist.

Mommy reaches out. Delicately, as though she's as afraid of him as he is of her.

The scissors open in his hand. He doesn't know if he did it or they did it on their own. She's still reaching out for them and he brings them toward her and the blades—

—slash across the Mirror Man's throat. A geyser of blood pours from the gaping wound and some primitive urge draws him into the flow. He sees red, blinks it clear. Tastes the tang of salt and copper. His gorge threatens but he swallows and it's like the world's biggest hit of cocaine, like jet fuel filling up his brain—

—as her blood pours into his mouth. His instinct is to spit but instead he licks his lips and swallows, and Mommy smiles and nurses him with the wound on her wrist, and the pain in his hand lessens and his heartbeat slows, and he's not scared anymore. He's safe. He's with his mommy and she loves him.

"I'm sorry, Mommy," he says, his lips sticky with her blood. "I won't be bad no more."

"What the H-E-double-hockey-stick is going on here?" Norma says, breaking the spell, and Mother and Son turn with guilt in their eyes and blood staining their lips—

—Martin drew a sharp breath, blinking awake to the sound of Sheila calling his name, drawing him up from the fog of unconsciousness.

He'd slumped over the table. The memories nearly crushed him under their weight. Everything he'd forgotten. Everything he'd once been. He shook his head clear.

Sitting next to him at the table, the scissor handles protruding from her scrawny chest, Ruby turned to him with a hint of a smile, removing her hand from his with a soft swish of dry flesh.

"Ah," she said, her lungs whistling. "You remember it all now, do you? The truth beyond magic?"

It took all of his strength to nod his head.

"Good." Blood trickled from her lips. Thin billows of black smoke flittered from the wound. "It's good that you remember. It will make what I have to do easier."

"I'm so sorry, Ruby," Norma said, a hand still held against her heart. "I'm so sorry."

"Don't be sorry, Norma dear. You're a good woman. A far better mother than I ever was. You did what was necessary. What was right. It's high time for me to do the same."

"What are you gonna do, Ma?" Martin asked softly.

Ruby smiled weakly. "I brought them into this world. I can just as easily take them out."

Outside, the Midwives began to shriek.

Sheila rushed to the window. Martin pushed himself up shakily and stood beside her.

The old women howled and writhed, their brittle old bones shattering, flesh sagging and falling off their bones like melting tallow. The screams grew to frantic, inhuman wails. Ribbons of black smoke curled from their bubbling tissue. The smoke eddied and swirled, seeming to form menacing, shrieking, vaguely human shapes with blazing green eyes briefly—then flittering away on an ocean breeze as the bodies they'd inhabited slumped to the ground, returning to dust.