By the time she was finally able to win him back, she'd be an appropriate age for motherhood.

Suddenly this plan seemed more than reasonable. It was the most mature, rational decision she'd ever made in her life.

Go with the flow, baby girl.

She could almost feel her father's voice in her ear, prickling the hairs on the back of her neck. The image of the coiled black snake lunging at her from the pulsating stones came to her bright and clear, like a movie flashing before her eyes.

Entering her.

The shock of pain.

The terror and confusion.

The blood—so much blood.

She whimpered. The memory of the standing stones made her decision easier.

With great care, she held out the boy, still tethered by the fleshy umbilical cord which had nurtured him into being.

The ancient woman whose face Rosalee had yet to see, even during the birthing ceremony—always in shadow, ever watchful—tucked the shillelagh under her arm and snatched the boy up in her crepe-paper hands.

"Please don't hurt him," Rosalee said, her voice a hoarse whisper.

"You know what must be done," the ancient woman said.

And she did. She supposed she'd always known, just as every living soul in Barrows Bay must, in their hearts.

She knew what must be done.

For the good of the people. For the good of the town.

Stephen wouldn't be given a good home. He'd be sacrificed. A profane ritual older than the town itself. A gift of blood to appease the caretakers of this godless island.

"Please," she said. "Please, just do it quick. Don't make it hurt him."

The lady to the old woman's left removed her hood. Beneath was a gorgeous mound of beehive gray hair that had gone out of style before Rosalee was born, set atop a pleasant, rosy-cheeked face with penciled-in eyebrows. She could easily have been a grocery store clerk or a secretarial temp. The others had called her Helen.

She removed something from her purse. A knife with a wavy blade, a green medallion in its shaft. Greener than Rosalee's eyes, which widened as they caught its reflection. It twinkled with a glint of streetlight.

"No..." she said. "Not now, please not now. I don't wanna see..."

"How would you have us remove the cord, dear child?" the ancient woman with the shillelagh asked. "Shall we gnash it with our teeth?"

She demonstrated, clacking her ancient yellow teeth together: clack-clack-clack-clack-clack! They gleamed in the unnatural light, the rest of her face still awash in darkness. All but those terrible, all-seeing eyes.

The other women laughed hysterically.

Rosalee joined them, startled into it, bullied into it, looking around at all their laughing faces and wondering why she was laughing with them when she was terrified to her bones.

Helen reached out and pinched the umbilical cord with one hand, carving with the dagger. Dark fluid oozed out onto her Mary Janes. "Yech!" She stepped out of the dribble.

"Hush, you ninny!" the ancient woman said, holding Stephen under his tiny arms, her bony fingers encircling his narrow chest.