The door to their room flew open, kicked by a booted foot. Torches lit the room, cruel in their intensity. Through the torchlight the bodies of men emerged, burly, garbed in crimson. The first strode across the room and slammed a hand down on Ravi’s neck. He leaned in close, studying the boy, the torch so close to his head that his features were a motley of distorted highlight and shadow. A second figure went to Mór. He was gentler. He placed a finger under Mór’s chin and turned her so that the first man could see her face.

“Yes,” he said, glancing between them, “you’re two sides of the same coin. You two are one, together in the womb, together in your fate. Your councilmen told us true. Come on. On your feet, both of you. We’ll not harm you if you come quiet.”

He was so matter-of-fact, so casually intimidating that before he knew what he was doing Ravi was standing. He and Mór were pushed through the doorway into the main room. What Ravi saw there stayed in his memory only in fragments, disjointed images captured between the jolting motion of being shoved, stumbling. He saw his mother’s face, openmouthed, her teeth looking like the fangs of a wolf or bear. His eyes shot around to find his father. He couldn’t find him. He saw a commotion of men near the cook-stove, their arms and legs moving like those of some monster. He never did see him or pick out his body from among the motion, but Ravi knew that his father was at the center of it.

Ravi was roughly conveyed through it toward the door. His foot caught the side of the doorjamb, and he sprawled out into the night. He hit the ground hard on his forearms and elbows, rolled, and had a clear moment of thought as he watched the figures striding out after him. Red cloaks. They wore red cloaks! And that meant he and Mór were to be taken by the eaters! Older boys had told stories about such things, saying that from time to time the king to the south sent hunters through Candovia in search of the children his god loved to devour. Ravi had never believed it. It had never happened in his lifetime, and he knew older boys were cruel and liars. But now a man was reaching down for him; his father was pinned beneath a seething mass of limbs; his mother wore a wolf’s face; his sister was crying out at some roughness.