“It’s just a dumb old brown hawk,” Annie said.

“It’s an eagle!”

She turned back to Lew. “It’s just horrible. It’s dead. Please don’t look at it.”

“It ain’t dead,” Alvin shouted.

Lew moved past her and down. She followed. It was late evening and the steeply angled sunlight shone right onto the bird. Raj’s long shadow lay beside it.

Excited, Alvin pulled his .22 from its bag. “I’m going to kill it.”

“No, you’re not,” Annie said.

“I’m going to put it out of its misery,” he said, as if she hadn’t understood him and he had to speak in her language.

“I’m not going to let you do this.” She stepped closer to him.

“Do what?”

“This.” He flinched as she put her hands on his shoulders. She stared into his desperate and innocent and cunning face, trying hard to understand what was going on inside him. “Why’d you do this? Why’d you bring us here?”

Alvin looked genuinely confused and hurt. “It’s…an eagle. It’s…”

She took the rifle from him. The bird maintained its vigilance, even at the heart of this nightmare, as if its head and body were now part of two different worlds. Trembling, she felt tearful and was angry at her weakness.

Gently, Raj eased the rifle out of her hands. “I’ll do it,” he said.

“You can’t let him do it,” Alvin shouted. “That’s my rifle.”

Raj stood close to the bird, setting the end of the barrel just inches from the soft feathers.

Lew’s voice came from behind them. “Not yet.” Standing at the base of the scree slope, he indicated for Raj to shift over a little. Then he raised his open hand, adjusting its position until its distinct shadow lay across the bird’s chest.

“Okay,” he said, and Raj fired.

“No one could have saved that woman’s life,” Angela insisted, following Dr. Weaver out of the emergency room.

Turgid with suffering, a vein in Dr. Weaver’s strong neck throbbed, its rhythm in mournful counterpoint to that of her own heart. They traded ragged, improvised, atonal solos of silence. She was not used to these feelings. Her body had been dead to her since she had lost all her family in the space of one year: her mother to cancer, her father to a blood clo t, her brother gunned down by police who mistook his lucky rubber chicken for a pistol.

“Dio,” she whispered to herself, touching her crucifix to her lips. As she turned to walk away, his hand snatched hers up. It was like electricity. Her breasts swelled to the size of zeppelins.

But he released her and hurried away as Nurse Fontaine abruptly appeared.

“Nurse Gordiano!” she said. “Look at your hair.”