“Oh.” Calliope wanted to keep calling her corn girl. It felt wrong to name her, let alone give her a Zuni name. “How long was I unconscious?”

“Night and morning.”

The corn girl finished breastfeeding and Malia washed Calliope with water poured from a gourd while she stood, gingerly, the water falling to mats on the floor. She was still dressed. Nala placed a clean dress over the wet one, and Calliope slipped out of the wet dress, which Nala tossed into the stove. During this ceremony the other women removed the mattress she’d birthed on and prepared a new bed in its place. The new bed was a layer of hot stones covered by a layer of sand, then by warm blankets.

She lay down on the heat and her corn girl, free of her cradleboard, was given to her.

Malia still appeared troubled. As she spoke her hands fluttered to her neck, like birds searching for a perch. “Now we will call Chance.”

* * * *

He stood in the doorway, haggard and weary. The corn girl was nursing again, but Calliope didn’t bother to cover herself. No one instructed her to, even with all their modesty customs, and she worried it would break the illusion of intimacy. She was supposed to be his wife after all.

His face eased when he saw her and the corn girl, but then he glanced around the room, searching for the other twin. Her eyes stung with tears. He walked toward her, knelt down and began to kiss her forehead, his lips cool against her skin, warm from the rocks and sand. He didn’t need to ask What happened? She wiped her eyes, whispered, “Necesito hablar contigo. Solo.” She couldn’t ask the other women to leave; she didn’t know her place in the unspoken hierarchy. But he could.

His mother’s hands still clenched, her expression still pained, she nodded at her son and spoke authoritatively to the women what Calliope understood as leave the parents and their e’lashdok’i (which she had gathered meant daughter).

Before Nala left the room, she whispered to Chance. Calliope heard: Brujería. Too late.

Calliope didn’t know which question to ask first.

They both asked at once, “What happened?”

She smiled at their mutual concern for the other. The ruts pressed into his leather skin, worry lines—something had gone wrong. With Mara? His talk with the Elders? His wavy black hair usually fallen across his shoulders was tied back in a tight ponytail, his shoulders and arms were tense, his jaw tight. He sighed.

“Mujer, the other twin didn’t make it?”

“They won’t tell me what happened to her.”

“My family?”