But crossing worlds? It didn’t make sense.

Yet Bisabuela’s voice … the Ancient Voices she heard in the cicada song on the rocks …

Since girlhood she’d understood there was so much more than she understood.

The worlds had split. And she had disappeared.

Her pulse had fluttered at her neck and wrists, insects scuttling inside her, burrowing through her skin. She’d turned toward Chance. “You knew. You knew what had happened. Why didn’t you tell me this before?” She wept, bitterness sludging her throat. “Why did you let me believe they were here … if you knew they weren’t?” She’d slapped his face, so hard it hurt her own hand. “You lied to me. You lied.”

He hadn’t reacted to being slapped, even as Arlen spoke under his breath in Zuni, his tone repulsed, and Calliope wondered briefly how different she was from Chance’s wife, as he was so different from her own husband. Chance had remained still, his expression not angry or guilty but searching. His voice level, his storyteller’s lilt, he said, “Mujer, what you’ve crossed has been much more than worlds. What you’ve carried, heavier than doubt. You wouldn’t have believed me. You wouldn’t have listened to Bisabuela’s words, allowed me to guide you, to keep you safe. I’m sorry that you’re angry, but I’ve done what I’ve been tasked with. No more or less.”

Phoenix was alive. He was alive but believed his mama was dead.

Had they held a funeral for her?

Their lives had gone on—as hers had gone on. Separately.

Arlen had seen through their facade. “Chance’s clan, his kiva, the Medicine clan … none of them will look kindly at what’s happened here. You can’t let anyone know. Chance is in trouble enough as it is. How many taboos must you break, brother?”

Calliope bristled at Arlen’s chastisement. In her mind, Chance had done nothing wrong. Nothing except keep the truth from her. But he’d protected her, he was right about that. The Suuke would have killed her otherwise, killed her corn girl. She asked Arlen, “Why were the Suuke after us? If they are gods, what reason had we given them to inflict harm? Is it such a taboo to help us?”

Arlen reached for a ko’ko on a far shelf, pulled out from behind rows of figures, the Suuke with the bow and arrow that had killed her friend. She remembered it lying dead in the snowy road beside Amy’s body, a track of arrows from its neck to groin as Chance shot it again and again then kicked it off the precipice. It seemed so innocuous as a wooden statue in Arlen’s hand, yet she knew its true form, its terrible power.

“Chance has told you of Zuni heaven?”

“The dancehall of the dead?”

Arlen nodded. “He’s told you how it was created?”