Still it did not make it any less painful; still she could not step over the rock baby. She nodded in response, saying nothing aloud, turned, and walked around to the back door instead.

Now, fear prickling the hairs on her neck and arms, she led Eunjoo around the side of the tall, honeycombed building and up the front steps, the lights all burning on this side of the house as well. She put her hand to the latch, hesitated. Voices from inside, low and insistent, a kind of humming. She opened the door.

In the corner of the main room, feet from where Calliope had given birth, loomed several tall figures, some multicolored, others black and white, some with slits for eyes, others protruding and disfigured, beaked, horned, or feathered. All of them huddled together. Again, Calliope had the overwhelming sense of being unable to differentiate the masks from the real things. Impostors or not, why were they gathered here?

Across the room at the large wooden table, Chance stood unmoving, his arms outstretched slightly in a stance of negotiation. In the kitchen, Malia, Wowo łashhi, Nala, and Mara likewise stood motionless. As Calliope hovered in the doorway holding Eunjoo’s hand, trying to figure out what scene she had walked in upon, one of the masked men grabbed her by the arm and pulled her close to him, still clutching Eunjoo, and the other masked figures circled around them. She yelped at the rope-burn pain of his grip on her arm, and Chance yelled, “No! Let her go. Leave them out of this.”

She should have let Eunjoo go, but she clutched her tighter, the girl burrowing her face into Calliope’s sweater. Where was the corn girl? Was she safe upstairs? Or were the masked men up there? Someone shoved a callused hand over Calliope’s mouth, so close to her nostrils she had to gasp for air. Another masked figure or the same? She couldn’t tell who held her. She wouldn’t have thought any of them capable of creating this mob. She’d lived here six months without so much as a disgruntled look or whiff of violence. She’d thought Chance and Malia were overreacting to the punishment ahead for breaking taboo. She never imagined this. What would they do to her, to Chance? Her heart raced frantically. The hand on her mouth smelled of damp earth and she pictured them burying her like the rocks.

Again, Chance shouted, “Let them go. The women have nothing to do with it.”

Calliope had shot the Suuke. She had everything to do with it.

One of the masked figures, in a low, menacing growl, “Then come with us.”