Dr. Toya said, “The Ancients likely built this place to protect the portal. Or control it. But there’s no controlling what’s only theirs to guard.” Calliope thought about the bodies buried in Room 33. It was an airless room, preserving the artifacts; the cotton shrouds encasing them had not decayed in a thousand years, which meant no air circulation at all. In the soil and yellow sand, beneath planks of wood, the Chacoans had buried bodies with their grave goods. Calliope remembered Susana buried in the straw inside the barn, the rock in her hand. The grave goods in Room 33—raw turquoise, jet, and gold, those bright and unrefined rocks—had they been more than offerings? Turned to stone. Had it happened to the Ancients? Had they meant it to happen? Were their grave goods never offerings but methods of communicating with the gods, of summoning them? Was the bridge through Chaco a portal of the gods? Based on the age rings of the pillars and wood in the walls, they had built Room 33 before any of the seven hundred others in Pueblo Bonito. They built the remaining rooms around it. Archaeologists had speculated it was an elaborate show, a theatrical exercise. But what if the Ancients had originally built Room 33 to protect the portal to the other world, the world Calliope was now a part of? And the bodies? Were those sacrifices to allow the Ancients safe passage? Or perhaps those who couldn’t get through? Those who didn’t survive the journey? She pictured Susana in the straw, her corpse rotting. Calliope should have brought her friend’s body with them. And Buick, who’d said there was nothing left of Albuquerque, not even the South Valley—it was all covered in black rock. And Buick’s body, rotting in Tía’s cabin. This version of the world was beautiful, yes. But as any world, it was also a graveyard.

A wheeling sun circled bedrock. Broken potsherds scattered in the dirt. A crumbled band of red rock sandwiched between solid gray brows of sandstone. A branch of dead juniper ledged like a fence. The sun cut through the slabs, slitting through the shadows on both the snake and spiral. The doctor had been right. Their calculations had been off. The portal—if there was a portal, if Room 33 was more than a burial shroud or elaborate stage—should have been open now. Calliope glanced at Chance, and he nodded, though Calliope still couldn’t quite read the look on his face. Apprehension? Doubt? Something else? She reached out for his arm. His muscles tensed.