Instinctively, she crouched low in her seat, curling herself into a caterpillar, her hands shielding her belly. Blood pulsed through her gut. Fetal hiccups. Bubbles popping. Just before impact, she recalled making peanut butter sandwiches with Phoenix, safe at home with Andres and her mother. Time, pliable as uterine strings when necessary, protracted wide enough for these thoughts: relief it was Saturday, relief for the empty booster seat behind her. Wide enough still for prayer. Rote memory took over and she began reciting scripture from childhood. Though she’d been estranged from her religion for years—since college, since she’d stopped bickering with her mother at the improbability of God, since she became an anthropology professor and found other ways of explaining human history, our shared stories, our deep-seated need for mythos—there in the car, under the palpable redness, in the moments before the crash, the only words that made any sense came streaming like rainwater: Thou art with me. Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. But after the prayer, a flickering. Cicadas buzzing and her bisabuela’s voice in a dust storm. She was split between worlds, and the Ancient Ones grasped her tight.

* * * *

The rail held. The river didn’t claim Calliope or her babies. She awoke to kicking inside her—the familiar prodding on her bladder. Her pants, wet and smelling of ammonia, clung to her sore thighs and groin, and her forehead throbbed. She pressed her hand to the sticky clumps that matted her wavy brown hair to her face and pulled the blood-caked strands out of her eyes. She wiggled her fingers and toes, reached for her cellphone on the passenger floor. No signal. Odd—she was still in the middle of Albuquerque, cellphone towers nearby. How long had she blacked out? Her class had ended around noon, and in mid-September the sun didn’t set until after seven, but the sky had gone utterly dark. She couldn’t have been stranded in the car for nearly eight hours, could she? Something was wrong. The streetlights past the bridge remained unlit. Her fingertips tingled; she felt nauseous.

Though it ached, she craned her neck to check behind her and figure out the logistics of her crash. The car must have circled completely so the passenger side hit the rail. But that also meant she was facing backward in the road. Why hadn’t any other cars crashed into her? Or maybe they had. She couldn’t hear anyone coming for her, couldn’t see beyond her window. The usual glow above the forest surrounding Montaño Road had been replaced by a darkness, strangely narrow and stygian.