She’d always meant to take them back to the other side, but she hadn’t fully realized their power. She’d need to take them with her, if she hoped to make it through. When they’d hiked up the mesa, they’d been too heavy to carry. She thought they’d have more time before equinox. She’d meant to go back to the truck. But then, in her rush to get home to Phoenix, she’d left them behind. “They’re still in the truck,” she admitted, her cheeks burning, ashamed she’d almost left her rock baby and Amy.

“I’ll get them,” Chance said, his voice near enough behind her that she could feel his breath on her neck.

She wanted to grab his hand, tell him not to go, afraid he might not return to her in the tunnels winding toward Room 33. Instead, she said, “See if there’s a flashlight.”

“I’ll be right back, mujer.”

She could hear him walking away swiftly toward the entrance.

They stepped down further into the airtight rooms. The floors alternated dirt and wooden planks. She knew that in Room 33 the layers of floor varied; the initial layer was sand and then black soil atop, alternating back and forth, white sand, black soil. This was supposed to represent the layers of earth growing again. Now she wondered what else it could have meant. It was a record of something. How many times Mother had taken people through her belly? The hole in the floor, the sipapu, represented the emergence of their ancestors from the underworld—like climbing a tree, they’d exited the underbelly through a small hole in the earth. They were heading toward Mother’s birth canal.

Calliope shivered.

Was it her imagination or had the air gotten colder? Eunjoo kept mumbling, squeezing Calliope’s hand tighter. A rustling. Like leaves scuttling in a windstorm.

“What’s that sound?” Mara asked, her voice tense. “One of you gals scratching the walls?”

Calliope turned toward the pinhole of light from where they’d just come; Chance’s shadow emerged as he ducked back into the sunlight.