On the closed hangar door, a rusted padlock. Chance slammed the butt of his rifle into the lock, and it busted open, debris of rust flaking to the ground like red snow. He and Amy pulled the massive hangar doors, each grabbing a handle at the center and walking away from each other. It screeched against the track, opening into darkness, a cave-like space inside, chill and dank. A loud flapping sound when the door stopped moving. Calliope looked up. An orange canvas windsock shook violently.

“I’m not going in there,” Amy said. “You two be my guests.”

Calliope had to know where the light was coming from. She imagined Phoenix huddled in the corner of the darkness, and her throat tightened. But he couldn’t be in there; it was locked from the outside. If he were inside, who would’ve locked him in? She shivered.

“Looks like a dead end, mujer. Right?” Still, a catch in Chance’s voice spurred her curiosity, like the cicadas; he wasn’t signaling defeat but challenging her.

She turned toward Amy. “Did we bring the flashlight from the car?”

“In that box from your trunk.”

Calliope retrieved the light then strode into the hangar as if fearless. The flashlight beam caught threads of ash floating through the air. If the hangar were sealed, the ash couldn’t have gotten inside. There must’ve been an opening somewhere else, another way in. Her heart beat faster. She called out, “Phoenix? Andres?”

Heat at her neck, a hand on her shoulder. “They your people?” Chance had followed her.

“Yes.”

“Why would they be in here? They know how to fly planes?”

The light illuminated several small airplanes lining the walls, crop dusters, the kind of small planes Calliope imagined flew circles, performing acrobatics in the sky.

“No.”

He stood so close to her she could feel his breath on her skin. She moved aside.

“Mujer, I couldn’t say in front of your friend, but I think there’s a reason you’re here. What did the voice say to you?”

Calliope’s stomach clenched, pulse quickened. She shone the light into his face. He wasn’t smiling. Lines creased his forehead. “It was my bisabuela’s voice,” she said, without meaning to. “But that’s in my head, in my memory. I carry her voice with me everywhere.”

He reached out and redirected the flashlight beam away from his face and toward a back corner of the hangar. “She led you here. Not just to this shed. To this land.”

“I live here. My bisabuela’s people are from here.”

“Exactly.” Something in his voice sent a chill through her.

She wanted to ask what he meant, and why he couldn’t say that in front of Amy, but her light shone upon a rounded shape ahead, and she stopped, frozen in place. The lump appeared covered in tattered blankets, like a vagrant. “Is that a person?” she whispered, her voice shaking.