He turned. Exclaimed in a language she didn’t understand. Pushed her toward the open cabin door. Jumped in. Slammed it down behind them and fastened the bolt.

He was hovering over Calliope, nearly sitting on her lap in the cramped space.

“Drive!” he yelled at Amy.

“Drive where? You bolted the hangar doors.”

“Just drive!”

Gamboling toward them, rabid, with a twisted limping gait that made its speed impossible—a massive painted body, pitch black except for white dappled spots pocking its face and ethereal white hair flowing loose at its sides. A masked creature. No, it wasn’t a mask. Horror pitted Calliope’s stomach, lodged in her throat. The creature was not painted or masked. Its eyes bulged and its teeth were long, protuberant, tusklike. Its romping, hop-like movements as it sped through the hangar were a mixture of a terrifying ritual dance and an animal charging, its arms raised as if swimming through the air. Calliope recognized this monster. It should have been carved of wood or stone. She’d held it before in her palm at the Old Town marketplace. It was a Kachina, a monstrous doll meant to depict an indigenous god whose name she did not know. Only now it was a grotesque giant, close enough to smell, like rotting fruit, sprinting toward her. It was a Kachina, come alive.

ELEVEN

ELEVEN

EUNJOO

It wasn’t a nightmare.

The dreams hadn’t started when Eunjoo asked the neighbor lady to help her.

No. Long before that.

Because of the dreams, she had known exactly where to go, whom to ask for help. When her parents had disappeared.

She’d played lots of times with Phoenix, sometimes in the wading pool in his backyard.

His mama was never home, Phoenix had said. She was always at work.

My parents are always fighting, Eunjoo had replied.

Over what?

There must have been a reason.

Eunjoo had shrugged.

They’d splashed cold water from the green hose at each other’s faces. Pretended it was a spitting snake. A water snake. They had laughed.

Eunjoo had dreamt of Phoenix’s mama often.

Lounging in the backyard, a sun hat over her curly hair, dark sunglasses over her suntanned face, and with a book in her hands, always with a book in her hands.

That was before her stomach had bulged. But Eunjoo had dreamt her fat with babies too.

When Phoenix had told her his mama was pregnant with twins, Eunjoo had nodded politely, but she’d already known.

The dreams had shown her that too.

From her little hole behind the seats in the yellow-and-white airplane, she knew what was coming.