Amy was silent for a minute. “What else do you see?”

“What we see from the air. Yellow areas the approximate shapes of towns and cities, blue for water, hard black lines for roads, and black lines with crosses for railroads …”

“That’s it,” Amy said, whooping. “We’ll follow the railroads through the mountain passes.”

“And we’re safe up here?”

“We’re fine. Engines use a self-contained high-voltage generator to create a spark for the spark plugs. Each engine has two in case one fails. Even if we were struck by lightning and lost all power, the engines would still keep running.”

“Don’t say we’ll get struck by lightning.” It was Murphy’s Law. Calliope had heard Richard Dawkins speak about how this so-called law was nonsense since it required inanimate objects to have desires of their own or else to react to one’s own desires. Calliope had agreed at the time. Science had held such a sway—her inner skeptic at its pinnacle.

But now … had she really seen inanimate objects come to life? Those Kachina figures Chance had called Suukes had almost ripped their airplane apart when they should’ve fit inside her palm. It didn’t make sense. The second law of thermodynamics: we tend toward entropy, toward chaos. Everything in our universe when left alone tended toward greater and greater disorder. Toward ruin.

“It’s coming from the north. We’re going south. I’m not as worried about the lightning as I am the ash. It could clog the engine’s air filter, choke it. I’ll fly low to avoid it.”

Chance said, “I only hope the Achiyalatopa doesn’t come too.”

“What’s that?”

“Its feathers are made of flint knives, which it throws at objects. My people never said it throws the knives at planes, but I don’t know why it wouldn’t.”

Entropy. Anything that could go wrong, would. Anything that could turn to ruin.

The clouds that had formed a red bird above them began to disperse into feathery pink stripes across the sky, the storm moving on, though ash still darkened the distance. Calliope read the map aloud to Amy, navigating where to fly, following the railroad tracks. She was proud of herself, keeping her composure in the air. They passed Truth or Consequences, a town whose name Calliope had always found amusing. They passed Lake Valley. Thirty minutes in the sky without incident.

Then, “Fucking ash,” Amy whispered. “Loss of manifold pressure?”

The map shook in Calliope’s hands.

“What?”

“We’re going down.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

Loudly, “Do I look like I’m fucking kidding?” Under her breath, Amy muttered, “Dead foot, dead engine,” as she pushed her foot against the pedal.

Calliope’s gut was dropping.

Still muttering to herself, Amy was chanting, “Feather the engine. It’ll stop windmilling. Feather the engine. It’ll stop windmilling. Fuck. Fuck.” To Calliope, “Where can we land?”