Lena thought on it, but found herself wondering which of the corpses under the mountain were related to her by blood—and whether she’d prepared a body for a grave that was an aunt, or a cousin, or a brother, without ever realizing. Had Vigo ever prepared one of his parents or siblings, recognizing their faces but unable to acknowledge them for who they were?

“Ordinary people never see the Ancestors,” Vigo continued, “except at funerals. Are we not blessed to be around them constantly? The work we do is the most sacred of all work. I have been here seventy years, Lena, and I feel my life has had purpose, and joy, and sorrow, as much as any other life. I had a wife for many years.” His eyes grew suddenly watery, and he turned aside. “I had a child.”

Despite the sincerity in his voice, the suppressed tears, she wasn’t in the mood to play along. Not today. “Seventy years in darkness,” Lena said, setting down her needle and picking up the green-painted eye-stone, not caring if she hurt the old man’s feelings. “A wife and child who lived and died in darkness. Sounds bad enough to me.”

“It is not as if we never go outside, Lena,” he snapped.

“Hidden under a cowl!” she protested, grasping the eye-stone tightly, feeling it cold and hard in her palm. “We might as well be underground. It’s like they”—she gestured at the frosted-glass ceiling, at the city above—“can’t bear to see us. Like we shame them. I don’t feel chosen at all. I don’t feel special. I feel the opposite of special.” She turned to the opened eye, scooped out the eyeball with a spoon, and slotted the gem in its place. She sullenly plopped the eyeball into a copper dish.

Vigo went quiet for a moment, studiously tending the herbal mixture with which he would pack the dead man’s cavities, the whisper and rattle of the pestle and mortar the only sounds in the preparatory chamber. In the silence, Lena grew to regret her words about his wife and son, who had died years before she was born, but she wasn’t sure how to say sorry. Eventually, Vigo apologized instead, his voice slightly unsteady. “I am sorry you feel this way. If not for the quarantine, you would have had the opportunity to leave forever. But now…”

“I never said I wanted to leave forever.” Lena hung her head, feeling shame burn tight and hot in her chest. “I don’t. No one should have to face such a stark choice—to stay forever or leave forever. What kind of a choice is that? I just … I just want a real choice. I want to feel like I’m in control for once.”

She picked up her needle again and started to pull back the second eyelid to sew it into place.

That’s when it happened.