“Don’t touch that,” the woman says, her voice a guttural growl that carries from a place in her body that is not hers. “If you have no money, you are of no use to us.”

“We’ll take the dog,” Tai says, fumbling in her fanny pack. “How much?”

Her seemingly innocent question flusters the woman even more—she’s a fallen bird whose feathers have been rumpled, whose dignity has been stolen. She shudders with a long-suppressed mix of frustration and rage. “You don’t purchase the creatures.” While clutching the dog, she tugs at a widening hole in the cloth near her wrist, and for a moment, I imagine her entire arm will unravel. And just then, a smell wafts into the room, the cloying stink of spoiled dairy—a cloud swelling around us. Several of the candles go out, and my eyes water from the stench.

“You don’t care,” the woman says, her eyes dark in the low light. “You don’t give a damn about anything but yourselves.”

The smell intensifies, thick as a rotten bisque, and Tai dry-heaves. A door slams over our heads, and she rips my hand out of the air, hauling me toward the entrance.

“We’re so sorry for disturbing you,” I say over my shoulder, as we push toward the curtain.

“Them,” spits the woman. “You all think you can buy them from under my nose and mistreat them. But you’re wrong. We can’t be bought.” I glance back, and she still holds a dog figurine in her hand, like a precious egg. As she runs a thumbnail over its scalp, an animal groan emanates from the walls, low and mournful.

We take our shoes in hand, not even bothering to put them on, and run.

Everything outside—even the woods—is cloaked in shades of deep gray; streetlamps are neither plentiful nor functional this far out, and it’s so overcast it feels like twilight. I don’t see the self-driving car anywhere.

We run from the woodcutter, hearing nothing but our own heartbeats and the smacks of our bare feet against pavement—not fleeing because we fear the woman herself, as much as the old sort of evil she’s tending inside the house. Tai sprints ahead of me, blindly, desperately.

“Tai, stop!”

I can’t run as fast, with my backpack jostling around.

“I’m going to kill you!” she shrieks.

“Let’s just call the car!” I yell back, lungs bursting. “Please!”