Later that night, she imagined her brother dying to the sound of that strange word and in spite of everything, she couldn’t batten down her eagerness to believe—what if even the smallest part of Mr. Capulatio’s stories were true? What if he did take her to Cape Canaveral? What if the shuttles did come back, once the world had been washed in blood for one Eon? Maybe the Eon of Pain was ending? Maybe her mother was wrong and Wonderblood meant all the pain and horror in her life and all lives had been worth something, after all. She tried to make herself care about the magic—she pinched her eyes closed and tried to whisper Mr. Capulatio’s word in thanks for her good fortune; she tried to believe it meant something. But really she only wanted to go home. With her eyes shut, she remembered the way the air and water fused on a warm day, exactly the same temperature, how she couldn’t tell where one stopped and the other started and how much a part of the universe this made her feel. More than any word. If only he took her back to Florida, she would escape, vanish, go home. She knew the saferoads there, some of them. She’d walked them so many times as a girl, behind her mother, watching her dress sway as they went from settlement to settlement, healing when they could. She’d live in her own small house, she’d have a dog, she’d eat seagulls, grow her vegetables. She thought of Cosmas in his sack and wished he weren’t a Head, so she could tell him about her plan. She’d ask him what it would feel like when her heart uncrushed. Like crying, he’d say, only the good kind of crying. She didn’t know the word for that feeling.
* * *
Just before dawn, she’d pinned the black brooch to her shirt. Mr. Capulatio was already dressed. He’d fixed his hat upon his head at an angle and was flicking through the book Argento had given her. He glanced at her and nodded to the brooch. “O, perfect, I was just about to suggest that.” He shrugged. “Can you read, darling?” he asked, his voice inflectionless.
She hesitated, shook her head.
“Why do you have this, then?”
“It’s not mine.”
“You surely don’t expect me to believe it’s his,” he said. She said nothing. He smiled again, bent until he was level with her, and batted at a piece of her hair. “All right. Impressive.” She didn’t know if he meant the book or her silence. His face close up was lineless, younger maybe than she’d first guessed and also cleaner than any face should be. “This,” he began, handing her the book, “is powerful magic. Dates and names and history, on and on. Why do you have it? I must ask, you know I have to ask. You are my almost-wife.”
“It’s not mine.”
“Not yours. I see. Well, that makes sense. Shall we go cut off some heads?” He shrugged again, and she sensed this gesture—this casual decisiveness—contained him more than any other.
“Please—”
“No please. Please is for later. Now is for thank you.”
She stared. He stared back. Then he rose and said over his shoulder, “If you could read—and I’m not saying you can—you would know that the subject of this book is me. How felicitous, how scenic! That I would find you exactly where I expected to find you at the moment I knew you would be there, and you would have in your possession a book about me! How is that for harmony! Glorify, the universe is truly great. Now, darling.” He looked deeply into her eyes and took his knife from where it lay on his bed. “Don’t make me tell you again. Say thank you.”
* * *
Colored streamers everywhere, ten thousand more than she’d ever seen, flapping as she walked with Mr. Capulatio across his carnival, which was huge, which had risen in two days like an enchanted crop. Crawling with people who moved, built, sliced, hammered. A clockwork masterpiece, this camp, with massive tents and a stage flanked by booths where the customers would buy their Heads come summer. And a metal cage, encircled by lanterns still glowing in the bottle-blue dawn, and people inside with faces tightened by fear. People she knew. When they saw her with Mr. Capulatio, when they looked at her like that, their hands on the bars, she tried to hide behind him, she thought: Don’t look, I can’t help you, but he was walking ahead, wearing red pants and a tan shirt and carrying that knife. His hair was long and flashing black like a seabird, topped by a felt hat with an aigrette thrust through the hatband. He did not hold her hand. She followed him anyway.
The birds were singing as Mr. Capulatio mounted the stage. Loud as tin cans tied to a spit in a storm. The people gathering about the stage were louder still, and she felt so alone, ringed on all sides by this oceanic land—she wondered wildly if this place was the root of her nostalgia, this country of surging grasses and wind that looked somehow like tides and waves. Then the first ray of true light split the horizon. All she could see was the block at the center of the stage, hideous-smooth and black. A servant directed her into a booth where three crones in face paint offered to hold her, in case she fainted when the time came. They draped a shawl over her shoulders and one whispered, “Cover your eyes if
