At last the torchlight of the villagers behind us reached the great, shadowy thicket. I couldn't help but stare in awe. It was exactly what my mind had painted it to be. Great tree trunks twisted around one another, their roots and branches indistinguishable in the snarled wooden snakes' nest that filled the space between the ground and the leathery-leaved branches that clawed at the sky.

We circled it first. People stopped as they came into view of the scene on its other side. More Centzon Huītznāuhtin lay scattered around two motionless figures in the middle of an immense wheel of lightning traces. It radiated outwards from here, so vast, even the very center of it could have spanned Grillo Negro. Its outermost rays must reach across the sky.

The first figure was Cihua, fallen and bound to the ground with roots like iron bars. She had her own localized set of lightning marks, which drew spider's legs out from her motionless body. They were Coyol's, frostless and gouging. Coyol must have stood behind her and let Cihua feed on her magic to fight. She really would throw every ally she had to their deaths before she let the enemy touch her.

On the ground behind Cihua was the moon goddess herself.

Coyol lay at the very center of the sky-wide lightning wheel. Had I not known better, I would have thought she was asleep, on her side with her hands tucked up and resting on the battered, ice-crusted grass. Her hair, still glowing, spread out behind her and framed her still face. Unlike Cihua, she looked peaceful.

She had escaped the deepest pit of hurt and abandonment as a child, and spent centuries fighting her family in search of closure for her pain. Had she found it in the end?

Villagers around me bowed their heads. A heavy hand rested on my shoulder. Abraham's fingertips touched his forehead, chest, and each shoulder with the slow ceremony of farewell. I closed my eyes.

When Abraham spoke, his rich voice was soft. "With kings and with counselors of the earth, who rebuilt ruins for themselves; or with princes who had gold, who were filling their houses with silver. Or like a miscarriage which is discarded, I would not be, as infants that never saw light. There the wicked cease from raging, and there the weary are at rest. The prisoners are at ease together; they do not hear the voice of the taskmaster. The small and the great are there, and the slave is free from his master."

Jem squeezed me gently against his side as I swallowed back pain as sharp as a fishbone in my throat. I put my head on his shoulder again. Abraham asked Emma something I did not hear. She said to leave the goddess where she lay.

I could have stayed there for an hour had Emma's tug on my sleeve not reminded me why we were here. Jem let me go, and we followed her back to the broad side of the thicket. There among the roots was a gap that wouldn't fit a rabbit. Emma motioned for the other villagers to wait. At her touch, the structure groaned. The crack widened, until Emma's small frame at least could slip through. Jem and I waited for it to keep growing, then followed her into the darkness.

The claustrophobia of the wooden tunnel lasted only a heartbeat before I emerged into a space beyond. I lit the flame in my hand. We were inside a box of tangled wood the size of a single-story house from the world before. When Emma dismissed the giant, shimmering snake wrapped around its edges, it was quiet and safe-feeling in a way I would never have expected had I imagined it myself. On the floor, still covered in blankets of thin roots, were the motionless forms of the gods.

Jem was already kneeling beside one of them, instructing Emma to pull back the blankets. That proved too slow, so she made a gap instead for him to reach through and check Chal's pulse. She was alive. They moved together to the next god, then the next, repeating the good news until I had to sit against the wall and put my head down just to keep from crying. My heart nearly stopped when they took twice as long beside Xolotl, but Jem's face assuaged my worst fears. Xolotl was still hanging on, if barely.

The gap into the room was wide enough to admit stretchers now, so we retreated and let the villagers gather the gods as the root-blankets withdrew. Jem looked down at Emma, who was pressed to my side, hugging my elbow. Wordlessly, he brought us to a semi-intact patch of grass and sat down, taking us both with him. We all scooched together for warmth. Someone dropped a fur around our shoulders. I looked up. My cousin Angelita gave us a smile, tucked us in, and left again.

Emma was cuddled so close beside me now, she was practically on my lap. I adjusted my arm around her and hugged her tight. Jem did the same for me. We stayed there as soft voices and the crunch of footsteps on frost behind us marked the villagers' movements in and out of the thicket. The first clusters left, headed back to the village. They would not need my guidance this time. Our footprints were clear enough for them to retrace our own steps.

The crowd behind us gradually dwindled. I was only half paying attention. Finally, I emerged from a mental lapse to find the field quiet. Only Abraham and Rodolfo still stood by the thicket, keeping watch and giving us our space.

I squeezed Emma's shoulder. "Anything you want to talk about?" I murmured.

"No."

I doubted that, but I wasn't about to push. We sat in silence for a long time. I wondered what time it was. There was no day or night in a world that had lost its sun.

At last, Emma shifted. "Who's going to be the new sun god?" she said, and I could tell it had been on her mind. It had been on mine, too.

"You would know better than we would."

"Only Xipe hasn't had a turn, other than Xolotl. Well, Xipe and..." she trailed off.

Xipe, and Xochi.

"But I don't think Xipe will want to," said Emma. "He likes his kitchen better."

"What about her?" I said, tipping my chin towards Cihua. "You left that snake to guard them because she's still alive, right?"

Emma wrinkled her nose. "Being the sun god is an honour. She doesn't deserve that."

"But maybe the others deserve not to have to fill it themselves."

She was silent for a moment at that. "Maybe," she said at last.

Jem was giving us both a wary look. He hadn't seen who I indicated. "Who's still alive?"

"Cihua."

"Emma, you didn't take care of her, too?"

Emma's chin jutted, a welcome flicker of normalcy against her shaken exterior. "I didn't want to kill anyone. Not if I didn't have to."

Have to probably encompassed the Centzon Huītznāuhtin, who were not the type to run away until they had accomplished their goal or lost the one who set them to it. Cihua would have been a different matter.

"I beat her," continued Emma. She scrunched down again and bundled the edge of our shared fur against her chest. "And my magic only wanted Coyol and the Centzon Huītznāuhtin. I could control the rest of it."

"You could?" That was news to me.

"I think so." She looked down at her hidden hands. "I practiced with the earth half a lot before, so this half still felt kind of familiar. And it was angry when it saw Coyol, but it can't act on its own. It needs me to actually do anything."

"Is it still angry?"

"Not now that Coyol's gone."

Gone by her doing. Was she okay with that? I tried to gauge if she was stifling worse emotions, but she seemed open enough. Maybe the realization of having taken a life was a shock that took time to sink in. Or maybe seeing Coyol shoot her siblings did to Emma what a lifetime of burned villages had done to me. I felt no remorse for the turkey god.

We sat together in silence again then, until I nearly fell asleep. Jem roused us both and got us on our feet again. We joined Abraham and Rodolfo and began the long trek back across the field together. We still had a long way home.