Daughters,

Skill is necessary, when what one shapes is another's tomb. The worm is friend to all, for he takes what was once tender flesh and moves it back into the earth, but before Brother Worm has his meal, we must have ours.

A person's likeness steals something of them; a mirror image, a replica maintains the spirit, so that we have always something to remember the sacrifice. She didn't perceive it when she saw it, but it is our way—dissemblance. His fate was carved the moment he crossed our path. The raven croaked his entry; the worm wove his path through the earth to await the moment.

But lies were hers, as well. We were not the only ones in masks, my daughters. Remember that.

~ the woman in the woods

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A strange sunrise cast the entirety of her cottage in a burning orange, as if the bed and chair and window ledges were on fire. Minn hadn't slept much at all, and she lay, eyes wide open, and watched the light move as the sun ascended to its place in the sky.

Everything felt so urgent, and she'd spent hours attempting to quell the slow-building hysteria. Wolf's sudden appearance had both relieved and confused her. She was at odds with herself. He'd offered little explanation before they'd been sucked into that bonfire, the insanity of which Minn still couldn't quite grasp. She was fairly sure that people had died last night, that they'd burnt up in that fire either willingly or otherwise. There'd been snakes? Poisonous ones, apparently. And when she thought about how close she'd been to all of it . . . and yet the whole thing was too absurd! Somehow, the flames had eventually dwindled just as the people had, and Minn had found herself outside her dwelling, begging Wolf to stay with her, but he'd refused. Refused! She'd been absolutely furious at him, mocking his desire to respect the traditions of these cultish, freakish people, but he'd insisted, and she'd gone into her own cottage and slammed the door so hard it'd come off its hinges.

She'd moved her bed against the door and tried to sleep on it, there. Her thoughts had been far too agitated, though, circling her brother and Peter and Isaac and that clay face that'd seemed familiar and Opal and flames . . . oh the flames! She might as well have entered Hell itself for all the flames in her dreams.

What was she to do? She still had Wolf. For as frustrated as he'd made her, there was no way he'd let anything happen to her or Peter. She knew that. And he'd promised that if she wanted to leave, he'd help them escape—because that's what it would be: an escape. So what if she'd promised to stay for the horrid festival they anticipated! They could do whatever they wanted with their skinned rabbits and snakes and one another, but she was finding her son and getting the hell out of there.

Her body was still, though her mind raced. It was probably something like seven o'clock in the morning, but who knew? There was no such thing as time in this place. Everything was some old, weird, outdated blend of religion and taboo, and she was having none of it. She'd rather die in that forest than spend any more time in this place.

"Minn?"

The harsh whisper at her door, the soft rap, were those of her brother. Part of Minn wanted to ignore him, to punish him for refusing to stay with her, but he was Wolf, her other half, her brother. However frustrating he could be from time to time, that wouldn't change. So she climbed off her little bed and pulled it away from the door, which immediately fell against the mattress.

Great, she thought. Now I have no door. But she planned to spend zero more nights there, so it didn't matter much.

"Morning, Minnow." Wolf stood in the dawn, shrugging at the sight of her door.

"Yeah, whatever. Hurry up before anyone sees you. They won't like a man visiting a woman." She said it with no small amount of derision.

Wolf stepped awkwardly around the bed. "I've got you some water."

"From the well?"

"Yep."

"They haven't touched it?" After the bonfire, he'd filled a water bottle from one of the wells and shared it with her.

"No, no. I brought it straight here."

Minn grabbed the bottle and drank greedily. Hunger she could handle, but thirst was another matter. Then she pulled the lone chair out into the middle of the floor and sat on it, gesturing for her brother to take the bed. "I don't want to mess around, Wolf," she got to the point. "You said we'd go if I still wanted to this morning, and I do. I want to leave even more after that—whatever we saw last night. In fact, I think we should go as soon as possible, now, even. I just need you to help me find Peter. Please tell me you saw him on the men's side?"

Wolf was still standing. Minn noticed he wore the plain brown pants and white shirt of the other men, and it upset her irrationally, but she stifled her annoyance. He was just trying to fit in, hopefully so it'd be easier for them to get out.

"Well? Stop looking at me like that, and please sit. You're making me nervous."

He shook his head of dark hair but capitulated and lowered onto the bed as carefully as if afraid he'd break it. "I didn't see Peter," was all he said.

Minn clutched her hands to still their trembling. "They've done something to him. Where do you think he is?"

"They haven't hurt him, all right? I know that for certain."

"You do?" Minn's eyes lit from within. "Are you sure? How do you know?"

"I spoke with some of the brothers last night. They were talking about him. Just how happy they were that he was there. There was no indication anyone had hurt him."

"But where is he, then? He'd want to see me. I know he would. They're keeping us apart!"

"Why would they do that?"

"I don't know! I don't—I don't know." She rose and began to pace. "But that blond kid, that weird-looking one, he told me I couldn't see Peter for two days."

Something moved through Wolf's features, as stealthy as his namesake. He watched his sister with a seriousness she didn't quite understand or like. His hands were on his knees, gripped them for a moment and then relaxed. She knew what he was going to say before he said it. "Then maybe we should stay until tomorrow, when you see him again."

Minn breathed deeply, tried to control the rising ire. "You told me—you promised me—that we'd leave this morning if I wanted to."

He stood and stepped to her, put his hands on her shoulders and looked down at her (though not from such a height; he wasn't a particularly tall man) as if she were a child. "Minnow, be reasonable. You won't leave without Peter, right? I will try to find him, I promise, but if I don't, then you'll see him tomorrow, as they said, and we can leave then."

"I don't want to stay here another minute!"

Wolf sighed, smiled strangely, and pulled his sister into his arms. "Everything's going to be all right. You worry too much. We'll figure it out."

Pressed against him, face buried in his shoulder, Minn brought her arms up around Wolf's back and tried to share his confidence. "I swear to God, Wolf," she mumbled, "if you don't come with me, I'm going to just run off into those woods myself, ghost women be damned. I don't care who or what's out there." She drew back. "We aren't safe, here."

Rather than say anything in return, her brother advised her to come to breakfast with him, but Minn refused, retorting that she'd rather eat grass than sit in the hall around all those people, wondering which of them were missing after last night's bonfire (not that she cared, exactly, except for maybe Opal—it would've been a shame for someone so young and beautiful to throw her life away like that). Hoping aloud Sister Dorothea had gone into the flames yet knowing she hadn't, Minn was chagrined at her brother's mild scolding. "You shouldn't deride these people's traditions," he told her. "They aren't wrong; they're just different." That sent Minn over the edge, and she pushed her brother out the door, snarking that she had to clear herself of corruption and needed privacy.

As he walked away, Wolf at least promised to search for Peter, to be her ears and eyes on the inside, and that settled the woman's mind somewhat.

Left alone in the unhinged door of her cottage, Minn's stomach rumbled. Her heart was turbulent. This person she'd been closest to throughout her entire life . . . why did she feel she hardly knew him? But she couldn't think of Wolf too deeply; Peter needed her presence of mind, now, more than anyone else. She'd do what she'd done earlier: sneak out while the others were eating. Even though she'd wound her way through the cottages and garden plots and eventually made it to that orchard and found nothing, they could be moving Peter around. Most likely, they were keeping him in one of the dwellings, holding him hostage or maybe drugging him so he wouldn't fight back. Oh, she hoped he was all right. He didn't deserve any of this. Damn Wolf. He'd done this to them, got some harebrained notion that this was a cultural experience, but people were dying! How he could act as if it were no big deal, what they'd witnessed the night before . . .

Minn shoved her bed against the door again and forced herself to be patient, to be rational, while she waited.

Thankfully, it wasn't long before she was sneaking back out into the sunshine, internally cursing that ball of flame for mocking her suffering. She was sure she'd waste her time peeking into windows she'd already peeked into and seeking something she'd not find, but the moment she crossed the green to the men's side of the village, she caught sight of two figures speaking to one another nearby and ducked behind a chicken coop in order to avoid being seen.

Brother Hank's voice, as low as it was, came crystal-clear to her ears. "Finish it, boy. It's needed tomorrow morning. I can get my sons—"

"No, brother," returned a second voice, and when Minn dared to peer around the corner of the coop, she saw it was one of the young men, the one with dark black curls down his shoulders, the caterpillar eyebrows. She'd seen him with Hank's weird blond twins. "I'll finish it," the boy added.

"Miss every meal until you do. You need help with the mud?"

"I have only the last trip to the river."

"Then make it."

"Aye, brother."

Minn slipped back as Brother Hank hustled by, probably off to eat. When he was gone, she leaned back out to watch the boy. She didn't see him at first, but within a moment, he was exiting the door of a particular cottage, two large wooden buckets in hand. He gazed up into the sky for a moment, put down the buckets, and wiped his brow with a handkerchief. Then he picked up the buckets again and headed off in the opposite direction of Hank. The river, Minn thought. He'd said one more trip to the river . . . for mud? If he were going to the river, that gave her time. What was he making? What needed to be finished by tomorrow morning? Perhaps this was some sort of clue as to Peter's whereabouts. Maybe he was in that cottage! Hank's was one of the larger ones, at least three times the size of the one she was in.

Minn hurried to the door. Her own cottage hadn't had a lock; she hoped that was indicative of the norm, and thankfully, it was. Hank's door pushed right in, and with one quick glance around her to make sure no one watched, she crept inside.

It was big, all right, but contrary to the multi-room structure she'd anticipated, the cottage was, like hers, one open space. There were multiple beds around the perimeter, twice as many chairs and bedside tables, more windows and a larger fireplace, but otherwise, she took it all in at a glance, and the only thing that stood out was the massive clay thing sitting right in the center of the polished floor. The light was dim, as it was in all of their poorly-lit buildings, but when Minn approached, she saw clearly that it resembled a sarcophagus, one of those things mummies were put into. It was made of clay, that same yellow-orange clay she'd seen hanging in bits from the trees and in that hut days ago (had it really only been a few days?). But what struck her most of all was the lid of the thing. It was not flat or patterned; no, it was sculpted into the likeness of an anatomically correct, nude, life-size person, head at one end, arms at the sides, torso and pelvis and legs and, all they way at the bottom, ankles, heels, and toes. It was masterfully made, so realistic in style, as if the thing had once been alive.

Minn stood over it, nausea worming into her gut as a slow and dreadful realization took hold. She knew, now, why that bit of sculpted face hanging in the orchard had been familiar. And she knew, too, that waiting for Peter was no longer an option, for it was the face of her own son that looked at her from those perfect peaks and grooves of shameless golden clay.