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She smelled salty, he says Like oceans

But she is practised in the ways of witchery – a trans wears a face different fros She is an impossibility with an unperturbed face

She is not beside Moses when he wakes in thefor her and finds her in the kitchen, sitting at the linoleu She has found a pair of kitchen shears and she is in the process of cutting off her long locks of red hair They fall to the ground around her as though she were an autuh – it is not hysterical but cruel, diabolical rather than panicky

Now you’re soul-split too, she says and points the shears at him If I’m broke, then so are you If I’ot boiling inside me, you loved it – and that ain

Who do you think you are? she continues Your soul ain’t better than h tower You’re down here in the muck with the rest of us You want order? You can play at order and righteousness all you want, but the world ain’t got any obligation to conform to your notions

He looks at the nest of red in which she sits

Your hair, is all he can utter

Tiliness on the outside of you The amber tresses ain’t me any more Haven’t you heard? I’ that’s been trained to talk and fuck

He turns and walks out of the kitchen He goes outside and sits with his duffel on the front porch He finds a cigar he’s been saving and sht, living or dead Sometimes it can be this way – just quiet and still The sound of a breeze through the high grasses, the creak of an unoiled barn door, the sandy brush of dust blown across an abandonedfor s used to be The world is so big – the a Who could of learned to live on this vast and poisonous air? What kind ofsomewhere The woman in the house behind hi ood ot to believe there are laws He’s got to believe there are things you’re supposed to do and things you ain’t – or else what’s it all for anyway? There are everywhere you look forks in the road If there weren’t so one or the other, then – then what? Then he and the world would be paralysed with quandariness

So maybe that’s what’s happened after all The whole world at a crossroads – and no reason to go either one way or the other

Finally, she eed Uneven patches stick out every which way, and she looks more like a child than ever A ferocious and feral child – all spit and hiss and gnashing teeth

You ready? he asks, looking away froet it done with

In the next town, Gunnison, an hour’s walk away, they find a car lot and search until they locate a vehicle that still runs They do not speak Moses glances down the road behind theht up to theines handing her over with an old-tiives him pleasure – and he checks himself for he does not want to become someone who lives exclusively in the mind

They drive east The roads rise in twists and turns over another ain Moses thinks of his brother waiting for hiain they pass out of the one fallow They stop and look at the maps Moses carries in his satchel They continue

In a place called Penrose they turn onto a new road and follow it north There is nothing for one back to immensities of stone and sky

But half a day after they find the car, they arrive at Colorado Springs It is thick with the slow dead The city holds warh to keep the dead animated, but they move with painful slowness across the icy streets The faces of the slugs here all wear the sa in their hair and eyelashes They reach out their ar to be done In soround, and the slugs are leashed there, trying fruitlessly to rise They will not be able to do so until the spring thaw Until then, they close their eyes against the snow that falls peacefully on their upturned faces

The place they are looking for is north of the town itself, so they drive through They turn up another road, and the Vestal Amata points to the road

Look, she says Tyre tracks Cars have been through here A lot of theood place to hole up, he says The dead ain’t in to see skeletons of old fighter jets parked on concrete platfor strips and radio towers every which way

Where is this citadel we’re going to? asks the Vestal

It’s military The friar said it was part of the Air Force Academy

The Vestal shakes her head

Goddaly

What’s that mean?

It means I don’t trust em

Maybe it ain’t for you to trust them – but for thes that ain’t ever worked so well for me

What about that pendant you wear on your neck?

What about it? she says, placing a palift, that’s all The symbol of it’s neither here nor there

They round a bend and coht in either direction over the snowy foothills