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“Shame, shame, shame.”

Out of the corner of my eye I see Brother Owen pull the small hatchet from a loop in his belt. He tests it against his palm, feeling the weight there. Seth moves to one end of the platform and jams his hands against the railing. Tears have already started streaking his dusty cheeks, and a glob of snot trembles wetly along his upper lip.

“We know the price to be paid for this crime!” I call out, addressing everyone at once. “Before all of you, he is to be punished! Before us all, he is offered redemption through transformation!”

“Shame! Shame! Shame!”

They all rock back and forth, raising their voices in unison. But it's a chant, not an angry mob. It's dutiful. It's determined.

Owen meets my eyes, his lips pressed into a hard, grim line. Silent agreement passes between us. He knows exactly what to do.

As he raises the hatchet, I turn away and walk back out of the clearing, threading my way through my Family. They don’t even see me. Everyone’s eyes are pinned to Seth and Owen.

I don't need to watch it. I hear it when it happens. That definitive thud, when Seth loses the tip of a finger.

When I see Melissa out of the corner of my eye, I pivot slightly to my left and almost run directly into Angel. She looks up at me, startled, breathing shallowly through her mouth. Her cheeks are pink, her fingers tugging thoughtfully at the sides of her cotton shift.

I’m not sure precisely what to say to her but I hear Owen’s voice behind me and turn around just in time.

“Go to your mother,” he tells her, over my shoulder. I turn to look at him. He waits a moment, presumably for Angel to walk away, before lowering his chin to speak confidentially to me.

“The aunties want it done tonight,” he says.

“Tonight? With everything else that happened today?”

He shrugs. “They feel that Seth made the situation more urgent, I guess. Mary said the aunties all want it tonight.”

I stretch back, rolling my shoulders look it up at the blue, cloudless sky. I remember suddenly that there has not been any rain i

n quite a while. Everything is so dusty and parched right now.

Owen is still staring intently at me when I relax.

“Well, I thought we weren't entirely decided on what to do with her, were we?”

He shifts his eyes to the left and right. He's uneasy talking about this in a public space. I agree with a curt nod and turn to walk to a more secluded spot. Once out of earshot, he begins again.

“The aunties want it done right away. If we don't want to negotiate the issue with them, we have to do it. Tonight.”

I nod. He's got a point. They'll definitely want to have some input on this decision if we let them. It’s best to not even get them involved.

“But I don’t want to rush into this, and find out we needed her sold. I don’t want it to come to that, but to be perfectly frank…”

“We’re in trouble,” he finishes the thought for me.

I can’t quite say it out loud, but my silence says enough.

“It would still on the table, even after the ceremony,” he continues.

“Dustin expects a virgin. You know that,” I counter.

He spits into the dirt. “The guys at Dustin wouldn't know any better anyway. She's got that virgin look about her. That'll probably last for a while, no matter if we go through the ceremony or not.”

That she does. The pink tip of her nose. The innocent eyes. The suggestive ways that she does things that she doesn't even know are suggestive.

“We could just leave her intact,” I suggest. “It’s unusual, I know, but it might be the best way to leave all the options open.”

“That’s not right,” he objects. The sharpness in his voice startles me, and I begin to realize there’s more to this that he has admitted.