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He went down on one knee in the salt, like he meant to propose, and cupped his hands in a makeshift stirrup. Step up, now, honey, ’fore you change your mind.

Best to strike while the iron’s hot.

She did.

And then . . . stood there a second more with one foot up, one foot down, like she couldn’t decide whether she wanted on or off this dirt-bound ride, after all. Listened quiet, while Rook mouthed the “hey, rube!” spiel his Lady dictated, from her sodden, death-stink home. How there was nothin’ to any fine degree wrong with stretching your own neck, if the circumstances warranted. How this tree was a gallows grown for Adaluz alone, to end her pain and see her set up on high for all to gawk at, a new constellation of loss fixed at the very apex of an empty black sky. No need to think it over, since in Rainbow’s suicide paradise her child would be returned to her, whole and grown, to live by her side forever —

“You’ll never want for anything again, either of you,” he told her, throat dust-dry. “No hunger . . . no fear. Woman who dies of childbirth, God smiles on her, something fierce. Her baby too. You’re a pair of soldiers who went down fightin’, and there’s not much more honourable than that.”

“No,” she said, eyes tight-shut, head shaking like palsy, like fever. Like the only way she could keep herself from stopping was to turn eyelids and brain inside-out, and slip into voluntary blindness like a hangman’s all-too-welcome hood. “There isn’t, is there?”

Rook shook his head right back at her, even knowing full well she couldn’t see him do it. It was that, or scream.

Adaluz reached up, face abruptly slick with tears, La Llorona herself; the tree reached down to meet her halfway, wrapping itself helpfully tight ’neath her chops. And when Rook let his clasp part at last, she didn’t even struggle — just hung there, slack yet straining, ’til her own weight broke that throat-bone Rook knew so well, long after midnight but longer still before dawn.

’Til her lips crept back, bruising blue, and her tongue ground bloody between two uneven rows of small white teeth. ’Til a weak little spurt of piss ran down her legs to splatter on the ground, washing the profane circle even wider.

Oh, this better all be worth it, in the end, Rook thought. ’Cause if it’s not — by God, all gods, I deserve every damn thing I get.

Rook watched her sway to and fro a span, continent-slow — her skin warm enough, yet, to mist just a bit, against the cold night air — before laying the Smoking Mirror carefully on the wet ground beneath her, so that her shadow crossed over it on the very next swing, crossed and then locked to it, impossibly fast. With only the key-in-lock click of an opening door as accompaniment, along with a rumble that might be thunder, if thunder normally came from down rather than up.

That Hell-deep crack, opening wider. Yawning to send a fresh new wad of darkness sprout forth, lolling, a wet black tongue.

Say my name now, husband, while her heart’s precious blood stays hot. Say it, out loud.

“I don’t know your name,” Rook snarled. But his mouth opened yet one more time, and he heard the alien syllables spill out, burning his throat the way bile does, when you vomit — a mouthful of foulness. Bones boiled to burnt stock.

She of the Rope

She of the Traps

She of the Snares

Lady Rainbow

Suicide Moon

Psychopomp Mother

Eclipse’s Bride

Ix

Tab

IxChel

YxTabayTlazTleOtlCoYoTlaxQhuiChalChiuhTlicue

All of them, and none of them — or just the first. Or — maybe not. Or —

The baroque chorale echo of it took Rook from inside, a tin hornet’s nest shook hard and set ringing, hammering, buzzing, poisonous-sweet and painful, shit, so fucking painful. . . .

He fell to his knees, which was probably where she liked him best. Pawed and beat at his own head like it was a nut he was trying to crack, as the mirror winked open — a staring eye, a hole. As it stretched itself to let a veritable snake-bag of new tresses burst forth, geyser up the tree’s trunk and swarm down the rope, cocooning Adaluz’s corpse in black: a silk-drop seed-pod, heavy and full and ripe.

Only to tear itself open, thread by thread, and let her fall free once more, hitting the ground beneath in a feral crouch — with such impact, the eclipse itself shattered, leaving the moon unscathed and coldly shining once more above. Shining, the way her eyes — and teeth — did, as she caught Rook by the chin and grinned, before crushing his mouth to hers. Like brightly polished bone.

“Oh, little king,” she said, tearing at his buttons, pinning him wide with her hard-muscled legs and screwing herself right down on top of him, regardless of wounds or muck — not even pausing to wipe the filth from her loins as she hiked her vehicle’s dress high, naked and unafraid. “I’m cold, cold so long . . . so long. Warm me, now. Warm me.”