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They watched and listened while it squirmed for what seemed like hours. Lily still held the shears at her side. Evelyn tried to take them from her, but her sister’s fingers were so hard and cold and tightly clasped they seemed carved into the handle.

“I told you,” Evelyn said. “I told you there was something here.”

Finally her sister said: “It makes a lot of noise.”

The creature smeared itself across the floor until it was curled up in the ashes next to the stove. It made noises that were high-pitched and strangely articulated. Cinders settled on its legs like snowflakes, turning a deep red where they touched the wound in its thigh.

“Is it a man?” Lily said.

Evelyn had not heard the word for so long. Had not spoken it for even longer. She squinted into the shadows. She couldn’t really remember what a man looked like.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t think so.”

Her head felt hot and swollen and her words sounded distant to her own ears.

“Are you a man?” Lily asked the thing. She held the shears in both hands now, and pointed them at the rags as if she were divining for water. The heap shifted and whimpered. Evelyn put out a hand and gently pushed the shears down.

“Steady on,” she said, and this felt like an answer to Lily’s question, because a man would not have deserved such consideration.

“It’s disgusting,” said Lily, her voice breaking slightly, as if she were moments from crying herself. “Get rid of it, Evie. It stinks. It’s stinking the whole kitchen up.”

“How? Where do we put it?”

“Throw it in the lake.”

“We drink from the lake.”

“Throw it over the wall, then. Put it on the bonfire. I don’t know!”

The rags heaved up again and started crawling toward the kitchen door on all fours. Lily screamed.

“Quickly, Evie, stop it!”

Evelyn could not move quickly. She was too old for any kind of pursuit. The figure slipped between them and scrambled like a dog toward the daylight. When it reached the doorstep it tried to stand on its bad leg, but cried out and collapsed and fell face-first into the gravel.

Evelyn caught up and stood over it. A new and frightening thing in the bright sunlight, curled and twitching in its rags as if it had just been born. It had a scarf wrapped around its head with gaps for its eyes and nose. Around its shoulders a rag worn like a cape, and beneath that a T-shirt so thin and full of holes it looked like the diaphanous cobwebs that gathered in the high corners of the toolshed. A handful of letters faded almost to invisibility across its chest, which stirred some inexplicable feeling of sadness in Evelyn. Skinny arms wrapped around its stomach, their skin dry and scaly like the feet of a chicken.

Lily came and peered over her shoulder.

“What are you going to do with it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let’s just get rid of it. Please, Sissie.”

Evelyn thought of lugging it to the lakeshore. Or pushing it over the wall. Neither seemed right, and her indecision came not just as a surprise but as an affront, to Mama and everything Mama had taught her. She did not want to destroy the thing, and she could not explain why.

“Let me think.”

“There’s nothing to think about! Wring its bloody neck!”

“We can put it in the icehouse.”

“What? Why?”

“Just while we decide.”

“I have decided!”

“Let’s all just calm down a minute. Let me think.”

Lily was quiet only for a moment. “We’re not putting it in the icehouse,” she said. “Absolutely not.”

“Why not?”

“What if it makes all the meat go rotten?”

“The meat’s past going rotten, I think.”

“Or it might eat what we’ve got left.”

“Then we’ll tie it up. Go and get some twine from the shed. Quickly. Before it tries to make a run for it again.”

The thing did not make a run for it, did not move at all, save for a couple of long, shuddering intakes of breath. It seemed very young, very frail. A fledgling fallen from its nest. Evelyn preferred to think about it this way, as something plucked from the air, rather than imagine where it might have come from on its skinny legs.

When Lily returned with the spools of twine, they got on their hands and knees and wound it around the thing’s ankles, then around its wrists, hands tied behind its back. The twine was old and dusty, and they had to make several loops before it felt secure. They pulled it tight until the string bit into its skin. The creature continued to sob silently but didn’t resist at all.

Evelyn stood up slowly and massaged her knees where the gravel had imprinted itself. She looked at their quarry, then looked at Lily. Her sister was fidgeting with the rings on her fingers.

“What about around its neck?” she said.

“What do you mean?” said Evelyn.

“We should tie something around its neck. Tight, so it can’t swallow anything.”

“I don’t think we need to do that.”

“Are you sure?”

Evelyn nodded, though she wasn’t sure of anything. Lily flared her nostrils and turned away.

“It’s disgusting,” she said again.

Evelyn found a large sack that their mother had once used for composting. They rolled the thing inside it and dragged it all the way across the gravel and through the herb garden, one sister at each corner, straining like horses at a plow. They had to rest every ten paces. When they reached the icehouse, Evelyn went inside and shoved the bag up against the rear wall and then stood in the darkness, panting.

“Shouldn’t we hang it up?” suggested Lily, loitering at the entrance.

“No need for that, I think,” said Evelyn. She felt that the thing had already endured more than was necessary. Lily squinted, unconvinced.

Evelyn left the creature and went to join her sister. They shut the iron gate and Evelyn found a spare piece of wire to bind it shut. They spent a few moments looking through the bars but could no longer see the outline of the sacking.

“What now?” said Lily.

“I don’t know,” said Evelyn. “We should probably ask Mama.”

“You know what Mama would do.”

Evelyn nodded. She knew well enough. They were quiet for a long time. She looked back at the garden, and the birds sang and looped overhead as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

“Maybe it’ll die by itself,” said Lily after a while.

“Maybe,” said Evelyn.

“If we don’t feed it or water it, it’ll just curl up and die and that’ll be that.”

“Yes. I daresay.”

“All right then.”

Lily seemed more reassured by the idea than Evelyn. She pressed her face up against the bars, though there was nothing to see. Evelyn watched her sister. Her heart still fluttering, hot and thin as a paper lantern.

“One of us should keep an eye on it,” said Lily.

“Yes,” said Evelyn. “One of us should.”

In the end they both stayed. They helped each other to the ground and sat cross-legged outside the gate, listening to the sniffs and rustles of whatever lurked in the gloom. After a while Lily clawed a handful of gravel from the path and began throwing the stones one by one between the bars of the gate. Evelyn caught her hand.

“Don’t do that,” she said.

“Why not?” said Lily.

“Just don’t,” said Evelyn.