If a group of travelers were to fly over the town of Alta, they would almost certainly mistake the houses below for a circle of crumpled stones. Every home looked the same: small and grey. Hut-like. Dirty and deserted.
All of Alta’s bodies were swarmed along the front of a shack that sat before the edge of the town’s dirt road. Faces struggled to find a place at one of the two tiny windows at either end of the structure, but only a few sets of eyes would be able to see inside the home of Mr. Worne.
Being the oldest member of the community, Mr. Worne was taken care of by the people of Alta. The attention paid toward him was more of an obsession than a gesture of kindness, since everybody wanted a chance to enter his home to sit on the lap of the long-armed oracle.
They remembered a young girl who, some years ago, managed to find her way into his home. She was small and looked to be about five years old. They had hated her for being so close to him and had envied her for how well she fit into the vacant space on his lap.
They remembered how frightened she had looked as they watched her through the windows. They’d clawed at the glass when she’d slid off his lap and crept toward the palm of his right hand that was resting on the floor. They’d watched her grab his wrist to help lower herself onto the flesh between his fingers.
They remembered her closing her eyes in the midst of their noise. And they remembered pushing their fingers flat against the glass while they’d watched Mr. Worne curl his fingers around the body of the small girl. She’d looked content, but the bitter pounding of the people outside had disturbed the quiet calm felt inside the house.
She’d kept eyes on them and the shape they made: an assemblage of body parts—one human-painted pane.