Chapter 17 is set in the Saltwater Flats and is told from Kora’s perspective on Day 9 of the node “Grain in Beard.”

Kora wakes up in the clinic and reports to Madame Dearborn that she is feeling better physically. She feels homesick, however: “She’s forgotten the hunger. She’s forgotten the strife. She wants to see Charlotte, Kai Wai, and K2 so badly she thinks she might burst” (112). Kora returns to the Isabelle shrine where she hid from the Cordova girls just a few days earlier. She says an awkward prayer for everyone in her life.

She inserts a scale she finds on the floor of the shrine, and from the scale emerges a projection of Isabelle Chow. Isabelle’s face is streaked with tears and uncomfortably close to Kora’s own face. It is an “emotional slaughterhouse” (114). In the projection, Isabelle says the unknown person she is addressing will not have the last word. Kora takes the scale with her. She is walking back to the Cordova School when Modesta and Soraya step out from the shadows; they drag Kora back to the school.