Dedication

For Gwyn,
and also for Lori (Annie) Smith

Lost

On a hot day in September, I found Celeste’s clothes scattered all over the barn, one shoe upside down next to Papa’s forge, the other inside one of the milking pails. Her yellow dress hung from a ladder like a bird suspended in midair. I pulled the dress down by its hem and three tiny blue feathers, nearly the same shade as my sister’s eyes, drifted down to the dusty floor.

I caught one of them in my hand; as I stood there puzzling over what might have happened that morning to make her run off again I began to feel alone, as though a wind had come up and peeled Celeste from the earth. I told myself that she was playing the same old game she’d scared us with so many other times, but this loneliness, so odd and new, followed me like a ghost as I ran outside and shouted for Papa. I was almost afraid he wouldn’t come, that I’d find our cabin gone, and I’d be without any family at all.

Papa searched the woods. I took our dog, Rufus, and ran up and down the river bank. When I found no trace of her, I followed Papa into the trees where there were more shadows than seemed right. I didn’t dare go in very far and kept circling the places Celeste and I knew well.

I heard Olena’s voice in my head telling me stories, her words dripping slowly the way honey falls from a spoon. Her stories had always made me uneasy. She believed there were ghosts, the last traces of the Old Ones, who were a part of the breath and spirit of the rocks and trees, of the river Talum, and the surrounding woods. But the wei-ni-la, the darker ones, were the shadows to really fear. They were ancient, too, and lived in the empty spaces of the woods, filling them with whispering.

All afternoon Celeste’s name echoed through the trees as Papa and I called for her. Finally, his shouting changed and Rufus started to bark furiously. I was so tired my legs were shaking. I was running on legs that wouldn’t work.

When I found them, Papa was half way up a steep gully with Celeste draped over his shoulder. Her hair, a skein of golden thread unraveling almost to the ground, was the only thing that covered her. I thought she looked newly born or newly dead.

“Is she all right?” I asked. My lips were dry and hurt when I spoke, and my words felt like spittle as they came out of my mouth.

All Papa could do was to keep climbing. A couple of times he lost his footing. I was afraid he’d slide all the way back down, but he finally got close enough for me to offer my hand, not that a twelve year old girl was much of an anchor for all that weight. He took my hand anyway and with a last push hauled Celeste over the rim of the gully, collapsing next to me.

He took a moment to catch his breath and then said, “Katy, take your sister.”

I pulled her off of him and held as much of her in my lap as I could. She breathed in the shallow way she did every night, as though she were dreaming peacefully, oblivious to all the fretting she'd caused us. Rufus, his red coat full of stickers, licked her face. I shooed him away. A couple of small blue feathers was stuck to his fur.

“Papa, if Celeste fell all the way down the gully, how come she doesn’t look it?”

There wasn’t a scratch or bruise anywhere on her body. Papa didn’t answer; he was still catching his breath. He finally stood up and carried her to Gruff, our mule, who was tethered to the branch of an old madrone tree. He got the quilt that was tied behind the saddle and wrapped her in it.

“You run home. Tell Mama we found her, that I think she’ll be fine.”

“What are you going to do?” I asked.

“Never mind. Just go,” he said. He wet his handkerchief with water from his canteen, bathed her face, and then tried to get some into her mouth.

I wanted a drink, too. My tongue was like a piece of felt, but I didn’t want to ask for the water. Celeste had always been the favorite, a fragile lamb in my parents’ eyes. She was also beautiful, everyone said so; even now with her face burned red from the sun she was beautiful.

But I knew differently. Celeste was anything but frail. I took one last look, and I thought I saw her eyes flutter for a second, then close again. I called to Rufus and turned wearily toward home.



Celeste and I were born the first day of summer. Papa said that there had been a storm the night before. The wind howled like the devil in a tantrum, knocking down trees with its temper. Lightning split the sky apart, and thunder seemed to rise from the earth, shaking the cabin like an earthquake. But in the morning, when we were born, the whole world became quiet, except for the rush of the Talum, the sound so familiar we barely heard it.

Papa said, right from the start, that he knew our destinies wouldn’t be the same. He always talked fancy like that, and I loved the way words flowed from his mouth, lighting the air the same way sparks lit the river when the sun hit it just so.

Mama said cradles would be a waste since we’d outgrow them in no time, so we slept in dresser drawers. Celeste slept sweetly in hers, looking like an angel, her skin white and her hair fair and downy. I had my father’s brown hair and eyes; I fussed and cried and carried on. At least, that is what they told us.

We lived on a small farm, five cleared acres, a quarter mile from the Talum River, half way between the little town of Falcon and the Rosamint Valley. My grandfather, Marcus Albert Farrow, traveled across the country to leave memories far behind after my grandmother died; he brought my father, Marcus Junior, to live here on the Talum.

In the city of San Jerome, an old miner told him of the river, how it was prettier than Paradise and just about as far from civilization. Grandpa used to say the Farrows were never sociable people and this wild, lonely place suited us just fine.

Papa met Mama in San Jerome. When he brought her to the river, Grandpa gave Papa the cabin he'd grown up in and built a new one across the Talum where he lived until he passed on with Olena, his Nanchuti wife.



The heat had put the forest asleep; everything was still except for the buzzing flies that flew around my head as I lumbered back home. Our cabin sat beneath a triplet of giant firs that I always thought of as guardians protecting us.

I dragged myself up the steps and heard Olena singing. She didn’t turn around when I walked in but sat by Mama’s bed. Her eyes were closed, and she was rocking back and forth as she sang to herself. She’d burned angelica root, an herb she often used in her doctoring, and the odor hung like a sweet cloud in the room, an offering to the Old Ones.

“Papa found Celeste. He’s on his way back,” I whispered. Papa and Olena didn’t get along, and I was afraid he’d find her there. “Is she sleeping?”

Olena didn’t answer but reached over and held Mama’s hand. She always wore the same conical hat, woven from reeds from the Talum and flicker feathers. Below it, her hair was gray like the rain clouds that hung on forever in the winter. Her arms were tattooed with the thin horizontal stripes that used to be the custom of the Nanchuti women. Only the older women were still marked this way, but I always forgot Olena was old. Her face didn’t have a wrinkle, and her eyes were dark obsidian and could cut just as sharp when she felt something wasn’t right.

I couldn’t lie to her because of the way she looked at me, her vision piercing into my soul where it always caught hold of my conscience. I could lie to the rest of them, and sometimes get away with it, but never to her.

Olena never made over Celeste the way the others did. If anything, she was stricter with her than with me. Being with her was the only time I felt important. She'd talk to me the same manner she'd talk to Mama, but I was the only one she told about how Celeste went between the two worlds. She said that was the reason she had her strange spells.

Most of this confused me. She told me that some day Celeste would need me, but the future felt like a myth then. My childhood had passed so slowly, the years circling like a carousel, one so much like the other, that I really didn’t believe that what she said would ever happen.

Olena stood up. The smell of the herb, savory and thick tingled in my nose.

“Your mama’s better,” she said, and walked out the door.

Tiny beads of sweat outlined Mama’s upper lip. Silver weaved through the strands of her auburn hair, and this made me feel sad. I put my hand on her forehead; her fever had broken.

I sat on the bed. Mama opened her eyes and ran her hand across her face.

“We found Celeste. Did I wake you?”

“Yes. That’s okay. Is she all right?”

“Papa said she’ll be fine.”

The lines in her forehead relaxed a bit. “You look tired, Katy.”

I remembered how thirsty I was. “I’ll go out to the pump and wash.”

As I stepped outside, the air felt like the inside of Papa’s forge, as hot as I feared Hell might be. The handle of the pump burned my hand, so I used the bottom of my shirt to push it. Four times the handle went down, and then the water began to pour. I stuck my head underneath, the water felt like winter, so cold I wanted to scream from the shock.

I pumped the handle a couple times to let Rufus have his drink, and then I heard Gruff. Papa and Celeste came through the trees. Celeste sat on Gruff while Papa led them on foot.

“I think Mama’s feeling better,” I called.

Celeste didn’t smile, but her face brightened. Papa stopped and helped her off the mule. I wondered if she was talking yet. I followed them into the house. Mama was sitting at the table.

“You should be in bed,” Papa said, then he sniffed a couple times. The air was still heavy with the scent of angelica. “Olena’s been here. I told you, Frances, I don’t want her meddling in this house with her superstitions.”

My stomach knotted up. He always acted like this about Olena. Celeste, Mama and I saw her every day, but we never mentioned our visits to Papa. Most of the time he pretended he didn’t notice.

“I’ve been sleeping, Marcus,” Mama said, plain and simple.

He looked at me. “Did you see her?”

“No, sir,” I lied, hoping he’d let the matter drop. I climbed up to the loft and threw down some clothes for Celeste.

Papa wasn’t a big man. In fact, he was only an inch or two taller than Mama. He stood there with dust thick on his overalls and in his sweat stained undershirt. His hair was dark and wild, just like mine; combing it never seemed to help. He hadn’t shaved for several days and his chin was covered with stubble, rough as short grass. Papa was stubborn, and though he didn’t look like it, he was the smartest man on the river, always reading when he wasn’t working.

“What happened, Celeste?” I asked, coming back down the stairs. I threw her nightgown to her. I was sure she was trying to get attention, certain that she faked being unconscious when Papa hauled her up the hill. I refused to listen to the quieter voice inside of me wondering how she got down in the gully to begin with.

“I don’t know," Celeste mumbled as Mama helped her into her nightgown. “One moment I was in the hay loft. The next thing I remember, Papa was waking me up.”

“You scared us half to death, once again,” I said.

"Enough of that, Katy,” Papa scolded.

“We were so worried,” Mama said gently, holding Celeste’s hands. "Katy, you need to be kinder to your sister."

That's when Celeste began to cry. “Katy's being mean. I don’t know what happened.”

I was crying by then but no one noticed. The same old thing was happening. Celeste was the one who ran off, and I was the one everyone got upset with. I was so tired my eyelids felt like bricks, but I ran out the door anyway. I told Rufus not to follow me, but he didn’t listen.

By the time I got down to the river, the sun had dipped behind the ridge and looked like a candle running out of wax. Rufus jumped into the dugout and whined, thumping his tail, anxious to get going. I stepped in, and soon my paddle sliced through the heat as I crossed over the river to find Olena.

Across the River

I wanted to tell Olena that I was sick of Celeste, that I was too old for her stories and I didn’t want to hear them anymore. But after I beached the dugout on the other side of the river and saw her sitting on her porch, all the words blazing in my mouth fell back into my throat. Whenever I came to her with my problems, wanting her to take my side, she never did. Olena never took sides with anyone.

The garden in front of her cabin overflowed with vegetables and flowers. I walked between the rows of summer squash and the huge heads of cabbages that looked pretty as bouquets. Olena was putting a pinch of tobacco from the pouch she always carried into her pipe. I sat down on the top step; neither of us said a word.

The night was waking up. The trees looked like fingers sprinkling stars into the sky, and crickets started to strum a beat that blended into the river’s pulse. Slowly, my heart stopped hammering. Rufus let out a loud sigh from his favorite spot between the fence and the trellis of beans. The darkness felt like a poultice for my temper, cooling it down, calming me.

Olena lit her pipe, sucked on it until the tobacco glowed. “You had a growl with your papa, didn’t you?”

“With all of them.” I slapped at a mosquito but was already bit. Olena didn’t need me to tell her that anything was wrong. “Celeste ran off again today, and now they’re all mad at me”.

“You think your sister’s little crazy?” Olena asked. I felt the mocking tone of her voice, but it was gentle enough not to hurt.

“No,” I protested, but as usual Olena had figured out what I was really thinking. “It’s just that she can be so wild, especially when we’re alone, but then, at home, she’s so good. At least she acts like she is.”

I felt like I had two sisters. There was the fearless girl that I thought only I knew about. When we were alone, she would climb on rocks, higher than I ever wanted to go, and then she’d jump from them into the river, screaming with joy all the way down. She’d tease me when I stood at the edge, looking down, unable to make myself step off. Or she’d run through the forest, taunting me to go in deeper and deeper. I’d follow until I was sure we were lost; I’d have to be close to tears before she’d agreed to go home.

Around anyone else, Celeste was quiet, more willing to do chores and lessons than I ever was. She never sulked like I did. She even looked differently, smaller and paler, as though life was draining from her. Sometimes I’d wonder if she disappeared on purpose just to be able to breathe.

The boards creaked behind me. Olena’s son, Tavi, walked out of the house. He was just a little younger than Papa, but the way Papa acted around him, you’d never guess that they had been raised together.

One time when we were in Falcon I saw the look that passed across Tavi’s face when Papa walked right past, pretending he didn’t even see him. Papa never treated Tavi like that at home, but even there you could tell Papa thought he was the only one to have grown up.

Maybe Papa would have acted differently if Tavi had cut his hair like a white man’s or sang hymns under his breath instead of his spirit songs. But then Tavi wouldn’t have been Tavi; he’d have been some other person because he’d have lost his soul.

I was pretty sure Tavi’s spirit animal, his tanatu, was a bear. A tanatu was something to keep private because if others found out, they could use it against you. Still, I loved to guess what tanatus belonged to the people I knew. I was pretty certain Mama’s was a salmon because of the way they came to her when we went fishing; she could net more than the rest of us put together, and the ones she caught were always the biggest.

Papa’s? I thought it might be a porcupine because he could get so bristly. Olena laughed when I told her that and said that a mule would be more like it. Celeste’s had to be something flighty, a bird or a butterfly, or maybe even a honey bee. but I could never decide exactly what. I kept wondering about mine, thinking a deer one day and then changing my mind to a rabbit the next. I went through most of the animals I saw around home but couldn’t settle on any of them.

I couldn’t figure out Olena’s either. Actually I was a little afraid to try, but I was sure about Tavi’s because he was such a big man, lots bigger than Papa. He could have easily knocked Papa to the ground with one swipe of his arm if he had wanted to. There were times I wished he would have, but Tavi was smarter than that.
Smiles came naturally to him, but lately, he hadn’t smiled much. Bad luck hung about him like a river mist.

While staying with Olena he was nursing a snake bite, and I could tell the leg still hurt by the uneven rhythm of his steps. He sat down next to me, stretched out his bad leg and began to sing in Nanchuti until the treetops held up the moon.

The three of us sat there wrapped in darkness, listening to the night. In a tree behind the cabin, an owl hooted once, twice, a third time. The forest was so quiet that I felt it listen right along with us; then, down river, we heard the faint answer of another owl. A moment passed, and the first owl cried again.

“What are they saying?” I asked.

“This one here saw a ghost,” Tavi said.

I sat up straight. Olena had taught me that ghosts, the Old Ones, were everywhere, always watching, always listening. They had lived along the Talum long before the Nanchuti. When Olena’s people first came to the river, many of the Old Ones were unwilling to share their home. They took the forms of birds and flew to their home in the North

But not all of them left. Olena said some stayed to help the Nanchuti, to teach them how to turn the world so that the dry season became wet and the wet, dry. They stayed to make the world new each year so that it wouldn’t fall back into the empty log that had given birth to it.

I thought about a time, a year earlier, when Olena had taken Celeste and me up to the top of the ridge that ran behind her cabin. The path snaked its way through the scrub brush that covered that side of the hill. At the top, there were pillars of rocks, a volcanic outcropping that time hadn’t quite worn away. We stopped at them, catching our breath. Olena pointed to the white head of a peak sticking up behind the three folds of mountain ridges that lay before us.

"That mountain there, Waltaktki, makes the river. Long, long ago, Nanchuti come and Old Ones wanted to be alone. From Waltaktki to ocean,” Olena pointed to the west, “big noise, big cry all over the land. Old Ones turn into eagles, hawks, ravens, anything with wings. Waltaktki smoked for days, hiding the Old One’s path to their new home, until ash rained from the clouds and Old Ones gone.

Over time the spirits of the Old Ones who stayed sunk into stones and grew into trees. Some became part of the river itself or wove themselves into the air, changing from sunlight to storm with the seasons. After they taught Nanchuti doctors how to remake the world, their longing to return to their brothers and sisters became stronger than their love for the river. But by then, none of them could remember the way home."

I don’t know how long I sat there thinking about these things. Olena and Tavi said good night and went to bed. I stayed and listened to the owls talk. When they stopped and only the crickets' songs remained, I forced myself to walk down to the dugout.

As I paddled toward home, the moon’s reflection rode the ripples, its light breaking apart into silvery specks and then coming back together like a dance. Rufus had stayed on the other side, his face down some rabbit burrow. I called to him and waited as he swam across; he whimpered all the way, as though he hadn’t swam the same stretch a hundred other times. He climbed out, shook off the water, mostly onto me, and we walked back up the path.

In the barn, Papa’s forge glowed like a devil’s kitchen. I always thought the red coals glowing in the forge’s mouth must be what the gates of Hell looked like. I wasn’t entirely sure I’d wind up in Heaven, so the fire scared me. But it fascinated me, too, the way Papa used it to bend iron into any shape he wanted.

He was the best smithy in a hundred miles, everyone said so; the money he made from this work was what actually kept us fed, not the farm. In summer, he’d work through the night while it was cool enough to stand the heat. I thought of how tired he must have been that night, but there he was beating on a piece of blazing metal as though he had to shape something to his will before he could fall asleep.

Mama snored softly as I walked into the cabin. I climbed the ladder to the loft where Celeste and I slept. Celeste stood in front of the window that was opened to the night. Her gown danced about her ankles with a breeze that the stars blew in. Her arms stretched out like wings, and she held her head back so that her hair nearly tumbled to the floor. I almost grabbed her because I thought she might jump, but then she turned and faced me.

“Don’t worry so, Katy.”

“I can’t believe you’re saying that,” I said, sitting on the bed, crossing my arms. “You really don’t remember anything?”

“I remember falling, and then the world getting dark.”

When she said that, the last bit of energy drained from my body as though I was falling into darkness. I couldn’t hold another thing in my head. I undressed to my shift and dropped into bed. Celeste lay beside me. The last thing I remember was her hand, a soft warm circle, closing around mine.

The next morning I heard Mama humming softly downstairs. I smelled the coffee brewing. Celeste was still asleep, so I dressed as quietly as I could and climbed down the ladder.

Mama had been sick for over a week. Her face was still pale and pinched, but it was good to see her up and about again. I gave her a hug.

“Olena was here yesterday when I got home,” I whispered. “I don’t know why Papa gets so upset with her. Look at you. Whatever she did got you on your feet again.”

“I know you were trying to keep the peace,” Mama said, “but I don’t want you to lie to your papa anymore.”

I felt like I had just swallowed a pepper. Sometimes I had to lie.

Olena often took us on long walks where she let us help her pick the herbs for her medicine, and we’d be gone for hours. Once she taught us steps to the Flower Dance, a dance that Nanchuti girls did with the young men when they became women. She told us what happened when a girl became a woman.

It was always Celeste’s fault that we didn’t come home. She always had one more question to ask Olena, and then just one more. Time seemed to pass for Olena the way trees grow, and both Celeste and I forgot about the minutes ticking away.

But I was the one who made up the stories, a rattlesnake on the path or a twisted ankle, and then I’d pretend to limp. They never believed me so I don’t know why I kept doing it, except to try to protect the world Olena shared with us.

Mama had gone back to mixing the biscuit batter, but I wasn’t done arguing my point.

“Papa shouldn’t be mad at Olena just because she still believes in the old ways. Most of the Nanchuti still do.”

"None of the rest flaunt it right under his nose. He’s concerned that she’s influencing the two of you too much.”

Mama tapped the spoon against the bowl. I poured half a cup of coffee and filled the rest with milk.

“Do you think she is?”

“Olena is a strong minded woman,” Mama said, “but I’ve been glad she’s been my neighbor all these years. She helped me so much when the two of you were little. There’s nothing wrong about learning about the Nanchuti ways, as long as you don’t start believing in them.”

But Celeste and I did believe. We would close our eyes as we sat on Olena’s porch and soar through the air with Nanchula and Hanla-chu, the creators, as they glided on heron wings from the north to breathe life into the first man and first woman. We listened with wide eyes when she told us about the wei-ni-la, the evil ones deep in the forest, who would drive people insane with their whispery voices that lay just beyond the wind.

Olena’s stories were more real to me than the ones Papa read from the Bible. I thought the things that happened in them were even more farfetched than Olena’s tales. I had grown up along the river and could see with my own eyes the things Olena talked about.

Celeste came downstairs sleepy-eyed, her hair uncombed. Mama put the biscuits in the stove and told Celeste to get the brush. She sat down and Mama began to tame her hair.

“Feeling better?” Mama asked after a few strokes.

“I think so,” Celeste said.

Mama had one braid done when Papa walked in. There was no doubt about it, he’d been up all night. He was still wearing the same dirty clothes. He went straight to the coffeepot without even saying good morning. After taking a couple of sips, he sat down at the table; he seemed to be looking at something none of us could see. Mama started on the second braid.

“I had a word with Olena,” he finally said, after a long while. None of us said anything. “I told her to leave the girls alone.”

Mama put the brush down on the table. “Olena will be welcome in this house as long as I am living in it, Marcus. I am not going to shun her.”

Papa didn’t look at any of us. “She said that if I felt that way she didn’t want to live on my land anymore. She and Tavi are headed for Orabend.”

“Oh, Marcus,” Mama said.

I couldn’t keep quiet any longer. “I can’t believe you did that,” I said.

“I refuse to have you grow up believing in the merits of a failed culture, Katy. I don’t know what my father ever saw in that woman.”

I couldn’t listen to him anymore. He never thought about how the rest of us felt. He only thought about himself. I was fuming again; I ran out of the house and down to the river. Sunlight sparked off the water, blinding me, and then I saw Olena and Tavi downstream, their dugout packed to overflowing.

“Come back,” I shouted and ran into the water. The current made my skirt billow in front of me, pulling me toward them. “You can’t go,” I shouted.

Olena heard me. I knew she did, but she didn’t look back. The boat could have been just a stick in the water as it disappeared around the bend.

The Secret

That afternoon Mama, Celeste and I stood in the garden with sweat dripping down our backs, shooing flies from our faces. Next to us, seven baskets were piled high with tomatoes. All three of us were still in bad moods from the morning news. Mama would be canning that afternoon; if she didn’t, the tomatoes would spoil.

Canning always made her irritable, especially in heat like this, but for some reason no one else could understand, she always chose the hottest day every year to do the chore.

Celeste headed to the house with a basket. If I didn’t think of something quick, the three of us would be sniping at each other within the hour.

“Can we go to the swimming hole after we get these inside?” I asked. I hoped she remembered what nuisances we had been the year before, that she had told us she’d have been better off working alone.

Mama glanced at Celeste, and she started to say no.

“I’ll watch after her. She’s never gotten into trouble while I’ve been around," I said.

Mama picked up a basket. I was ready for her to tell me to get into the cabin, but instead she rested her basket on her hip and said, “Okay, off with you.”

A few minutes later we were running to the hole. Rufus followed us, sniffing the trail, happy to tag along. The hole had been the site of an old placer mine. Miners had turned their hoses on the hill behind the river and left it like it had been slashed by a bear’s claw. The crook of the river had been dammed by the soil that had washed down, making it a perfect place to swim.

Celeste and I sat on a piece of driftwood, a gnarly piece of oak drained of color, gray as I imagined the face of one of the wei-ni-la might be. A familiar shiver ran down my back like a zigzag of ice cold lightning. I wondered if their eyes were on us. Did they lure Celeste away from the house, their dark presence pulling her to them? Was how she got down in the gully?

I tried to think of other things.

A couple of summers earlier, on a day that was almost as hot as this one was, Olena had sat with us in this same spot and told us a story .

“Moonfish don’t want nobody to see them no more.” Olena pointed past the hole to where the river’s current was still running swiftly. “They swam here, long ago, when I was little girl like you. On hot summer nights when the moon came out, up they came from bottom like silver fire. Big eyes on the sides of their heads. Miners came, and they got mad. Moonfish ghosts now”.

I threw a rock into the river and took off my shoes.

“I can’t believe Olena would just pack up and go like that. She didn’t even say good bye.”

“You know how proud she is, “ Celeste said. “Papa probably got her into an awful growl. Maybe when she calms down, she’ll come back.”

I doubted that.

“She could have at least said good bye,” I repeated stubbornly.

I couldn’t imagine not having Olena close, and the thought of her empty cabin spooked me. She had done so much medicine I was afraid of the power it held.

“What really happened yesterday?” I asked.

“I told you, I don’t know.” Celeste spoke in her little girl voice. She was playing feeble, but I wasn’t going to let her get away with it.

“Like that time you got stuck in the tree and couldn’t get down?” I chided. “Or the time Mama found you outside that night wading in the river?”

“I was sleepwalking.” Celeste said that loud enough.

“What about the time you jumped from the cliff?”

“I fell, I didn’t jump. Besides, I wasn’t that high up.” Celeste took me by the shoulders and turned me so I faced her. She was getting angry, and I liked her better for it because she was acting real now. “Katy, you promised me you’d keep that a secret.”

“I have.”

Her grip relaxed, and she bit her lower lip as though she wanted to say something else but thought better of it. Rufus was splashing in the river and barked at us to join him.

“Are you going in?”

“I don’t feel like swimming anymore.”

It was way too hot not to go swimming. I undressed to my underclothes. Mama made us promise we wouldn’t swim naked ever since Reverend Thompson canoed by with a party of Methodists from Rosamint Valley. Not knowing there was any shame in it, we told Papa and Mama how they stared at us with their mouths hanging open. Papa actually laughed. He had religion something fierce, but not the church kind, and he said the joke was on them. But Mama said she’d die of embarrassment if she ever saw any of them. From then on, we had to swim proper.

I held myself as still as a lizard. When my skin felt about fried, and I couldn’t stand the heat a second longer, I jumped up and splashed into the river. I took a deep breath and dived underneath. I did a hand stand, and then a somersault, before I came back up for air.

I floated on my back for a minute or two. “Celeste?” I found my footing and waded out. “Celeste?”

The heat pushed down heavily on my skin like I was a piece of cloth it was ironing. I couldn’t hear a thing, not a bird or even a drone of a fly. The same type of loneliness I’d felt the day before when I found that Celeste was gone came over me. Everything was so still, as if the forest was waiting for its life to be erased, swept up into the sky by Jesus or dissolved into the forest with the Old Ones, leaving only Rufus and me in an empty world.

What would I tell Mama if lost Celeste? What would Papa say? I pictured their grief and then turned off the image; it was too awful to think about. Rufus whimpered. I saw Celeste’s footprints then. The panic drained from my legs, and I found I could move. There was nothing else to do but follow her into the trees, but as soon as I did I lost track of her steps.

Within fifty feet of the riverbank, the young trees grew so close together that they fought with each other to reach light beneath the canopy of the bigger oaks and pines. The mulch of dead leaves crinkled under my shoes. Twice I tripped over a pile of pinecones. Celeste could have turned into one of the trees, as far as I knew.

“Celeste?” I called again. “Don’t do this. I’m not mad at you.”

Rufus was beside me. His panting helped to keep me calm as I searched for her. Finally, after minutes passed, her laughter trickled through the leaves like a small rivulet of water. It was impossible to tell which direction to go until Rufus took off, running underneath a log.

“She is crazy,” I muttered, climbing over it.

The poison oak was turning red, and Rufus’ coat blended into it; I had trouble keeping him in sight. But then he stopped dead and wagged his tail, looking back at me. There was Celeste, just a few feet ahead, standing on the top of a pile of rocks with her back toward us.

“That’s a good way to get snake bit,” I said.

She was whispering to herself, and then she laughed again. I didn’t hear any rattling, so I climbed up the rocks keeping both of my ears cocked.

She kept staring ahead of her. I couldn’t see anything, just more trees, though they weren’t quite as dense here. There were some manzanitas, full with their umbrellas of little leaves. High up in an oak, a squirrel darted from one branch to the other.

Celeste laughed again. I couldn’t make any sense of what she was doing. “Don’t you see them?”

She startled me. I wasn’t sure she knew I was there. “See what?”

“Not what. Who. The Old Ones. Right there in front of us.”

"I don't see anything but trees."

“They’re leaving now.” She sounded disappointed. “They said you’re not ready to see them.” Celeste hopped off the rock. “You don’t have to believe me, I know what I saw. And I was talking to them.”

“So, what did they say?”

I heard the taunt to my voice. The rock was too high for me to jump, so I squatted down on my bottom and slipped off.

“They’re coming to visit me again.”

“Just you? Too bad that when we really need Olena, she’s gone.”

I meant that to sound like a joke, but when I heard myself I realized that I really wanted to believe Celeste. “I think we go back this way.” I pointed to the way I thought I had come.

“That's not the way home, Katy.” Celeste marched off in the opposite direction, and Rufus bounded after her.

I followed scared we were going to get lost even worse that we already were, but within a couple minute I heard the river. We came out of the woods just above the swimming hole and made our way across the rocks that dotted the beach.

Celeste turned around. Her eyes narrowed into slits of blue light and she took hold of my shoulders again. “Don’t you dare tell. They said this has to be a secret.”

I wondered if Celeste was stepping off into something neither of us could control, but I knew I wouldn’t say a thing. I looked back at the trees wishing I could see the Old Ones and also scared that I might.

“What were they like?” I asked.

Celeste took hold of my hands. “I knew you would believe me. They’re so beautiful.”

“What do they want?”

“I’m not sure yet. They say they’ll let me know soon.”

Celeste giggled. Two jays scouring the ground cackled with her. I hoped she was all right, and I wasn’t keeping too many secrets.

Olena's Cabin

I couldn’t sleep that night. My thoughts flitted around like there were a hundred butterflies in my head. I wanted to believe Celeste, I really did; but as I lay in the dark room, nothing she’d told me made any sense.

Why would the Old Ones appear to a settler girl, especially one as flighty as Celeste? I decided she was either playing a joke on me or she really was losing her mind.

I was too restless to sleep. I gave up trying to fall asleep and slid out of bed. I knew exactly where I was headed. My hands didn’t shake as I laced up my boots, but I was still plenty scared.

My heart tripped over the rungs as I climbed down the ladder. Tiptoeing to the front door, I found Rufus sleeping inside the dugout. I nudged him with my foot until he grumbled and sat up.

“Sh,” I said softly, petting him as he slumped next to me. “You be quiet, okay?”

I shoved the dugout into the water. Rufus sat up and stared at me. If he barked, my parents would have heard, but he behaved when I jumped into the boat. My paddle slid through the water like a spoon through milk; I didn’t make a single splash.

On the other side, I walked to Olena’s cabin, not sure I was brave enough to go in by myself. At her door, I froze, paralyzed just like in the dreams I’d had where I couldn’t move. I was sure I heard something behind me.

Rufus sidled up close and thumped his tail on the planks of the porch. I breathed with the rhythm of the thumps until I made myself turn around. There was only moonlight falling into the hollow spaces between the trees.

My stomach did flip-flops as I walked in the cabin. I went straight to the basket where Olena kept her candles and took out the stub of an old one and a box of matches. I lit it so I could see. On the table lay two medicine bundles wrapped in our favorite colors, sky blue for Celeste and scarlet for me. Olena had left these for us, her way of saying good bye.

Each bundle had its own scent. Celeste’s smelled like mugwort with just a hint of mint. The odor of angelica came from mine and there was a very mild trace of something else. I decided it had to be mullein because Olena knew how much I liked the tea she made from it, always putting in a big spoonful of honey if she had any to spare. She must have been twenty miles down river by now, but I felt assured that she wasn’t going to forget us.

I put both bundles over my head and was about to blow out the candle when I looked up.

Olena stood in the doorway.

“You’ve come back.”

I took a step toward her, but she held out her hand to stop me.

Be a good girl and help your sister.

“What do you mean?”

Help her to listen to the true voices. Not to wei-ni-la, but Old Ones.

Her image vanished as quickly as it came. The door creaked and opened out to the night. I walked through it, holding on tightly to the bundles.

“I’m not afraid,” I said to the garden. Rufus walked up the steps, sat down on my foot, and leaned against me. I was glad he was there, feeling so real against my leg.

I squatted and hugged him. “Rufus, I am afraid,” I said into his fur. “How am I suppose to help Celeste?”

An owl hooted. The Old Ones were all around, but, the wei-ni-la, the evil ones, were too. I no longer doubted whether or not they were real. Seeing Olena was enough to convince me that they had to be everywhere.

I was too spooked to stay there any longer. I wanted to get to our side of the river as fast as possible.

As I rowed back, I thought about how there were two seasons, the dry and the wet, and how each year the world had to be made new again. In a couple of months, the Nanchuti would dance the Circle Dance, and the rains would start. Big tears come, Olena always said. The new year would begin and the old one would settle beneath the land to sleep, taking all of its problems with it.

Olena knew how to make this happen, along with a few other elderly Nanchuti, all of them doctors. She told us once there were a few young people who were learning how to doctor and how to fix the seasons, but then she made Celeste and me swear we would never tell a soul. Her hope was that if the old ways of the Nanchuti had to sleep for awhile, after she and the others were gone, a time would come when the ways of her people would be born again.

“Will the world really end?” I asked. Papa had scared me with the Book of Revelations, with all of its plagues and fire.

The rain streamed down on the roof of Olena’s cabin. Celeste and I had been picking toyon berries to decorate for Christmas. Mama called the plant river holly because it always put out the red berries in December. The sky had started to cry big time, and we ran to Olena’s cabin to dry off.

Olena was squeezing water out of Celeste’s hair with a rag. “Nanchuti world, maybe.”

We both asked her to tell us more, but her lips grew thin and she stopped talking.

I thought about all of this as I pulled the dugout onto the sand. Things would definitely be different without Olena nearby.

From where I stood, I could just make out a light streaming through the trees. Papa had gotten up. By the time I’d walked up to the barn, I was too tired to try to sneak back inside the cabin. I tucked the bundles in my pants’ pocket and went in to talk to him.

Patience, our heifer, was also awake and lowed softly to greet me. I could just make out her big eyes in the lantern light as I crossed over to Papa. Rufus sniffed at his boots then curled into a ball at his feet. Papa was leaning against a hay bale reading his Bible under the lantern light.

“I couldn’t sleep,” I said.

“That’s okay.”

“Did you know I was gone?” I asked.

“I heard you leave.”

Papa patted the spot next to him, and I sat down. I wanted to tell him about seeing Olena and what she’d said to me, but I didn’t know how to form even the first word that would make him understand.

Papa cleared his voice. “I didn’t ask Olena to leave, that wasn’t my intention. I just wanted her to be clear what this house stands for.”

“It used to be her house,” I said. When he didn’t answer, I added, “What do we stand for, Papa?”

“Living decent lives. Believing in God. Showing our neighbors the truth in this.”

He held up the Bible.

“What about love? Do we stand for that?”

“Of course. Your mother and I love Celeste and you very much. That’s why I get so concerned. I want the best for you.”

I was trying to form an idea in my mind. I could see the shape of it, but not the whole thing.

“Papa, if we love, why can’t we accept the Nanchuti for what they believe? Why do we have to change them?“

“We were sent here to the river to show them the truth. There is only one truth, Katy. What I pray for more than anything is that Celeste and you come to see that.”

I wasn’t sure who the “we” were he was talking about. Many of the settlers came here to hide away from the law. Men on the river were always getting shot.

When the settlers showed up, they brought whiskey to the river and diseases the Nanchuti had never had before. Many of them died from small pox and measles, including Olena’s parents. Most of the miners thought nothing of shooting the Nanchuti for sport. That was the way Olena’s brother died. I said as much, and Papa sighed.

“Those people are as lost as the Nanchuti. The world beyond the river still needs to be redeemed, too. I was speaking of the God fearing people who have moved here.”

I put my head on his shoulder. I was getting sleepy. “But I don’t want to fear God, Papa.”

I don’t remember saying anything else. When I woke the next morning, I found the bundles then nudged Celeste until her eyes opened. I told her what had happened, but not about what Olena had said about the wei-ni-la. I knew she wouldn’t like hearing it.

When I placed her medicine bundle in her hand, her eyes filled with tears.

“You really believe I saw the Old Ones?”

“Sh,” I said.

Celeste put her hand to her mouth and smiled. She whispered back to me, “Thank you, Katy.”



A few days later, Swain, the mail rider, came by. He always stopped at our place, whether or not he had any mail. More often than not we didn’t, so it was no disappointment when he had nothing for us today.

We could hear him come down the trail because of the cowbells he hung from his mules to frighten panthers away; though I figured if a panther was hungry enough, it wasn’t going to let a little tinkling noise get in the way of a good dinner.

I felt sorry for his mules because Swain was big man. He had two, one called Thunder and one called Lightning, and he switched the days he rode them, while the other carried the mail sacks. Swain’s face was always red, and in summer his whole head glowed with a sheen of sweat he never could wipe away.

He once broke the forefinger of his left hand, and it wasn’t set right because of the lack of a doctor. The finger was now frozen in a permanently flexed position. When we were little, Celeste and I would sit on his lap, and he’d tell us to fix it. We’d bang on it with our fists to try to straighten it. Swain would roar with laughter when we finally gave up in frustration.

We could count on Swain’s visits. He always showed up during the first few days of each month. We had just sat down to dinner when we heard the cowbells tinkling outside. Swain had a talent for arriving when food was on the table.

Papa went out to help him unload the mules. When they walked in the house, Swain said, “Saw Olena and Tavi rounding the bend at White Butte. Looked like they pulled up stakes. Must have had to portage all that stuff around Clear Creek.”

When none of us said anything, he scratched his chin. “Good afternoon, Frances. Girls. My, that corn bread smells like a piece of heaven.”

Swain sat down and reached across the table and pulled off a chunk, slathering it with butter.

“Any news?” Mama asked.

Swain wiped his mouth with his arm. “Well, a school’s going to start in Falcon for the Nanchuti. The government’s sent a lady to be an Indian Matron.” He chuckled. “Suppose to come from one of those high falutin’ families from back East.” He began laughing. I looked away because his mouth was full. “How much you want to bet, she’s the one who’s going to get the education.”

“What’s her name?” Celeste asked.

“Miss Sarah Price.” Swain began to munch on a chicken leg. “I’ve heard she’s a damn fool woman, if you pardon the expression. Rode all the way to Falcon by herself ‘to get to know the area,’ she said. Doesn’t seem to be afraid of Nanchuti, or panthers either.”

“It sounds as though she’s willing to do her job.” Mama took a sip of milk. “Any woman who is willing to come out here must have a sense of adventure.”

“As long as she conducts herself properly,” Papa said.

Swain belched. “She’s supposed to be as proper as they come.”

The only other single settler woman living on the river was Mama Hank who owned the boarding house in Falcon, and she had been living there since Papa was a boy. Here was someone new, who recently had come from the world outside.

“I can’t wait to meet her,” I said.

They all looked at me.

“I’ve never met anyone from the East.”

“Katy,” Celeste said. “We’ve never met anyone from off the river. I want to meet her too, Papa.”

Papa shoved himself a way from the table a bit.

“School teacher, you say, Swain?”

“That’s what she did back in Massachusetts,” Swain answered and then grabbed another slice of bread.

I heard Papa’s question but didn’t think a thing about it. I should have known better, though. Papa never asked about anything he hadn’t already done some thinking about. Celeste and I chattered about what Miss Price must be like, unaware that our lives would soon be changed forever.

Sarah Price

A month passed. Daytime was still plenty warm, but the cold night air sucked all the green from the oak trees turning them the color of Mama’s wedding band. Except for Olena’s absence, life went on as usual. If Celeste were talking to any kind of ghost, wei-ni-la or Old One, she kept it to herself. I kept meaning to tell her what Olena had said, but the time never seemed right.

We had to help Papa harvest the crops, at least the ones the deer hadn’t eaten. We picked the last of the beans and the apples, cut our scrawny patches of wheat and barley. Mama ground the grain herself and somehow managed to make bread with it all year. Most mornings she cornered us; we had no choice but to stay indoors and put up the winter preserves with her.

One afternoon there were clouds, the first ones since the spring and as thin as strands of corn silk. In another month, the clouds would mean rain was on the way, but for now they were only teasing.

Celeste and I had just thrown a bucket of slop to our pig who was grunting peacefully, his snout deep in the mess.

“Too bad about Jethro,” Celeste said. “He's such a cute little piggy.”

Jethro’s flesh rippled as he snorted. It had been many months since he was a little pig.

“Papa says he’s going to make some good bacon.”

“I wish we didn’t have to eat him.”

Celeste was been especially tender lately. I didn’t like the slaughtering either, but I did enjoy the bacon. I was about to say that when Rufus barked. A mule’s bray answered him.

“It isn’t time for Swain to come by,” Celeste said.

“Is anyone home?” a woman’s voice called, and we ran from the pen around the barn to the front of the house.

Sure enough, a woman was sliding off a mule. She smiled when she saw us.

“Let’s see,” she said pointing to me. “You must be Katy. And you’re Celeste. Mr. Swain told me about you when I met him in Falcon. I’m Sarah Price.” She stood there with her hand in the air for us to shake, but our arms were glued to our sides. She lowered her hand but kept smiling. “I’m the new Indian matron.”

“The school teacher?” Celeste asked.

Miss Price scrunched her nose. “Oh dear, I was afraid of that. I hadn’t intended to teach, but it seems that it’s being thrust upon me. Maybe I’ll only have to do it a couple days a week.”

Miss Price was younger than Mama, but not by a whole lot. I hadn’t seen that many settler women to know if she’d be considered pretty but decided she probably wouldn’t have been. Her face was narrow, and I thought right off that she looked a little horsy. She had a sharp chin and nose, but her eyes were wide and green. Olena had taught us to look for the light that came out of a person’s eyes to judge what they were like inside. I liked her light.

I’m sure Miss Price thought we were backward and without manners, but a strange woman showing up at our doorstep was something that had never happened before. Mama opened the cabin door in time to save the three of us from a long silence.

“Isn’t this a lovely surprise.” Mama wiped her hands on her apron.

“I was visiting some Nanchuti families who live up river from here and thought I’d drop by. I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. Come in, and I’ll fix you a cup of tea.” Mama said this just like she had visitors every day.

Celeste and I followed them into the cabin. I had never thought of either of us as shy, but we all we could do was sit at the table and listen to the two of them talk. Mama had no friends to speak of other than Olena. We lived too far from Falcon, and the other farms on the river were more than a day’s ride away.

Miss Price took off her gloves and looked around the room. I was afraid she was thinking of how poor we were, but then she smiled. “This is lovely, just the type of place I imagined I’d live in before I came out here.”

“Tell us about yourself,” Mama said, as she put the kettle on the stove.

“Not much to tell. I was embarrassing my family because I had no inclination to marry, and I’m afraid they didn’t approve of my causes. I campaigned for woman’s suffrage, and that infuriated them.”

“What’s suffrage?” Celeste asked.

“The right to vote,” Miss Price explained. “When I found out about this opportunity, I couldn’t resist, seeing a new part of the country, learning about a new culture. I have to admit,” she leaned forward as though she was conspiring with us, “I did receive a small amount of pleasure from my family’s reaction when I told them what I was up to.”

The kettle began to whistle. Mama poured the water into her china teapot, the one she never used. I sat like a rock. I knew it was rude to stare, but I was too fascinated to take my eyes from Miss Price.

“And what do you think so far?” Mama asked.

“Oh, Mrs. Farrow, I’ve made the right decision. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier. Back home we don’t have mountains like these. The wilderness is all gone from there. And I respect the Nanchuti so much. I feel as though I’m learning more from them than I could ever teach them.”

We heard the creak of the pump handle. Mama walked to the door and called, “Marcus, we have a guest.”

“Where do you two go to school?” Miss Price asked to make conversation.

“We don’t,” Celeste said. "Papa teaches us.”

I held my breath, afraid she’d tell Miss Price that she was a much better student than I was. My reading was plodding, and my sums were even worse. But Celeste continued to be her sweet self, the one who wouldn’t think of embarrassing me

Papa came in, holding his hat in his hand, something he never did. “Good day to you,” he said.

“So nice to meet you, Mr. Farrow.”

Miss Price stood up and offered him her hand. Papa wiped his on his overalls and took it. He was the one looking embarrassed now, and I felt a little sorry for him.

Mama poured the tea. Miss Price picked her cup up and took a sip. “Ah, delicious. I was just telling your family about how much I’m learning here. I understand that later this month there is to be a dance near Falcon to welcome the rainy season, if I’m not mistaken.”

“You’re not thinking of attending?” Papa asked.

“I’ve been invited. I think it would be rude not to go.”

“I believe your job is to civilize these people, not to encourage their heathen ways,“ Papa said.

“My job is to help the Nanchuti in any way that is needed, but I have been asked to start a Sunday School, of sorts. Sandila says she will come and bring some people she knows.”

Papa all but groaned. Sandila was Olena’s older sister. Olena had learned to speak “pretty good English” living with Grandpa, but Sandila said that the language felt like sticks in her mouth, the words all dry and brittle. When she wanted to she could speak it, but around Papa she always pretended she had no idea what he was saying. Miss Price must have made a good impression on her.

“We’ll sing hymns, and I’ll read from my prayer book,” Miss Price continued. “But it is not my job to judge their beliefs, Mr. Farrow, or to make them think mine are superior to theirs. I believe this country has done too much of that, to the detriment of all people.”

Miss Price must have had a lot of practice shocking her family, because she was doing a good job of startling all of us. Papa had finally met his match, someone who was as good with words as he was, and he didn’t like it one bit.

“I had hoped a good Christian woman had come to the river,” Papa said. His ears were getting red; he was getting angry, and it slipped out not only in what he said, but in the way he talked, every word slow and measured and far too calm.

“Marcus, apologize, right now,” Mama said. “Don’t you dare treat our guest this way.”

Papa ignored her. “I had also hoped arrangements could be made for the girls. Katy can barely read her name. But now I see that wouldn’t do.”

I wanted to disappear, sure she was thinking I was stupid.

Celeste leaned toward Miss Price as if she was pulled by a string. “I’d love to go to school.”

“I would be honored to work with your children, Mr. Farrow. They seem like lovely girls. I promise I wouldn’t plant any subversive thoughts in their heads.” Nobody else noticed, but I saw Miss Price cross her fingers.

Papa didn’t say anything else, but it was obvious he didn't like her.

Miss Price changed the conversation to the heat, how drier it was than in New England. I was wondering just how far away New England was when Mama surprised me.

“If you could teach Katy to read better, we’d be grateful.” Mama didn’t add that she couldn’t read herself. She was ashamed of it.

“I would be honored.”

“Both girls could use some learning about the world,” Mama said. “We’re so isolated here. Marcus and I can’t prepare them for life off the river.“

“Who’s going to leave the river?” I asked, finding my voice.

You, Katy. Someday you go far away.

These words echoed in my head. Papa hadn’t closed the door; I grew cold as though all the warmth in the room drained through it. The voice was Olena’s, not mine. Why would she say something like that? I looked outside, halfway expecting to see her.

Someday you go away.

The wind had picked up and tossed leaves around the yard like flakes of gold dust; then the door slammed shut.

I wasn’t going to live on the river forever? But it was my home. Why would I ever leave?

A little while later, Miss Price got on her mule and rode away. Mama, Celeste and I waved good bye.

“That woman wears divided skirts,” Papa said, watching her ride off.

“For goodness sakes, Marcus, there is nothing wrong with divided skirts. Just makes sense if you’re going to ride,” Mama said. She was holding a magazine that Miss Price had given her close to her chest. She didn’t say so when Miss Price offered it to her, but I was sure she hadn’t seen one since she had left San Jerome to come to the river with Papa.

Mama looked down at the magazine. “This is what women are wearing down below. Can you believe it?”

Celeste and I stood on either side of her.

“Fashions for 1908,” Celeste read. “Mama, can we look at it?”

“Later. Your father and I have to talk. Go find something to do for awhile.”

The word “father” was a danger signal; it meant they were going to have an argument.

“I don’t trust that woman, Frances,” Papa said.

“We’ll talk about it in the house.”

Mama turned around, clutching the magazine. Papa didn’t look happy as he followed her. Celeste wanted to eavesdrop, but I pulled on her arm.

“We have to talk, too.”

Ten minutes later we were on Olena’s porch, our medicine bundles clasped tightly in our hands, eyes closed, trying to call her to us.

After several minutes, Celeste gave up. “Are you sure you heard her?”

“I’m positive.”

“If you’re going to leave the river, what about me?”

“I don’t know, but there was something that Olena said that night that I didn’t tell you.” Celeste eyed me suspiciously. I wished I hadn’t brought the subject up, but I figured I might as well get it out of the way. “She said you’ve been talking to the wei-ni-la.”

Her eyes sparked, ready to burn me. “I don’t believe you, Katy.”

“That’s what she said.” I stood up. “Olena said that you needed to listen to the Old Ones, not to them.”

“You’re lying, Katy. You’ve never heard Olena.”

“I am not,” I answered. “You have to trust me.”

“Why?”

“Because I’m your sister.”

We had started yelling at each other, but now a strange look passed across Celeste's face. She looked like she was about to cry.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" I asked.

“Sandila, he thinks he hears two panther cubs.”

Both of us jumped. Sandila was standing in Olena’s doorway. Her grandson, Kontal, a young man of about twenty, stood behind her, looking at us over her shoulder. Where had they hid their dugout?

“Two girls fight.” She shook her head. “Old woman, he try to sleep, but you two bad as crows.”

“How long have you been there?” Celeste asked.

“You go. Fight on another Nanchuti home, not Sandila’s.”

“This is Olena’s home,” I said.

Sandila’s black eyes pierced my own. “Talk back to old woman?”

I didn’t want a growl with Sandila. In Nanchuti ways, Olena’s home also belonged to her.

“I’m sorry.”

Kontal walked back into the cabin and the rest of us sat down, Sandila on Olena’s stool, Celeste and I on the porch steps. We kept quiet, in Nanchuti fashion, waiting for her to speak.

“Dance comes soon,” she finally said.

“It’ll be a good dance,” Celeste answered her.

A few minutes passed. Some blue jays made a racket off in the trees. I thought about how much quieter winter would be. As soon as the rain began, the jays would be gone.

“Celeste and Katy maybe go this year.”

I’m sure we both gaped at her.

“Papa would never allow us,” I said.

She gave me a stern look. “Maybe Papa not allow, but maybe you go.”

Sandila smiled. She was missing most of her teeth. I saw the milky film covering her eyes; she was almost blind. When had that happened?

She crossed her arms over her stomach. “World get made right, bring rains, you think?”

When we got back home, Papa and Mama were sitting at the kitchen table, still as statues. There was no sign that Mama had started supper.

“Sit down,” Papa said. Once we got settled, he thawed a bit. “Your mother has decided . . .”

Mama interrupted him. “Papa and I have decided that the best thing for the two of you is to go to school with Miss Price in Falcon.”

“You’ll be with half breeds and Indians,” Papa said.

I think he wanted one of us to say that we minded.

“Dear,” Mama said, “it’s been decided.” If Mama was calling him “dear,” then there really had been some fighting. Mama winked, and both Celeste and I tried not to smile. “You’ll stay at Mama Hank’s.”

I started to feel numb. What Mama was actually saying began to sink in.

“Alone? You won’t come with us?”

“There’s too much to do here for me to leave.”

Alone with Celeste in Falcon? We only went there a few times a year. Sure, there wasn’t much to the town other than a dusty street or two, but going there alone, living there, would feel like being shipped to the far side of the world. What if Celeste decided to disappear again?

Mama must have read the look on my face. “We don’t want to force you into anything you don’t want to do, but we both think that this will be best for you.” She put her hand on top of Papa’s. After a moment, he turned his hand so that he could hold hers. “Mama Hank can look after you. After all, she practically raised your father.”

“We want to go,” Celeste said.

My sister answered for both of us.

Falcon

If Celeste and I had to choose someone to live with, someone who was supposed to watch over us, the last person in the world would have been Mama Hank. She had taken care of Papa when he was little. Her disposition, sour like an old dishrag, must have rubbed off on him.

Papa Hank had died not long after they got to Falcon, before the town was even named. Mama said that she had to fend for herself and that her life had been hard, but she never looked needy to me. Mama Hank was a big woman, towering over half of the men in town like Goliath in a skirt. Her thick gray hair was always tied up in a bun and this made her look even taller. Nobody messed with her; no one would ever bother us. There were rumors she wore a gun strapped to her leg.

Mama Hank’s hotel was the only one the Talum between San Jerome and the coast. Calling the place a hotel was a stretch, just like it was to call Falcon a town. There were only four rooms in the place, counting Mama Hank’s and ours, plus the parlor, dining room and kitchen.

The two spare rooms were usually empty, but sometimes a group of men would come from down below with wanderlust in their eyes, hoping to find the big veins of gold rumored to be still flowing through the hillsides like saffron colored rivers.
They’d stay a day or two to get their bearings and then disappear up river. If any of them did strike it rich, nobody ever heard about it. Sometimes men from the government would come to study the mountains, the river, or the Nanchuti, scribbling things in their notebooks, looking so serious the town folk mocked them behind their backs. Just like the prospectors, they came and went.

Most of the local settler men who didn’t have Nanchuti wives depended on Mama Hank to feed them. Swain usually was in the dining room when he wasn’t on the trail. Mama Hank spent a good deal of her day cooking in the kitchen, and more often than not, her dimpled arms were pasty white with flour from the bread and pies she constantly baked.

From the very start it was clear that, like Papa, Mama Hank didn’t think much of Miss Price. She let my parents know right off that Miss Price spent entirely too much time with the Nanchuti. Mama tried to explain to her that was her job and spending time with them was what she was supposed to do, but Mama Hank said, “She don’t need to look like she’s enjoying it, now does she?”

Celeste and I were on a trial run. Papa said that Miss Price had until Christmas to prove herself. If I didn’t behave, if Celeste showed any signs of falling back to her old habits, or if Miss Price did anything that in anyway compromised her, we’d be shipped back with Swain on the very next mail run. Plus, I had to improve in both my reading and my sums by Christmas.

Falcon was built on the site of an old Nanchuti village called Kalatchi. Sixty years earlier there were no wood framed buildings, no fences. There was no need of a store that sold items brought in by mule from the world down below, no jail, no sheriff. The church hadn't been built. The Nanchuti had a roundhouse where they danced and a sweat lodge where they prayed. There no longer were traces of either of these places, though Olena had told us that sweat lodges were still hidden away in the hills. All of the old Nanchuti homes had vanished, too. Everyone lived in cabins now, settler style.

Miss Price insisted Celeste and I call her by her Christian name from the very first day. Sarah’s cabin was tucked up next to the side of a hill, half mile from town. Celeste and I walked there everyday, whether or not “class” was to be held.

Mornings were cold enough now that we could see our breath. On our way to school, we usually met up with Matai, a boy a couple of years older than us. Matai’s mother was Nanchuti, and her father was from Cornwall, and a hint of his father’s accent flavored Matai’s English. Matai had long black hair, smooth like the best obsidian, which hung down straight to his shoulders.

His face was a full moon, not pudgy, just round, and his expression was open most of the time. His face would cloud up, though, without warning, and when this happened there wasn’t anything you could do that would make him smile. I found out later there was plenty of darkness in his life.

Most of the Nanchuti children had to go the Indian school in Fletchet, a town near the coast, nearly fifty miles away. They were forced to do this, whether their parents wanted them to go or not. Somehow, Mattai had been overlooked, maybe because his father was white, but this didn’t make things easier for him.

“Half breeds are the worse,” Mama Hank told us the first time we told her that Matai was our friend. “Nanchuti’s are honest folk, for the most part,” she begrudgingly admitted, “but mix them up with any other blood, and they become lying, sneaking . . .”

“Matai doesn’t seem like that at all,” I interrupted. I didn’t want to hear anymore. I knew everything she was going to say. I had heard it all of my life.

“Hmmph,” was all Mama Hank replied. “Ain’t fitting for you girls to be friends with him. You be careful.”

“Of what?” Celeste asked.

“You got your reputations to think of,” Mama Hank said and walked away.

That was the last time we confided in her. We made a game of keeping secrets from her after that. We were good at this, and, besides, she wasn’t going to tell us what to do.



A light rain was falling, the first time in months, making the earth smell freshly washed. Fifteen damp people were squeezed into Sarah’s cabin, which was smaller than ours; it was almost impossible to get from one side of it to the other without stepping on someone’s hand or leg.

Sarah only had three chairs, so the oldest students sat in them. The rest of us crowded on her bed, on her two trunks, or huddled together on the floor. The Circle Dance would be held in a week. Families were already crowding into town from up and down river, camping on the river, or staying with their relatives who lived in and about Falcon. Some of them had come to school, wanting to get a taste of it, I guess, or to have a story about the crazy wahshee teacher to tell when they got back home.

Celeste was teaching two Nanchuti women who were visiting from up river how to write their names. Most of the other women were copying the alphabet that Sarah had written on an old chalkboard precariously balanced on the windowsill. All of them did a beautiful work, each letter as perfect as the beading they had brought with them, even though for many of them it was the first time they had seen the letters.

I was reading a primer to Matai. Sandila sat next to us in Sarah’s rocking chair. She never participated in a lesson, and often pretended she was sleeping. But she came every day, and if she heard a story once, she could recite it by heart.

I missed a word from the book I was reading. Sandila opened her eyes.

“You go back,” she demanded. “Find big. You say, ‘The big black dog has a red ball.’”

Matai laughed, and I read the sentence again. He was as strict a teacher as Sandila and made me read the whole story again because of my mistake.

When I was done, he said, ‘You need a harder book,” and stood up. He stepped over people to get to Sarah who was working on mental addition problems with the men.

“Kontal went to Falcon and bought five sacks of flour for thirty cents a piece. He also bought three pounds of sugar at forty-three cents per pound,” Sarah was saying to the group.

She'd told me earlier that she had to do all the figuring beforehand because she couldn’t do mental math as fast as her pupils. She was worried she would run out of things to teach them before long. Occasionally, Sandila would call out an answer, not bothering to open her eyes.

Matai whispered in Sarah’s ear. She smiled and pointed to a box next to her bed. Matai pulled out a new book for me, and one for himself. He was Sarah’s star pupil, but now Celeste was a rival for that position. Each was trying to out read the other. Sarah said she was running out of books and would have to ask her family to send more.

Someone knocked at the door. We all knew it wouldn’t be a Nanchuti because only settlers knocked. The Nanchuti thought it a rude thing to do, bringing attention on the person instead of just coming into a place quietly. Celeste was closest, so she opened the door. Swain stood there, looking sheepishly inside until he saw Sarah, and then he started to blush.

“Ah, excuse me, Ma’am, but this here came for you.”

He handed a package to Celeste, which was then passed from hand to hand across the room.

Sarah’s face brightened when it reached her. “My magazines!” she said. “They’ve come just in time!”

She didn’t notice that Swain was still at the door. Everyone else in the room stared at him while Sarah ripped the wrapping paper from her box. When she finally noticed how quiet the room had gotten, she looked up.

“Forgive my manners, Mr. Swain. Would you like to come in?” That was like asking a bear to find room in a beehive, but she had to ask to be polite.

“No, thank you, Miss Price, but I brought you a little something else.” He reached into his coat pocket and took out a box that traveled the same route as the first package.

Everyone was watching her. She opened this new box with less certainty.

“Chocolates? Mr. Swain, where did you ever find them?”

“Ordered them from San Jerome,“ he said, spinning his hat in his hand. Thunder, or maybe it was Lightning, let out a loud bray. “That’s why I came out of my way. Didn’t want them to spoil. If I kept them any longer, I’d have ate them all up.”

Swain turned around before she had a chance to thank him. I looked through the window over the chalkboard, so I could see him. He was wiping his face with his kerchief; I don’t think it was because it was sprinkling. He glanced back once at the cabin before he swung his leg over Thunder’s back and rode off.

Sandila started laughing, and the rest of us joined in. Celeste tried not to, but finally she put her hand over her mouth and bent over, not able to stop herself.

Sarah looked as though she wished Swain had eaten them. “Dear, dear,” she said.

One thing was certain, the news of the romance between Sarah and Swain would soon be up and down the Talum.

Everyone had left the cabin before noon except for Sandila, Matai, Celeste and me. There was enough for each of us to have one chocolate each. When I tasted mine, I couldn’t believe Sarah was willing to share them.

“So, how are the preparations going for the dance?” Sarah asked.

Sandila shrugged as if it were a silly question. Sarah hadn’t learned Nanchuti manners yet. To ask directly about the dance was like opening a door to a private room.

Sandila was in a forgiving mood though. In a little while, she closed her eyes, crossed her arms over her belly, and began to tell a story. The three of us girls knew that it was a story that couldn’t have been told in the summer; it was Sandlia’s way of opening the door just a crack to let us peek in.

Once, time way back, before even Old Ones or wei-ni-la live on Talum, when water and earth was only things, Nanchula and Hanla-chu, flew from their home in the north. They saw river and thought it was a pretty good place.

There was no food to eat. Nanchula peeled off bark of manzanita and threw it into river. Red bark became salmon. Hanla-chu wet her wings from Talum water and flew over the land. Drops fell. Became Bear and Deer, Raccoon and Possum, all the animals, all the birds and tiny little bugs.

Hanla-chu laid two eggs but they would not hatch. So Nanchula flew to ocean and brought back rain. Rain fell and Talum got big just like ocean. No more land no more. Beaver carved out log, and all the animals crammed inside, floated until the eggs hatched. Old Man and Old Woman came out of blue egg.. Wei-ni-la came out of white one.

Old Man and Old Woman danced. They danced until world was made again. Rains stopped. Old Man and Old Woman were first Old Ones. Nanchula and Hanla-chu taught them to fish and hunt and to gather food so they don’t get hungry. Told them the path to their home in north, then laid down at L’chulta and went to sleep. Today, they still sleep there.

Old Woman began to cry. Ai, ai, ai, and gave birth to the rest of Old Ones. They live on river until Nanchuti come.

We were all very silent. The wind had picked up outside and the rain tapped on the roof, like animal feet scurrying from a flood.

Sarah asked Sandila in a soft voice, almost as though she was afraid to disturb her, “That’s why your people dance the Circle Dance?”

Sandila opened her eyes. They seemed more cloudy than usual, like she had really been watching Old Man and Old Woman dance.

But then she looked at Sarah so sharply that I could swear her vision was as good as mine. “World got to be made right.”

She turned her head and stared at Celeste. Celeste grew paler. I didn’t know what was going on.

Sandila withdrew into herself again, closing her eyes. This time I think she really did fall asleep. We talked for a while. Matai said that the three of us were expected to come to the dance. How we would get out of Mama Hank’s sight that day, I didn’t know. She had already told us we weren’t leaving the hotel.

Matai stood up, stretched, then nudged Sandila awake. “I’ll walk you home,” he told the old woman, but before they got out of the door he turned around, holding onto Sandila’s elbow. “Our stories are true, you know.” He said this as though we'd said that we doubted them.

For the first time since we had met her, Sarah seemed lost for words. Then she said, “I think Sandila feels like an Old One.”

“Well, she is old,” I said, but as soon as the words came out of my mouth, I realized that wasn’t what Sarah meant.

Hardly before we got out the door, I said to Celeste, “You’re not telling me something.”

Celeste just kept walking toward town. The rain had stopped, but a colder wind had taken its place.

“What’s going on, Celeste?”

She wouldn’t look at me. “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

“I don’t believe you.”

She stopped, exasperated with me. “Before she left, Olena told me for me to expect something during the dance. She said that I had to be brave, that’s all I know. Do you believe me now?”

Celeste began walking again. I followed behind her. I began to shiver, but it wasn’t because of the wind.