With the whispers of the recorded voice echoing the name—Osiris—in her mind, Aurora turned, her hands reflexively covering her baby’s crown, her eyes volcanic rock. She wanted to run, to reject the myth, the origin of who she was, but she knew nothing was that simple. Still, she could not let herself be ruled by the past. She would choose her life. And this running and hiding was not what she chose. Instead, she walked out of the museum with the two babies, walked quietly back into the light.

◆◆◆

After the babies slept that night, Aurora regarded her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Aurora’s hair—long again. The wound on her face had fully healed, leaving only a faded white scar. And the baby had changed her, filled her with milk and life and light. The journey into darkness to find Cyrus had changed her, too; she saw that now. Enough to find the strength to care for two children on her own and face the myth that haunted her.

This was what made it possible for her to text him, finally:

Dear Ever, I want to see you. I’m sorry for everything. Please meet me tomorrow at sunset on Mecca Beach near the sign.

But there was something else she had to do along the way.

All is Full of Love

All is Full of Love

The next day, Aurora put both babies into their car seats, strapping them carefully to avoid pinching the soft chub of their thighs. Keaton just gazed up at her wanly batting his lashes, his pointed chin pressed into the soft folds of his neck. Jack already looked like he was about to cry. If she got the car started fast, got driving, he’d calm down.

Dog jumped up into the front seat.

Aurora cranked the air conditioning, played some Navajo flute music. The reedy sounds had gotten her through Keaton’s birth, though it had been hard to hear them over the sound of her own screams.

The San Jacinto and San Bernardino mountains swallowed the truck. Aurora drove through the Tehachapi Wind Farm where manic turbines spun. Cyrus once said he thought the four thousand windmills marred the landscape: “Planetary molestation.” The clearing of the desert floor released carbon dioxide. The huge glass panels built to harness the sun at the plant outside Vegas fried birds to death, he told her. Like the electric fences at Calipatria State Prison.

“Someday we’ll be like the dinosaurs,” Cyrus said when he stood with her in front of the T-Rex and Apatosaurus statues in Cabazon. “Aliens will build steel and concrete statues of us along the side of the road.”

Was it true? Was the planet coming to its demise? What world would her children know when she was gone?