As they rose through the winding pass of the Mogollon Mountains, the temperature dropped and the wind grew stronger. Snowflakes gathered on the windshield in six-fold symmetry. These ancient roads had borne the first peoples, then later, her bisabuela’s people, the Chacoans; these roads had carried them northward into Chaco and southward into Mesoamerica to trade for cacao for frothy ritual drinks, Scarlet Macaws, copper bells, and colorful Mayan pottery. Calliope had long wanted to know what it felt like, being an ancient human—a cave dweller, one of the first in the Americas. Her research on the Clovis people in grad school had her trying out the atlatl, fastening a spear with a Clovis point affixed to the end, throwing it with the atlatl toward a target, a bullseye on a tree, where the only rules were these: nature and survival. Now, she’d experienced real hunting. She’d helped kill a beast. Unwittingly, she’d become a first person, and for better or worse, these people in the truck with her were her tribe. Until she found her family.

Mara awoke needing water, which they didn’t have in the truck.

Amy pulled to the side of the steep, narrow road, where Calliope gathered snow in an empty mason jar she’d found in the glove box, and held it to the heater.

Eunjoo asked Mara, “Why do you keep a glass jar in here?”

“To collect samples.” The woman’s voice was garbled but understandable.

“Of what?”

“Don’t bother her with questions, chica. She should save her strength.”

“The earth,” Mara answered anyway. “I collect Earth samples to paint and make colors. River water, mossy grass, cactus spines, white sands.” She coughed, and Calliope handed her the jar of melted snow, hoping it didn’t contain ash, though the ash had miraculously disappeared.

Miraculous, Calliope thought, wryly. She felt a pang of longing for her mother and family, who would have marveled at her use of the word, not in reference to any ancient belief but the present world. Miracles happen every day, her mother had said, if you know where to look, if you know how to look. Not through the microscope, mija. Through the kaleidoscope of your heart.

Calliope wished she would have told her mother what a beautiful thing that was to say, what a relevant piece of poetry, instead of bristling, arguing back in academic language she knew her mother couldn’t understand. What a petty child she’d been, thinking herself so high and intellectual, a crab who’d escaped the bucket—only to find herself in the fisherman’s mouth.

Her mother wasn’t dead. Calliope had to believe a miracle was keeping them alive—and her searching for them.