It was as if she’d traveled back in time, or as if the arrow of time had whirred forward for Zuni—only without the interference of the Anglo government. Tall, multileveled, apartment-like structures constructed of rust-red earth, logs, and stones rose toward the sky, an ancient city come back from the dead. Though she knew Zuni had never been dead. The people had carried it within them, and here it was. Restored. Gone were the 7-Eleven and cheap drywall. The signs boasting clean restrooms on the side of the road. No signs at all for tourists, no tourists, no turquoise booths, no hawking the people’s art for their livelihood. The mud was tightly packed, the stone shining in sunlight. Rectangular flat-roofed terraces circled courtyards, connecting many-familied homes. It reminded her of the geometrical structure of honeycomb. From round kivas, rooms for religious ceremonies, gray-black smoke swirled and eddied through the air. Outdoor ladders connected each level of each building.

Though she didn’t recognize most of the pueblo from her own childhood, she did know well the hornos: beehive ovens made of adobe-mud and used for baking bread and other foods outdoors, which most Puebloan peoples of the Southwest had still used, including Bisabuela. When Calliope was growing up, she would watch Bisabuela building a fire inside the horno and, when the proper amount of time had passed, scooping out with a shovel all the embers and ashes and placing the bread with a large wooden paddle into the blisteringly hot horno. In the case of corn, she doused the embers with water and then used a poker to insert the corn to be steam-cooked. For gauging the temperature, she’d sweep out the fire then toss in dried corn husks. If the corn husks burnt quickly, the horno was too hot. If the husks turned golden brown, it was just right. When cooking meats, she fired it white-hot, swept the coals to the back, shoved in the meats on a tray, and sealed the smoke-hole door with mud. Calliope had once helped her cook a turkey in the horno. It took three hours and came out more succulent than any turkey she’d tasted before or since. Calliope glanced around the beehive ovens, half expecting to see Bisabuela lurking nearby, preparing some meal.