The restored village on its own would have been enough to inspire Calliope’s awe. But it wasn’t the buildings alone that made her believe the Spirits could have been alive and dwelling here. What struck her most were the people themselves. Chance had called himself and his people A’shiwi. And Calliope imagined this was what he meant. The village was bustling. It was brimming with A’shiwi. She’d read that the population of Zuni had dipped dangerously low many times after interactions with Anglos, whether Spanish conquistadors or United States settlers, whether war, famine, or smallpox. Eventually it had stabilized again. Last she had heard, despite high unemployment, poverty, and alcoholism, and even though their land had been stripped and stripped again so that the reservation finally encompassed less than seven hundred square miles, the pueblo had boasted ten thousand tribal members, 90 percent of whom lived in Zuni.

But poverty was nowhere in this Zuni. The people, like the land, had been revived.

Many men wore colorful woven shirts and pants, and many women wore mantas—brightly patterned woven dresses made of linen-like material tied over one shoulder and belted at the waist. There were men and women in jeans and boots, but still others in moccasins.

Some people waved to Chance and called out greetings in Zuni; others went about their business, largely ignoring the truck driving the dirt roads through the village.

“Did you know it would be like this?” she asked Chance.

His face was wet with tears. He shook his head, wiped his face, then pointed toward a building twenty feet ahead, gardens on the ground and flat rooftops. “I shouldn’t know this, since I’ve never been here before, not like this, but that’s my mother’s house.”

“Your mother?” Calliope didn’t see a woman or anyone outside who would differentiate the building he’d indicated from the others, but what stood out was the lush greenness and color emanating from the place. She recognized the ancient tradition of waffle gardens, sunken beds intended for water conservation in the desert: collect all the moisture you can and hold onto it for as long as you can. Each depression in the waffle would catch rainfall and hold water close to plant roots. How the crops could have grown into full shoots when the frost had ended only hours ago, Calliope added to her growing list of mysteries. Square beds teemed with corn, squash, broccoli, scallions, cilantro, and radishes.

“Her name is Malia Guardian.”

Calliope’s gaze shifted uncomfortably from the dazzling buildings to the back seat where Mara lay, her ragged breath, a low continuous wheezing. Why hadn’t Old Lady Salt helped her back at the lake?

“And what about Mara?”