“Mujer, I know you’re in shock, and to say you’ve been through a lot in the past few days would be a gross understatement. I also know you’re a fellow scientist and that you reason with your intellect what you read in books and only believe what experiential data you find in the world around you when it fits into the mold of that intellect, those books. When it conforms to the process of those who’ve taught you how to think. You’re not of my people, and you don’t know our ways. So I won’t fault you for the disrespect you’ve shown, speaking to me that way in front of my mother, when she has just saved your life and your child’s.” He nodded toward the corn girl, and Calliope’s throat filled with cotton, the anger dissipating, clouding instead into shame. She wanted to apologize for speaking so harshly in front of his mother. She’d risked their facade of marriage and family by treating him as someone she mistrusted and derided rather than someone she loved. But before she could say anything, he said, “I need to tell you a story.” She closed her eyes and sighed. He wasn’t deterred by her apparent disinterest, but continued in his lilting storyteller’s voice:

“In Tewa, there once was a young woman who never wanted to marry and instead lived with her parents and helped her mother make water jars. One day while her mother was away fetching water and the young woman was mixing the clay with her foot, she put the clay onto a flat stone and stepped on it, hard, and some of the clay entered her. She became pregnant and gave birth. The mother’s anger at her daughter’s pregnancy ended when she saw what the daughter had birthed: not a regular child but a little water jar.

“The young woman cried and cried because he had no legs or arms, but after a time, the family grew fond of the little jar and found they could feed him through the jar mouth and soon he grew larger and could play with the other children, though he was a jar. When the snow came he asked his grandfather to take him hunting, and though the grandfather was reluctant, he gave in and took him down below the mesa where he could roll around to find jackrabbits. Soon Water Jar Child saw tracks and rolled after them, but when he found the jackrabbit, it began to chase him, and he rolled into a rock, breaking open.

“Out jumped a flesh child, glad his skin had broken. He had beads around his neck, earstrings of turquoise, a dance kilt and moccasins, and a buckskin shirt. He killed four jackrabbits before sunset.