Chapters (41)
- PART ONE
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- PART TWO
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- PART THREE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Chance said, “Do not follow us, brother. I do not want to hurt you.”
Calliope lowered the gun in the kitchen. Malia was looking at her with suspicion. She hated to leave this way—to leave the Coyote clan women who’d shared their lives with her. She wanted to tell them she would return, that she would come home to them. She could bring her son—
She stopped herself. It would not work. The masked men would not have it. She didn’t belong here. The way Malia was looking at her, she could not tell if she would ever be welcome again. Perhaps Malia blamed Calliope for what was happening with her son. For taking her son away.
Once they were in the truck, Eunjoo asked Chance, “They won’t hurt your family, will they?”
His voice was sad, but he said, “No. They never would.” And Calliope understood what he meant; they didn’t see her as his family. She wouldn’t have been safe there. She couldn’t go back if she’d wanted to.
“Will they follow us?” Calliope asked.
“I hope not.”
Mara sped through the dirt roads off the rez.
They neared Black Rock, the basalt bluff at the northern edge of Zuni where Old Lady Salt had lived before she’d uprooted herself forty-five miles south, because the people had disrespected her by urinating and spitting while swimming in her waters and wasting her sacred flesh; she had hoped that by moving farther away, they would appreciate her more. Their pilgrimage would mean something. She’d left a gaping hole in the center of the rock, the place she’d traveled through to find her new home.
“The rock baby,” Calliope said. “I left her.”
“You’re carrying her, mujer.”
Calliope’s gut lurched, and she checked quickly on the corn girl in the wool sling across her chest, making sure the flesh-and-blood girl had not turned to stone.
“Not Miwe e’le. On your back. I exhumed the rock baby while you were in the back with Mara. I knew you’d need to bring her.”
Calliope lumbered out of the heavy backpack straps and peered inside the bag. She pulled out the rock baby. Funny how she could have stoppered the hole in Black Rock, she matched so well, she could have staunched that gaping exit wound.
“Did you bring Amy too?” Eunjoo asked.
Mara patted the rock in the center console. “Got her right here.”
“Good,” Eunjoo said. “It would have been cruel to leave her. Since she isn’t dead.”
THIRTY-FOUR
THIRTY-FOUR
QUEMADO LAKE
