They stopped for water at a flat crag two-thirds of the way up. Calliope watched Mara and Eunjoo passing the clay jar, the older woman and little girl reminding her of Bisabuela and her younger self; they must have been nearly identical ages as when she’d made the trek, a true parallel. Watching the pair, she wondered, Why us? Why had they been pulled through? Chance she understood, his Mother had brought him; this myth was his reality. But Mara, Eunjoo, and Calliope? Her stomach ached with shame at the thought of those she hadn’t been able to keep safe here, in this world—Susana, Buick, and Amy. All of them together, those hiking beside her now and those she’d lost over the past six months, why had they come through? Was there an intention for them? Or had they all been an accident? A cosmic happenstance, flotsam and jetsam caught in the quantum stream? Could Bisabuela have orchestrated their journey? And for what purpose? Just to show Calliope that Bisabuela had been right? The lesson didn’t seem worth the cost. Or was there still something Calliope was missing, some message she hadn’t quite deciphered? Was it a fool’s errand to search for purpose in a random world? Only, she wasn’t in her world anymore, was she? Perhaps things weren’t quite so random here.

They started up the mesa again, passing a clump of sage growing like tufts of hair from the rock faces. Atop the tabletop earth, a figure on a stone bench leaned toward the fire, back slumped toward them. Bisabuela? But before the figure at the fire could solidify into her great-grandmother, Mara called in a tone of childlike wonder, “Chaiwa?” and Calliope realized her mistake. A ghost to more than just Calliope, it seemed, the figure at the campfire was a woman, a flesh-and-blood woman, her long black hair braided to her waist, though she wore modern clothes, jeans and a T-shirt. She turned around, her sepia skin dewy and clear. This was not the older San Ildefonso nanny Mara had described disappearing from Los Alamos in the 1940s nor Calliope’s own great-grandmother. In fact, Calliope didn’t recognize the woman at all. She blinked the dust and disappointment from her eyes.

“Doctor?” Mara asked.

The woman’s face warmed in recognition, as if she’d been expecting them. A thin smile formed across her mouth, and creases gathered around her dark eyes. “So you’ve made it,” she said, her tone composed, almost welcoming.

“How do you know each other?” Calliope asked, the buzzing of cicadas loud in her ears. Could they trust this woman? Even Chance seemed suspicious, his arms folded across his chest.

“We met, briefly,” the woman said. “In the hospital.”