The City of Rocks State Park was a labyrinth of giants, families of tall rocks huddling together in formation, as if fending off an attack or staunching the rain or protecting some rock god within their circular bodies. Calliope marveled at the unusual group of rounded volcanic boulders, surrounded by flat, dying prairie. These rolling desert plains were not an obvious place to find unusual, eroded rock formations, but a half-mile expanse of large volcanic columns loomed ahead, some at least forty feet tall. One encampment of rocks, if she’d seen it isolated in a photograph, she would have sworn were human-constructed, human-placed—they so clearly resembled the wonder of Stonehenge, that most famous megalith among other ancient stone circles. Why hadn’t she ever camped here before? It was stunning, these mossy-backed giants huddling around firepits, picnic benches, sharing the secrets of the land they guarded. She could almost hear them whispering against the fierce winds.

Calliope strode closer, spellbound, Eunjoo at her side, holding her hand. Sparse vegetation grew around the boulders, an occasional oak or emory between the rocks, bare, sandy chambers or narrow, slot-like passages. In one passage of the campsite, a blue canvas tent. Calliope looked inside. Sleeping bag, backpack, flashlight, boots. All the accoutrements of life. But no one living.

The rocks themselves were light brown to pink in color, many covered by lichen and eroded into surreal shapes remarkably like statues, intentional, like people. Calliope reached out with her free hand to feel the rock, half expecting it to be warm with breath, shuddering at what they’d witnessed in the hangar—those Kachina creatures. But these rocks were cold. Calliope could tell they were the result of wind and water erosion of compacted tuff, formed by the eruption of some nearby volcano millions of years ago. Not human-formed. There must have been a caldera nearby, a large cauldron-like depression in the earth, along with other volcanic residues. She glanced away from the stone encampment, into the distance. Dark mountain ranges past the valley—the Gilas. She’d cut through them at the end of last winter to see her tía. She’d thought the snow was over then, but the roads had been slippery with black ice.

They weren’t far from Silver City. She looked toward the sky; though the red bird swirling from the ash was gone, the clouds behind the Gilas were dark with rainstorm. Thunder padded in the distance, heavy streaks connecting sky and mountaintops that meant it was raining there already. The lightning they’d avoided in the plane was drawing nearer. “We should get moving again,” she called to Chance and Amy. “Chance, where’s the map? I don’t think we’re far from my tía’s hacienda.”

He came toward her, the aviation chart folded in his hand. “Your head hurt, mujer? I saw you smack it against the window in our rough landing.”