Phoenix chucked rocks at his mother. He picked them from the pocked ground, feverishly, his eyes malicious in a way no child’s should be. Or maybe they were angry, Calliope couldn’t tell past the painful thudding at her skin where the sharp rocks struck. She tried calling out, not Stop but Come back. For even as he was aiming for her, for blood, he was drifting further and further away, so the rocks had to travel vast distances, past a chasm in the rutted, red earth. He balanced atop one mesa like a vulture on a branch, and she another. Her tabletop mesa slipping, shaking, his rising toward the sky and away from hers. Wait—but no words came. She grappled, an animal on hands and knees, to keep from falling. The rocks pummeled her belly. Something rose in her throat and when she tried to speak, from her mouth she dislodged a rock. She was made of rocks. She couldn’t move from the fossilized casing she’d once called her body.

Heat crackled nearby. A conversation wove through the fire. A child’s sweaty body curled at her lap, chest rhythms of breathing, up and down, pressing against her.

“I didn’t want to believe it was happening again …” Mara’s voice drifted somewhere between dreamworld and the terrifying space Calliope would find herself still trapped if she opened her eyes: her family’s house without her family. “My dad was a scientist at Los Alamos during World War II. He helped make the A-bomb. Fucking scientists.”

Chance laughed. “I’m a scientist.”

“Oh yeah?” Mara joined the laughter, hers wry. “I had a nanny there, Chaiwa, who was of the San Ildefonso people.” Mara paused, looked imploringly at Chance. “You ever heard of Lizard’s Tail?”

“That it grows a new one?”

“Yeah, but it’s more than that. Chaiwa was the wisest person I ever knew, and like I said I grew up around scientists. She told me the story of Coyote and Lizard, how Coyote heard Lizard singing and wanted to learn the song but couldn’t remember it. When Lizard wouldn’t sing it for Coyote, wouldn’t let him steal it, Coyote swallowed Lizard. In his belly, Lizard began to sing. Coyote knew he would regret what he had done, and sure enough, Lizard cut Coyote’s throat to his stomach from inside and Coyote fell dead. Lizard emerged singing.”

Chance laughed anew, a deep belly laugh that made Calliope want to open her eyes to peek at him. She kept them tight.

“What about Lizard’s Tail though?” Chance asked.