“You?” Another round of mocking laughter. “Liar. Mongrel. Child of Dirt Pig. What do the three of you hope to accomplish against a god?”
“¡No mames!” said Father Aguirre in a conversational tone.
The world rippled. It wasn’t quite like an earthquake or a migraine or the wavering of heat coming off baking asphalt, but itwasn’t unlike them either. Selena stumbled. She had a sudden feeling that something was rushing toward her, something vast, like a wall of water or an oncoming train. When she looked up, she couldn’t see anything but it was still there, picking up speed, and stranger still, something inside her rib cage was rising to meet it and when the two smashed together ... what then?
“Lord have mercy upon us,” said Father Aquirre, grabbing for Selena’s hand.
The warning not to get separated was still strong in her ears, and she reached back. Their fingers slid along each other for an instant, then Copper barked.
And lunged.
The leash that Selena knew she shouldn’t have wrapped around her wrist yanked taut and jerked her away. Father Aguirre said something in Spanish that sounded incredibly rude and her last thought as the invisible wave crashed over them was that she would have to ask Lupé what it meant.
Chapter 19
The world was black and silver, sand and brush, and it went on forever. So did she. She had been walking since the beginning of time and she would walk until the end of it. Perhaps her legs should have been tired, but it did not seem strange that they were not. Walking was what she did, what she had always done, threading her way between the black branches of creosote bushes, under a sky that blazed with alien stars.
Once or twice, the thought came to her that there was something she was supposed to be doing, someone she was supposed to be concerned about, but it faded quickly. There was no one else to worry about. There might be no one else living in the entire world.
Strangely this did not concern her. The purpose of the world was to be walked through, and she was the one who did that. There was no need for anyone else.
She had been walking for decades or heartbeats when she came to a saguaro that loomed like a monolith over the landscape. She went around it. Then there was another one, a young one without any arms, and she went around that too. Then came a particularly tall one, arms upraised, riddled with holes. Something looked out at her from one of the holes and she took a step back, startled, and a creosote bush behind her tapped her wrist like a friend trying to get her attention.
Her wrist burned. She looked down, startled, and in the silver starlight, she saw raw lines seared across it.Oh,she thought,of course, that’s where I had Copper’s leash—
Copper.
Like a key in a lock, her memories unfolded. Her dog. Her friends. Her own name, which Selena had not realized that she had forgotten.
Snake-Eater did this to me. Did something to my brain. Where am I?
She turned in a circle but could see nothing but the desert in all directions. The ground did not seem to rise or fall in any direction. The creosote bushes made a labyrinth with a thousand passages, and when she looked behind her, the ground had not taken any of her footprints.
Is this the spirit world?
What had Father Aguirre said? Something about lost souls wandering for eternity?
Dear god, how long have I been walking?
“Copper,” she called. Her throat should have been dry, but it wasn’t, despite her not having drunk anything for what felt like centuries. “Copper? Where are you, girl?”
There was a panicky thought in the back of her skull that maybe she really had been wandering for eternity, and that Copper and Grandma Billy and Father Aguirre had died of old age. Maybe if she stumbled out of the spirit world, centuries would have passed.
No, that’s fairyland. This isn’t the same. Except that I’d probably know more about fairyland. I don’t belong here. This is not my place.Surely this endless black-and-white landscape was meant for someone else—for the Native people who had lived here since the beginning of time and knew the shape of the spirits, for someone like Father Aguirre who was part spirit himself. Even for someone like Grandma Billy, who knew about magic, and who seemed to bend the world around her. But not for shy, neurotic former assistant managers. Wherever she belonged, it certainly wasn’t here.
“I didn’t mean to come,” she said out loud, to the saguaro, who seemed a little like a god itself. “I’m sorry. Snake-Eater brought me. I know I shouldn’t be here. I just want to find my friends.”
The saguaro was silent.
“Thank you. I think you, um, snapped me out of ... whatever that was. I’m sorry to bother you.”
There was movement inside the hole again, and something inched forward. Selena saw starlight reflected in two round, unblinking eyes, and a body smaller than her fist.
“You’re an elf owl,” she said. She only knew what that was because she’d seen them on a page of desert birds when she was looking up roadrunners. “Aren’t you?”
The elf owl bobbed its head, then launched itself into the air, circled the great saguaro twice, then winged its way into the desert. For lack of any other direction, Selena followed.
The owl was so small that she lost sight of it frequently, but then it would pop up again, a dark shape crossing the stars.
