Mom and I have lunch—baked potatoes with canned tuna—and then she insists that I rest in the living room for the afternoon. She finds a pack of cards and we play a few games, then Scrabble—Mom is good at Scrabble, from all the courtroom touch-typing, and I’m not bad either. But she always beats me.
Though this time, she lets me win a couple of games. I think it’s because she’s feeling weird about her being a secret murderer, though she doesn’t mention it, which in itself is weird.
It’s like neither of us knows how to bring it up.
The moon is gone from the sky now, at least, so when I look out the window the world seems normal and bright, though colder than Phoenix. Wisps of cloud scud across the sun and the air is crystal clear. Some kind of hawk flies past the window.
Can we go outside? I say when we finish our game of Scrabble.
She frowns. I wanted you to rest.
I’ve rested. I’m fine. Honestly. But it looks nice out there.
Okay, honey. We can take a look at that canyon, she says. It’s no Grand Canyon, but still.
I smile because she’s making an effort. Yeah, thanks, I say.
We go through the cabin and out the front door. The sun is low in the sky. We’re so cut off from everything here—deep in the forest, at the end of this little dirt track, the green leaves all around us, the canyon scarring the earth in front of us. It’s like a gingerbread cottage in a fairy tale, lost in the woods. Like no one could ever find us.
We don’t walk far from the cabin, because of my CAM Walker—just to the edge of the canyon. From here, you can see the river stretching away, turning and twisting, as it cuts through the forest. The red of the rock below shines in the sun; the river is precious metal now, gleaming.
Look, says Mom. A deer.
I see it—a flash of antler, of haunch, and it is gone, blinking away into the woods.
Soon after that a hawk begins to circle lazily overhead. I can almost see the blue of its feathers. The air here seems thin, pure. Like you could see for miles if you climbed one of these trees, like the very atmosphere is cleaner and lighter than anything I have ever known before.
We sit down on smooth rocks, furred with moss. The forest breathes around us. I see a rabbit, breaking cover and running fast for the undergrowth. I see a squirrel run up a tree.
It’s like a fairy tale, says Mom.
What I was thinking, I say.
Other than that we stay silent. We sit there for like 499 hours, it feels like. But I never get bored—I love watching the river, how it’s never quite the same, the foam breaking, leaves rushing past, caught in its swell, the eddies and currents like someone doodling, endlessly.
At some point, we go inside and eat a snack. Beans—from a can again. Then we go outside again and sit, without speaking to each other. It’s like we’ve been wounded, and we’re slowly healing without saying anything about it. Getting used to a new idea of what we are.
I wonder if there are coyotes here, I think as we sit in the gradually darkening forest.
Then I push the thought down with the other one
(the Mom being a murderer one)
and I bury them in the same shallow grave, and I don’t let them out again. There are no coyotes. I mean, there are coyotes. Of course there are coyotes. I’m not mental. But there is no Coyote, no Player of Tricks with capital letters in his name. I shiver: a memory flashes through me, like a glinting fish, of the wolf impaled on the antlers of the elk.
The elk who is dying, bitten by the—
Ugh.
I bury that thought too. My weird dreams should stay in the dark, where they belong. Under the stars.
Another minnow flashes through my mind: Mark’s skin melting, prickling into fur—
No.
I close my eyes, let the sun make red patterns against my eyelids. I must doze off because when I open them again the sun is setting, a burning ball of dark red, like blood through the trees. The clouds above it are on fire, streaked with pink against the pale blue of the sky.
Beautiful, Mom murmurs.
Yes, I say.
After that we go inside. There’s a fireplace, and next to it a great pile of split wood in like an alcove thing. It’s an enormous, open fireplace. Light that, would you, honey? says Mom. I’ll make dinner.
What about the smoke? I say. What if someone sees?
We’re ten miles from anything, says Mom. And I’m cold.
I stare at the grate.
How do I light it?
Mom rolls her eyes. What have I been teaching you? she says.
Your curriculum. Typing.
She smiles. Okay, well I’m adding fire-building to the curriculum. Honestly, Shelby, she says, the things you don’t know, it’s—
She stops, stricken, her hands falling to her sides.
Sorry, she says. I didn’t think how that was going to come out. I mean, I know I lied to you and—
It’s okay, I say. You were scared, right? That I would judge you for what you did?
She nods.
I get it, I say. But I don’t say: I get it and I don’t judge you. I don’t know if that would be true, and I don’t want to say something that’s a lie.
(He is the First Liar. He is not to be trusted.)
I just give her a wan smile and she stands there for a long moment looking at me, waiting, and I feel like a bitch to the power of fricking ten, and then she looks away, breaks it first, and I feel so grateful to her.
We can talk about it later, I say a little desperately.
Sure, she says. The movements of her hands are flat.
But she kneels in front of the fireplace. She shows me a little basket with wood shavings in it; sawdust. Tinder, she says. She builds a little pile of it in the middle of the grate, she finds a piece of paper for it to sit on, from a message pad next to the phone, so the dust doesn’t fall down through the bars.
Kindling, she says, taking some small pieces of wood from the basket. She arranges these cross-wise over the pile of tinder.
Then logs, right? I say.
Quick study, my daughter, she says. She takes three logs and places them in a kind of teepee over the other stuff.
What now? I say.
Now you light the tinder.
That’s it?
That’s it.
Oh, okay, I say. I snag the matches and strike one—it flares bright orange and then settles into a wavering flame. I touch it to the tinder, and soon the whole thing is flickering flame.
Mom stands there nodding.
What does it sound like? I say.
She gives me a sad look. It crackles, she says. And fizzes … and pops … There aren’t any words. It sounds like a fire.
I nod.
I’m sorry, she says.
I shrug.
Dinner, she says, and goes to the kitchen. I sit by the fire in a low-slung leather armchair. I feel very warm and comfortable. I feel like a lamp that’s switched on; like to someone else looking at me my skin might be alight.
I want to turn on the TV but I figure Mom might be pissed; I remember her cutting the cable of the computer.
Then I think of the books on the shelf—the folktales and Native American stuff that I dismissed before. Only now the elks have been talking about Coyote, and I picture the Google results when I typed in “coyote,” the stuff about him being a trickster god in Native American mythology. I get up and hobble over to the books, then glance down the spines. I see one on Apache folktales so I take it down and go sit again, curling up, the book in my lap. The fire glows, expands and contracts, filling the room with throbbing light. It’s beautiful—I can’t quite take my eyes off it, though I try to leaf through the book.
Words leap out at me.
Coyote.
Trickster.
The moon. The stars.
Coyote kills the Giant.
The Man who became a sheep.
When Coyote stole fire from the Fire God. I scan the page. There was a time when only the Fire God possessed fire, and all others were cold on this earth.
The Fire God lived in a hogan with high walls. Coyote went to the geese and asked them to help him fly; they made him wings of their feathers, and he was able to join them in the skies.
Then Coyote flew over the walls of the Fire God’s house. He tied a small branch to his tail, dipped it into the fire to light it. The Fire God saw him and chased him, murder in his eyes, but Coyote used his goose wings and leaped into the air, flying over the wall.
Everywhere he went, the burning brand on his tail set fire to things—to bushes, to grass, to trees. The first forest fire began, destroying many acres and lives.
But after that, fire was out in the world, was loose, and people were able to use it.
I blink, trying to wash the tiredness out of my eyes. There is an idea buzzing around my consciousness, like a fly. A thought, about chaos and order, and what they mean. About stealing. I can’t quite catch it, though.
I sit there trying to empty my mind for a long time, empty it into a wide net to seize that flashing fish of a thought, its scales gleaming as it disappears into the blackness of deep water, and then I must fall asleep because when I open my eyes I’m surrounded by