PROLOGUE

In 1528, Spanish ships landed near what is now Tampa Bay, Florida. Three hundred men and forty horses marched inland to explore the New World. Eight years later, the remaining four survivors of that expedition met up with Spanish slavers in northern Mexico. One of these four, the renowned Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, would eventually write and publish a report of his adventures for the King of Spain—the true-life story of a conquistador who became a trader for the coastal tribes of Texas, then a slave of those tribes, then a shaman, then a conquistador again.

This story, however, is about the girl who never appeared in that report to the King of Spain—a girl who could listen to plants and stone and deer. This story is one of those hidden things, rising from the earth and kept hidden in the earth. This is a story remembered by a few, reimagined, remade, returned. In this story, animals and people know each other. Words are alive, and power runs through our veins, through everything, everyone, like water rushing to sea, each day bringing its own amazement.