when I was old enough,” said Susanah. “Chilocco, on the Kansas border. Work and building things and forgetting who you were while the teachers tried to force you to be white. One day I just had enough, so I snuck out. I didn’t know much about the Comanches—the Numunuu—except some simple words here and there. I didn’t even remember where I had been taken from, I was so young. So I stole a book on the Comanches, found that my band was from the Oklahoma Panhandle, and that’s where I went. I hopped trains. I walked, and when I got here, there was… nothing but dust. And then the storm came, and when it cleared and everything was different… I found a baby, crying alone in that abandoned car, and I named her Kahúu. Mouse. A real child of the desert. We both were, I guess. I was only thirteen.”
Mowse listened placidly, wincing when Susanah hit another tangle.
“She was the first part of my family. Then I found Zo a few years later, and then Olivia, and then the others after her, and now there are eight of us together.” Susanah paused. “You weren’t what I was looking for. But you are what I needed.”
Olivia stood with her bottle of moonshine and looked at each of us. “All of us came from pain and dirt and shit and death,” she said. “But we are family now. And you have my word, hermanas—y hermano—I will do anything for you. A toast to us!”
“To us!” we said.
We toasted with our Coke bottles, the blue-green glass gleaming in the firelight, and took another swig of moonshine (cactus juice for Mowse). It felt like Communion felt, quiet, reverent somehow. Important. And in the firelight, through the pleasant haze of moonshine, I realized that they were what we had needed. I had asked my pendulum to help me find something that could help fix everything and it had led me here. But why? And earlier, what Olivia had said about Mother Morevna… what had she meant? Questions seemed to spread over my mind like spilled paint, coloring everything warm around me dark again. Finally, I decided I couldn’t wait any longer. These questions needed answers.
“Olivia,” I said when she sat back down next to me. “Can I speak to you for a minute? Alone?” My voice sounded flat and somber, contrasting sharply to the jubilant, carefree mood.
Olivia smiled and said, “Sure, kid.” She gave Asa an apologetic look. He nodded in return. Then I followed Olivia out of the circle of warmth and firelight and into the dark, toward her.
“You did good today,” Olivia said as she shut the door behind us. “If you hadn’t thrown me that rock, I think he might have had me. I think you and Asa will be a great fit with us, especially after today. Here, make yourself at home.”
I looked around, expecting to see walls of weapons, maps, maybe bloodstained clothes littered here and there. Instead, Olivia’s room looked somehow sad and bare. There was one window, a low, twin-size bed with a plaid blanket on it and a feed-sack pillow. Just above the bed, the picture Asa had given her, of Olivia and her sister, Rosa, was tacked up. Something tingled in the back of my mind, but I couldn’t put my finger to it.
“So, what are you thinking about?” she said.
I took a deep breath. It was now or never.
“About what you said earlier,” I said. “I have a few questions about Mother Morevna, about Elysium… and what happened while you were there.”
I braced myself for her reaction, though I didn’t know what it would be. Anger? Sadness? Would she tell me to go away? Instead, she simply took a swig of her moonshine, held it in her mouth for a moment, and swallowed.
“Well?” she said. “What do you want to know?”
“How did you know Mother Morevna?” I asked. “Did she teach you about magic?”
Olivia sighed. “It was back in the beginning of Elysium,” she said. “When she was starting out trying to make Elysium equal—outlawing hate speech, getting rid of ‘whites only’ areas and stuff like that. One day, I was being harassed by some white boys. They were telling me I shouldn’t be allowed in Elysium because I wasn’t ‘a real American,’ that I should have left like other ‘Mexicans.’ I told them I was proud to be Mexican, but that I was born here and that I’m just as American as they are.