skull

teacher leigh claimed nellie for the fastest horse in a hundred miles, come from a line of breeding older than the western territory. he never raced her. said it wouldn’t be fair sport to the cowboy ponies.

now they test the truth of it. sam mounts first, lucy behind. the two of them, and the rucksack of ba, are still lighter than the trunk was. nellie paws the ground, eager to run despite her skimpy diet of grass. lucy expects an answering impatience from sam.

instead, sam leans forward and whispers. the mare’s gray ears twitch back, subtle as speech.

and then sam whoops.

nellie stretches long, long—legs flicker over grass and they are flying, the wind shrieking, the sound from sam’s throat raw and thrilling, at once ba’s pride and ma’s husky rasp and something all sam’s own, wild as a beast—and lucy realizes the sound isn’t from one throat. it’s hers too.

if this is a haunting, then it’s a good one.

—

were a traveler to go by wagon, it takes a month to cross the western territory. the main trail that they left starts at the ocean in the west, bumps against the inland mountains to the east. there the trail turns north, hugging the range till it flattens. east the trail loops, into the gentle plains of the next territory. a clear path, well-traveled. easy enough to find again if they wished. but sam, drawing in the dirt that night, has other plans.

“most people do this,” sam says, tracing the first part of the wagon trail with a stick. sam depicts mountains as ma did: clusters of three peaks.

“and then,” lucy says, picking up her own stick, “most people keep going.” she draws the next piece of trail that crosses into the neighboring territory.

sam scowls. taps lucy’s stick away. “but no one goes here.” taking up a thinner stick, sam draws a new line. this one splits from the wagon trail. “or here.” the line cuts clean through the middle of the range. “or here.” now it leaps to the side as if shoved. “or here.” when sam is finished, the map holds a wriggling snake of a trail, one that loops and circles, cuts through the mountains, wends south, jumps north, leans into the far western coast.

lucy squints. sam’s new line seems to end where it begins, so many times does it curl. “no one would go that way. it’s senseless.”

“exactly. no one would.this here’s all the wild places.” sam studies lucy. “ba said that’s where to find buffalo.”

“those are stories, sam. the buffalo are dead.”

“you read that. you don’t know it.”

“nobody’s seen buffalo in these parts in years.”

“you said we could keep looking.”

“not forever.” sam’s line represents months of travel through the most rugged, unbroken places. maybe years.

“you promised.” sam turns away. the red fabric across sam’s back is faded, stretched tighter than when they set out. a line of stomach peeps from the shirt’s bottom edge—sam has grown. a dark splotch forms, unaccountably, at the corner of the dirt map though sam’s stick doesn’t move. the splotch spreads, sam’s shoulders shake. the darkness is wet. sam—is sam crying?

“promised,” sam says again, quieter, the words before and after unheard except for a sloshing, and this time lucy hears, he promised he wouldn’t die.

lucy knew of ba’s dying for years. all she lacked was the day. though he lived not even two decades, ma’s death aged him. ba refused meals and took whiskey like water. his lips sank into his leathery face, his teeth loosened and spotted, and his eyes went red, then yellow, then a mix of both like fatty beef. lucy wasn’t truly surprised to find his body. it’s been years since she mourned ba’s broken promises.

but it was different for sam. ba saved what little tenderness was left in him for sam.

“shh,” lucy says, though sam is silent. “hao de, hao de. we’ll go. we’ll look.”

lucy knows they won’t find a thing. not one buffalo. the truth of those wild places is written in books. but sam trusts only two sources: ba, and sam’s own eyes. one is lost. the other will see the empty mountains soon enough. it may take a few weeks more, but soon, lucy hopes, sam will lay ba down.

—

from atop nellie, the hills roll by with a speed that makes them liquid. the ocean ma spoke of, remade in yellow grass. the distant mountains draw closer till one day lucy sees: why, they’re not blue. green brush and gray rock, purple shadows held deep in ridges.

the land, too, regains color. the stream widens. cattails, miner’s lettuce, clusters of wild garlic and carrots. hills grow craggier, valleys deeper. from time to time, the grass bursts full green in the shade of a grove.

is this, then, the wildness ba sought? this sense that they might disappear into the land—a claiming of their bodies like invisibility, or forgiveness? the hollow in lucy shrinks as she shrinks, insignificant against the mountains, the gold light filtered green through unbent oaks. even sam is gentling in a wind that tastes of life as much as it tastes of dust.

one day lucy wakes to birdsong, and it isn’t a dream of the past that holds her. it’s a new vision of the future, clinging like dew.

there was a kind of miner’s wife who faced inland and sighed, civilization. such wives came from those fertile plains on the far side of the mountains, tugged west by letters from miner husbands. the letters made no mention of coal dust. the wives arrived in cheerful dresses that faded fast as their hopes in the strong western sun.

soft, ba scoffed. kan kan, they’ll die off quick. he was right. when cough came, those wives crumpled like flowers tossed to fire. their widowers remarried sturdy women who fixed eyes to their tasks and never looked inland

but lucy liked to hear about the next territory, and the next one, even farther east. those flat plains where water is abundant and green stretches in every direction. where towns have shade trees and paved roads, houses of wood and glass. where instead of wetand drythere are seasons with names like song: autumn, winter, summer, spring. where stores carry cloth in every color, candy in every shape. civilizationholds the word civilin its heart and so lucy imagines kids who dress nice and speak nicer, storekeepers who smile, doors held open instead of slammed, and everything—handkerchiefs, floors, words—clean. a new place, where two girls might be wholly unremarkable.

in lucy’s fondest dream, the one she doesn’t want to wake from, she braves no dragons and tigers. finds no gold. she sees wonders from a distance, her face unnoticed in the crowd. when she walks down the long street that leads her home, no one pays her any mind at all.

—

they’ve nearly reached the foot of the mountains, one week later, when the rib in the sky thickens. wolf moon, rarest kind. bright enough that after sunset and star rise comes moonrise. silver pries their eyes awake. the blades of grass, the bristles of nellie’s mane, the creases of their clothes—illuminated.

across the grass, an even brighter glow.

like two still sleeping they rise from their blankets and walk. their hands brush. did sam reach across? or is it a coincidence of strides grown similar thanks to sam’s new height?

the light comes from a tiger skull.

it’s pristine. the snarl untouched. chance didn’t place this skull; the beast didn’t die here. no other bones surround it. the empty sockets face east and north. follow its gaze, and lucy sees the very end of the mountains, where the wagon trail curves to the plains.

“it’s—” lucy says, heart quickening.

“a sign,” sam says.

most times lucy can’t read sam’s dark eyes. tonight the moonlight has pierced sam through, made sam’s thoughts clear as the blades of grass. together they stand as if at a threshold, remembering the tiger ma drew in the doorway of each new house. ma’s tiger like no other tiger lucy has seen, a set of eight lines suggesting the beast only if you squinted. a cipher. ma drew her tiger as protection against what might come. singing, lao hu, lao hu

ma drew her tiger in each new home.

song shivers through lucy’s head as she touches the skull’s intact teeth. a threat, or else a grin. what was the last word of the song? a call to the tiger: lai.

“what makes a home a home?” lucy says.

sam faces the mountains and roars