It was Vivian who broke the silence. “I once said that your six-great-grandmother was too stubborn when it came to danger,” she said, twisting in her seat to make eye contact with Ellie. “Personally,” she continued, “I used to consider that part of her to be a character flaw.”
“I know,” Ellie said, smiling faintly.
“I might have been wrong.”
“What?!” Pat blurted out. “Are you unwell? We pass a hospital on the way—”
“Stop it,” Vivian said. “I’m trying to make a point.”
“But if you need medical attention—”
“I don’t.”
“—the offer stands.”
“That’s very generous of you,” she said.
“You’re welcome.”
“What were you going to say?” Ellie asked, leaning forward until the seat belt resisted. Briefly, she wondered if the coyote should be buckled up. Kirby used to have a harness for the car. When he was alive. When he was with her.
She focused on the memory of Kirby, reaching for him, calling his name with the part of her soul that sang the language of all living things.
There was no response.
“She knew herself,” Vivian said. “And never doubted what she knew. No matter how many times people said, ‘It’s too dangerous. Don’t do it.’ Your six-great-grandmother knew that she was capable of wonderful, dangerous things. That isn’t a flaw. It’s … enviable.”
“But she made a mistake, Mom. In the end.”
“No. She took a risk for love. That isn’t a mistake. It isn’t even a bad decision.”
“I’d go one step farther,” Pat said, “and say it’s a good decision.”
Me too, the coyote agreed. She yawned wide and curled up in a ball, tucking her nose under her tail. Her mournful yellow eyes peered up at Ellie. What happened last night? The air felt … taut. Like its threads were ready to unravel.
The car turned, and sunlight spilled through Ellie’s east-facing window, warming her face. “I guess I should start from the beginning,” she said. “When I was a kid, my parents took me to the pound. That’s where I met a dog …”
She’d say his name and tell his story. Maybe, someday, he’d follow the words home.
THIRTY-FIVE
A FEW DAYS LATER, as Ellie shoved her folded clothes into a backpack, packing for the return trip home, her phone buzzed. A message from Lenore popped onto the rectangular screen:
Meet me in the park.
Instinctually, Ellie felt to Kirby, calling, “Walk, boy!”
Five minutes later, she left the house alone.
It was strange to feel the sun against the back of her neck. As Ellie walked through the calm neighborhood, she wondered how long it would take for her hair to grow below her back. She was tempted to keep it short until she stopped mourning.
How long would that take?
Lenore sat on a bench in the park, Gregory dozing beside her in a hooded baby carriage. She wore round sunglasses and a short white dress. There was a small cardboard box on the ground.
“Hey,” Ellie said, sitting beside Lenore. “Funny story: this is where I got swarmed by trilobites.”
“Eek.” Lenore lifted her feet gingerly, as if protecting them from a roach. “Do you want to move?”
“No worries. That was a one-time mistake.”
“I’ll miss you,” Lenore said. “Please visit. Okay?” She had decided to sell her house in the Rio Grande and move in with her good friends, a married couple. The women lived alongside the Mojave Desert and had a large guest house.
“I promise,” Ellie said.
“You’re always welcome. Always. Oh! I have a gift for you.” Lenore nudged the cardboard box with one of her feet; she wore a pair of shiny red pumps with silver heels. “Did you know that I used to work at a comic-book store?”
“No way!” Ellie said. She used Trevor’s Swiss Army knife to cut through the masking tape around the cardboard box, revealing stacks of graphic novels. They included indie titles she’d never seen before. Rare and unique oddities about jilted sirens, unhappy psychics, and unlucky starlets. All very elegant and melancholy, just like Lenore Moore.
“When I was in college,” Lenore said. “The job paid for my degree, but I also enjoyed its perks. Like a twenty-percent employee discount.”
“Are these all yours, then?” Ellie asked.
“Mm-hm. They used to be.” She looked away, almost self-consciously. “Trevor mentioned you like comics too.”
“I do!”
“They’re yours now.” Lenore put a hand on Ellie’s shoulder. “Something to read during the long trip home. When are you leaving?”
“Tomorrow morning.”
“One more supper together.”
In silence, they watched a father push his daughter on a swing in the park. The girl was laughing, “Higher, higher!”
“He was a good dad,” Lenore said. “And a good man.”
Ellie knew exactly who she was talking about. No names required.
THIRTY-SIX
“SNICKERS,” ELLIE SAID, “play dead!”
The brown labradoodle rolled onto his back.
“Dead,” Ellie repeated.
His pink tongue lolled out.
Jay whistled, impressed. “How’d Snickers learn that in a week?”
Had it really been just seven days since her father brought the dog home? Ellie felt like she’d known Snickers for years. Granted, he was no Kirby. That was fine, though. She didn’t want a replacement.
“He’s the most food-motivated dog I’ve met,” Ellie said. She passed Snickers a pea-sized treat. He revived in a heartbeat and swallowed it whole. “I could train him to vacuum my bedroom for a slice of bacon.”
“I’m surprised that nobody wanted him,” Jay said.
“Sadly, I’m not.” Ellie gave Snickers a firm squeeze. He leaned into the hug and tickled her cheek with his floppy ear. “People don’t go to the shelter for eight-year-old dogs. They want young ’uns and puppies. If Dad hadn’t agreed to foster him …”
The underworld must teem with unwanted pets. She hoped that, in death, they finally found love. Maybe, Kirby integrated with a pack in the labyrinthine Below. Ellie wondered if she’d have to wait until her own death before they’d be reunited. If they’d be reunited at all. Could she risk another visit to the underworld? Return just long enough to call Kirby’s name?
“Just foster?” Jay asked. “Great! I’ll adopt him! Awyeah. Doggy maid.”
“Sorry to crush your dreams,” she said, “but Snickers is joining my family. You can visit any time, though.”
Ellie winked and returned to the center of her bedroom. There, balsa wood, paint, and superglue were scattered across an unfolded newspaper. A half-finished bridge dried atop the comics pages. The semester had just started, and she was already working on a group project. Fortunately, she and Jay were in the same structural physics class. With a partner like him, Ellie finally enjoyed group work.
“Another one!” Jay plucked a page from the newspaper mat. “Hah. ‘Senator resigns after Willowbee connection revealed.’ It’s the guy from Texarkana! Can I keep this for my summer scrapbook?”
“Feel free.” She prodded the bridge delicately. “Needs a few more minutes.”
“This Willowbee thing got so big,” he continued, folding the newspaper into a tidy rectangle, “I’ve had to start a second book for news articles. Mom thinks we can use the publicity to get scholarships. You … still want that, right? College?”
Considering her role in the Willowbee scandal, Ellie could easily start her own business after high school. Although her parents guarded her privacy with every trick they knew, the occasional interview request, fan message, or angry screed broke through their barrier. If one third of the people who contacted her were serious, she had enough potential clients to fill years of work.
Dear Ellie Bride,
My son has been acting weird lately. He hears rats in the walls, but there
are none! Is our house haunted? Other strange events include …
Dear Ellie,
I live in an apartment near El Cementerio del Barrio de los Lipanes. My girlfriend thinks that the original burial ground was larger, but developers built on it. Please tell your dead tribe that I’m sorry for living over their graves. I can’t afford a better location right now. My girlfriend won’t stay the night until I do something. We’ve been together three years …
Hello Miss Bride,
What are your opinions on alien abductions? Namely: can an alien ghost abduct a human ghost? Please respond …
Dear Ellie Bride,
Abraham Allerton is not alone. There are other wizards on our land, self-worshipping people who corrupt reality itself. Be careful.
“There’s a lot I want to learn,” Ellie said. “My mother, her mother, and my grandmother’s mother taught me about the way of our land, our dead, and our monsters, but the times have changed. I need college to prepare for the next Willowbee.”
Ellie threw Bear Buddy across the room; Snickers caught it midair and crawled under the bed, wringing squeaks from the toy with his teeth. Unlike Kirby, he did treat fetch like a game of keep-away. The habit would take more than a week to break.
“Will there be another Willowbee?” Jay asked.
“You can bet on it.” Ellie knelt and tried to grab Bear Buddy, but Snickers just wiggled farther back. Groaning with mild annoyance, she dropped to her stomach and used her elbows to scoot halfway under the bed.
“At least we’re prepa—AAAAH! What the hell! Run!” Ellie felt Jay grab her by the foot and pull. If she hadn’t been wearing overalls and long sleeves, the maneuver would have caused serious carpet burn.
“What?” she cried.
“That!” Jay pointed. A googly-eyed skull bobbed across the room, carried in the mouth of an invisible dog.
It took a moment for Ellie to regain speech. “Appear, Kirby!” she said. “Appear!”
In an instant, he turned visible. There stood Kirby in all his floppy-eared, feather-tailed glory. Ellie made a joyous sound that verged between a shriek and a wail. She threw herself at him, squeezing his intangible body, and he wagged his poltergeist tail so enthusiastically, it scattered balsa wood slivers in a preternatural wind. “You aren’t afraid of it anymore,” she said.
Snickers poked his nose into the open, intrigued.
“This is your big brother,” Ellie declared. “He’s a ghost.”
The dogs circled each other twice. Neither seemed to care about life or death, living or dead. After the silent introduction, they bounded around the room, and Jay narrowly rescued the bridge from destruction. Eventually, when Snickers grew tired of play, he and Kirby curled side-by-side on the doggy bed. Ellie was torn between watching them sleep and gathering both dogs in her arms in a tight, joyful hug.
“I knew that Kirby would find a way home,” Jay said. “Dogs always do. Huh. What’s that?”
He stooped and picked up a dirty, torn doll from the ground. It was made of leather and rattled when Jay tossed it across the room to Ellie’s outstretched hand. Kirby and Snickers perked up, their eyes trained on the toy.
“I’ve never seen this before,” Ellie said. The doll was no marvel of craftsmanship. Just a sock-shaped tube of leather with a smiling face painted on one side. A long braid of fibrous material dangled from the top of its head, and the rattle, which reminded Ellie of dry mesquite seeds shaking in their husks, came from its belly. “It looks like a dog toy, though. Maybe Kirby brought it with him.”
“From Below?” Jay asked. “You … do you think it’s cursed?”
“It took him forever to warm up to Skull Buddy over there,” Ellie said. “I really doubt Kirby would be in the same room as a cursed dollie. Hm. I wonder …”
Ellie thought that her happiness would sprout a pair of wings and fly through the window, over the house, higher than Owl, and above the sun. Fly so high, that the ground would disappear and there’d be nowhere to fall.
That night, she and Jay finished the bridge together, and once the glue dried, they decorated its beams with acrylic paint. There were no broken hearts.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I wrote a “novel” when I was in first grade. It was a forty-page mystery about a girl who found a box of opals and a riddle in her attic. I only remember fragments of the plot. Somebody was poisoning a butterfly garden in the neighborhood park, and the protagonist cracked the case (don’t ask me how; it was related to the opals … maybe).
So there I was, a seven-year-old author with a finished manuscript. I gave it to the only beta readers I knew: my parents. Luckily, my dad, an English/writing professor with a strong background in Shakespearean lit, not only read the book (and praised my writing!), he edited all forty pages.
Keep in mind that we were still learning the alphabet in my homeroom class. To put it lightly, I didn’t have the strongest grasp of English grammar.
Dad explained his edits, and I corrected my manuscript on a nineties-era computer that was good for two things: typing and Tetris. Then, Dad taught me how to write a query letter (gotta be succinct and polite!), and I sent my manuscript to a real book publisher.
You can probably guess their response. I still have the rejection letter. Dad framed it, proud of my persistence and big dreams. Proud of me. He figured I could hang it alongside my first acceptance letter as a reminder of my journey.
When it comes to my writing, Dad has always been my biggest teacher, supporter, and advocate. This book wouldn’t exist without a lifetime of his guidance.
I am also thankful for the friendship of my writing community at the “cafe”; for the linguistic guidance of David Gohre; for the breathtaking art of Rovina Cai; and for my agent, Michael Curry, who not only found a home for Elatsoe but also provided suggestions that helped it become a richer, more cohesive work.
Finally, I’d like to acknowledge the wonderful team at Levine Querido (Arthur A. Levine, Alexandra Hernandez, Antonio Gonzalez Cerna, Meghan Maria McCullough, and Nick Thomas), who have been incredible champions for Elatsoe. In particular, I am exceedingly grateful for my editor, Nick Thomas, whose keen editorial insights helped Elatsoe shine. Nick, it’s been a privilege working with you.
And to my readers:
xastéyó.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Darcie Little Badger is an Earth scientist, writer, and fan of the weird, beautiful, and haunting. She is an enrolled member of the Lipan Apache Tribe of Texas. Elatsoe is her debut novel.
SOME NOTES ON THIS BOOK’S PRODUCTION
The art for the jacket and interiors was drawn by Rovina Cai on an iPad, and then edited, shaded, and textured in Photoshop. The text was set by Westchester Publishing Services in Danbury, CT, in Cochin Lt Std, from the Cochin font family, a serif Italian old-style typeface designed in 1912 by Georges Peignot. The display was set in Dear Sarah, designed in 2007 by Christian Robertson and meant to evoke the feel of hand-writing. This e-book was created by Westchester Publishing Services.
Production was supervised by Leslie Cohen and Freesia Blizard
Book jacket and interiors designed by Sheila Smallwood
Edited by Nick Thomas
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