Race to the Sun

by Rebecca Roanhorse

  I bite my lip, wondering if that’s what happened to my mom.

  Spider Woman’s still talking. “Monsters are going to try to stop you from reaching the Sun,” she says. “But as long as you stick to the Rainbow Road, they can’t touch you.”

  “And what about the four trials?” I ask. “How will we know what they are and when we’ve passed them?”

  “Look to the song the Diyin Dine’é gave you. It’s a map, in a way. Showing you not where to go, but what to wonder.”

  “You mean ‘wander’?” Davery asks.

  “I meant what I said. Now”—she makes a shooing motion with her hands—“walk in beauty, my darlings.”

  And with that she turns and disappears down the path, leaving us alone on the Rainbow Road.

  “Well, at least she didn’t eat us,” Mac says, looking at the place where Spider Woman was standing moments ago. “Hey, are you going to finish your burrito?”

  I hand Mac my uneaten half. “I wish Mr. Yazzie were here,” I say, suddenly feeling like maybe this isn’t such a good idea. “I didn’t realize how much I was starting to rely on a horned toad to get me through the day.”

  “I miss him, too,” Davery says. “But following the road should be easy enough, especially with the song to guide us. I think I get what Spider Woman meant when she said it’s like a map of wonder.”

  “That makes one of us,” I mutter. But I trust Davery knows what he’s talking about. After all, Mr. Yazzie said he was destined to be someone wise, like a scholar or a hatałii, which means he can probably understand things that I can’t. Like that song. “Could I see it again?”

  He digs the fair flyer out of his pocket and hands it to me. I read aloud the lines about the trials.

  A talking stone, a field of knives, a prom of thorns, a seethe of sand.

  Thoughts take form, form becomes true.

  To defeat the trials, you must know you.

  “Okay, so we’ll meet some talking rocks first,” Davery says, stepping forward. “That could be interesting.”

  “Yeah, talking rocks don’t sound so bad. Maybe they’ll ask us a riddle, like a Sphinx or something.” Beneath my feet, the rainbow road spreads about twenty feet in front of us as we walk, the stripes of color a steady glow in the morning sun. “But a field of knives can’t be good.”

  “And I’m too young to go to prom,” Mac says. “Besides, I can’t dance.”

  “And I don’t know what a seethe is, exactly,” Davery admits. “But it sounds like it could be dangerous.”

  “That song will only make sense after we’ve done all the things it talks about,” I say, putting it in my backpack. “What’s the point of even having it if it can’t tell us where to go?”

  “Maybe we should focus less on the destination and enjoy the journey,” Mac says as he stuffs the last of my burrito in his mouth.

  Davery and I turn to stare.

  “What?” he asks, wiping his cheek. “Do I have Spam on my face?”

  “You sound like a Hallmark card,” I say, rolling my eyes a little. “We can’t enjoy the journey when we only have until tomorrow’s sunrise to get to the Sun!”

  “Hey, don’t yell at me. It works when Oprah says it.”

  “You are definitely not Oprah.”

  “Dream crusher.”

  I turn back to Davery. “What do you think we should do?”

  “I think we should pick up the pace,” he says, “or our road might disappear.”

  I look down at my feet and sure enough, the rainbow stripes that were perfectly solid just seconds ago are fading, like pastel watercolors with too much water added.

  “If I had to guess,” Davery says, walking a little faster, “I would say that as the sun rises and the rain dries out, the rainbow disappears. Just like a real rainbow would. We have to hurry!”

  We start fast-walking and then running as the colors dwindle to Easter-egg versions of themselves. I look back once and the spot where we started is plain red mud again, the road having completely disappeared.

  “Faster!” I say as we rush forward.

  I’m going so fast, looking over my shoulders as I run, that I don’t even see what’s in front of us.

  “Nizhoni, stop!” Davery yells, but it’s too late.

  Feet scrambling for purchase, arms flailing wildly, I fall off the edge of a cliff.

  Luckily, the cliff drops off to a small muddy hill, which I slide down on my heels, like I’m skiing. I skid to a stop at the bottom and try to stay upright, but the ground is so slippery, I end up sitting in a puddle.

  “Are you hurt?” Davery asks as he scrambles down to join me.

  “Ow!” I exclaim. “My butt!”

  Davery giggles, and I guess it is pretty funny, but it also hurts.

  “I landed on my tailbone.”

  “Good thing the mud cushioned your fall, or it could have been worse.” He puts out a hand to pull me up.

  Once I’m on my feet, I try to wipe mud from the back of my pants. It comes off thick and red in my hands. Seems like the humiliations never end. “I can’t believe the Rainbow Road led us off the side of a cliff!”

  “Speaking of rainbows, where did the road go?” Mac asks as he climbs down.

  We all look around, and yup, there’s no more road to be seen. I groan in disappointment. We went to all that trouble to find it, and we’ve already lost it?

  “There!” Davery says, pointing across the gorge. Squinting, I think I can just barely see glowing colors on the far side, picking up again on the top of a hill like the one we just slid down. It’s as if the road used to be connected but these two hills were pulled apart, the space between them forming the valley we’re in now, which is divided by a wide rushing river. We have to get across, but how?

  “I guess we should take that?” Davery says, pointing at a dry narrow path that winds between two tall rock walls about twenty yards away. The early morning sunlight hasn’t risen over the walls yet, and the trail looks dark and creepy. But it’s the only way through.

  “It’s not part of the Rainbow Road,” I point out. “And Spider Woman warned us we could get lost if we—”

  “What’s that noise?” Mac asks, sounding scared.

  An eerie sound is coming from the dark path, sort of like a low moan. I shudder as chills run up and down my spine.

  “Is that a ghost?” Mac whispers. “I hate ghosts.”

  “No,” says Davery. “When wind blows through a narrow canyon, it can sound like a supernatural phenomenon, but it’s really quite natural.”

  “Promise?” Mac asks as the groaning picks up. It sounds like wind blowing through a narrow canyon, sure, but it also sounds like a dozen voices in some kind of awful pain. A pain way worse than what my butt is feeling right now.

  Davery blinks. “I guess I can’t exactly promise.…”

  I try to peer into the corridor, but I can’t see a thing. It’s darker between the walls than it was back at Spider Woman’s before the sun came up.

  “I vote ghosts, then,” Mac says. “And that means we need to find another way to get to the road.”

  “There is none,” I say. “Unless we want to try climbing back up that slippery hill and going the long way around. It could take hours—hours we don’t have.”

  Another moan emanates from the valley path, and this time I swear it’s saying something. “I think that’s a voice,” I say.

  “Is it saying, This way, children?” Davery asks.

  I hear it, too. Thisssss wayyyyy…

  “Welp!” Mac says, throwing up his hands. “Definitely haunted.”

  “Or,” Davery says, “remember the song? The talking rocks? Well, these rocks are talking.”

  “Yeah,” Mac says, “and they’re saying, Run away, we’re haunted!”

  “No, I think we’re meant to go through them. I think this is the first trial.”

  Of course the first trial would have to involve a haunted canyon. Why couldn’t it just be a math test or somet
hing? I’d rather try to divide fractions than fight ghosts, and I really, really hate fractions.

  “Okay, then,” I say, squaring my shoulders, “let’s do it. But everyone stay close together.”

  “I wish Mr. Yazzie was here,” Mac says mournfully. “He would know what to do.”

  Davery pats Mac’s shoulder. “Yeah, he—”

  “There he is!” Mac shouts. And miraculously, there’s a horned toad sitting right at the entrance to the corridor.

  “Hurry, little heroes!” he shouts, waving us forward. “The path is only open for a few more minutes. You must get through before it closes.”

  “But how did Mr. Yazzie get here?” Davery asks, a puzzled look on his face. “Last we saw him, he was—”

  “Who cares how he got here?” Mac says. “Let’s go!” And just like that, he takes off.

  It is really strange. The lizard couldn’t have gotten here first, could he? And there’s another thing. “Where’s his sweater?” I ask.

  Mac is almost to Mr. Yazzie, when Davery exclaims, “The song!”

  “What about it?”

  “Beware, beware the friendly toad. We skipped that part, because I didn’t know what it meant!”

  I’d totally forgotten, but the meaning seems pretty clear now. “It’s a trap!”

  “Mac!” we both shout, running after my little brother.

  “Hurry, children!” the fake Mr. Yazzie says. “This way! Right through here. You’re almost there.” And as he turns to wave Mac forward, I can see his eyes. They’re red, just like the fake Adrien Cuttlebush’s at the train station, and the buzzard bozos at Black Mountain. Which means…monster!

  “No, Mac! Stop! That’s not really Mr. Yazzie!” But he’s not listening. And as the horned toad scuttles down the path and disappears into the dark, Mac follows him.

  The canyon rumbles. The whole ground shakes like we’re having an earthquake. Debris showers down as the rock walls start to move. I rub my eyes. Move? That’s impossible.

  Davery skids to a stop and grabs my arm. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

  “The canyon walls are moving closer together, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, and if we don’t get Mac out,” Davery says, “they’re going to squish him like a grape!”

  “We have to follow him!”

  “And then we’ll get squished like grapes! No, there has to be another way.”

  “Did the song have any ideas about how to win the trials?”

  Davery purses his lips, thinking. “To defeat the trial, you must know you.”

  “How am I supposed to know myself ? I mean, I already do. That makes no sense and is entirely unhelpful.” I look around the valley, feeling frantic, searching for something we could use to get Mac back. There’s a pile of stones nearby, a few scrubby plants growing in the sandy wash, and a small grove of cottonwood trees. Rocks, mud, and trees—that’s all there is.

  And then I have an idea. I run over to a cottonwood. I jump up and grab on to a long branch that’s sticking out at about eye level. I haul myself up, like I’m doing a pull-up in gym class, and then let my weight drop. The branch wobbles and starts to crack. I do it again. Up, then drop. And the crack gets bigger. On the third try, when I come down, the branch breaks off. I land on my feet, now holding a branch longer than I am.

  I rush back over to Davery. “That was really impressive,” he says. “You’re strong.”

  “For a girl?” I say sarcastically.

  “No. For anyone. It was…cool.”

  I hadn’t really thought about it, but I guess I am strong. Maybe that’s part of my ancestral powers, or maybe I’m just naturally that way and never had the chance to try it out. Either way, I’m glad it worked.

  “Watch this!” I exclaim. The canyon trail is getting narrower by the minute. When we first got here, it was wide enough for Mac, Davery, and me to walk through side by side without even touching shoulders. Now it’s only wide enough for Davery and me, and that might be a tight fit.

  I step forward, just a little way into the corridor. The wind still howls like it’s full of ghosts, and when I look down into the darkness, Mac and the fake Mr. Yazzie are nowhere to be seen. I gulp nervously. What if something’s happened to Mac?

  No, I can’t think that way. This is going to work, and I’m going to rescue him.

  I thrust my branch into the opening and turn it horizontally so it’s jammed between the two rock walls. The canyon rumbles and the sides keep trying to move closer, but this time, the branch stops them. The moaning wind picks up a notch. But my branch doesn’t break.

  “It’s working!” Davery exclaims.

  I turn to my best friend and mimic his voice. “Well, if you understood the science behind it, it’s actually quite—”

  A groaning sound, like an animal in pain, comes from behind me. I whirl back around to see my stick bending and buckling as the canyon walls heave together again, refusing to just stop already.

  “Uh, Nizhoni?” Davery says worriedly. “I think you’d better move out of the way.”

  I take a big step back, and then another, and we watch as my brilliant plan shatters under the pressure of the closing rock walls and a hundred splinters come flying right at us.

  “I thought it would work,” I moan as I pick myself up off the ground. Once again, there’s a fine coating of mud on my rear end. The only upside is that this time Davery has a mud butt, too.

  “It was a good idea,” he says generously. “But now we’re back to square one.” He leans over to pick a twig out of my hair.

  The walls are still closing in, and the corridor is now only wide enough for one person to pass. And it’s still dark and spooky in there, but it’s clear what we have to do.

  “I have to go in and find Mac.”

  “I knew you were going to say that,” Davery says, sighing.

  “You did?” Maybe foretelling the future is Davery’s ancestral power. That could be handy.

  “Not in a magic way or anything. Just because it’s what we have to do.”

  Oh. Disappointing. “You don’t have to come.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not letting you go in there by yourself. Besides, you might need me.”

  Might? Most definitely. I breathe a sigh of relief and tighten my backpack straps. “Ready?”

  Davery adjusts his backpack, too, and his glasses so they’re tight against his face, and then nods. “Let’s do this!” he shouts, and takes off.

  My friend has a lot of enthusiasm, but there’s no way he’s faster than me. I catch up to him before we’ve even entered the corridor, and I go in first. The darkness closes around me immediately, but I keep running. After a few seconds in the pitch-black, I glance behind me. I can’t even see the light from the opening where we came in. It’s like we dropped into another dimension. The only way I know Davery is still back there is because I can hear his feet as they slap the ground, as well as his heavy panting. He really has to work on his cardio if he’s going to fight monsters with me.

  And then, over the rumble of the canyon walls and Davery’s breathing, I hear something else. Faint, but I’d recognize Mac’s voice anywhere.

  I shift into another gear, asking my legs to really move, and they answer me with a burst of speed. I’m racing through the passage almost like I can see in the dark. And then I realize I can! Things aren’t as sharp as if I were in daylight, more like a sketch. The walls are outlines that I instinctively know to keep away from, and I can see the curves of rock up ahead.

  “I think I have X-ray vision!” I shout over my shoulder.

  Davery doesn’t say anything, so I turn to repeat this amazing information, but he’s too far back.

  I must have superspeed, too! Probably inherited from my monster-fighting ancestors. Clearly, this is the coolest moment ever.

  “Nizhooooniiiiii!”

  It’s Mac. His voice is a wavery, hollow-sounding moan, but it’s definitely him, and he’s in trouble. I accelerate even m
ore, trying to get to my brother as quickly as possible, and trusting that Davery will catch up.

  Finally, I see Mac. He’s slumped against the wall, his head tucked between his knees and his arms wrapped around his legs. He’s crying.

  “Mac!” I grab his shoulder and shake him gently. “Are you okay? Did that fake Mr. Yazzie hurt you? Where’d he go?”

  He won’t look at me, just keeps sobbing with his head down.

  “You’ve got to snap out of it!” I tell him. “The walls are closing in, and we can’t stay here.”

  He sniffles, but he still won’t look up. And suddenly, the hairs on the back of my neck rise. I whip around, expecting a monster to be sneaking up on me. But no one’s there.

  And then I realize Mac’s crying has stopped. With a feeling of dread, I slowly turn to face my brother.

  He’s staring right at me. With big red eyes.

  I scream and stumble away. He bares sharp teeth and hisses. Climbs slowly to his feet.

  The walls seem to have stopped moving. I could go back the way I came. I’m fast and could probably outrun him if he tried to chase me. But Davery’s coming up behind me, and I don’t want him to smack into the monster. Besides, I need to find out what happened to my little brother.

  Monster Mac takes a swipe at me, and I see that besides having long, pointy teeth, he has long, pointy claws, too.

  “What did you do with my brother?” I shout.

  “Nizhonee baloney,” the monster hisses. “Nizhonee’s a phony!”

  “I am not!” I say. What in the world is going on? This monster is just like Adrien Cuttlebush with its weird insults.

  “Nizhonee pepperoni, Nizhonee rigatoni, Nizhonee macaroni!”

  That’s it! I can take a lot, but mocking me with my favorite Italian foods is going one step too far. I turn and launch a swinging kick right at the monster’s stomach. It lands with an Oomph! I elbow him in the chest and he doubles over. One more kick—this time to his ribs—and he’s down. He’s on all fours, panting.

  “Come at me, bro!” I shout, because I’m ready to dish out more, and the monster still looks like Mac, who is, in fact, my bro, so it makes sense. Plus, I heard the line on a commercial once.