The Love That Split the World(4)

“He nodded. Then, carefully, he suggested, ‘I wonder what it’s like down there.’

“She said, ‘I wonder too.’

“He said, ‘Maybe someone could go down there and find out.’

“But his wife was shocked. ‘How could anyone do that?’ she asked.

“‘Jump,’ he said.

“‘Jump?’ she said, leaning over the hole again. She tried to guess how far below the new world was, but she had no idea. She’d never seen such a great distance, she was sure.

“‘Someone as brave as you could easily do it,’ her husband said. ‘Become a gentle breeze, or a petal or blossom from the light tree, or any number of things, and jump lightly and float down, or dive like a hawk, to that beautiful world below.’

“For a long minute she stared down into that glimmering blue, that endless blue of things she’d never seen, dreams she’d never dreamed. ‘I could jump,’ she said. ‘I could float. I could fall into the shining blue.’

“‘Yes, you could,’ her husband said. For another long minute, she stayed there, kneeling and gazing and meditating. Then she stood and flexed her hard muscles, bent her knees, raised her arms up high over her head, and dove down through the hole in her world into the beautiful blue.

“For a long while, the sorcerer—for he was no longer her husband now—watched her body tumble through the darkness. The medicine people who had advised him made their way toward his lodge and the hole where he stood. ‘She jumped,’ he told them, and then they all lifted the tree back into place and covered the hole that led to the new world.

“And because she jumped, our world began,” Grandmother concludes.

“Depending on who you ask,” I say, sitting up.

Grandmother tips her head. “Depending on who you ask.” About a third of the stories she’s told me are creation stories of some type, and no two are identical. I don’t know who all the stories belong to, precisely, although I can usually make a decent guess when the names are Squirrel and Corn Woman or Abraham and Isaac. “You know . . .” Grandmother takes a deep breath and glances down at her hands. “There’s a reason I’ve told you all these stories, Natalie.”

I sit up again. It’s not like I haven’t asked her a million times: Why do you show up in my room in the middle of the night to tell me these things? “You said the stories were the reasons.”

She sighs, and her voice becomes weaker, gruffer. “The stories matter. Separate from us, they matter. We are part of them, Natalie. We’re much smaller than them. But there’s another reason too.”

I see tears lining her dark lashes, and suddenly she seems so much younger. “What’s wrong?” I say. “Grandmother, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t want to scare you,” she says. “But you need to be prepared for what’s coming.”

Goose bumps prickle up along my arms as Grandmother buries her face in her hands, and I get out of bed to crouch in front of her. I’ve never seen her like this. I’ve only ever seen her the one way. She grips my hands hard, and her eyes find mine. “The stories,” she says. “It’s all in the stories.”

“What is?”

“Everything. The truth. The whole world, Natalie,” she says brusquely. “That girl jumped through the hole, not knowing what would happen, and the whole world got born. You understand that, right? The whole world.”

“I understand,” I lie, to calm her. Because I am scared now, and I need her to be the Grandmother I know, so I can be the child who’s soothed from her own fear of the dark.

“Good.” Her hand grazes my cheek. “Good. Because you have only three months.”

“What are you talking about—”

“Three months to save him, Natalie.”

“Save? Save who?”

Her eyes, immense and milky all of a sudden, dart over my shoulder, and her mouth drops open. “You,” she breathes. “Already—you’re already here.”

I look over my shoulder, neck alive with tingles, but no one’s there.

“Don’t be afraid, Natalie. Alice will help you,” Grandmother says. “Find Alice Chan.”

When I turn back, the rocking chair is empty, still nodding back and forth as though the ancient woman has just stood from it.

I’m alone again. I’m no longer the girl who talks to God.





2


I tumble out of bed and hurry to stop the shriek of my phone alarm. I don’t know how I got back to sleep after last night’s events, but apparently I did. The moonlight has faded, and the dim streetlights lining our cul-de-sac have popped on, sprinkling yellowy glares throughout the purple-blue of my dew-dampened windowpanes. The earliest birds and backfiring pickup engines are waking up, but the chirping crickets haven’t gotten the memo that this hellish hour is technically considered “morning.”

I flick the light switch of my walk-in closet, and Gus moos unappreciatively before turning over and going right back to sleep. I’m so jealous I throw a pillow at him, and would have immediately felt horribly guilty if not for the fact that he just lets out a snore and covers his eyes with one paw.

As exhausted as I am, I still can’t shake the fear left over from last night. For as long as I can remember, Grandmother’s been a force of calm in my life. I mean, her stories don’t tend to be happy or calming by any means, but her presence has always made me feel safe. Until last night.