“Inside every stone is a gem,” Jerome explained to her. “Sometimes nature makes a miracle.”
Here they told each other their secrets. Taking turns holding the stones, eyes closed, fists closed, peeking every now and then to see the other: yes, they were listening. Jerome shared how his mother was a Kalapuya native who had died when he was a baby. He had bounced around different foster homes until he had landed, as if in sanctuary, with Mrs. Cottle. He had a picture of his mom that he kept on his dresser. Every night Mrs. Cottle encouraged him to kiss the picture and say a prayer. He said he was proud to be a Kalapuya because they were brave and smart.
Naomi confessed she had tried but couldn’t remember anything about before, except that she had dreams. She felt she needed to look for someone. Who it was she did not know. Only that she felt the compulsion to wander the edge of every field. But whom would she call for if she didn’t know their name?
At this Jerome had held her hand, holding the gem. “I will come and help you,” he had said, eyes wide.
Come see the stones, Jerome had called to her, and they ran, dusting the fields with their laughter, even as they grew up, and hair shadowed his cheek, and her very scalp lengthened. Each time they found themselves in this throne of God, high above all else in the fertile valley, Jerome would tenderly pluck a jewel for her: a piece of opal, quartz, a shiny agate.
More beautiful than the stones, Jerome’s eyes said, and the very sky clapped blue in agreement.
God’s gracious gift.
The words echoed to Naomi as she drove back through the valley, crossing farmlands as the sun kissed the world good-bye. The gentle hills were covered in green velvet, the low fields gnarled with abandoned orchards. Pink clouds unfurled.
At one time people cherished these places. Naomi remembered life in the valley as a constant harvest—strawberries tumbled in flats, green beans piled dusty from the fields, sweet pumpkins for pie. Now most of the small towns were empty. The mom-and-pop farms had been replaced by giant producers, their walking sprinklers crawling across a dirt sky. Nobody lived on those massive farms except the caretakers and the passing workers.
On impulse Naomi turned off the next exit, knowing exactly what had triggered her memory. She entered the empty town of Harlow, past brick buildings, swinging wood signs, and a single child’s red wagon parked at the side of the road. She stopped and peered in: empty except for a button-eyed doll. She could remember a time not long before when these streets were filled with children. Including a little boy named Juan.
She drove to the cemetery at the end of town, marked by old stones. The sun was just setting, and a cool breeze blew across the empty land. She knelt and swept dirt from the grave.
Juan Aguilar was one of her early cases. His mom was an undocumented farm worker who, weighing the risk of going to the police about her missing son against the risk of deportation, chose the police—and was deported. She had told Naomi from her jail cell, where she was shackled and waiting for the deportation bus, that she had named her son Juan because the name meant “God’s gracious gift.”
Naomi was new; she lacked confidence—that was what she told herself later. There was a man she suspected, a farm boss, if for no other reason than the look in his eye. She had begun to track him. She wanted to learn more about him—find any clues about who he was, and why she felt the way she did.
But he had seen her. He knew.
One day she had been following the man as he drove through town in a battered old truck. He had stopped at the post office, carrying a large, suspicious-looking box wrapped in duct tape. After a time he came out.
Curious, she waited a bit and then went into the post office, wondering what he had sent. Perhaps it was evidence. The box was on the counter. It was empty as a shell. The address on the outside said only this: Fuck you.
When she came back out he had disappeared.
The next day Juan was found at the bottom of a well. He had not fallen. He was deposited there: both legs broken, the entire well a shed of blood. When they pulled him out, his slender golden form was covered in these globules, like ruby gems attached to his skin. The man had vanished, and to this day he had never been found. The case was considered unsolved.
Naomi had vowed after that case that she would not be deceived again. She would view every act with suspicion, every witness as questionable, and every piece of possible evidence along the way as a trap.
She knelt over the grave, until her nose was touching the dirt. “When you are ready to inhabit a new skin,” she said, “we will be waiting for you.”
Life for the thing called B was seen in flashes of light, like vivid color shots on lake water still frozen in the early days of summer. It was seen in the shape of clouds, or in a fir tree against the silver sky.
The day after the girl had slept in his bed for the first time, B had come back from trapping and sat on the edge of the bed. Something was different about him—and yet he did not know what it was. He put his hands over his head; felt his hair, his eyes that could see. Put his fingers in his mouth, wondering why others seemed to have a way of knowing each other when their lips moved. He put his hands over his ears, knowing they were part of the problem. He had seen the way the girl turned her head when he walked close. He had seen how the ears of foxes twitched. His ears did not twitch.
Inside him he could feel noise: the beat of blood, the drum of life. He could feel that life in his fingertips. He could taste food. He could touch the girl. He liked touching the girl. She was soft. The girl had that thing he did not have—what it was he was not sure. It made her head turn. It made her eyes open up wide. It made her smile at him. Him—for whom no one smiled.
A very long time ago, the creature called B had thought he was real. There was a sense of connection he had, like the cord traveling from a mother fox to a newborn kit pulled from the den. You could smell these newly born creatures, wet-blind at birth, marvel at their closed eyes, before putting your firm hand on them and pressing. That connection had been lost long ago, only to be remembered when the girl came.
The girl was magic. She was bringing him to life. Why then did he still feel such rage?
6
Over a year and a half had passed since her creation, and snow girl could not help but grow. It was from drinking the milk of the forest, the red cedar blood. It coursed through her veins, and the elbows that split from her torn sweater. Her toes hurt in her tennis shoes. Her bright yellow underwear was gray and ragged.
Her pants got shorter and her ankles peeked out, until she realized one day this was part of the magic. She would grow tall enough to run above the trees. From up high she could spot the animals in the traps and let Mr. B know.
Mr. B had frowned at her when she showed him the pants that cut into her waist, the grimy old shoes. It made him angry. He dragged her into the root cellar, pushing her down the ladder. Later he brought her food. She ate and fell deeply asleep.
When she woke up he was gone. Her wrists hurt, and her bottom did, too. She tried not to notice that. Sometimes the woods were not nice.
The cellar was cold. It was good she had blankets and piles of rank furs. He had left food: a bag of brown potatoes she ate raw and a jar of peanut butter with a bent metal spoon.
The peanut butter was so good she broke open the jar and carefully licked the insides before burying the shards in the corner, only to dig them back up again when she got hungry, thinking maybe more peanut butter had appeared.