A Snake Falls to Earth: Newbery Honor Award Winner

by Darcie Little Badger

Nina often wondered if she’d like the Earth one hundred years from now. The future could be a wondrous place of androids, cloned dinosaurs, and VR glasses. That’s what Nina wanted to believe. However, when the anxious hum of the evening news slipped into her bedroom, carrying prophesies of disease and pain, it seemed more likely that the future would be a place of nightmares.

“Gotta pick your battles carefully,” Risk added. “Weigh the risk against the reward. That’s what Auntie always says.” I smiled. “Another bit of good advice from your aunt. She must be very wise.” “Oh. We have a hundred aunties. I don’t know if I’d call any individual auntie wise. But all together? Yeah. They are a deep well of wisdom.”

To her, the emptiness and silence were home. This wasn’t a ghost town. Not when the heart of her family still beat within the land.

“What was the chain for? Good, solid metal: why would anybody abandon it to rust? And is it part of the oak now? Does that mean the tree and the chain are the same entity? When you eat a slow-roasted tilapia, Oli, at what point does it cease to be fish and become you?” I shrugged slowly, careful not to jostle Ami. “When it goes into my stomach, I assume.” “Not in your mouth? It has to be the stomach? What if it’s not dead? What if it’s still swimming? Thrashing and struggling to escape.”

I sensed the minutes flowing forward, drawing me closer to something big. It pained me that I couldn’t escape the current. Couldn’t delay my inevitable arrival at the result of a million actions, whatever it would be. All I could do was make the most of the time I had and hope that my actions mattered.

They cackled shrilly in either anxious delight or delighted anxiety; I couldn’t tell.

“The cave shares warnings, not terrible secrets, so it’ll be very practical, as far as our adventures go.” “That makes sense.” “I’m not convinced,” Reign said. “For all we know, the warnings could come from a pithy bat hiding behind a stalagmite. ‘Don’t stay awake too late! Be kind to the people you love!’ See? It’s easy.”

She hadn’t quite decided yet how to view the animal people. On the one hand, there was an exceptional beauty about them, an otherworldliness. Their “human” bodies moved across the world with an unusual ease, as if Earth’s gravity did not pull them too tightly. And their voices had a keenly musical quality. It wasn’t that the animal people barked out literal instrumental notes or sang when they spoke. Rather, their words ignited emotional responses Nina had previously only experienced through music.

to end, as if it filled the hill with rooms. This is the problem with humanity, his voice-over lectured. People all want to be the big winner. They aren’t content with less.

What sickness does your grandma have? Can you put her in an ambulance? They’re like movable hospitals.” “She knows what an ambulance is,” Risk said. “She’s literally from here.” “It wouldn’t help.” Nina shook her head, dismayed. “Her heart gives out when she leaves home.

I’d seen candles before—I’ve even made them from beeswax—but the Earth candle was special. It smelled of pine, but I tasted no trees, no fallen needles or prickly cones. It was like the ghost of a forest grew in the dim house.

The path to anywhere-you-please cannot be found, and I never expect it to find me again. That’s okay. I’ll always be grateful for our single encounter, and for its grace to guide me home. A place where the water binds two worlds; where coyotes confide in monsters; where hawks and mockingbirds discern revelations from ancient trees; where my best friend basks in the sun beside me; and where I can spend long days in the company of new family, as I search for the family I left behind. I don’t need the path anymore.