A Snake Falls to Earth: Newbery Honor Award Winner

by Darcie Little Badger

Rosita was an entertainer, the keeper of ten

thousand stories, each stranger than the last.

“It may be an Apache dialect. Rosita’s parents spoke Lipan, ’round when our people had to go culturally incognito for survival.”

Born among family in the tumbleweed-spawning desert, Rosita had no official documents listing her birth date. But when Nina’s father removed her portrait from its frame to scan the image for her wake, he found a single date written on the back: 1894.

In my dreams, I tried to sing, but my voice was drowned by the screams of trees. “Why are you shouting?” I asked the forest. “It’s okay. You’re home.” “Then why are you here?” the trees asked. “If this is our home, who are you?”

Nina’s teacher would never accept that Great-Great-Grandma Rosita was born in the 1870s (give or take) and died over 150 years later. But everything Nina knew about her ancestor supported this impossible truth.

All three of Rosita’s children, including Nina’s great-grandfather (who’d retired to an assisted living home in South Carolina after marrying his fourth wife), were still alive. None were younger than one hundred. “It’s lucky genes,” her father had once claimed, whatever that meant.

Animal people. Everyone knew they had left Earth thousands of years ago after the joined era, but considering their prodigious lifespans, Nina had to ask the question.

Some people don’t want to be known by the unknown, believe it or not.”

There did not seem to be any kindness in the world beyond my childhood, and I could never return to the past.

They say the path to anywhere-you-please is not concerned with the rules of space or time. It slithers snakelike through forests—mostly in the world of spirits and monsters, but occasionally on Earth—fleeing from the people who want to catch it. That’s why no map leads to the path, just like no map can lead to a roaming pack of wolves. Guess that’s also why most people who walk the path do so unwittingly.

It was a world-shaper, an act that momentarily tweaked the natural laws through willpower alone. On Earth, some humans call it “magic.” They’re afraid of it or fascinated by it or—most commonly—don’t believe in it.

For every species on Earth, there are animal people. A couple truths are known. First, we’re strong and plentiful when our species do well. Second, we suffer when our species suffer. Bison people used to be among the most common folk in the land. They even built a city. When my great-grandmother was a child, still living hand in hand

with her twelve siblings, she visited their homeland: loops of long, hoof-hardened paths winding through well-kept prairie gardens and blocks of earthen buildings. There, farmers tended fields of maize: the bright, jewellike kernels brought living rainbows to the land every harvest season. Adobe towers overlooked the meandering trails, and clear bathing pools glinted under the pseudosun. It was the most prosperous city in the central continent, a hub of agricultural trade and art. Then, with no warning, all the bison people fell ill. Even the originators, who’d lived for centuries. They were too fatigued to farm, too exhausted to transform. They no longer strolled down the mazelike garden paths or tended their crops. No more bison babies were born, and deaths washed across the city like a flood.

“They were slaughtered,” she said. “A human breed known as colonizer killed millions.”

They didn’t hunt the bison for food. The colonizers desired to annihilate another group of humans. Indigenous peoples. They knew that the

Indigenous ones relied on bison. So the bison had to go. Thankfully, the species did not go completely extinct. With time, the number of Earth bison has grown. But where there were once tens of millions, there are now only thousands. The city remains in ruins. Never forget how quickly our end can come, Oli. Never take your life for granted.”

However, much is still unknown about the creation of animal peoples and the meaning of our existence (if there even is meaning). The catfish cultists—the guardians of the finned and whiskered—were one of many groups who believe that we are guardians of our species. Gods, even. Unfortunately, instead of protecting their wards on Ea...

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.

All I could do was make the most of the time I had and hope that my actions mattered.

Every transformation or act of world-shaping decreases our hold on this world. The greater the act, the greater its cost.

There was no doubt in her heart that, if hunters still existed in the shadows of society, they’d be tapped into social media. Maybe even private phones. They’d develop sophisticated algorithms designed to identify animal features on humanlike bodies. To look for incontrovertible proof. One photo in the cloud could endanger everyone.

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.