A Snake Falls to Earth: Newbery Honor Award Winner

by Darcie Little Badger

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?”

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.

“An illness with no cure in this world. Scouts were dispatched to Earth, and after making the dangerous journey through the pseudosun, they confirmed the healers’ fear: the bison species was going extinct.”

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

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.

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.

From experience, when a stranger’s introduction included the words “trust me,” under no circumstances should they be trusted.