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.”

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?”

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.

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

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.

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.