Race to the Sun

by Rebecca Roanhorse

  There’s a break in the music and I lean over to Davery. “We’re popular!” I whisper. “I’ve always wanted to be popular!”

  “Yeah, these kids are pretty decent,” he admits. He looks longingly at the punch bowl. Next to it someone has put out a tray of cookies—chocolate chunk and even some sugar-free vegan oatmeal ones. “I suppose it would be okay to have some refreshments.…”

  “I was hoping you’d say that!” I say. Laughing, we rush over to the snack table, load up a plate of cookies, and grab two cups of punch.

  “This is the best party I’ve ever been to,” I say, stuffing a whole cookie into my mouth at once. I wash it down with the punch, which is cold, sparkling, and delicious. “I only wish Mac were here with us.”

  “Who?” Davery asks, taking a more restrained bite of his oatmeal cookie.

  And for a second, I can’t remember who Mac is, either. The name is so familiar, though. “I’m not sure.…”

  “Hey, beautiful girl,” the boy in the tuxedo says, coming up beside me. “Ready to dance again?”

  “I…Does the name Mac mean anything to you?” I feel like I should know who Mac is, but it’s just out of my reach.

  “Come on,” the cute boy says, taking my plate from me and setting it on the table. “Let’s dance our cares away. No need to worry about Mac or anything else.”

  The next song comes on, and the boy starts singing along to it.

  “Beautiful girl, lovely dress…”

  It sounds so familiar, but I can’t recall the name of it.

  “’Cause it’s gone, daddy, gone…”

  Daddy…gone…

  I stop in my tracks. “My dad…” I say. “I…I think he’s in trouble.”

  The tuxedo boy grabs my hand and pulls. “Forget about that,” he says.

  I tug my arm away. “My dad…and Mac!” Mac is my little brother. How could I have forgotten?

  Oh no. Davery was right. This place isn’t good at all.

  I follow Tuxedo Boy to the dance floor and edge my way over to Davery, who is swaying in place, happily munching on another cookie.

  “Davery,” I whisper when Tuxedo Boy looks lost in the music, “we’ve got to get out of here.”

  “What’s the rush?” he asks. “I thought you said everything was great.”

  “Maybe it’s a little too great,” I say. “Like, no way am I this likable. This whole prom is fake. It’s a trap, just like you thought it was going to be. A prom of thorns.”

  “I don’t even see any roses in here,” says Davery with a shake of his head, “much less thorns. Only crepe-paper flowers.”

  The boy in the tuxedo grabs at my hand again, his smile fixed, white teeth gleaming in the disco ball light. “Come on, pretty girl,” he says again, insistent.

  He and I dance together again for a few minutes, and suddenly it all makes sense. I twirl over to my best friend.

  “Davery! I get it. The people with their fancy clothes and perfect looks? They’re the roses—because they’re beautiful, like flowers. And we’re trapped, like we’re tangled in thorns. I think getting out of here is our third trial.”

  He considers this for a moment, and I’m worried he may not agree and we’ll be stuck in this gym forever.

  Finally he says, “You may be right,” taking another bite of the cookie. “There’s an easy way to find out. Let’s head for the back door, where the Rainbow Road probably picks up again, and see what happens.” He takes two more cookies from the table and slides them into his pants pocket.

  I give him a look, and he grins sheepishly. “I don’t think the food’s poisoned after all,” he admits. “And these cookies are really good. We may not get a chance to eat anything else until we get to the House of the Sun.”

  I want to roll my eyes, but he has a point, so I pocket a few cookies myself. We walk shoulder to shoulder toward the door, but immediately, partygoers start blocking our path.

  “Don’t you want to dance with me, pretty girl?” the boy in the tuxedo asks, frowning in confusion.

  “Tell me another monster story,” says an enthusiastic girl in a pink dress.

  “Isn’t this your favorite song?” asks another girl with short hair and diamonds on her black pants.

  They swarm around us, asking us questions, trying to make us stay, but Davery and I push forward, mouthing apologies, not stopping. Someone grabs at my shoulder, pulls my hoodie, but I slip by them. The crowd is getting so thick now that it’s hard to move. They back us up against a wall.

  “What do we do?” Davery asks. I see a boy reach for his arm, but he manages to brush him off.

  I look to my right and my left, trying to find any empty space. And then I see it—a familiar red box on the wall.

  “I think it might be time to water these roses.”

  I pull the fire alarm, which sets off a horrible whoop whoop sound. The kids move back, hands over their ears. Then the ceiling sprinklers kick in, spraying the entire room. People start to scream and run in all directions, and Davery and I take off, breaking through the crowd. A boy in a powder-blue jacket steps in front of me, but I raise my hands and push through him like a running back. He goes skidding across the slick floor. “Almost there!” I shout, and as soon as I’m close enough, I lower my shoulder and hit the exit door full force.

  Lucky for me, it’s not locked, and Davery and I go through at top speed. We spill out into the fresh air, while hands still grasp for our clothes. Davery slams the door behind us, muffling the alarm and the shrieks. Then, in an instant, the whole gym shimmers and disappears.

  “What…just…happened?” I ask in between gasps.

  “It…was…all…an illusion!”

  “Good,” I say. “That means…I won’t get…arrested for…pulling the…alarm.”

  That gets a laugh from Davery, who’s the biggest rule follower I know.

  As we catch our breath, I peer around. We’re back in the middle of nowhere. But at least our feet are solidly planted on the Rainbow Road, so we’re where we’re supposed to be. Wherever that is.

  “How long were we in there?” I ask. It was no later than lunchtime when we went in, but now the sun is setting and the sky overhead is darkening quickly.

  “Too long,” Davery says. “And we have one more trial to get through.”

  “But we still have to get the weapons, and find my dad and Mac, and defeat Mr. Charles.…” I slump to the ground. “How are we ever going to do all that before sunrise?”

  “Just one more, Nizhoni,” Davery says. “It can’t be that much farther. And we have all night.…”

  “But what if it takes a long time to even find the next trial? What was it? A seethe of sand? We still don’t know what a ‘seethe’ is.”

  “I don’t think it matters,” Davery says, his voice sounding anxious, “because I think the trial has found us.”

  “What are those?” I ask.

  “They look like…mirrors?”

  Davery’s right. As we walk closer, I see that the field of yellow-green desert grass in front of us is dotted with mirrors—the old-fashioned kind that stand on two legs. I think they’re called dressing mirrors. Some of them have carved wooden frames and look like they belong in an old English mansion. Then there are modern ones with metal frames in black or silver. There’s even a bright pink one that looks like it’s from a child’s room.

  “What are they all for?” I wonder aloud. “And what do they have to do with the fourth trial?”

  “Well…” Davery says, tapping a finger thoughtfully against his chin. “Mirrors are made of sand.”

  “They are?”

  “You really don’t pay attention in science class, do you?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Glass is made by heating sand until it’s boiling and then shaping and cooling it. And a mirror is made by painting the back of a sheet of glass with silver nitrate. So”—he waves his hand toward the field of mirrors—“this looks like our fourth trial.”

  “Well
, let’s get this over with,” I say, marching forward. I reach the first mirror, a nice tall glass in a dark mahogany frame with elaborate curlicues carved into the wood. I check out my reflection. Despite what the prom kids said, I’m not looking too hot. I’ve been covered in mud not just once but twice today, been rained on, and my jeans have a big rip in the knee from the knifelike reeds.

  “Wow,” I say to Davery. “Why didn’t you tell me I look like day-old garbage?” I press a hand to my hair, trying to make it a little more presentable, but who am I kidding? I’m going to need professional help.

  Davery’s gazing into a mirror a few feet away and brushing flakes of dried mud from his shoulders. “We aren’t looking our best,” he agrees.

  I turn to the side, assessing myself. “When you said sand, I expected quicksand or something.”

  “I—I think the trials adapt to our wonderings, our thoughts. Just like Spider Woman said. We’re following a map of wondering.”

  “Huh. So when I said I didn’t want any more nature challenges, it took me seriously and gave us an actual prom? And now it’s giving us mirrors?”

  “I bet the other monsterslayers who went through the trials had different challenges,” he says. “Like, their trials made sense for their time, just like ours are contemporary and make sense for us.”

  “Cool,” I say. It makes me wonder what kind of trials my mom faced. “But what are we supposed to do with a field of mirrors?”

  “Well, the song did say that in order to defeat the trials we have to know ourselves.”

  “You must know you,” I quote. “I remember.”

  “So maybe this is somehow helping us to get to know ourselves.”

  “All I know from looking in this mirror is that I need a serious shower.”

  “Let’s try different ones.”

  We each move on to another mirror. The one I pick is wider than it is tall, and it looks like it belongs above a girl’s dresser. Its frame is white, and there are small stickers of daisies in the corners, pretty bursts of yellow petals on green stems. “This one’s nice.”

  “See anything different in it?”

  “No.” I start to move on, but then something catches my eye. I turn back and there’s a woman’s reflection next to mine.

  I yelp in surprise and whip around, but there’s no one behind me. I look back at the mirror, and she’s still there. Standing in the high yellow grassy field, a soft breeze ruffling her hair.

  “Davery…” I say slowly, “there’s someone in my mirror.”

  The woman looks about thirty, and she’s wearing blue jeans and a motorcycle jacket over a white T-shirt. She has a beautiful squash blossom necklace made of silver and turquoise. Her long black hair blows around her face so that I can’t get a good look at her features.

  She seems so familiar. I reach out my hand, almost touching the mirror. If only I could see her clearly.

  She waves—at me?—and beckons.…

  “Do I know you?” I ask.

  “Who are you talking to?” Davery asks.

  “This woman. I can see her. I—I think I know her.…”

  I dig in my pocket and pull out the picture of my family—the one Mr. Charles tried to steal. I know it by heart. I’m a toddler, no more than two years old. Mac is a baby, wrapped up tight on a cradleboard. Dad is standing behind the woman in front, who is holding Mac with one arm and has me on her knee.

  I hold up the picture so I can look at it and the mirror at the same time. And for a second, I can’t catch my breath. When I can breathe again, only one word comes out of my mouth.

  “Mom?”

  I lean forward to press my hand against the mirror, and suddenly the surface is not there anymore. Or at least it’s not solid. I go plummeting into the glass. I squeeze my eyes shut and try to scream, but no sound comes out. After a dizzying tumble, I finally land on my feet.

  When I open my eyes again, I’m alone in a clearing. Not the field that was in the mirror, all scrub grass and sagebrushes, but somewhere else. This glade is surrounded by high pines and other trees. And it’s winter here. It looks a bit like the first sacred mountain, Sisnaajiní. But this snow is a lot deeper, almost up to my knees. And snowflakes are falling fast and heavy, the wind whipping them around like I’m in the middle of a blizzard.

  I instinctively try to wrap my hoodie tighter around my body to stay warm before I realize that I’m not cold. Wait. How’s that possible? I’m in the middle of a snowstorm and I can’t feel anything?

  I hear the crunch of footsteps behind me and whip around to see who it is. A figure, bundled up against the cold, is trudging determinedly toward me. Davery?

  The person is wearing a shapeless coat and has a wool hat pulled down over their face and a thick patterned scarf wrapped around their neck.

  They are carrying a large bundle in their arms, something wrapped tightly in layers of blankets. Then I hear a weak and tired whimper. A human whimper. The bundle is a baby—a baby who can definitely feel the cold.

  “Hello?” I say as the person gets closer, but they totally ignore me. They walk right past, close enough to brush my shoulder, and I realize they can’t hear me or see me. It’s like a scene from a movie is playing, and I can only watch.

  The figure keeps walking, fighting the snowstorm, making their way to a bare patch of ground under a pine tree two dozen feet away. I follow, curious to see what they’re doing and wondering why I’m here. If the mirror is trying to show me something, I want to know what it is.

  Under the trees, there’s a little bit of shelter from the elements. The snow has abated and the wind has calmed and there’s almost a warm welcoming glow where the moonlight cuts through the pines.

  The person sets the bundled child down gently on a bed of needles and then pulls off their own scarf, unwinding it bit by bit. Then they remove their gloves and hat and shake out their black ponytail. A smile breaks across a beautiful face.

  I know that face.

  “Mom?” I whisper.

  She looks fierce, and maybe a little intimidating, with an undercut beneath her long tresses. A tattoo peeks out of the gap at her collar and trails a few inches up her neck. Her brown eyes are accentuated with black eyeliner and thick mascara, and her fingernails are painted blue and bitten down to the quick. But as she gazes lovingly at the toddler, still wrapped in a bundle of blankets, I can tell she has a good heart.

  “Hello, Nizhoni,” she whispers to the child.

  My breath catches in my throat, and I feel a little dizzy again. This vision is a memory—Mom’s memory, because I was too young when it happened to remember it.

  I don’t have a chance to wonder how it is that I’m seeing this, because my mom is talking. “I know this is really hard, baby,” she says to little me, “but I’m going to need you to be a warrior.”

  Little me doesn’t answer, because, well, I can’t be more than two years old. And it looks like my lips have started to turn blue and my teeth are chattering in my toddler-size head, so even if I could talk, I would probably just ask to go home. I mean, I knew my mom wasn’t the greatest mother in the world, but why would she take me out here in the middle of a snowstorm? It makes my chest feel heavy.

  I watch with disbelief as my mom unwraps little me from the layers of blankets until I’m just wearing one-piece pajamas. Not much protection from the cold at all! She lays me on my back directly on the snow. I sink in a bit. And then, very gently, my mom pushes me back and forth. And then she turns me all the way over, back to tummy, the same way I rolled out the dough for bread at Spider Woman’s house. Until there’s snow clinging to my onesie and soaking me through to the skin.

  I totally expect little me to start wailing at any moment. I mean, it’s freezing, and my wacky mother just made it ten times worse! But to my surprise, I don’t cry at all. I just stare at her with huge baby eyes and shiver a little.

  She smiles at me. “Already a warrior,” she says, sounding proud. “Already so brave.”

&n
bsp; My mom called me brave? The thought spreads warmth through my veins.

  After a minute, my mom wraps me up again in the original blankets and dusts the remaining snow from my head. She leans down and kisses my forehead.

  “That was to make you tough,” she explains to me, even though there’s no way I could have understood her. “I’ll be gone soon, and you will need to be strong.”

  Little me makes a happy laughing sound, but real me is starting to feel sick. My stomach hurts deep down, and I wrap my arms around myself. I knew my mom left us, but the mirror is showing me the actual moment when she said good-bye, and I don’t want to see any more. I don’t think I can take it.

  I try to turn away, get out of here, but I can’t move. The scene plays out before me, and I have no choice but to watch.

  “If the day comes when the monsters rise again, you will be the first to see them. It will be scary, and you’ll feel overwhelmed, but I’ll be there with you. In spirit, if not in body…” Mom’s voice trails off, and her eyes get distant, as if she’s remembering something painful. Then she shakes her head like she’s flicking the memories away, and she keeps talking. “So don’t be afraid, okay? You won’t be alone.”

  The wind picks up her words and tosses them around the trees. They seem to twist back to my ears in echoes. Alone, alone, alone. And I can’t tell if her words feel like a blessing or a curse.

  I watch as my mom reaches into her pocket and takes out a necklace. I swallow past the hard lump in my throat. My hand automatically reaches for the place where the turquoise hung on my chest for eleven years, before I gave it to Spider Woman.

  My mom slips the loop of brown suede with the pendant around my tiny neck. “This is to keep you safe,” she says. “Whenever you wear this necklace, the ancestors can find you. Even when I’m gone, you will be protected.”

  The necklace is way too big for little me, so the pendant rests against the baby’s tummy. I watch, wide-eyed, as the turquoise seems to glow bright blue, like a tiny, perfect star. My mom touches it with one finger and bows her head like she’s saying a silent prayer.