midnight

One more skull to make. Renata unwrapped her abuela’s hundred-year-old-ceramic mold—passed from daughter to daughter since Villa still called himself Francisco. She would craft this alfeñique in the traditional way, to honor her grandmother. She ached for a token of home.

She sat the hand-hammered copper pan under the faucet and opened the creaky handle all the way, her eyes and nostrils burning from the vapors trapped in the tiny janitor’s closet. Ammonia and chlorine together—a dangerous combination. She backed into a locker, head swimming, and missed the exact moment the water stopped gushing. She noticed the change in the air first—burning chemicals gave way to a forest breeze of moss, mint, damp earth. A thick twist of clover and hop sedge sprouted from the faucet, overflowed the copper pan, and crawled across the floor to stop at her feet.

Static in a prickly wave stood hairs on her arm and neck at attention as a snow- white owl hopped out of the pan, claws clicking on the edge before it spread its wings and launched toward Renata without a sound, banking left to reveal the little man pulling on a leather thong around the bird’s neck.

The bird circled once, twice, three times, and with each pass another little person climbed out of the pan and walked toward Renata on the grass pathway. They were no taller than two feet. The owl floated soundlessly down and the rider slid to the floor, still holding the thong. He spoke in an unfamiliar language, but Renata heard his thoughts in English.

You are mizvaskez.

Renata could only stare.

We are here because our friend Tige asked a favor of us.

Renata held her face steady, watching the little people who could change water to grass and ride birds like horses, who knew her name and her student’s name. She cradled the ceramic mold, cool and smooth in her palms, and recalled abuela’s fingers, gently prying the two halves apart to free the hollow skulls. Telling stories from her girlhood in Veracruz, of hardship and drought and magic, and the powers haunting the land before the Spaniards came. Warning her to beware of the chaneque, the little people who controlled the winds and brought the rains.

She’d fallen asleep at her desk, surely, and dreamed her abuela’s tale. She missed her mother and sisters, especially in the evenings, talking through the day. Even the tiniest, silliest things. The memories they shared of abuela’s laugh and sudden bouts of temper. Teasing each other that her ghost still sat in the wooden rocking chair and stirred the fringe of her wall hangings. These little visitors had to be born of homesickness and fatigue.

The little people were just a dream.

“Never say just a dream!” abuela always scolded. “They bring messages.”

“But abuela,” Renata asked, “what if they are nightmares?”

“Then,” she said, touching her finger to the shiny black pendant Renata still wore around her neck, “hold onto your azabache and be brave. Resist the demon. Find the message.”

Renata clasped her pendant, put on her teacher’s face, and spoke politely.

“Tige Raines. He asked you to see me?” she asked.

Owl-rider, clearly the leader in his beaded shirt and red calico turban, spoke.

Yes. He is generous, and he keeps our secrets. Now he wants a favor from us.

Abuela had drilled the habit of hospitality into Renata and her sisters. “Ignore your discomfort,” she always said. “Put your guest at ease.”

“Won’t you come to my classroom?” Renata asked Owl-rider. “We can be comfortable there, and talk.”

Owl-rider, clearly pleased, looked at his companions and nodded.

“This way,” Renata said.

Surely the dream would shift now. But no, the little ones followed her single file down the hall. Owl-rider. Two women, one in a dress of woven fiber, and another wearing a leather cape with fringe hanging to her knees. Another man, bare-chested, with rawhide leggings and turkey feathers in his topknot. Abuela had never spoken of what the chaneque wore. These visitors wore traditional Cherokee dress, right out of pictures in her anthropology text. Her unconscious had cobbled the dream together from home and school.

Renata sat on the edge of her desk, cradling the mold in her lap. Owl-rider spoke in a language that sounded like Cherokee, but Renata continued to hear his thoughts in English.

You are mizvaskez, teacher of Tige.

“Yes. Call me Renata.”

Owl-rider looked at the neat rows of desks.

What can be learned sitting in a room, Rayna-ta?

Her stomach tightened exactly as it had during her interview.

When Teach for America sent her to Fentress County, Tennessee, Renata expected shoeless Latino children, shoved into the shadows by hillbilly bigots. Instead, she found a clique of Guatemalan teenagers clearly better off than their white counterparts. Their clothes were newer, and they dominated the soccer fields. They were bilingual, moving easily between Spanish and Appalachian English, while the mountain kids balked at anything beyond “Buenos Dias.” Renata resolved to be patient with the poor whites’ limitations, but that barely took her through the first week. When the Tennessee kids realized, with teen telepathy, that their mispronunciations annoyed her, they recited as one, answering her prompts in a brazen singsong: BWAAYNUS DEEEUS, SEEN-YORE-EEDA VASS KEHZZZ. She tried to laugh at their mutinous energy, but it made her angry.

She took revenge by giving them phrases like “I’m so stupid” to repeat, sending the native speakers into raucous laughter and polarizing the groups even more. Shamed by her pettiness, she eventually won them over simply by showing up every day, absorbing their taunts, and behaving like an adult whether she felt like one or not. That old-fashioned mainstay of caregivers, bribery, finally won the day.

She placed a plastic tub of Tootsie Pops on her desk. Each day she wrote a sentence on the board, tomorrow’s “frase especial.” If they recalled the special sentence, they got a Tootsie Pop. Crazy how well it worked.

Handing out candy, she had noticed Tige Raines’ front teeth. Renata had never seen the boy smile, but his zoned-out expression left his mouth partially open, buck teeth protruding, dark circles of rot spreading across his upper incisors.

“Maybe I shouldn’t give him candy,” she told her supervisor.

“Bless his heart,” the older woman said, peering above her reading glasses. “He can probably use the calories.”

Tige was from “out on the branch,” in country as remote and wild as Tennessee had to offer. Not much you could do for those kids, her elders agreed. They were practically feral.

“You feel bad now, wait till the last day of school. They’ll line up at your door and beg. ‘Can’t we still come to school? Can we come just for lunch?’”

Renata found Tige sitting by himself at the end of a long table, shoveling in his navy beans and cornbread with gusto. The one meal he could depend on every day. Renata felt a hole in her stomach as she sat beside the boy.

“Tige, do you mind if I ask you something?”

He looked up. Not avoiding her eyes, but wary.

“You’re not in any trouble. Go ahead and finish your lunch.”

He looked at his plate and kept shoveling in the beans, mopping up the juice with his cornbread.

“I don’t really like cornbread. Would you like mine?” He hesitated slightly before taking the crumbly square from her hand. He could have been digging a hole with his bare hands, with those black crescent-moons of dirt under his fingernails. He took the cornbread and made a noise that could have been “thanks.”

“I’ve found out something that might help you. Please don’t be embarrassed, but I need to speak frankly. Your teeth.”

Tige kept chewing and turned his face to the window. She told Tige about the Tennessee Dental Association’s free service. They could repair damage, pull rotten teeth.

“Daddy don’t like welfare.”

The first complete sentence Renata had ever heard him speak. A voice thin but steady.

“It’s not welfare,” Renata said. “It’s emergency medical assistance.”

Tige swallowed the last bite and took a swig from his milk carton. How could the teeth be so bad? Surely there was no fluoride in the water he drank, and Renata couldn’t tell that he had ever brushed his teeth.

“Tige, I have to be honest. Decay that advanced, I’m afraid there’ll be no enamel left pretty soon. Some might already be too far gone to ... save.”

“What’s the use then?”

“Well, they could take out the worst ones. Give you a partial plate.”

His eyebrows raised in alarm. “What you mean, plate?”

“You know. Artificial teeth.”

“False teeth?” He stood suddenly and picked up his tray. “Thank you to mind your business,” he said, and walked away.

Renata almost followed him but didn’t want to harass the boy. Of course, he was proud. He’d rather do without teeth than stoop to fake government teeth. Renata understood pride. Abuela had absolutely refused to take a Social Security check from the government. They’d had to open a checking account in her name and deposit the check without telling her.

So. She’d failed with Tige today, and the dream visitors sprang from her conscience. Homesickness and job anxiety accounted for this dream. Owl-rider continued to watch her, waiting for an answer to his question. To find the message, Renata would have to go where the dream took her.

Owl-rider repeated his question.

What can be learned sitting in a room?

Renata looked at the rows of battered desks. Fluorescent lights buzzed. Her head ached and eyes felt as if they’d been rolled in sand. Could you feel so exhausted in a dream?

She gestured to tables pushed against the walls, lined with sugar skulls.

“Well, right now we are learning about Dia de los Muertos.”

Sugar skulls crowded the tables, a riot of colors, patterns, and textures. Explaining the holiday got blank stares, but showing pictures sparked interest. She walked her students through making the sugar paste and pressing it into plastic molds. Several had to be redone, but finally every student produced a hollow skull. She’d laid out the pictures and materials and turned them loose to copy and invent. Royal icing in red spirals, yellow sunbursts with sequins, bouquets of roses in strange colors, squiggles, crosses, explosions of feathers and glitter. They’d tried to outdo each other.

Renata picked up the nearest skull and held it out to Owl-rider, who stepped backward quickly, eyes wide. He crossed his arms in an “X” across his face and the floor jounced as a deafening crack of thunder shook the building. Windows rattled and strobed with lightning. Renata’s hair stood up in a wash of static, and her chest tightened as if squeezed by a fist.

She couldn’t be dreaming. In her dreams she saw things, heard things, and felt emotions, but physical sensation like this—never.

The thunder moved away in a stumbling roll.

Renata struggled to slow her breathing, to ease the constriction in her chest and slow the hammering of her heart. Every sensation told her she was wide awake.

Abuela help me, she silently prayed.

She pictured her grandmother, sitting in the shade in her wicker chair, pulling at her hand loom and telling tales. Chiding her silly granddaughters for disobeying her, for hiking in the desert. The chaneque, she said, looked for human children uncertain of their boundaries. They kidnapped these children and stole their memories of home, then abruptly released them to wander. Some would eventually come back to themselves, but some would die in the desert.

“Be certain in obedience,” she said in her spookiest voice, “or they will steal you in the hills.”

That these creatures from “out on the branch” could be the same ones from abuela’s tales seemed stranger than the fact they existed at all. But a deeper instruction pressed against her fear. They were guests.

“Don’t be alarmed,” she said, voice gravelly from the effort to keep it steady. “We make sugar skulls each year. To honor our dead.”

She moved away from the table, picked up the tub of Tootsie Pops, and sat on the floor.

“Please, join me.”

Owl-rider gestured, and the four cautiously sat with her in a circle. She unwrapped a Pop, stuck it in her mouth, and passed the tub around. Owl-rider was cautious until the first lick, then his eyes lit up and the others tore into the Tootsie Pops as eagerly as her students had. She took her time, rolling the sphere around in her mouth, and they followed her example, sober at first, then smiling, eyes closed, savoring the pleasure. Whatever or whoever they were, they loved sweets.

She popped the hard candy off the cardboard handle, dropped the handle into the trash can, and passed it so they could do the same. She returned to the table and chose a colorful skull, placing it on the floor before Owl-rider.

“Please, as my guest,” she said. To refuse now would be a breach of hospitality.

The visitors conferred briefly, then Owl-rider looked at Renata and nodded, as solemn as a president accepting nuclear codes. She gave them each a skull.

Owl-rider gestured, and Fringed Cape lifted her garment to reveal a tiny silver fork held in place with a calico sash. She withdrew it, placing it on the floor beside Owl-Rider.

Owl-rider gestured to the fork. Tige gave us this gift. It is silver, rare and full of power. Tige-grandmother used it to feed her children.

Renata’s idea of Tige shifted. This pathetic mountain boy with rotten teeth was also a beloved child fed by his grandmother, and a friend of beings who commanded thunder and lightning. Perhaps her image of abuela as a superstitious old woman was incomplete, also. What if she had met the chaneque?

We are to grant you a favor, Owl-rider said, but your gift upsets the balance.

“I only wanted to make you welcome,” Renata said, keeping her voice as steady as she could. “I mean no offense. They are only decorations.”

Her visitors frowned, all speaking at once, making emphatic gestures. Competing protocols collided in Renata’s thoughts: hostess, teacher, granddaughter, mortal. Was hospitality large enough to steer her through this encounter?

Finally, Owl-rider raised his hand and they fell silent. He fixed his gaze on Renata, and she felt his presence probing her thoughts.

It is wrong to call them decorations. They are doorways of the dead. A gift of so much power makes us . . . inseguro.

The first word she’d heard in Spanish. He had reached into her mind for a deeper level of meaning to explain their reaction. A good sign.

Inseguro. Insecure. Uncertain. Did that make things better, or worse? In the old stories, children who wandered away from home, who forgot their boundaries, fell into the chaneque’s world and never returned. Inseguro for them equaled perdido—lost. What happened when the chaneque were unsure?

We must bestow the favor asked of us, and restore balance, Owl-Rider said. You must answer this question. What do you desire above all else?

A pinprick of dread. No, she didn’t want to hear that question. Abuela’s stories flooded her memory. “The chaneque can be powerful allies, but they are unpredictable,” she said. “Only the desperate seek their help.” They granted boons but exacted terrible dues. A drought ended but a child lost. A debt paid but the borrower’s spirit ripped from his body. Had abuela bargained with the chaneque? Knowing the visitors could hear her thoughts, Renata struggled to keep her mind blank, but the pinprick widened into a pit. The visitors watched; her palms began to sweat.

The burden of uncertainty was hers now. Renata wished her grandmother were there, to sort through the stories, to advise her.

You wish to speak with your grandmother?

Renata’s pulse leapt. Owl-rider still probed her thoughts. What would he make of her uncertainty?

“No! I mean, yes, I would love to speak with her. But that is not my answer to your question.”

Owl-rider watched and waited, and Renata tried to mirror his calm. What did she desire above all else? Her memory spun with tales of foolish people who were granted riches, love, and fame, but suffered for it. Stories that warned against treasures selfish and unearned. Here and now, Renata burned with unanswered questions. Had abuela known the chaneque? Were the chaneque the same as these visitors? Had Tige always known them, or discovered them himself? That led to the biggest puzzle of all.

“I desire above all else,” Renata said, her voice firm, “to know why Tige sent you to me.”

Owl-rider and the others spoke together briefly, then looked at her, nodding and smiling.

We honor your choice, Owl-rider said. You have not chosen with vanity or greed. Tige is wise to grant you this favor, Reyna-ta. Here is the reason. Tige fears above all else—

Renata felt the presence of his thoughts again, searching for the right words.

—dientes falsos.

Renata caught the laugh before it escaped her. False teeth? Tige had summoned elemental powers because of that?

He granted you this favor to turn your mind away from changing him.

“But ...” It was Renata’s turn to search for the right words. “I only wanted to help him!”

Owl-rider indicated the desks.

Does teaching not change children? Can you help without change?

He picked up his sugar skull carefully, with his fingertips.

You call these doorways “only decorations,” but honoring the dead is not a show. You are not aware of the power in these objects. You give them away freely, with no conditions. You lead children to make them, not bothering to imagine the consequences.

Renata’s cheeks burned. She had stepped into the classroom without knowing a thing about the children who sat before her every day, her knowledge about them cobbled together from assumptions.

They weren’t poor immigrants, or needy rednecks. They were mysteries.

“I’m ... ashamed of my arrogance,” Renata stammered, holding back tears, feeling more transparent and contrite than she ever had before a priest in confession.

Do not be ashamed. Simply welcome Tige, as you welcomed us.

“As abuela taught me,” Renata managed to say.

To honor the dead, keep their ways, Owl-rider said, and the others nodded.

The visitors stood. Owl-rider pointed to the antique ceramic mold, which Renata still held clutched in her lap. This belonged to your abuela?

“Yes,” Renata said.

Owl-rider held out his hand and Renata handed the mold to him. He touched the mold to his sugar skull and began to hum. Renata recognized the tune, or thought she did. Abuela always hummed while she made the skulls, and her song, if not the same as Owl-rider’s song, arose from a common source. The sound crowded Renata’s memory, weaving around abuela’s hum in a mazy descant. Tige’s silver fork began to faintly glow.

Owl-rider opened his mouth and the hum broke open into one sustained note, which ended in a guttural cry halfway between joy and sorrow.

Renata took back the mold, her hands tingling as from a slight electrical current, as they wrapped around the smooth ceramic.

Once each year, Owl-rider said, on your day of celebration for the dead, you may speak with your abuela through this doorway.

The white owl, gliding in eerie silence, sailed through the door and dropped to the floor by its rider.

Thank you for your gifts, and for your wise choice. We will speak of you with pleasure, but do not speak of us.

He mounted the owl, which dipped its head, spread its wings, and lifted off without a sound. Fringed Cape and the others followed on the floor, single file.

Renata stared after them until the gush of water from the janitor’s closet broke the midnight silence. She stumbled to the door and looked down the hall to see the grass path had disappeared, replaced by creeping fingers of water. By the time she had soaked up the water with mop and bucket the classroom clock said one a.m.

She stared at her classroom, at the wall of windows, built to let in the light of day, now barely able to hold back the dark. Empty desks facing in a single direction while mysteries spread out in all directions. A table of bright sugar skulls with four missing. A trash can with five wadded up wrappers. Abuela’s mold on the desk before her, tingling under her fingers.

“Abuelita?” she whispered.

The tingling spread out like ripples on water, widening into a circle roiled with silvery smoke, smoke that receded, giving way to a grassy meadow filled with flowers. Impossibly, Renata sat across from her grandmother, dressed as she had been in life, framed by low hills that glowed an incandescent lavender.

“Mi nieta!” abuela cooed, her wrinkled face smoothed young, eyes brighter than in life, fingers resting on the clay mold.

Renata drank in the sight of her, too happy to speak.

“How did you open the doorway?” abuela asked.

“A boy,” Renata said. “A strange boy from a place called ‘the branch.’”

“A magic place?”

“I’ve never been there, but I want to visit soon. I have much to learn.”