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before I’d started school. My dad could jog up to the top without even breathing heavy. Every chance I got I’d slip away from Mom and head to that hill so I could stare up at it, kind of study it, and then take off as fast as I could to the top. It was more dirt than grass, and sometimes I’d slip and slide all the way back to the bottom. Even when I made it, I’d get my hands and knees bloody. But I was fascinated by the thing.”
    â€œAnd you still are?” she asked.
    â€œThere’s something about hills,” he said.
    She tried to imagine him small and uncoordinated. “Did your parents try to stop you?”
    â€œOh, Mom did. Dad was always impressed by bloody knees. He said it meant I had character.”
    They were nearing the top, and for a while there was only the puff of breathing and the soft crunch of rocks and dirt.
    â€œSo when will you have to go back to your day job?” Silas asked. “I know you’re not a fancy-free new Ph.D. anymore.”
    â€œAre you kidding? This artist is what got me the director’s spot at the museum. If the board thinks there’s a chance I can get out of here with more bowls, they’ll let me stay here until Christmas. Well, not until Christmas. But I have some leeway.”
    She was in no hurry to get back. Not that she disliked her job. Her first couple of years at the museum had been intensely satisfying: She’d spent every spare moment cataloging the Crow Creek finds. There had been intense days and nights of sitting at a table, sifting through sherds, trying to fit pieces together, making sure each artifact wound up in the right bag with the right label. She selected fragments to ship to labs in hope of more information on clay and geography and time periods. Pulling things out of the dirt was the fun part—the hard data took much longer to unearth. The museum board had given her the time and the resources to continue her analysis on Crow Creek, had given her a place to showcase the results. They paid her salary. They occasionally let her take time off to chase after pottery. In return, she managed the very self-sufficient staff, planned exhibits, and strategized how to bring in more visitors. It was not a bad trade-off. Still, she preferred the sun and sky to fluorescent lighting and e-mails.
    â€œAnd what about you?” she asked. “Why are you here?”
    â€œIt’s this place.” He took several steps, watching the trail, then glanced back toward her. “The unclaimed space. The outer edges. Not northern, not southern. Somewhere you could shed your skin and create a whole new existence. I want to know how it all came together. And it’s a nice thing to get paid to play in the dirt. Braxton—the guy who owns the place—has the money to fund this himself. He set up a foundation, just for his own curiosity as much as anything else. Last year, when he asked me to work out here full-time, I didn’t exactly argue.”
    â€œIt is a pretty nice gig.”
    â€œHe and my father grew up together in the middle of nowhere. I’ve known Braxton forever. So there was a little nepotism involved.”
    â€œSounds like the work here isn’t close to done,” Ren said.
    â€œWe can’t even begin to guess how much is here. Sites are scattered all over the canyon. When the populations at Chaco and the Mimbres River Valley were exploding during the tenth and eleventh centuries with all the rainfall, we got people trickling into the canyon. But by 1130, when the massive drought hit—and everything started falling apart—we really started seeing some action. The tributaries of the Rio Grande were drying up, but our spring-fed Rio Rosa held steady. Even during a drought, we’re getting two thousand gallons per minute from an aquifer that taps into a Pleistocene lake bed. It must have been very tempting here.”
    They’d made it to the top, and the land was