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right away. She turned to a different batch of rising dough and began punching it down, punching hard, as if defending herself from attack. She asked her question again.
    â€œYou think wheat will make Indians happy like your parents are happy?”
    Evie ignored the question and pinched a corner of the dough, rolled it into a pill, and squeezed her hand into Magellan’s crate to offer it. He swiped down, bit her knuckle with a small, vicious twist.
    Hard red spring, at least, had not yet won over Ixna, or Magellan. How could anyone resist it? In addition to being tasty, it was beautiful out in the fields. When the stalks rose, they came up looking like fire.
    â€œFather’s very smart,” Evie said, sucking the blood from her injured finger.
    â€œNot so smart if he makes the snake angry. It was very ignorant to make him angry.” As Ixna spoke, she took the lid off the boiling pot to check the water.
    â€œWhat snake?” Evie knew she should not ask, but if she did not know she would only imagine the worst. Yet another enemy added to their life on the mountain.
    â€œThe big snake in the volcano.” Ixna took a heap of dough and rolled it briskly with the flat of her hands, making a long tube, a snake. “He punishes bad people.”
    Ixna never tried to shield Evie from the horrible truths of the adult world, and because of this she was sometimes her best source of information. As long as she made sense, which she rarely did. “How has Father been bad?”
    â€œBad is not asking permission of the mountain, not giving thanks. Bad is going against the ancestors. Breaking their traditions.” She cut the snake of dough into small pieces and pinched the ends. More dumplings.
    â€œWhat traditions?”
    â€œTraditions of dressing and praying and eating.”
    â€œLike eating bread? Does eating bread make the snake angry?”
    â€œYes.” Ixna took the dumplings and dropped them in the pot one by one. “But what makes him most angry is when someone tries to own this mountain.” Ixna dropped the last one in and watched the blanched bodies tumble, fighting for surface space.
    Evie watched Ixna watching the dumplings, taming their foam with a spoon. They came out one by one, their little pale faces wrinkly, cooked, hardened into worry.
    Evie found Mother in the parlor, alone. In this new red light, she looked beautiful. Until about a year ago, she had been shaped by corsets and padding, her skin dusted porcelain with powder. One by one, these artifices had dropped away. The corset was the first to go, being impractical with the work, the uphill walks, and Father’s claim not to notice a difference. She began to wear her hair straight and loose. With the disappearance of her last tin of face powder, she suddenly developed freckles across her nose, which made her look girlish. Only her lipstick remained, and this Mother applied obsessively,
to keep the wolves from the door
, Father had once said. Another terrifying joke Evie did not understand.
    Mother was writing a letter.
    â€œWho are you writing to?” Evie asked.
    â€œJust writing a letter home.”
    Mother composed all their letters to New York. These letters, which Mother read aloud before mailing, usually detailed the most trivial things. Things like: “Evie was chased by a rooster today,” “The Indians stare at mewhen I wear pants.” On the day they woke up to ash raining down on their heads, she wrote home: “I ripped my last pair of good stockings today. Will never be able to replace them.”
    â€œIs there something you want to say to Grandma?”
    Evie did not remember her grandmother, but would never say so. “Are we staying, then?”
    â€œYes.” Mother tried on a smile, fresh and pink. “Your father has a plan.”
    Evie understood this plan right away. Like every other plan he’d had on the mountain: Mother would write Grandmother for more