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open, and he'd survived.
    He'd ID'd my father.  He'd sent my father away.
    Nettlebush around me went red as blood, as the sun at sea.  My blood lit on fire.  The ground trembled loudly, like the lyrics from our old Switch Song:  "Annitain, annitain."  Hold onto your sagebrush, because too many evil people are standing on this planet, and one day it's going to tip over.
    Dad was one of those evil people.  Dad was a murderer.  If Dad hadn't been caught, he would have gone on killing countless other women.  Maybe he would have even taken his enterprises off the reservation.  In my head I knew it was a good thing that he was gone now, that the St. Clair kid had lived to point the finger.  That didn't stop me from wondering what it would have been like to grow up with both parents.  Not long after Dad got caught, Mom fell ill and passed away.  Maybe Mom would have gotten sick anyway; nobody can predict the future.  But if Dad had never been caught--if the St. Clair kid hadn't lived--
    "This is a strange hiding spot."
    Mrs. Looks Over and Mrs. Threefold had walked away.  Sarah Two Eagles crouched down in front of me, her hands on her knees.
    I didn't know where she had come from.  I didn't know how she had waded through my darkness, through my tremors, without getting hurt.  The hell business did she have looking so tiny?  Didn't she know tiny things were easy to break?
    "Get lost," I snarled.
    "Yes, you look lost," Sarah said.  "Would you like me to walk you home?"
    I was afraid of an eleven-year-old.  I was afraid I'd hurt her, because it was in my blood; it was on my face.  She hadn't been alive when Dad committed those murders.  She didn't know she was staring at the shadow of a monster.
    I gathered up my art supplies, my legs numb.  I climbed to my feet, burning, and ran away.

    3
    Skylar
     
    In Nettlebush everyone has a role: farmer, hunter, architect, whatever.  Unless you're sick or something, you're not allowed to sit around the whole day being unproductive.  It's part of a belief system called Nahii'wi.  If you give something to every single person you come across, and they do the same, eventually the gifts circle back to you.
    Uncle Gabe and I were hunters.  Every day we staked the badlands for mule deer and big-horned sheep, the woods for red deer and quails.  Whatever yield we won, we brought it back to the house and cut it up and gave it to our neighbors.  There's no such thing as ownership when you're talking about the land and its offerings.  Creator gave the earth to everyone to subsist off of, not just a select few people.  Guess you can see why we clashed so much with the colonists.
    On Monday morning Uncle Gabe and I waited outside our house for the other hunters to show up.  I jammed an iron spearhead on the end of my willow spear, tying it with milkweed.  The At Dawn family straggled along first, classmates of mine, identical twins Holly and Daisy with curly black hair and curved, birdlike noses.  Their dad followed them, a giant, cheerful man named Cyrus who belonged to the tribal council.  Andrew Nabako slinked up the road toward us, bow and arrows resting on his back.  If I hadn't gone to school with his brother Jack I would have thought Andrew was some hobo that strolled in off the streets.  He was about twenty years old, his hair long and unwashed and riddled with cowlicks.  Despite the climbing, eighty degree weather, he stood huddled under a mangy sweatshirt and a jacket and mittens.  Either he had a serious case of iron deficiency or he was hoarding clothes.
    "Hello, ladies," said a tenth grade girl with hair pinned back, loping toward us on long legs.  Selena Long Way.  Way too full of herself.
    "Looks like Luke's not coming today," Uncle Gabriel said, checking his wristwatch.
    He was wrong.  Luke Owns Forty came at us from the windmill field, carrying his hunting knife.  He was a middle-aged man, haggard, his hair in loose ringlets.  He threw me a look of