Cynthia Hand - Unearthly

“Over there is Teton National Park and Yellowstone.” Mom points toward the horizon. “We’ll have to go there, in the spring, check it out.”

Jeffrey joins us on the ridge. He isn’t wearing a jacket, just jeans and a T-shirt, but he doesn’t look cold. He’s too mad to shiver. His expression as he surveys our new environment is carefully blank. A cloud moves over the sun, casting the valley in shadow. The air instantly feels about ten degrees colder. I’m suddenly anxious, like now that I’ve officially arrived in Wyoming the trees will burst into flame and I’ll have to fulfill my purpose on the spot. So much is expected of me in this place.

“Don’t worry.” Mom puts her hands on my shoulders and squeezes briefly. “This is where you belong, Clara.”

“I know.” I try to muster a brave smile.

“You,” she says, moving to Jeffrey, “are going to love the sports here. Snow skiing and waterskiing and rock climbing and all kinds of extreme sports. I give you full permission to hurl yourself off stuff.”

“I guess,” he mutters.

“Great,” she says, seemingly satisfied. She snaps a quick picture of us. Then she moves briskly back to the car. “Now let’s go.”

I follow her as the road twists down the mountain. Another sign catches my eye.

WARNING, it says, SHARP CURVES AHEAD.

Right before we reach Jackson we turn onto Spring Gulch Road, which takes us to another long, winding road, this one with a big iron gate we need a pass code to get through. That’s my first inkling that our humble abode is going to be fairly posh. My second clue is all the enormous log houses I see tucked away in the trees. I follow Mom’s car as she turns down a freshly plowed driveway and makes her way slowly through a forest of lodgepole pine, birch, and aspen trees, until we reach a clearing where our new house poses on a small rise.

“Whoa,” I breathe, gazing up at the house through the windshield. “Jeffrey, look.”

The house is made of solid logs and river rock, the roof covered with a blanket of pure white snow like what you see on a gingerbread house, complete with a set of perfect silver icicles dangling along the edges. It’s bigger than our house in California, but cozier somehow, with a long, covered porch and huge windows that look out on a mind-bogglingly spectacular view of the snowcapped mountain range.

“Welcome home,” Mom says. She’s leaning against her car, taking in our stunned reactions as we step out into the circular drive. She is so pleased with herself for finding this house she’s practically bursting into song. “Our nearest neighbor is almost a mile away. This little wood is all ours.”

A breeze stirs the trees so that wisps of snow drift down through the branches, like our house is in a snow globe resting on a mantelpiece. The air feels warmer here.

It’s absolutely quiet. A sense of well-being washes over me.

This is home, I think. We’re safe here, which comes as a huge relief because, after weeks of nothing but visions and danger and sorrow, the uncertainty of moving and leaving everything behind, the insanity of it all, I can finally picture us having a life in Wyoming. Instead of only seeing myself walking into a fire.

I glance over at Mom. She’s literally glowing, getting brighter and brighter by the second, a low vibrating hum of angelic pleasure rolling off her.

Any second now and we’ll be able to see her wings.

Jeffrey coughs. The sight is still new enough to weird him out.

“Mom,” he says. “You’re doing the glory thing.”

She dims.

“Who cares?” I say. “There’s no one around to see it. We can be ourselves here.”

“Yes,” says Mom quietly. “In fact, the backyard would be perfect for practicing some flying.”

I stare at her in dismay. Mom has tried to teach me to fly exactly two times, and both were complete disasters. In fact, I’ve essentially given up on the idea of flight altogether and accepted that I’m going to be an angel-blood who stays earthbound, a flightless bird, like an ostrich maybe, or, in this weather, a penguin.

“You might need to fly here,” Mom says a bit stiffly. “And you might want to try it out,”

she adds to Jeffrey. “I bet you’d be a natural.”

I can feel my face getting hot. Sure, Jeffrey will be a natural when I can’t even make it off the ground.

“I want to see my room,” I say, and escape to the safety of the house.

That afternoon we stand for the first time on the boardwalk of Broadway Avenue in Jackson, Wyoming. Even in December, there are plenty of tourists. Stagecoaches and horse-drawn carriages pass by every few minutes, along with a never-ending string of cars. I can’t help but scan for one particular silver truck: the mysterious Avalanche with the license plate 99CX.

“Who knew there’d be so much traffic?” I remark as I watch the cars go by.

“What would you do if you saw him right now?” Mom asks. She’s wearing a new straw cowboy hat that she was unable to resist in the first gift shop we went into. A cowboy hat. Personally I think she’s taking this Old West thing a bit too far.

“She’d probably pass out,” says Jeffrey. He bats his eyelashes wildly and fans himself, then pretends to collapse against Mom. They both laugh.

Jeffrey has already bought himself a T-shirt with a snowboarder on it and is deliberating on a real, honest-to-goodness snowboard he liked in a shop window.

He’s been in a much better mood since we arrived at the house and he saw that all is not completely lost. He’s acting a lot like the old Jeffrey, the one who smiles and teases and occasionally speaks in full sentences.

“You two are hilarious,” I say, rolling my eyes. I jog ahead toward a small park I notice on the other side of the street. The entrance is a huge arch made of elk antlers.

“Let’s go this way,” I call back to Mom and Jeffrey. We hurry across the crosswalk right as the little orange hand starts to flash. Then we linger for a minute under the arch, gazing up at the latticework of antlers, which vaguely resemble bones.

Overhead the sky darkens with clouds, and a cold wind picks up.

“I smell barbecue,” says Jeffrey.

“You’re just a giant stomach.”

“Hey, can I help it if I have a faster metabolism than normal people? How about we eat there.” He points up the street where a line of people stand waiting to get into the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar.

“Sure, and I’ll buy you a beer, too,” Mom says.

“Really?”

“No.”

As they bicker about it, I’m struck with the sudden urge to document this moment, so I’ll be able to look back and say, this was the beginning. Part one of Clara’s purpose.

My chest swells with emotion at the thought. A new beginning, for us all.

“Excuse me, ma’am, would you mind taking our picture?” I ask a lady walking past.

She nods and takes the camera from Mom. We strike a pose under the arch, Mom in the middle, Jeffrey and me on either side. We smile. The woman tries to snap a picture, but nothing happens. Mom steps over to show her how to work the flash.

That’s when the sun comes out again. I suddenly become super aware of what’s going on around me, like it’s all slowing down for me to encounter piece by piece: the voices of the other people on the boardwalk, the flash of teeth when they speak, the rumble of engines and the tiny squeal of brakes as cars stop at the red light. My heart is beating like a slow, loud drum. My breath drags in and out of my lungs. I smell horse manure and rock salt, my own lavender shampoo, Mom’s splash of vanilla, Jeffrey’s manly deodorant, even the faint aroma of decay that still clings to the antlers above us. Classical music pours from underneath the glass doors of one of the art galleries. A dog barks in the distance. Somewhere a baby is crying. It feels like too much, like I’ll explode trying to take it all in. Everything’s too bright. There’s a small dark bird perched in a tree in the park behind us, singing, fluffing its feathers against the cold. How can I see it, if it’s behind me? But I feel its sharp black eyes on me; I see it angle its head this way and that, watching me, watching, until suddenly it takes off from the tree and swirls up into the wide-open sky like a bit of smoke, disappearing into the sun.