Tonight she and Fat Crack’s grandson ate their food in a cloud of stubborn silence. When it was over, Lani heated some water and made a hot drink of prickly pear juice and water sweetened with honey.

“I’d rather have a Coke,” Gabe said.

“I’m sure you would,” Lani said mildly, “but sodas aren’t the point of this trip.”

“What is?”

She glanced at the fire. “Do you remember the story of Betraying Woman?” she asked.

“Not really,” Gabe replied.

“You used to know it.”

Gabe shrugged. “So?”

“Then maybe I should remind you.” She told the story then, from beginning to end.

“So that’s what this is about?” Gabe asked sarcastically when she finished telling him the story of Young Man and Betraying Woman. “We’re just going to sit around out here in the middle of nowhere and tell ghost stories all night?”

Lani felt discouraged. This should have been a time when she could give Fat Crack’s grandson the benefit of some of the old man’s wisdom. For years, she had imagined coming here with the boy when he was almost, if not completely, grown, and being able to share the Peace Smoke with him. She had hoped to be able to tell him about her battle with the evil ohb; about how Bat and the spirit of Betraying Woman had aided her in the fight; and about how Fat Crack had helped her deal with the aftermath of that awful day.

That’s what she had always wanted to do, but somehow Gabe had morphed into a difficult young man who had no patience for or interest in the old ways. It saddened Lani to think that perhaps he had drifted completely beyond her reach.

She took a deep breath. “You used to love the I’itoi stories,” Lani pointed out. “When you were little, you used to come to the hospital with me. You liked to visit the patients, especially the old ones. Sometimes you would listen while they told stories, and sometimes you would do the telling.”

“I was little then,” Gabe countered. “I believed in all that crap back then, along with Santa Claus and other stupid stuff that I don’t believe in anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Because I grew up.”

Lani reached over to her backpack and pulled out her medicine basket. Inside she found the soft leather pouch that held her divining crystals. Lani supposed that those four pieces of lavender-­colored rock must have originally come from the wreckage of a geode that had been smashed to pieces long ago. The tiny rocks themselves, as well as the worn pouch that held them, had been passed down from S-­ab Neid Pi Has—­Looks at Nothing—­to Gigh Tahpani—­Fat Crack—­and from Fat Crack to Lani. She had always supposed that one day they would go to Gabe. At the moment that outcome seemed unlikely.

“Have you ever seen divining crystals?” she asked, emptying the shards of rock into her hand. When she held them up, one at a time, they winked in the firelight.

“So this is what, like reading tea leaves or something?” Gabe asked, his voice dripping with contempt. “You look into them somehow and see the future?”

“It’s not exactly like reading tea leaves,” Lani said. “Do you remember back when you were in third grade? I went with you on a nighttime school field trip to Kitt Peak, and they let us take turns looking through the telescopes.”

“Sure, I remember,” Gabe said with a laugh. “For a long time, I thought I’d be an astronomer someday when I grew up. I’m over that, too, by the way.”

Ignoring his sarcasm, Lani continued. “When the scientists up there . . .” She paused and motioned with her head toward the collection of invisible buildings on top of the mountain that made up the Kitt Peak National Observatory. “When they look through their telescopes, they use powerful lenses to focus on things that eyes alone could never see. These crystals work the same way. They allow your mind to focus on things that you can’t necessarily see. Here, try it.”

She passed the crystals over to Gabe. For a long time, he stared down at them. Finally, reluctantly, he held the first one up to his eye, peering through it at Lani.

“What do you see?” she prompted.

“You, of course.”

“Be honest now,” she said. “Tell the truth. Tell me what you really see. Don’t you see someone who’s a friend of your parents? Someone who won’t mind her own business and keeps telling you what to do?”

Gabe looked crestfallen. “I guess,” he admitted.

“Try again. Look at the fire this time,” she suggested. “What do you see there?”

He held up the second crystal and peered through it.

“I see a fire,” he answered, “a fire and nothing else.”

“But what is your mind focusing on as you look at the fire? Are you grateful to be sitting by it, glad of its warmth, or are you thinking something else? Maybe, instead of watching the fire burn, you’d rather be at home, playing with your Xbox or watching TV.”

The startled expression on the boy’s face told Lani that she had hit the nail on the head. Gabe immediately passed the crystals back to Lani.

“Obviously I’m no good at this,” he said.

“All right,” Lani agreed. “Let me try.” She held one of the crystals up to her eye. “I see a boy who was born in the backseat of a car the night his grandfather was buried. Fat Crack knew before you were born that you would be a boy. He hoped you’d follow in his footsteps.”

“And be what, a medicine man?” Gabe asked with a derisive snort. “Right. How much money do medicine men make these days? Where do they go to school?”

“Medicine men go to school in places just like this,” Lani said quietly. “They sit around fires and listen to stories—­the stories their ancestors used to explain why the world around them—­their particular world—­was the way it was. Those stories don’t have to be scientifically accurate to be true, to contain elements of truth.”

Gabe remained unconvinced. “Whatever,” he said dismissively, shaking his head.

Lani held up the second crystal. Looking through it, she frowned as she spoke. “I see something strange here—­a woman, a white-­haired Milgahn woman. I don’t understand it, but she’s dangerous somehow. You need to stay away from her.”

Lani found the idea of an Anglo woman being a Dangerous Object both worrisome and puzzling. Dangerous Objects were an essential part of the Tohono O’odham tradition of Staying Sickness. According to ancient customs, there were two kinds of sicknesses abroad in the world. Traveling Sicknesses, the kinds caused by germs, were the ones Dr. Walker-­Pardee routinely treated with antibiotics. Those affected everybody, Indian and Anglo alike. Staying Sicknesses, on the other hand, a kind of Spirit Sickness, were caused by Dangerous Objects and affected Indians only. A Spirit Sickness was usually diagnosed and treated by a Tohono O’odham healer—­a medicine man or medicine woman—­by means of a combination of traditional chants—­kuadk—­and related devices.

Coyote Sickness, for example, was caused by someone eating a Dangerous Object—­perhaps a melon that a coyote had bitten into. Someone suffering from Coyote Sickness could be treated with coyote feces—­boiled and turned into a paste, and then rubbed on the patient’s body. ­People with Coyote Sickness could also be treated by a medicine man rubbing the patient’s body with a coyote’s tail.

Lani knew that as a baby she herself had once been considered a Dangerous Object due to the ant bites that had covered her body. What was disturbing in this instance, however, was that the dangerous object in question was an Anglo. How was that even possible?

Gabe, however, found none of this the least bit mystifying.

“I know who that is,” he said, “white hair and all. It’s got to be Mrs. Travers, the school principal. She hates my guts.”

Without further comment, Lani held up the third crystal. “This one says that you’re walking a difficult path right now,” she said, “traveling it with some friends. You’re about to come to a fork in that path. One fork leads to the PaDaj O’odham—­the Bad ­People—­who came out of the South to do battle with I’itoi. If you go the same way your friends do, you’ll end up being bad, too.”