“Look at that,” River said.
She looked up at huge billows of gray and black clouds roiling in the eastern sky.
“It looks kind of like a funnel starting, doesn’t it? Mom said hurricanes can make tornadoes.”
The churning dark clouds looked enraged. Raven wondered what Mama would have thought of that sky. Would she see spirits in the clouds? Would she fear their fury? Raven had begun to doubt the spirits. She had felt them gradually leaving her since the day she’d blamed them for nearly killing her brother. Their disappearance hurt, made her feel terribly alone even when she was with her family. Mama had said that would happen if she lived in the outer world.
A slippery sensation stirred in her belly. She put her hand there, down low, not on her stomach. It happened again. As if a fish were swimming around inside her.
“Are you okay?” River asked.
The little creature inside her moved again. She pressed both hands on it. Rain driven by the wind pelted her face. River couldn’t see her tears.
But Maxine stared at her. As if she knew. She often gazed intently at Raven like that. She came to Raven, put her hands on her arms, looked into her eyes.
“What’s going on?” River said.
Maxine nodded toward the house to say he and Raven should go back. She made more gestures, indicating they had done enough. They should go home.
Ellis came over. “Yes, you two should go,” she said. “Get a hot shower before we lose power.”
“You’ll for sure lose power?” River asked.
“In these rural areas, trees fall on the power lines in almost every big storm. And with a hurricane, it could be out for days, even weeks.”
“We won’t have water?”
“The pump runs on electricity, but Maxine will hook it up to a generator if we have a long power outage. Those will be cold showers, though. The water heater will go down.”
“Cold showers?” River said. “No way.” He jogged down to the barn house.
“Go on. We’re about done,” Ellis told Raven. “Thank you for your help.”
Raven walked into the blowing rain. The tops of the oaks tossed madly in another gust. Her wet hair whipped her face, but she couldn’t feel it. The wildness of the earth didn’t touch her. She was insensible to it all.
Keith was home already. His supervisors had sent him home early, when it was still safe enough to drive. Raven liked Keith. He was one of the kindest people she’d ever met. But she didn’t want to talk to him. She couldn’t talk to anyone. She just wanted quiet.
She would go to the tree. Not the giant mother tree that was down in the bottomland. She would have no protection from the rain there. She would go to her second favorite tree, the one Ellis had talked about the day River and Jasper arrived. The oak that was partly hollow but still very much alive.
Raven walked down the hill to the tree. It was barely visible from the master bedroom window. She had to get inside before Keith saw her. She stood on the roots and climbed into the trunk’s hole. She sat on the soft earthy floor of the little room. Ellis said the tree had put up four kinds of walls to protect itself from the spreading damage. Raven liked that, sitting in a tiny one-room cabin that the tree had made inside itself.
A gust of wind whined through the oak’s hollow. But she stayed dry. She leaned against the tree wall. When she curled her body inward, her thighs pushed uncomfortably against her belly.
Because it was bigger.
She didn’t want to think about it. She closed her eyes. She kept her attention on the outside drum of rain, whooshing treetops, creaking limbs, the moan of wind when it hit the hollow trunk just right.
“Raven!”
She opened her eyes. She had fallen asleep. Ellis was peering into the cavity doorway. She looked upset.
“How did you know I was in here?”
“Max,” Ellis said loudly over the wind.
“How did she know?”
Ellis handed a wet piece of paper down to her. It was from the little notebooks Ellis and Maxine used to say things they couldn’t translate into gestures.
The first line said, Do you know where Raven is?
Maxine answered, She’s not in the house?
No. And not in the barn house. I’m worried.
Look inside the hollow oak.
What???
Look there, Maxine wrote. You need to talk to her. Really TALK to her.
Raven crumpled the note and let it fall.
“What did she mean?” Ellis asked. “Is something wrong?”
Is something wrong? Her whole life had been a giant wrong.
“Please talk to me,” Ellis said. “You can tell me.”
Raven wiped her hands down her face.
“Why are you crying, sweetheart?” Ellis said. “Please tell me.”
She would have to tell her. And better now when no one else was there to hear.
“My mother—Audrey . . .”
Ellis looked surprised that she’d called her by her first name. She’d never done that before.
“She tricked me,” Raven said. “She lied to me.”
Ellis had nothing to say. Because of course Audrey had lied. Everyone knew that. Even Raven had come to understand Mama had told her lies. But she used to think they were necessary lies. Good lies.
She sat up higher inside the tree. “Do you know what I used to believe?”
Ellis leaned into the tree to listen over the wind and rain.
“I believed my father was the spirit of a raven. She told me I was a miracle made by an earth spirit that embodied all ravens that had ever lived on Earth. He created me with her spirit. I actually believed I was only half-human.”
Ellis was trying not to cry.
“No one knows my real name,” Raven said. “It isn’t Raven Lind.”
“What is your name?” Ellis asked.
“Daughter of Raven. I didn’t have a human last name because I was
