It happens, sometimes.
Like a superbloom, or a storm blowing in out of the far east. The surface of Lake Pleasant becomes glassy and still under the autumn night sky. The stars dance on the water like fireflies, until one becomes two, becomes three, four, five, and there’s more flickering lights in the reservoir than in all the night sky.
And then they come up, up, up, out of the water. The eldest, first– Dia does not know their names. They are much older than she is. They test the strange, warm air with sunlight smiles, waterworn oars, and long spearheads of pure color. Then come the people she can name: Huhugam, Patayan, Sinagua. Their sons and daughters, the first peoples: Yavapai, Akimel O’odham, Dilzhe’e, Piipaash. Finally, the orphans of the land rise hand-in-hand with the foreigners, those inheritors of violence: The descendants of Black slaves, of Anglo colonizers, of Latinos, Mestizos, of Irish, Jewish, German, Asian-American immigrants.
Numberless beaming faces pass her by as they step up onto the surface of the lake. Most she doesn’t recognize. Some she does. They dance south, downstream of the dam, along old highways in the bones of the Agua Fria. A glittering procession. A river.
And Dia runs far, far north. She knows better than to join them. They are going to a place she cannot follow.
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