Lifting the Sky by Mackie d'Arge Page A

of the ground as they clung to the rim for dear life. Gnarly branches looped to one side around a twisted trunk to form a shadowy cave. The tree was loaded with greenish blue berries. I grabbed a handful and munched. Tangy and bittersweet. Mam loved them. She said they tasted like gin.
    I kissed my finger. “I hereby dub you my very own special tree.” I reached down and picked up a small pink granite stone. “My
wishing
tree,” I said, and I closed my eyes and made my first wish.
    â€œMy dad. Please let him find us. And then everything will be
perfect
.” I tucked the stone into a crook in a twisted branch of my tree. “Thank you,” I whispered.
    From the hill I could see my whole queendom. The ranch tucked in its valley, the house looking as small as a dollhouse and Ol’ Yeller like a toy truck parked beside atoy barn. The hills tumbling down to the badlands and far distant mountains. The mountains looming behind. And everything bursting with light, as if the land itself made its own sunlight.
    I sank to the ground, slipped off my backpack, and sat still as the tree, still as the rocks and the hill.
    First came a chipmunk, creeping across the rocky ground, sniffing at my toes, zipping over my leg as if it were just a bump in its path. A crow swooped down and, tipping its head to the side, took one peck at my jeans and then hopped away and flew off. Two magpies landed on the rocky rim behind me and fussed at each other, acting like I was just part of the landscape. Below me, a herd of antelope slowly munched their way across the hillside. Like the smaller creatures, they seemed to pay no attention to me.
    I dug out my journal and pencils. Page after page got filled with golden-brown blotches with long spindly legs. It took lots of practice before I got one that looked halfway like a pronghorn antelope.
    Soon I noticed I was drawing one particular antelope over and over. I could pick her out of the herd by the white markings on her neck, since their neck bands were all slightly different. For some reason the lights around her seemed brighter than the lights around the other antelopes. Her belly was big, like the rest of the older does. Soon she’d be having her fawns. I knew that pronghorns usually had twins because having two made it more likely that at least one would survive.
    I drew comic-book panels showing the antelopebowing her neck, kicking her heels up, and sprinting away from the herd. I sketched the big handsome buck that ran up onto a rocky mound and then stood there looking like he was the boss. And acting like it too, the way he huffed and puffed and snorted at her. Next I sketched her being chased by him. I drew her fluffing up her white rump as she ran, and I noticed how the reddish brown ruff on her neck stood straight up when she turned to confront him. I drew him edging her back into the herd. I drew her hop-hop-hopping away from him again, and then looking back and panting with her black tongue sticking out. “So there!” I wrote in the bubble over her head.
    I called my comic “The Adventures of Lone One.”
    By now the rest of the herd had scattered out of sight. I got up and stretched. The lone antelope stared up at me, cocking her head to the side. I mirrored her. I cocked my head. I sprinted and stotted around in a circle on top of the hill, and she was so incurably curious that she looked up and watched the whole show. When I stumbled over my feet and went
splat,
she sprinted off after the herd.
    I’d barely noticed the shadows creeping into the valley and filling it up to the rim with deep violet blue. Golden rays spiked up behind the mountains so that for a minute they looked as if they’d just been crowned. Down below, Ol’ Yeller was now parked by the house.
    I stuffed my things into my pack. “Race you,” I said to Stew Pot, and the two of us charged down the hill.

Chapter Nine
    A few days later, Mam stomped into the