The Four Winds

A click, then nothing.

Elsa tried it again and again, pumping the gas, her panic bumping up with each failed attempt.

“Steady, Elsa.” She took a deep breath and tried again.

The engine coughed and sputtered to life.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

Elsa drove back onto the road and kept going.

Sometime around four, the road began to rise, becoming a giant unfurling snake of a thing, turning and twisting.

The air coming in through the open window cooled. Elsa’s sweat dried in itchy patches.

She drove up the steep, winding road, following the beam of her headlights, trying not to look at the cliff that crumbled away beside her.

Finally, when she could barely keep her eyes open, she pulled off the road into a wide patch of dirt ringed by tall trees.

She climbed into bed with her sleeping children, exhausted, and closed her eyes.

* * *

“MOM.”

“Mom.”

Elsa opened her eyes.

Sunlight blinded her.

Loreda was standing by the truck. “Come here.”

“Can I sleep for just—”

“No. Come. Now.”

Elsa groaned. How long had she been asleep? Ten minutes? A glance at her watch told her that it was nine o’clock.

Numb with exhaustion, she climbed out of the truck. She and Loreda walked uphill, toward a break in the trees, where Ant was waiting impatiently, bobbing up and down on bare feet.

“I need coffee,” Elsa said.

“Look.”

Elsa glanced behind her, looking for a good spot to make a campfire.

“Look, Mom,” Loreda said, shaking her.

Elsa turned.

They were standing at the top of a mountain, on a wide patch of flat land. Far below lay a vast swath of farmland, fields of green. Great rectangles of brown, newly tilled earth.

“California,” Ant said.

Elsa had never seen land so beautiful. So fertile. So green.

California.