Eve brought four books to Preyuna over Christmas break, but she worried they wouldn’t be enough. It was a sunny Monday when they arrived, and Eve immediately missed the winter of home. She insisted on staying inside as much as possible, to pretend the seasons hadn’t changed on her overnight. The temperature would make her sick, she insisted. The craving for winter was deep down in her bones; it sat beside wanderlust and seeing her parents again. She wanted darkness at five o’clock, hot cocoa by the fire, bare trees, overcast, snow storms, thick mittens, apple pie, and a Christmas tree at least as tall as she was. None of those things were happening though, so Eve stayed inside while her sister and grandmother went out to enjoy their vacation. She watched them from the window seat on which she firmly planted herself. When they weren’t looking at her anymore, Eve turned on all of the fans and wrapped herself in borrowed blankets.

In the morning, sunshine spilled onto the carpet and warmed her toes with pinks and blues and oranges. It lit up her eyelids, forcing her to open them, and to find that she had fallen asleep in the window seat. There were clusters of flies on the other side of the glass, and she was surprised their constant buzzing hadn’t woken her sooner. The sound was overwhelming against the quiet awakening of the world outside, filled with crickets and frogs and rustling leaves, just like home. The flies buzzed and continued to hit their bodies against the glass, wanting to come inside, and actually, Eve did want to go outside. But she didn’t want to admit it right away, so she instead pointed her toes, held her breath, and refocused her ears to the cracking of her spine.

The light rose over the horizon and she wondered what time it was. There were no clocks in their rented vacation home. There were also no television, radio, or board games. This must have been on purpose because what was in the living room was a tall pamphlet advertising “The Great Outdoors”, stamped over a smiling family of beachgoers. Eve tiptoed past it, to her suitcase still abandoned on the floor in front of the couch, and retrieved her thickest scarf. First, she triumphantly wrapped it around as much of her upper half as possible; second, she turned off the fans.

Eve had thought Preyuna was a big city, but was delighted to find it as country as her home. There were barely any unnatural sounds, not even a car in the distance. In her early morning investigation, she had even uncovered a hidden fireplace, and made a mental note to ask about it later. Eve sat on the couch, swung her legs, and looked at all of the pamphlets she could find, until moving on to finishing up a book. Her grandmother was an early riser, and would keep her company soon enough. Marisol could sleep all day if no one objected. 

“Good morning, mija,” came a gentle, old voice. Eve’s grandmother padded into the kitchenette, tying her robe with a bow along the way. She opened the fridge and took out a pitcher of water. She always started her day with a cold glass of water and urged Eve and Marisol to do the same. She filled two glasses and placed them on the counter. Eve stood up to retrieve hers, and winced at how cold her first swallow was.

“Are you going to come out with us today?” her grandmother asked. “I can’t, in good conscience, leave you here alone again. I think you’d really love it here.” She sipped her water and waited for a response. Eve looked down into her glass.

“Can we go to a movie?”

“Oh, Evie. We can do that anywhere! But, if that’s what you really want, of course we can. Try to wake up your sister and we’ll see what’s playing.”

When the three of them made it to the theater just two hours later, their grandmother claimed there was nothing playing that was appropriate for children. Marisol groaned and prepared to argue, but Eve didn’t mind. Across from the theater, just beyond clear vision, was a misty piece of land. She interrupted the bickering to beg them to go there. She wanted to walk through the trees and feel the sun on her bare arms. 

Eve pulled out her disposable camera and snapped all along the way, unaware of her finger obscuring most of the images. The walk lasted a while, for how long she wasn’t certain, but it was long enough for their grandmother to request a rest. They all plopped down in the unkempt grass and the damp blades were cool against Eve’s legs. She could almost close her eyes and pretend it was autumn, goose bumps sprouting on her arms and her teeth beginning to chatter. She found herself again dreaming of snow, even while her skin was still stained with green.

“It must be so nice living here. Don’t you think, girls?” Their grandmother was smiling, looking at them back and forth. She coughed into her handkerchief and continued smiling. Eve considered it, but she couldn’t imagine living anywhere else but home, where the mountains could be seen from every street and deer peeked out from snow-sunken branches.

Marisol was holding blades of grass in her mouth, while she pressed others in between the pages of her journal. A frog hopped onto her leg and she didn’t flinch at all, but Eve did. It hopped off in the next instant, and she twitched, refrained from running after it. The air smelled like sunshine and salt and Eve kind of liked it, she had to admit. She made another mental note to ask her sister how to press flowers into her own books. Until then, she scratched lines into the little piles of dirt all around and spelled out words with the grass. It was all she could do; she had already finished two of four books, and didn’t want the pages to get sun bleached. She imagined being swallowed by the Earth in retaliation, green filling her eyes and the sky waving goodbye. She dug her toes into the wet dirt, slowly pushing it under her nails and into her skin. She relished in the smell of it—familiar, but somehow more magical. The leaves of the trees, the insects, the sprouts, all growing.

# # #

That night, the covers of her bed were as cool as the grass, almost damp with the humidity of the air coming through the opened windows. It smelled like rain. Eve was tired and maybe a little sleep-deprived—the sun had a way of making her feel exhausted when she’d done nothing at all—yet restless. Her skin still tasted like salt, and her toes twitched, wanting to go back outside. Spending a day in the sunshine was addictive, she realized as she looked up at the ceiling. The lines in the wood had once belonged to great trees of old wisdom, but were now etched and cut and dried. Eve didn’t want to be stuck inside like that.

The slow beating of her resting heart mixed with the sound of water hitting the roof. It rained all day Wednesday as eternal evening befell Preyuna. The storm was not as friendly as the ones she was used to; when she stuck an arm out of the window, it was crisp and harsh against her skin. She could taste the iciness in the air, and for the first time, she longed for sunlight. When she really thought about it, Eve often wanted what she couldn’t have. She wanted home, her parents, adventure, to get away and be someone else, just for a day at least. In her diary (she was too much of a baby to have a journal, Marisol said), she would refer to herself as “India.” India was a clever girl with secrets, who could go anywhere she wanted, anytime. Eve believed an interesting name would make everything better. But for the time being, she sat in the window seat and watched the rain. A snail was stuck to the windowsill and her grandmother warned her not to let it in, so Eve settled for keeping an eye on it, making sure it didn’t get swept into the bruised sky. 

By the late afternoon on Thursday, when it was dark and grey, heavy rain clouds hanging low, the sky openly weeping, the sun suddenly pierced through. It flooded the air and the streets in thick yellow light—a deep shade that was rich like mustard and creamy like butter. Eve found it fascinating that even in the darkness, the rain drops could find the tiniest amount of light to reflect. They created contrasting streaks across the window, like juicy slugs falling from the sky. The greyness and rain pressed on, but the light steadily lingered, taking its time to settle into dominance. Eve stuck a hand out of the window again, feeling the raindrops become lighter and lighter against her palm. 

“Abuelita,” she asked, “can I go play outside?”

“You’re just like your mother, you know. She always waited for the worst weather to ask to go stomp around in it. She was happiest when the sky was pink. Never blue! Must be in the genes.” Eve watched her grandmother walk over to the window and look out for herself. She gave a sad smile to the frog that was still managing to hold on. 

“Promise not to get too muddy? And be back before dinner. Marisol, sweetheart, go with her please.”

As soon as they were free, Eve knew where she wanted to go. They headed for the hidden land from Tuesday, racing each other until they were across the street. It was rare for Marisol to want to join in on Eve’s fun, so she capitalized on it as much as possible, looking back and grabbing her sister’s hand. They ran most of the way hand-in-hand, jumping over puddles and occasionally stopping to rescue worms from the street and bat away mosquitoes. When they finally got there, Eve collapsed into the soft marshland, pulling her sister down with her. Tree branches drooped down and shielded the girls, creating their own private wonderland.

Eve stretched her fingers over the grass around her, feeling how it too had become limp in the rain, yet somehow stronger. By lying in it, she was sure she would become rejuvenated as well.

“Evie,” Marisol said, “it’s kind of chilly. Maybe we shouldn’t be lying in the grass. We might get sick.” But it wasn’t too chilly for Eve. She liked to feel the cool grass on her back and the warm sun on her front, like a perfect bed. She rolled onto her side and faced Marisol. Blades of grass tickled her face and she let out one small sneeze. 

“See!” Marisol started to sit up.

“Bless you,” Eve said out loud to herself, smiling. “No, I like it out here! Please, let’s stay!” She grabbed Marisol’s hand and pulled her back down.

For a while, they stayed silent. They usually were, since Marisol had moved up to the middle school and therefore wasn’t fun anymore, according to Eve. They were still facing each other, both looking down at the microscopic jungle below them.

“Mar,” Eve whispered, “you have such a great name. I wish I had your name.”

“Eve is a great name too.”

“No, Eve is boring. It’s just one syllable, and it can’t be shortened. Marisol is fun. Sometimes… I think I wish my name were… India.” She could hardly believe her only secret had slipped out so easily.

“India? Why?” Marisol made her signature teasing-yet-curious expression. “Wait. India? Wasn’t that the name of the fairy Mom said lived in our lily patch?”

“India,” Eve whispered to herself, trying to remember. She rolled the name around on her tongue for good measure, and was sure she had come up with it herself. “In… dee… uh. India! See? It’s fun to say. It’s… special.” She was smiling again. As she reached up to touch her mouth to feel how the name shaped her lips, there was a roar overhead and the clouds rolled in. One drop landed on her nose and then the wind picked up. Eve got to her knees, ready to leave, when Marisol was the one to hold her back.

“We don’t have to go. I know you don’t really want to. A little rain never hurt anyone.” She smiled a genuine smile and Eve lay back down. Marisol waited a few seconds before continuing, “Well, India’s fine but I like your name. It’s the one our parents gave you, so, I like it.”

Grass clumsily danced in the wind, and it reminded Eve of her hair when it floated on the surface of the water in the bathtub. It made beautiful shapes, and bobbed up and down in front of her eyes. She touched one blade and felt it slip through her fingers to rejoin the others in their dance. The soil underneath her was becoming softer and softer, and now her hair was plastered to her head. She pinched another blade between her fingers, and tugged it until it slipped out smoothly from the earth. She placed the grass on Marisol’s cheek, who made a sour face upon feeling its clamminess.

“Do you… remember mom and dad?” Eve asked.

“Not really. You know that. I was just a little kid, not a lot younger than you.”

“Oh.”

Eve tried to enjoy the sensations around her. She closed her eyes and focused on each individual raindrop landing on her face, on the grass slithering over her hands. She pictured her hair mixing in with it, turning green and brown up to the root, intertwining with the coils and becoming one. She wouldn’t mind growing into the ground and staying there forever. She would be nourished by the natural resources around her, and Marisol and her grandmother would still be able to visit her. In the springtime, they could come out and plant flowers around her body. They could lay down next to her and she could tell them what it’s like to be part of the Earth.

“Did they love us, though?”

“Eve! Why would you ask that? Of course they loved us.” Eve shrugged against the ground and turned her head to the other side.

“But then why have we always been with Abuelita? Didn’t they want us?” Marisol inched towards her sister and wrapped her arms around her. 

“They did, but you know they were really young when I was born, and—and there was no way they were ready for a second baby too, and they just couldn’t take care of us the way we needed. But we should be grateful for Abuelita. You probably don’t remember, but she took us to see them almost every day until…”

“I don’t remember. I… want to know where they really are.”

“Evie. You have us and we love you. When you’re older, you’ll understand. And you’ll understand why things happen the way they do.”

Eve’s chest tightened when she heard this. It was frustrating to always be too young to “understand” things. It was suffocating. She plunged her fingertips into the exposed soil between the blades of grass, feeling the world beneath. She tilted her head to rest one ear on the ground, and listened for sounds of life. The grass in front of her rose and fell in sync with her breath. She flattened her palm on the spot and found that the ground itself was breathing. 

“Hello?” Eve asked the air.

“Hello?” came a muffled response from below. 

“What?” said Marisol from behind Eve’s hair.

A blue jay fluttered overhead and hesitated for a moment, distracting Eve, before it landed in the grass in front of her nose. It looked her in the eyes and she braced herself to be pecked, but it kept its distance. Instead, it pushed its beak into the soil three times in quick succession, hopped around the small hole, and took off again. She followed it in the air with her eyes for a few moments, smiling at its folly, and then the ground under her ear began to vibrate. She lifted her head no more than six inches, only to find that her hair was actually entangled in the grass. She tugged at it, but it wouldn’t budge. Her hair and the grass created one big sopping mess; it felt heavy in her hands, and too strong to detangle. The bird squeaked, watching her struggle. Eve repositioned herself onto all fours, determined to get away. She didn’t understand what was happening. What if it was an earthquake? She’d never experienced one before, and didn’t know if they could even occur so far south, but she didn’t want to find out this way. She continued to tug her neck back and forth until her scalp was screaming. 

“Mar! Mar!” she desperately yelled out, “I’m stuck! Help!”

“Okay, okay, I get it! Let’s head back now.” Eve watched her sister’s legs wobble on the shaking ground. She was so close, but just out of reach. Eve tried to extend her arm out farther, and her fingertips just brushed the denim of her sister’s pants. The soil under her toes dissolved before her eyes, widening into a gaping hole in the ground. She jumped forward, bringing her knees to her chest, but the hole kept growing. Before she knew it, her legs were dangling under her and her sister was barely holding onto her arms.

“Evie! I’ve got you! Don’t be scared!” Marisol’s face was stricken with pure horror, and Eve’s arms were too weak to support her own weight. She inched her hands up her sister’s arms, desperate to hold on. The blue jay landed on Marisol’s shoulder, and began pecking. She tried to shrug it off, but it had its feet latched on. Her face contorted from horror to pain as the bird wouldn’t stop. Just before the Earth completely swallowed her up, Eve saw her sister jerk her arm free to swat at the blue jay.

She fell for a long time, so long that she almost thought she must be dreaming. But there’s nothing so lovely as dreams, Eve thought; this is not a dream. She fell and fell, swallowed in darkness. When she stopped and finally landed on something solid, she didn’t realize she had. Everything was as flat as night, void of texture and variation. She squeezed her eyes shut and hoped to wake up in bed, but when she opened them again there was nothing in front of, behind, above, or below her. She looked hard into the darkness and raised her arms up to guide her. She took a step and heard her shoe crunch on what sounded like dry dirt. 

“Hello?” she tested her voice. It was strained from fear.

“Hello?” another voice responded from somewhere. Eve froze in her place, wrapped her arms around herself, and begged the universe to send her home. “Hello? Are you the girl who called to me?”

Eve stayed silent, remembering when she had said hello, but had assumed the extra response was an echo in her mind. She heard shuffling from somewhere nearby, the soft sound of cloth dragging over rock. Eve bent her knees and lowered herself down, once again holding them close to her chest. Tears rolled down her cheeks. She sniffled.

“Oh dear, you’re crying, aren’t you? I’m not going to hurt you. You’re safe down here, believe me.”

A hand rested on Eve’s shoulder, and she flinched violently. She cried out and scrambled away from the figure, finding something solid just nearby. She tried to completely flatten herself against it.

“It’s okay! Everything is okay. You can’t see me, can you? That’s why you must be so scared. Oh, dear. Just open your eyes so they can adjust to the dark. Okay?”

Eve, attempting to hide in the apparently plain sight of the mysterious figure, opened her eyes and focused on a random spot for a minute. She heard breathing. When her eyes finally adjusted, she could just barely make out the silhouette of a woman, standing very close to her. Eve stood up and tried to back away, but realized she had been leaning against a wall. Her short, shallow breaths had rapidly become lightheadedness. She concentrated on calming down like Marisol had taught her to, steadying her breathing as best as she could under the circumstances, and it worked. She straightened up a bit and waited another minute until she could make out some of the woman’s features.

The woman’s skin, resembling dry clay, was grey and cracking with age. She was cloaked in dark materials, even darker than their surroundings. She had thick hair that grew straight up, and slightly swayed with every little movement. But the woman looked kind enough. Deep wrinkles formed around her mouth and the corners of her eyes, which were dilated and wide, having grown accustomed to straining through the darkness. If Eve only focused on her eyes, she almost reminded her of her grandmother: stressed out and full of love. Eve began to let her guard down. She didn’t feel as afraid now that she could see who she was talking to. She felt cautious, but not afraid.

“I… I can see you,” Eve said. She moved away from the wall, just to see what would happen. As Eve looked up to see where she had fallen through, the woman stayed where she was. She watched Eve walk around her. With Eve on the other side, the woman stood flat against the wall instead, and she nearly blended in with it.

“I’m, uh, um… India,” stammered Eve. The woman gave her a knowing smile, but nodded.

“India is a beautiful name.”

“What’s… your name?”

“Oh, I don’t have one anymore. I think it used to be… no, I can’t remember.” She continued to smile at Eve as if having a name was not an important thing.

“Where am I?” Eve asked, trying to not sound rude. But no matter how nice this woman seemed, Eve was in no hurry to plan her stay. She didn’t want to know how long it would take for her skin to lose its color and her eyes to sink into themselves.

“You’re just on the other side, dear.”

“The other side?”

“Yes, the other side of your world.”

“But how did I get here? Is this real?” Eve considered feeling around for a way to climb up. She was good at climbing the large oak trees in her yard, and she believed that if there were a way to come down, there had to be a way to go up. Eve glanced over her shoulder before deciding she didn’t want to take her eyes off of the woman.

“I was just listening to you, dear. You said ‘hello’ first. You intertwined our hair and you synchronized our breathing. You created your own path to this side. This is as real as you are,” the woman explained, but Eve did not understand. She couldn’t wrap her head around any of it, even with the woman just a foot away. She continued, “when the weather can’t decide to be sunny or rainy, when a bird can’t decide to be in the air or on the ground, when a little girl wants a different name and to be in a different place, the other side opens up. I’m always here, but the path only reveals itself when the timing is off. Yours was.”

Eve listened and absorbed the information, trying to make sense of up and down, if there even was an up or down. 

“So… you live down here? On the other side? What…” She wasn’t sure what to ask.

“I do. I live in a house with my girls. I have a whole life, dear. Think of it like this: to me, your world is the other side. It’s just that when I heard your call today, and you heard mine, I decided to be the one to greet you.” She smiled again, contrasting Eve’s frozen face.

“Do you want to meet them? My girls?” she asked.

Eve waited a beat before nodding uncertainly. As soon as she completed her second nod, she could see a little house in the distance, surrounded by grey grass. She followed the woman toward it and wondered if she should be so trusting. She could turn around and run, find a way back home while she wasn’t being watched. She was good at sneaking. But the woman was beaming at her, absolutely ecstatic for Eve to be there. And with her lanky limbs and off-putting posture, Eve knew that the other side was where the woman belonged, but Eve didn’t belong there. She slowed down, waiting to see if the woman noticed, and then started walking backwards. She bumped into someone.

“Hi,” said a little girl, the same height as Eve but somehow appearing much older.

“Hi…,” said Eve.

“We heard you this morning! I wanted to come see but Mama told me to stay put.” Eve nodded and didn’t know what to say. She could feel the woman standing behind her now, and the girl in front. She was trapped. All she could do was stare and hope the interaction would be over soon. The shadowed girl was peppered with wrinkles and wiry hair just like her mother’s, but her face was childishly round. And unlike the woman, the girl was wearing a grey little dress, the kind Eve liked to pick out when she was allowed to. Eve smiled with one corner of her mouth, looking down at her own dirty dress. 

“Do you want to leave, India?” the woman unexpectedly asked.

“I… um, yes.” Eve’s answer was sheepish, but she really did want to be home. She wanted to tell her grandmother about the other side, and write about it in her diary.

“Of course you do, dear. And that’s fine. You could’ve left at any time.”

“I could’ve?”

“You could stay and play with me!” squeaked the little girl. “But it’s okay. Come on!” 

She grabbed Eve’s hand and guided her to the greyed-out yard. They lay down side by side. The little girl began pushing Eve’s hair down into the soil, and telling her to relax.

“If you’re really ready to go, you will. Just think about what’s happening on the other side right now, and how much you want to be there. It’s easy!”

Eve lay still, thinking about her sister, probably terrified, and her grandmother, too old to be this worried. She pictured her house, her yard, and even the vacation rental and that terrible blue jay from the morning. She thought about her name and if it was truly fit for a fairy. 

“Goodbye,” the girl said, now standing up and holding the woman’s hand. “And remember, there is light in darkness. That’s what Mama always says.” She smiled up at the woman and together they waved as Eve melted into the ground. After a moment, she landed with a thud that knocked the wind out of her. She coughed a few times and then it was blindingly bright when she opened her eyes and looked around. The earth was closed and solid again. Marisol was lying down, looking extremely exhausted. Her eyes were closed and her red cheeks were streaked with tears. Eve huddled close to her and rested her head on her shoulder.

“Mar, I’m back,” she whispered.

Her sister didn’t open her eyes when she said, softly, “Evie.” She pulled her closer.

“I was on the other side! But I came back.”

She didn’t know if her sister had heard her, so they both stayed silent, holding on to one another. The two lay in the grass for hours more, watching the sun move across the sky. Eve kept one hand spread over the grass next to her, feeling the ground occasionally breathe with her.

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