Author’s Note: Hover the mouse over Spanish sentences to reveal English translations.

Lying on the hard ground, wrapped in a blanket, Marco stared up into a cold, gray sky as winter moved slowly, shyly, into Love & War.

December is usually a welcome, though eccentric, guest in the desert. After months of a long, dry summer under a scorched sky and unrelenting sun, desert folk breath a sigh of relief as the wind and cold catch hands, breathless, and knock on the door, apologetic and smiling, wondering if maybe, if it’s all right, they could stay for a while. December ushers in, falls in love with the desert, is sometimes beguiled by its warmth and rosy skies, and for a moment forgets what it is, and wraps the desert in its familiar temperatures and colors. But a heartbeat later, without thinking, December falls into its natural ways, and the sky darkens, and the cold settles in, and the desert folk sit and wait for winter to tire of its stay and rustle out and quickly as it descended.

Alma sat next to Marco, legs crossed, looking down into the turtle pond. She was watching one particular turtle, green and yellowed striped with orange near his eyes, stick its nose out of the water.

“Do you know what these turtles are called?” Alma asked. She put her finger to the water. The turtle ducked back underneath the surface.

Marco reached up, scratched his cheek. “Red-ear sliders,” he said. “Our dad got us one for our birthday last year, but it died. I think Alejandro tried to feed it Pop Tarts.” Since there was nothing in the sky for Marco’s eyes to latch onto, he rolled onto his stomach, propped himself up on his elbows. “They like earthworms and carrots,” he said. “And you have to give them vitamins.” A wind blew and he shivered, his hands retreating into the warmth of his oversized, bright yellow jacket. “I don’t know who gives these turtles vitamins. Or carrots.”

Alma leaned forward, peering deeper into the water. “Do you want to speak Spanish?” she asked.

“No.”

“I think you need the practice,” she said.

Marco sighed. “Alma, I understand Spanish just fine.”

Alma found the turtle again, smiled and wriggled her fingers at it. “Sí, pero no puedes hablar,” Yes, but you can’t speak it she said, ruthlessly ignoring Marco’s wishes. “If you don’t learn Spanish, your mother will be sad. I heard her crying last night,” she said.

Marco sighed. That his mother had been crying, while disconcerting, was not surprising. Over the years, Marco had grown accustomed to his mother’s tears. She didn’t cry loudly, or in a way that demanded attention. She didn’t offer herself to the crying the way other women did. She offered the crying no sanctuary. She cried because she had to, because she was born in the wrong month, because the chiles had been too hot, because the world was not as kind as she had been led to believe. She cried sometimes when she made tortillas—little teardrops making their way down round, sienna-colored cheeks, little sniffling sounds in between prayers to la Virgen de GuadalupeThe Virgin of Guadalupe. She cried as her knitting needles clinked together when she watched spaghetti Westerns, the kind she used to watch when Marco and Alejandro were babies and Irma was still married to their father. She cried when she tucked Marco in at night, smoothing the hair way from his forehead, kissing his cheeks and telling him she loved him so much. So, so much. And she cried when his father called. And he had called last night.

“She wasn’t crying because I don’t speak Spanish,” Marco said. “She was crying because she argued with my father. He wants Alejandro to come live with him in Odessa. My mother doesn’t want Alejandro to go.”

“Does Alejandro want to go?”

“Mother says Alejandro doesn’t know what he wants. He’s just a boy.”

“What does Alejandro say?”

Marco’s jaw clenched. “Alejandro says our father will teach him how to be a man.”

Alma made clicking sounds at the turtle, beckoning it to stick its nose out of the water again. “Don’t you want to be a man?”

“I can be a man here, with my mother,” he said, resolution heavy in his eight-year-old voice. “I don’t need to move to Odessa for that.”

Alma sat back on her heels, looked Marco in the eye. “He doesn’t want you, does he?”

Marco quirked his head to the left, a stiff head shake. “No.”

Alma reached out, ruffled Marco’s hair the way she’d seen his mother do. “I think you’ll be a good man,” she said. She smiled. Her adult teeth were too big for her mouth. They made her look oafish and radiant.

Marco liked the turtle pond not because it reminded him of the turtle he no longer had, the turtle his brother had poisoned with Pop Tarts, but because the water was peaceful, even in the dim gray of winter. The tiny ecosystem brought him peace and comfort. He could come to the pond and talk with Alma, away from people who would ask questions, and he could imagine himself the kind of boy other boys played ball with, the kind of boy dads wanted to visit, the kind of boy that knew what to say to a crying mother to make her smile and chase all her sadness away.

He wasn’t quite as fond of the turtle pond when it had other visitors, as it did now.

Mitsuo and Satsuko were ambling up the path to the water, heads down, hands tucked into the kangaroo pockets of their threadbare sweatshirts, tugging them low. Satsuko was wearing a long pink skirt that was not warm enough for this weather. Her wild hair served as a pink and black halo about her head. She was chewing gum and humming.

“You should go, Alma,” Marco said. He flicked his eyes to the teenagers approaching the pond.

“I don’t want to go,” Alma said, her chin jutting out as she pouted. “I don’t have anything else to do.”

“Go, Alma,” Marco hissed. “Please.”

But Alma only crossed her arms. “You’re not the boss of me.”

Marco groaned. That was one retort there just was no adequate answer to.

The teenagers came to sit near the pond, keeping a socially appropriate distance from Marco. Mitsuo flipped open his sketchbook, began drawing. Satsuko sprawled out next to him. She seemed oblivious to the cold. Marco watched them without looking like he was watching them.

A wind blew, and a loose piece of paper from Mitsuo’s notebook took to the air, tumbled about, skirted past Marco, headed for the water. Marco jumped to his feet and rescued the paper before it fell into the pond. He examined the drawing, smiled. He walked over to Mitsuo and handed to drawing to him. “You drew Gracey,” he said.

Mitsuo blushed, muttered a thank you, and stuck the paper back in the sketchbook. Marco knelt down beside him. “It looks just like her,” he said. “Even the way her hair is always a mess all over the place.”

Mitsuo chuckled a bit self-consciously, nodded. “Yeah.”

“Gracey lives across the street from me. I’m Marco,” he said.

Mitsuo smiled at the boy. “I’m Mitsuo,” he said. “I work at Gracey’s bakery.”

Marco raised an eyebrow. “That’s a funny name,” he said.

“It’s no funnier than Marco,” the teenager replied.

“That’s Spanish.”

The teen shrugged. “Mitsuo’s Japanese,” he said.

Now, Marco looked really surprised. “You’re Japanese? You look white.”

Mitsuo blushed again. “Well, no. I mean, I am white. She gave me that name,” he said, nodding in Satsuko’s direction.

Marco turned to Satsuko, who sat up and opened her mouth to speak when her eyes caught Marco’s. Electricity surged between them. The air around them crackled. Her eyes popped open and she reached out, placed her palms flat against the sides of Marco’s face. She leaned in close, like she was going to kiss him. A soft, slow smile, a disbelieving shake of the head, a serene sigh of bliss. “Do you know what you are?” she breathed.

“I’m a Libra,” Marco stammered.

Satsuko tossed her head back, laughed, didn’t remove her hands from Marco’s face. Her thumbs caressed his skin. “You have it in you,” she whispered. “But you don’t know how to use it.”

“What do you have in you, Marco?” Alma asked. Marco ignored her.

“Aw, leave him alone, Satsuko, you’re freaking him out.” Mitsuo reached for Satsuko, tugged on her sweatshirt.

But Marco wasn’t freaked out. He saw in Satsuko’s eyes a glimmer of something that he knew lived inside him, something unique to him, something he didn’t share with his brother or Alma or anyone. He’d thought it was his alone, a secret sparkle that he harbored, a mystery, a hobgoblin. But Satsuko had it, too. Or something very like it. The realization burned through Marco like fire. He didn’t even feel the cold anymore.

“Do you know how to use it?” Satsuko asked. She pulled her hands away from his face, folded them in her lap.

Marco shook his head. “No,” he said. “Well, only a little. And sometimes I mess it up and bad things happen.” He said this last part in a whisper, rolling the images and sounds from the night of the ouija board over in his mind. He searched Satsuko’s face. “You have it, too?”

Satsuko bit her bottom lip, smiled. “I can teach you,” she whispered. “Would you like that?”

“What are you guys talking about?” Mitsuo and Alma asked their own versions of the question, but neither was answered.

Marco nodded, not trusting his voice. Satsuko clapped her hands once, climbed to her knees and padded over to Mitsuo. She covered one of his hands with hers. “Draw this,” she said.

Obedient, Mitsuo flipped his sketchbook to a fresh page, his pencil hovering over the paper, waiting for Satsuko’s instruction. The girl closed her eyes, her facial muscles going slack. She breathed a few deep breaths, slipped into a trance. She was quiet, utterly still, without so much as a hair on her body bending to a breeze. But then the words started spilling out of her, not quite her own. Marco gave Alma a frightened look. Alma was smiling.

“He has long ears like a hare, but he’s a rabbit. A small body, compact, strong, with long, slender feet, good for jumping. He has bright, black eyes that twinkle, and his face is wise, knowing. He is surrounded by multitudes of others like him; they are brothers and sisters, celebrating. They are frivolous and happy. Eternal. He is called Two Rabbit. He’s waiting for you, Marco, on the other side of the moon.”

Mitsuo sketched furiously, his hand moving over the paper like a man possessed, taking the images Satsuko was feeding him and translating them into lines, arches, shadows. He scribbled madly, his tongue poking out for between his lips as he concentrated. Satsuko was not speaking now, but her hand was still on Mitsuo’s hand, a silent communication bonding them together as Satsuko transmitted and Mitsuo drew. Marco watched, fascinated, and Alma wrapped her arms around him lovingly.

After a long moment, Satusko’s mouth snapped shut, and her face became her own again as the stranger’s mask slipped off. She blinked a few times, smiled brightly at Marco, and beckoned for Mitsuo to hand her the sketch. Gingerly, he separated the paper from the sketchbook and handed it to her. She took the drawing, examined it closely, and then leaned over and kissed Mitsuo on the cheek. He blushed, scowling, but he didn’t push her away.

Satsuko scooted back over to Marco, folding the paper into quarters. She pressed it into his hand. “This is for you,” she said. “This is the first part. You take this paper, and you learn it by heart. Learn everything. Learn what he looks like. Learn what he makes you feel. Learn his name. And then—”

Marco screwed up his face, his eyebrows drawing together in confusion. “You called him—”

“Shizukani,” she hissed, shaking her head, bringing her finger to her lips in the universal sign for “be quiet.” “I don’t want to know what I said when I was under,” she said. “It was a message for you, not me. Whatever I called him, that wasn’t his name,” she said. “Do you understand the importance of a name?”

On a warm night in a small Mexican village, October 1st, 2001, a baby, small and pale, the color of coffee drowning in milk, slid between his mother’s bloody thighs, head first into the world, screaming. His fists were balled, his face smashed, the black hairs on his head plastered to his skin as he shook with violent sobs, demanding. La partera, the midwife, handed the baby to Irma, who admired him, eyes wide and disbelieving, so full of the inexplicable rush of maternal love, and ushered him directly to her breast. “Un niño,”A boy the midwife revealed, hands clutching at her heart.

Radiant, Irma caressed his cheek with a finger as the baby suckled. “José Alejandro Flores Guzman,” she said. “Hijo de mi alma.” Son of my soul

A few minutes later, the labor pains came again, and the midwife rushed between Irma’s legs as the new mother writhed in pain. “¡Gemelos!” Twins the midwife shouted. “El segundo viene.” The second one is coming.The mother pushed, and a second baby, identical in appearance to the first, slid into the world, his eyes wide open and curious even as he howled. The midwife handed the new baby to Irma, who accepted him in awe, shaking her head with disbelief, tears streaming down her cheeks. With the midwife’s help, Irma held the second baby to her body, offering him her free breast, watched as he suckled lazily. Irma looked up at the midwife, incredulous, and through her tears exclaimed, “Este se parece a mi papá. Lo nombraré José Maria Marco Flores Guzman, como mi padre.” This one looks like my Papa; I will name him José Maria Marco Flores Guzman after my father. At his naming, Marco paused his suckling and offered his mother his first smile; the midwife crossed herself, muttered blessings and prayers. Marco resumed his suckling, and Irma smiled at her two sons as they nursed hungrily and as she cried.

This was the story Irma had told her sons about their birth. He’d heard the story many times. As he’d grown older and the differences between him and his older brother became more marked, Marco wondered how much of their personalities had to do with their names. If Irma had named the first baby Marco for her father, instead of the second, would Alejandro now be quiet, withdrawn, studious, and thoughtful? Would he, Marco, be a different boy if he had been called Ignacio, Juaquin, Diego, or Andrés? He and Alejandro looked so alike. They came into the world the same way. They shared the same heritage, same family, same food, same bedroom. Yet they were so different. Alejandro had, as far as Marco knew, no hint of the kind of abilities that Marco had seen in himself.

Was it the name, then?

Marco nodded solemnly at Satsuko. “I understand,” he said.

Satisfied, Satsuko sat back on her heels. “Good. When you have this information, you come back to me. But now, I’ll teach you another thing.” She seemed to think a moment. “Can you come to the Badlands after school?”

Marco shook his head. “I’m not allowed to go to the Badlands,” he said.

“He’s just a kid,” Mitsuo put in.

Satsuko nodded. She turned to Mitsuo. “You think Gracey’d mind if me and Marco met at her bakery few time a week? No trouble.” Marco raised an eyebrow at Satsuko’s sudden poor English, but Mitsuo appeared to take no notice.

Mitsuo shrugged a shoulder, noncommittal. “I don’t know,” he said. “Can’t hurt to try.”

Satsuko turned back to Marco, smiling. Marco believed in that moment that he would come to love that smile. “I’ll see you there Monday,” she whispered. “After school. I’ll teach you how to see.”

Marco wasn’t so much spying on the Prime of Darkness as he was watching him very closely without the Prime of Darkness knowing about it.

The binoculars he’d gotten from Aunt Iris for his birthday were blue and yellow, and worked surprisingly well for a device purchased from Toys R Us. They hung around his neck from a blue cord when not in use, but right now he had them pressed against his eyes as he peered into the sun, trying to make out exactly what the Prime of Darkness was doing with his motorcycle.

“He’s just doing something to his bike,” Marco said, shrugging one bony shoulder. “Think we should go over there and see if he wants to come play?”

“No way,” Alma said, reaching for the binoculars. Marco scowled and handed them to her, pressing his head against hers. They were, after all, still attached to the cord around his neck. “Didn’t your mom say he was a social degenerate or something?”

Marco hooted. “Yeah, she did. She loves to say stuff like that. She says the same thing about Simon Cowell.”

“Who’s Simon Cowell?”

“You know, that guy on American Idol who says everybody sucks?”

Alma made a face. “You know I don’t watch television. Hey, look, what’s he doing now?”

She handed the binoculars back to Marco, who took a moment to adjust them while he peered across the yard to where the Prime of Darkness  was standing very still, staring up into a tree in front of Gracey’s house.   The only movement was his red cape as a soft breeze rustled by.

“That guy is so weird,” Marco said. “What’s he looking at?”

Alma shook her head. ” I don’t know, I can’t tell. I thought maybe you could see. Maybe there’s birds in that tree. A nest.”

Marco chuckled, shaking his head. “I don’t think anybody who looks like that cares that much about birds.” When Alma didn’t disagree, Marco continued. “What are those things on his shoulders, anyway? Those shiny, pointy things?”

“I think those are his pauldrons,” Alma said, reaching for the binoculars again. “But I don’t know why he’s wearing them. I think they’re for like, ancient warriors or something. Or superheroes.”

Marco whistled. “How do you know about pauldrons?” he asked.

Alma looked sternly matter-of-fact as only an eight year old girl can, even as she peered intently through the binoculars. “I read it in a comic book.”

Marco looked impressed. “Yeah? Which one?”

Alma handed the binoculars back to Marco, bored now of watching the Prime of Darkness stare up into a tree. She rolled over onto her back, folding her hands across her stomach. “I don’t remember,” she said. “I read a lot of comic books.”

Marco took the binoculars off and set them aside. “Which one is your favorite?”

Alma thought a moment, making hrmmming sounds as her mind whirled. “Well, I really like X-Men,” she said, slowly, “but I also really like Steady Beat, but that’s not really a comic, more like a manga. And there’s no superheroes in it.”

“What’s a manga?”

But now Alma was tired of answering questions. Rolling her eyes, she slapped Marco on the knee. “You don’t know anything,” she said, shaking her head. “Hey, where’s your brother?”

Marco shrugged, stung by Alma’s off-hand remark. “He’s at our dad’s place in Odessa.”

Alma cocked her head to the side. “How come you don’t go?”

It was a question Marco had stopped asking himself, because he was confused about the real answer. Their dad liked sports, talking loud, and driving too fast. He thought reading was a waste of time. Alejandro and their father had many of these things in common, but Marco, even though he and Alejandro were twins, couldn’t relate. Still, he wanted to spend time with his dad. He just wasn’t sure his dad wanted to spend time with him. In fact, he got the feeling he kind of creeped his dad out.

But he didn’t want to share any of this with Alma. “I don’t really like Odessa that much,” he said lamely.

Alma let the subject drop, refocusing her attention on the stranger with the tree fascination. She lifted the binoculars and looked across the street again, but the Prime of Darkness was nowhere to be found.