Something wasn’t quite right.

Everything looked familiar—the sky overhead was the same clear blue it had been for days, the still air still hot and dry. In fact, everything looked too familiar.  Marco was standing in the Love & War cemetery, wearing the same uncomfortable suit he’d just worn to Aleister Fairgood’s funeral. He could smell aftershave and funeral flowers.

Something wasn’t quite right.

He took a more careful look around. A group of mourners stood in one corner of the cemetery, huddled before an open grave. Marco immediately recognized the scene, as he’d seen it just a day earlier. He was watching Aleister Fairgood’s funeral.The grave was still open, the preacher standing over it reading from the Bible, a heady flower arrangement placed over the shining coffin. Sitting on folding chairs in the front row, Shira Fairgood stared unblinking into space.

Marco shuddered. He’d seen all this before. Reliving the funeral wasn’t anything he wanted to be doing.

Lifting his eyes, Marco saw movement on the opposite end of the cemetery. Moving in to take a closer look, Marco grinned as the apparition solidified into a familiar shape. Two Rabbit was beckoning for Marco with a quick jerk of the head, impatiently tapping a slender foot against the earth.

Quietly, Marco hurried away from the mourners, breathing a sigh of relief as he approached the rabbit. But his relief was replaced with confusion as he drew closer, his brow drawing together in a furrow. “You look weird,” Marco said.

“You’re a very rude young man, and I don’t mind saying so,” the rabbit retorted, obviously offended. “I don’t see why you should say such a thing, anyway—you are dressed in your finery, and I am dressed in mine.”

Marco wasn’t entirely sure what “finery” meant, but all the same, Two Rabbit did look weird. Unlike the first time they’d met, Two Rabbit now had a large, rectangular, golden ring running through his nose, and his face was painted half black and half red. Around his long ears was perched a golden, fan shaped headdress.

“But why are you dressed like that?” Marco asked.

The rabbit bristled. “Never mind that! We are not here for you to harangue me with you impertinent interview! If you knew the history of your ancestors, you wouldn’t have to ask these questions in the first place!”

Marco looked down, abashed, and the rabbit sighed, lowering his voice. “My apologies. I am not used to being questioned. I must remember to grant you a modicum of leeway. I will agree to remind myself of your unfortunate ignorance if you will agree to keep your questions and superfluous comments to a minimum. Are we agreed?”

Marco wasn’t sure what, exactly, he was agreeing to, but it seemed best to hold his tongue and nod his head, which he did. Two Rabbit sighed, visibly relieved.

“Very well. First things first. It has been a while since our last encounter. What, my dear boy, has taken you so long to return?”

Marco shrugged his shoulders. “I didn’t know how to find you again,” he admitted.

“Well, how did you manage to find me this time?”

Marco’s face flushed red. “I think it’s because I got drunk,” he said, embarrassed.

The rabbit guffawed. “Drunk! Surely you jest! And what, pray tell, did you get drunk on?”

“Pulque.”

The rabbit nodded slowly, dark eyes twinkling. “It adds up, then,” he said. “Pulque is a sacred beverage, Marco, and it will always bring you to me. However, it is probably in your interest, especially at your age, to find another way to induce the state of mind which will initiate our meetings, don’t you agree?”

Marco nodded, relieved that he was going to be spared a scolding. He figured he’d subjected to punishment enough upon waking, whenever that may be.

“I don’t suppose, then, that you’ve managed to conjure up my name yet, have you?”

Marco gave a slow, dejected shake of the head.

The rabbit sighed. “I suppose it cannot be helped. Well, let’s get on with it, shall we? Tell me, Marco: why have you brought us here to the place of the dead? I rather preferred our last venue, if I’m to be honest. I’m not very comfortable with funerary rites.”

At this, Marco looked surprised, and shook his head. “I didn’t bring you here,” he said. “I just drank the pulque and fell asleep, and now I’m dreaming, but I’m not dreaming of the funeral on purpose. Believe me.”

The rabbit gave Marco one of his knowing smiles. “This is your dream, Marco,” Two Rabbit said. “If we are here, we are here for reasons that are your own. And, considering the subject matter, I suspect the reasons are important, even if your conscious mind isn’t yet sure what they are. Together we’ll work it out. Now tell me, Marco: why do you need to see the funeral again?”

Without realizing it, Marco had begun walking toward the funeral party, Two Rabbit hopping apace beside him. They were close enough now to hear the preacher’s voice, but not close enough to make out the words. Marco watched the woman in the front row crying silent tears, an older woman holding her hand. “That’s the widow, Mrs. Fairgood,” Marco whispered. “Nobody can find her daughter.”

“Is she the one you’re here to see?”

Marco shook his head. “I don’t think so.”

“Then look again.”

Marco watched the scene before him with an eerie sense of déjà vu, though in truth, it wasn’t just that he felt he’d already seen this before. He really had. The funeral he watched now was the same one he had attended. He saw Bibi Armstrong and her husband (whose name Marco didn’t know) standing with Jackson and Hannah Davey. He saw Gracey and Tiny dressed in matching black dresses, their hair pulled back from their faces. He even saw himself sitting between his mother and Alejandro, and Alma (who had not been invited, Marco noted) playing by herself in the last row. Everything was exactly as it had been just a day or so ago. He’d already seen all of this once. He didn’t understand why he needed to see it all again.

And then Marco saw her.

He didn’t remember seeing her the first time, but perhaps he had seen her and just not noticed her—otherwise, would he be able to see her now, in his subconscious? Noticing her now, Marco felt as though an itch in his brain had finally been scratched. Standing just behind the widow and next to the magician  Simon St. Laine was a small, dark woman, her downturned face hidden behind a mass of shiny, black curls. She stood erect, shoulders back, unmoving. She was perfectly still, more like an image than a real woman, but what called his attention to her was not the way she looked.

It was that Marco could hear her screaming inside her own head.

Her screams were wordless, animal, the sound of pure terror and suffering. Emotions radiated out from her like waves from an earthquake’s epicenter, and Marco gasped as they rippled through him: fury, hatred, desire…and bone-chilling satisfaction.

“It’s her,” Marco breathed, his voice thready. “She’s the one. I didn’t notice her before. That’s why I had to come again.”

He’d barely said the words when everything came rushing back to him in a whirlwind of images and feelings. The graveyard at nighttime. The ouija board. The spirit that had beckoned to him, cajoling him into bringing it over from wherever it was to Love & War, where it wasn’t supposed to be. The high-pitched laughter that had seemed directed at him, and Rubio Bautista’s ruined body hanging from that tree. And then, worst of all, the humiliation he’d felt at having been unable to resist doing something he’d known he shouldn’t have done.

Two Rabbit narrowed his eyes at Marco, his expression stern. “Do you have her name, Marco? If you own a thing’s name—”

“—You own a thing,” Marco finished. He licked his lips and clenched his hands into small, determined fists. “I know it. I remember. Her name is Minerva Katherine Auckland.”

He spoke her name with crisp clarity, and felt every hair on his body stand at attention as he said it. The moment her name left Marco’s lips, the woman’s head snapped up, and her attention was on Marco, her bright, intense eyes staring daggers at the boy. They stared at each other across the funeral party, across dimensions of time, across dreamtime and reality. As he stared at her, Marco felt his skin grow terribly hot as though he were on fire. After a moment, a slow, thin, cold smile spread across the woman’s face, and she mouthed the words, “I see you, Marco.”

Marco felt like he might be sick.

Breaking eye contact, Marco took a few frantic steps backward, stumbled, and toppled to the ground beside the rabbit, his eyes rimmed with tears. His skin seemed to have grown cool again. “I have to put her back, Two Rabbit,” he said. “She’s terrible. She’s hurting people. I brought her here and now I have to put her back where she belongs.”

“Taking responsibility for one’s actions,” the rabbit proclaimed in a bombastic voice befitting one so prone to pontification, “is the first irrefutable sign of a noble heart. However, it must be pointed out, Marco, that you’re just a little boy, and such an undertaking might be even beyond your abilities, such as they are.”

“You said I was a warrior,” Marco reminded him, his voice full of reproach.

The rabbit, at least, had the decency to appear appropriately rebuffed. “A warrior in training, perhaps, that you are. Still, one warrior cannot accomplish much of anything on his own, which is why kings and emperors form allegiances. So tell me, Marco, who are your allies? Who can you trust to help you banish the evil that you’ve unleashed?”

His mind was not as filled with possibilities as he would have liked. He immediately dismissed his mother as a candidate, for her weak heart and propensity for melodrama made Marco suspect she wouldn’t have the strength to help him in his quest, even if she believed him, which she probably wouldn’t. He similarly dismissed his Aunt Conchita, for even though she might have been of some help, she could be relied upon to divulge Marco’s predicament to his mother.

His stepfather Chucho was not around often enough to be helpful, but even if he were Marco wasn’t sure he could confide in him; the two weren’t especially close. He considered Satsuko, with her wise eyes and obvious affection for him, but although a teenager, she was just a kid, too.

Who could he trust, who could he trust?

He scanned the funeral, looking for someone, anyone who could help him, who would believe him, who would share responsibility for putting that unholy entity back in her grave.

A gentle breeze blew, bringing with it the unmistakable aroma of buttery crust oozing with blueberry juice. He closed his eyes, savoring the smell, his stomach rumbling with hunger. And just like that, Marco had his answer: Gracey Daylittle. Gracey would help him.

His body was getting heavy, and the world around him was beginning to fade; he was waking up. He turned to Two Rabbit and smiled. “I’ll see you soon?”

The rabbit hopped close and nuzzled Marco with a twitchy nose. “Any time you need me,” he agreed.

New Year’s Day had only just come and gone in Love & War, but in the supersaturated version of the town that Marco inhabited in his dreams, it was spring. The sky was deep and blue, the sides of the roads dotted with the orange and yellow wildflowers that managed to thrive in the desert. Marco was sitting alone at the turtle pond, jeans rolled up over his knees, feet skimming the cool, clear water.

A few feet away, crouched low behind a cactus and watching Marco with intent, gleaming eyes and the occasional twitch of a long, slender ear, was a rabbit.

Something was different about this rabbit. Most rabbits Marco had happened upon shook when you looked at them, their tiny bodies all taut muscle ready to spring at a moment’s notice, and they darted off, uncatchable, if you go too close. (He knew this because many summer afternoons with Alejandro and Cheehawk had been spent trying to catch a rabbit, since Chucho had promised if they caught one, they could keep it. In retrospect, Marco recognized it for the ploy to keep the boys outside and occupied and out of their mother’s hair it was.) But this rabbit was different. He looked relaxed, even curious. And he was so pretty and fluffy. So Marco reached into his pocket and pulled out a carrot. Smiling, he held it out to the rabbit, clucking his teeth as he did so. “Here, bunny bunny,” he said. “Come get the carrot. Come get the nice carrot.”

The rabbit sniffed, turned up his nose in disdain. “Now, really,” the rabbit said, “is that any way to talk to a superior being?”

This was how Marco knew he was dreaming. He dropped the carrot in his lap and cocked his head quizzically at the rabbit. “Wait a second,” Marco said slowly. “I think I know you. I have a drawing of you in my pocket.”

Again the rabbit sniffed, thumping his foot in irritation. “Oh, that’s rich,” the rabbit said. “You have a drawing of me in your pocket, therefore you think you know me? You know of me, perhaps. Is that what meant to say?”

Marco didn’t understand the question, and so felt no need to answer.

“You don’t know as much as you think in any case,” the rabbit continued. “The Japanese girl gave you a task, a mission toward which your sum effort up to this point has been to pass a hastily drawn—though very good, I must admit—illustration of me to a dull-witted fat boy and inquire as to whether I looked familiar. To him.” The rabbit shook his head, bristling as he did so. “As though I have any use whatsoever for such a one as he. Truly, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you were daft. I have little use for the mentally impaired, do you understand?”

Marco didn’t understand every nuance of what the rabbit was saying, but he knew that tone of voice all too well and understood that he was being scolded. Cheeks burning red, Marco had the decency to lower his eyes, chagrined. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know how to do what Satsuko told me to do.”

Satisfied, the rabbit shook himself, hopped closer to where Marco sat. “All right. Now that we have that nonsense out of the way, I believe a proper introduction is in order. What is your name?”

“Marco,” he said, shyly.

Flustered, the rabbit beat his foot against the ground, beady eyes glaring from underneath a furry brow. “I didn’t ask you what you are called,” the rabbit said. “I asked you your name. A name is a sacred thing, boy, and you are right not to give it blithely. To own a thing’s name is to own a thing. If you don’t remember anything else, remember that. On the other hand, I am here to help you. And I cannot do that without the magic that is your name. You are called Marco. But that is not your name. A thing is, and a thing seems. What it is and what it seems are not always the same. That is the difference between llamarTo be called and nombrarTo be named. Do you understand?”

Marco licked his lips, nodded. “I think so.”

The rabbit nodded. “Very well, then. I’ll ask you again. What is your name?”

“José Maria Marco Flores Guzman,” he said.

The rabbit smiled, a sight more disconcerting than Marco would have expected. “Very well. And for whom were you named, José Maria Marco Flores Guzman?”

“For my mother’s father,” Marco supplied. He suspected the rabbit would appreciate the precision of this answer over the more ambiguous term, “grandfather”.

“And your mother’s father? For whom was he named?”

Marco shook his head. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “No one?”

“Well,” the rabbit said, “surely he was not the first person to be called José Maria, nor Marco, is that right?”

Marco shrugged. “I guess.”

The rabbit said nothing, waiting expectantly. Marco half expected him to stand on his hind legs and cross his front legs over his chest.

“José Maria is for the blessed mother and Joseph,” Marco said after a while. “Baby Jesus’s parents.”

The rabbit nodded. “Go on.”

But Marco only shrugged, shaking his head. “I don’t know any other Marcos,” he said.

The rabbit puffed out his chest, his long ears twitching impatiently. “I have so much to teach you, and such a little time to do it. I do wish your upbringing thus far had been more competent, but I imagine your poor mother has had other things occupying her mind, such as it is. No matter, we shall have to make do with what we have. Now listen up: you, your grandfather, Marco Polo, the month of March, MartesTuesday, the red planet, the martial arts, and all the Marcos for all eternity, or close enough that it makes no difference, are named for the Roman god Mars—once a god of fertility and vegetation, but later and most prominently known as a god of war. You, my boy, have the might of warriors running within you.”

Marco looked skeptical. “I’m not a warrior,” Marco said slowly. “I’m just a little kid.”

“Cartesian philosophy,” the rabbit interjected, “will be the downfall of mankind; mark my words! It is possible to be more than one thing at a time—I know creatures who are a dozen things at once, so to manage two should be a small feat. Especially for one such as you, who has been set aside for such great things.” He glanced at Marco, and upon seeing his distress and confusion, shook his furry head. “But I’m getting ahead of myself,” he said, a smile creeping into his voice. “I’ll take that carrot now, if you don’t mind,” the rabbit said, motioning with this nose to the vegetable in Marco’s lap. “All this talking makes my mouth a little dry.”

Quickly, Marco retrieved the carrot from his lap and passed it to the rabbit. He waited patiently, kicking his feet in the pond water, while the rabbit munched. When the rabbit was finished—he’d even finished off the greens—he sat back on his haunches, satisfied. “Thank you; that’s quite a lot better. Now. Where was I?”

“Mars,” Marco said.

But the rabbit shook his head. “In point of fact, we had gotten off that subject, though I do not doubt we shall have to return to it at a later date. What we were actually discussing was the ability to be more than one thing at a time,” the rabbit said. “I, for example, am a rabbit. But I am also a god. I am a brother, a husband, and a son. And each of these things that I am has a story,” he said. “If you only know me as one thing—say, a rabbit—then you only know one of my stories. You would know that I like carrots and that I like to run and jump. But if all you know about me is that I am a rabbit, then you wouldn’t suspect that I am also a great lover of alcohol, would you?”

Marco waited a long beat before saying, “You don’t look like a god.”

At this, the rabbit chuckled, bending one ear playfully toward Marco. “How would you know? Have you ever seen a god before?”

Marco hesitated. “No, but we have pictures of Jesus Christ at my house and you don’t look like him. Not at all.”

“And why would I?” the rabbit asked, indignant. “Jesus Christ is a man; I am clearly a rabbit, and under no circumstances do rabbits and men look alike, even if they are both gods. You see, Marco, your problem, and the problem with all of humanity, I daresay, is that you aren’t very good thinkers. Your propensity for logic is terrible. There have been exceptions, of course, but overall you are much better storytellers than you are thinkers, though you, José Maria Marco Flores Guzman, will have to learn to do both equally well, for that is what you have been destined for. Blessed with two purposes!”

Marco stared at the rabbit a moment. Finally he said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

The rabbit laughed and winked at Marco. “No, I don’t suppose you do, but keep listening; it will all make sense by and by. Now. My point, Marco, is that you are a boy, and you are a warrior. You are also, it would seem, a go-between. You have one foot in your world and one foot in mine,” he said. The rabbit’s voice had gone softer, more stern, as though the mirth had all but seeped out of it. “But other things are more than one thing, too. And if you only know a thing in one way, you’ll never have the whole story. Everything has more than one story, and every story has more than one point of view. There is nothing more important than story, Marco. Not even logic. If you know the stories, you can access all the power of the universe.”

Marco’s head was swimming. He could make neither heads nor tails of what the rabbit was saying, but it seemed that the rabbit liked to talk, and Marco had nothing better to do, so it seemed wise to simply let the rabbit talk. Besides, it wasn’t so often that he had the pleasure of talking with rabbits on warm spring afternoons by the turtle pond and he had enough of his wits about him to realize he shouldn’t pass such an opportunity by.

The rabbit cocked his head to the side; his ear perked up and turned. He was listening to something. “Do you hear that?”

Marco stood as still as he could. At first all he heard was the sound of cars in the distance, the beating of his own heart. Then, softly, like a whisper on the wind, he heard it—a sweet soprano, a melody he recognized but couldn’t quite place.

“That’s my Aunt Conchita singing,” Marco said.

The rabbit nodded. His face was solemn. “You are going to have to wake up soon.”

“I’m not ready. You never told me your name,” Marco said.

Again, the rabbit smiled. “You may call me Two Rabbit,” he said. “But for now, I’m going to keep my name. I have faith that you will come to discover it on your own. And once you do, our real work will begin. But there is one more thing you must know before you go. The Japanese girl.”

The rabbit rubbed his front two paws together while he thought of what to say. After a moment he licked his lips, if you can call what a rabbit has lips, and said, “There’s much you can learn from that one,” he said. “Take care to pay attention to her. Stay close. And whatever you do, keep her talking if you can. She’s got more stories than Scheherazade.”