In the Great Quiet

Prologue

It begins with the earth.

She says,

Once, they listened for my voice. With the crash of dawn over the horizon, they’d press their palms against my skin, wet me with their tears. A swipe of soil across the brow, a crumble of my body in their palms, my cinnamon-red hue as sacred as blood. Once, I was cherished. But that was longago.

Today, I scream, and you do not hear.

Today, I’m brittle and fragmented and so thirsty I spit out coughs of despair and ash.

You call it dust storm, drought, famine.

Today, your storytellers speak of a hunt.

I feel your wheels scrape into my skin, wagons collapsing my throat, hoofbeats stomping along my spine.

Then—alone in the wild distances something begins.

Across my body, women speak. Memories intertwine, forward and backward, across eons, the reality of one ancestor blending with the truth of another: a new history of women arriving.

Once, the prairie was quiet and I was alone. But that was longago.

Time continues to turn, around and around I spin.

Today, I will tell you such tales. Of women who drove cattle dressed as men and women who swallowed thunderbolts as newborns.

Women determined, women lost. Women seemingly ordinary, women larger than life.

Some women recorded in the annals of history, others told as fireside lore.

Settle in, listen. I have stories to tell.