Blue sighs. “Somehow I’m not surprised you’re less familiar with your own gods than you are with the Olympians.”

“I had to write a report on Demeter,” I say defensively. “Evan wrote one on Persophone. It’s not like we’ve ever had to write about… about… who did you say, again?”

“Hihankaga,” Rising Star interrupts. “Owl-Maker, in English. She is the goddess of the dead and the guardian of the afterlife.”

Mom raises her hand. “I’m sorry, the goddess of the dead decided to bless my son?”

Blue looks towards the sky. “Hihankaga help us,” she says, exasperated. “Owl-Maker is the guardian of the Path of Stars, the bridge we all walk when we die. There, she judges if you are ready for death or not.”

“So the Lakota afterlife… is in the sky?” I ask warily. “That’s… that’s definitely new.”

“It is different,” Blue agrees. “The Olympians all go underground, which is just…” she shivers. “Could you imagine being stuck underground for the rest of your afterlife? Seems too much for me.”

Rising Star gazes wistfully upwards, then immediately gets annoyed with the ceiling. “I like being able to see the sky,” she says. “Modern buildings are so…” she scrunches up her nose.

“Too damn suffocating,” Blue agrees. “Let’s go back to camp. Are you three coming?” She aims this question at me, Mom, and Evan.

Mom and I immediately perk up and agree, but Evan seems a little on the unsure side.

“I dunno,” he says. “I… I kinda want to go learn more about my own mom.”

Blue tuts. “Oh, honey. I don’t know that you’ll ever meet her.” She shakes her head sadly. “Hecate is not known for her motherly nature.”

Rising Star ruffles his hair. “If she wants to meet you, she’ll find her way out here. We don’t have anything to stop her from coming into the camp to meet you if she ever decides she wants… she wants to.” Rising Star frowns. “Actually, that’s a solid point. We don’t have any borders for the camp. I don’t know how safe that’ll be if we start filling the place to the brim with demigods and other magical mortals.”

“We can talk to Fallen Star and Resting Star about it when we get back,” Blue agrees. “It does seem a bit questionable, thinking about it.”

“So where is this camp you keep talking about, anyway?” Mom asks, look at the two as she grabs her purse and car keys. “And did you two drive here or…? Should I follow you in my car?”

“You can follow us, we took a rezmobile to the park,” Blue says dismissively.

“A rezmobile?” Mom asks, incredulous. “Immortals drive rezmobiles?”

Blue laughs. “Anything that gets lost on the rez… well, we consider it an offering to us and take it for ourselves. We’ve got a few cars, but we usually drive the ‘75 Eldarado when we need to go too far.”

My dad comes around the corner at this. “Forgive me, ladies… immortals, whatever you are, did you say you drive a ‘75 caddy?”

I laugh at this as he begins pelting questions at Blue and Rising Star. To my surprise, Rising Star rises and answers all of them, as well as mentioning a few… magical alterations she’s made to the car.

“It’s a convertible with no roof,” she starts. “We replaced it with a ward against rain and wind, so it’s always comfy without a roof, and so we can fire from it with more ease. I’ve been working on it since ‘77, when it was lost in a snowstorm at the back end of someone’s land. They never did unbury it, so we took it as an offering. It’s got a custom engine - Nice as the old eight-point-two liter V8 engine was, we replaced it with a more modernized V12, modified from a Rolls-Royce.” Rising Star grins at that. “She can reach sixty in under five seconds after all the work I’ve done on her.”

My dad and I both whistle. “That’s a hotrod,” he says. “Can I see her sometime?”

Rising Star shrugs. “Sure,” she responds. “Come out to the camp sometime, you can take her for a spin. We use her to get to the Gathering of Nations every year, so she’s a reliable old thing.”

“Sweet,” I say. I love cars, and I know dad does too, but we’ve never really had the time to do much about it.

Dad, for as much as I love him, spends all his time working. He’s an attorney downtown, but spends so much time taking on cases pro bono that he doesn’t make as much as he’d hope. But still… he helps people who need it, and that’s what’s important.

To him, at least. To me, it mostly means we never get to do anything fun.

Mom turns from talking to Blue. “So we just head to Silver City, then… what, keep going a little past?” She frowns. “There’s just a dirt road… ooooh, I get it. You hide the camp out on the dirt road, don’t you?”

Blue shrugs. “I wouldn’t say there’s much need to hide anything, but yeah. That’s about the gist of it.”

“Sweet. So we’ll meet you down there? It’s only about a twenty minute drive or so, isn’t it? Not that far.”

“Twenty five, give or take, yeah. We’ll take the girl and you can take the boys.”

“Sounds good to me,” Mom replies. “We’ll meet you out there.

So out there it turns out is basically just a lot of grass.

“This is the camp?” Mom calls out to Blue and Rising Star as they get out of the car, Red Cheek and Layla behind them. She’s got a hand over her eyes, blotting out the sun. “There’s not much out here but grass, and… that.” Mom points up.

“That’s Starpeak!” Rising Star calls out.

Now, I want to point out that, as we drove up, I saw no mountains in this area. At least, nothing beyond the normal rolling hills of ȟesapa that I expect in this area.

But now? Looking up, I’m absolutely blown away by the size of the mountain in front of us. There’s no way this mountain is actually there - It dwarfs Black Elk Peak, which I can no longer see behind it.

“How tall is that?” I call out.

Rising Star chooses to walk to our side before answering. “Just shy of sixteen thousand feet. It’s the tallest peak in the Rockies and for most of the surrounding distance. This, my dear nephew, is what we protect - the heart of ȟesapa. This is the mountain we climb when we want to speak with the Star People.”

My breath skips a few. “How… how did you prevent anyone from seeing it?”

Rising Star just shrugs at this. “Honestly? Pure luck, at this point. People ventured to Silver City there, but then just… went no further. We think someone is pushing them away, but we’re not sure who.” She squints up at the peak. “Could be the heart itself is repelling any who might mean it harm.”

“So… when will I have to climb this?”

Rising Star just smiles mysteriously at me. “That, my dear nephew, is going to be up to Fallen Star, not me.”

“Ah,” I say. Of course. A medicine man would lead me on my spiritual journey out here, not a woman. Nice as Rising Star is, it’s Fallen Star I’ll be spending most of my time with.

I look around at the barrenness of the camp. “So there’s not much going on out here, auntie.” I frown. “If we want to have a camp of any sort out here… what kind of camp is it, anyway?”

Rising Star shrugs. “A summer camp. Y’know. Somewhere for kids to have fun and learn things they can’t at school.”

“Wait… hold on. You want to make a summer camp for demigods and other kids like that? Isn’t that, y’know, a bit dangerous?”

At this, Red Cheek walks up behind us. “I’ve been talking to Layla, who has some surprising insight about why the Greeks and Romans, at least, focus on these camps for younger kids.”

“Oh?” I ask.

She frowns at my tone, but continues. “They’re designed to give kids the best chance they can - but we’ll likely also end up accepting significantly younger children than we’d expected, as it sounds like Greek and Roman demigods, at least, begin to attract monsters around the time they hit puberty.”

“Weird part of puberty,” I observe. “But won’t they just go to the other camps?”

Blue shakes her head. “That’s the issue - out here on the prairie…” She hesitates, a little nervous, but continues. “Out here on the prairie, creatures blow in from every part of the world. Everything blows onto the prairie at some point or another, whether it wants to or not. It’s why we made our living out here - We could interact with the rest of the world without ever leaving home.”

I blink. I hadn’t expected that.

“But that also means that a lot of Greek and Roman demigods, at least, never make it alive out of here. The poor satyrs sent to rescue them just don’t know what they’re up against.”

“Sounds like you’ve known about this for awhile,” I say quietly.

Blue shrugs. “It’s Resting Star’s decision. I run the camp down here, but he’s the mouthpiece of the upper spirits. And we do what the upper spirits say, whether we like it or not.”

“Besides,” Rising Star’s voice is tinged with sadness. “They’re not our problem, and very rarely are they our oyate’s children.”

I smile at the use of oyate. It means “nation” or “people,” and our oyate is the Lakota people. And out here on the prairie, we ruled the roost.

Rising Star walks us around the area, but there’s not a whole lot to see. The mountain envelopes this little valley in a U-shape, as if to embrace it on three sides. The U itself is layered in three distinct levels of terrain - The lowest, which we’re standing on, has a bonfire burning in the middle of it. The central houses the largest tipi I’ve ever seen in my life, and the path up to the second is flanked by a rundown cabin, sorta cabin in the woods vibes that looks like I’ll have a meet-and-greet with a serial killer if I walk into it.

The highest flat area is just flat, and nothing is happening there.

Two small paths break off from it. One curves over the eastern slope of the mountain and around to the other side of it, but the other begins a very long criss-cross back and forth across this face of the mountain before eventually disappearing around the western face of the mountain. I assume that one leads to the peak.

“So,” Mom says, her hand on her hip. “We want to turn this into a summer camp for magical children.”

“Yep,” Blue says. “And I have no idea where to start.”

“Well,” Mom says, with confidence in her voice. “You’re in luck.”

This is where I should mention what my job does for a living - She works for the YMCA downtown, running summer camps.

I can’t help but laugh at the sheer luck, but if the upper spirits are involved… well, it’s probably not luck. No doubt they picked me specifically because they knew my mom would be able to help the clueless immortals about how to entertain children.

Mom explains to the three immortals what her day job is, and the three of them burst out laughing at the sheer coincidence of situations happening. Mom starts to go off on a tangent, and pulls Layla to her side, pelting her with questions about the two other camps that Layla has seen and knows about.

In the meantime, Evan and I decide to explore the serial-killer-y looking cabin.

We approach it through the high grass. As we push through the strings and strings of stuff, I glance over at Evan. His bright brown eyes are flecked with gold, and I can’t help but wonder - Did Hecate do that? Or is that because he’s as Native as these tall grasses we’re surrounded by?

I can’t help but notice the similarities between him and the ground we’re surrounded by. He reminds me of the grass, with the way he waves and darts between the tall grasses and shrubbery, and when a hand darts out towards a bush filled with bright red berries, it returns with a couple for me and a smile on his lips. He has an underbite, same as he always has, and I can’t help but smile when he gives me a handful of juneberries.

He makes me smile, and I’ll never forget that.

We make it to the cabin and the first thing that happens is I fall over dead.