torn the paper:
WHEN THE CREEK RUNS BACKWARD, LOOK UNDER THE HAWK’S BEAK.
Lily had read that line a hundred times.
She had never understood it.
Calder Creek ran down from the mountain into town. It did not run backward. Creeks did not decide to reverse themselves because someone wrote a poetic sentence in a notebook.
But three weeks ago, after a summer dry enough to crack mud into plates, Lily had seen something.
At dawn, before the feed store opened, she had walked up to refill jugs from the
