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The moon was less than half-full, a sickled horn waning toward the dark of the moon, sending down silver moonrays that fought the flickering candle-colors set out through the town. At Tomas's family's home, the party would spill out the doors and yard, draped with fragile paper cutouts and candy skulls, while another party would glow with jack-o-lantern lights in Eva's yard.
Grandma Harken had not wasted a pumpkin on the old holiday of the East. She had not hung sugar skulls or set out offerings to the dead. A low fire lit the house Grandma Harken shared with a girl as delicate as a quail. After Grandma Harken's long, long year, with her grandson's foolishness about the jackalope wife and the fight with the cold-king, she felt perfectly justified in staying at home this night, to coax Spook-cat from under the bed for a petting in the fire's orange glow.
"You and me and Spook-cat tonight," she said to the girl.
The girl asked, "No town party?" She cast her eyes down, looked disappointed.
That made Grandma Harken hesitate. It was one thing for her to tell Eva she wouldn't come into town, but keeping a young apprentice from dancing and foolishness, even a girl with cholla-rib bones, didn't sit right with her.
She sighed. "Could drop in on Eva. See how she's doing. Got your shoes, girl?"
The moon was a little higher in the crisp air as they walked toward Eva's house, octotillo and the rare tall sugaro casting day-sharp shadows. More candles had been lit and set at town windows, or were carried in human hands, doubling, trebling, blurring the shadows. Some of those candles and the chattering folk who held them strolled toward her daughter's house, where children ran in and out of open doors, wheeling in loud flocks to accost the next interesting person or thing.
Grandma Harken thought wistfully of Spook-cat and her own comfortable fireside, but gripped Anna's great-granddaughter's hand a tiny bit more firmly as they came into Eva's house.
"Grandma!" voices called, and piping children's voices, birdlike, shouted for her apprentice. Eva turned and hurried over, plump and comfortable. "Mother,” she said, mildly surprised, "sit down right here. Adam, get Ma a plate, there's a good boy."
She sat stiffly in the warm bustle. The plate came heaped with cornmeal cakes and fried chicken, a black bean and sweet corn salad bursting with cilantro, green and red peppers chopped and mixed in. Her apprentice's voice cut through the party racket, glowing with happiness as she shouted along with one of the kids' songs adding to the noise.
It would be a long walk home, back to the edge of the desert, but hearing that happy noise from her quiet apprentice, and watching Eva's comfortable smile, Grandma Haken thought the trip might be worth the effort.