Elatsoe

As Vivian and Ronnie’s friends wait to hear from Ellie and Jay, she tells the women the story of how she once killed a man. She describes growing up in New Mexico and how “[her] mother got the idea to make an extinct thing her companion” (444). Vivian would watch as her mother trained the mammoth, and before long, she taught her daughter how to command the creature. One day while Vivian was a little girl, she was walking through the desert. A man in a pickup truck tried to abduct her by threatening her with a knife, and Vivian “called for the mammoth” (450). The ghost sensed that Vivian was in danger, so it violently murdered the man while Vivian watched. Vivian “[doesn’t] feel guilt, but [she] wish[es] that [she] could have kept [her] innocence just a little longer” (451). Suddenly, Al finds them and explains that Ellie and Jay are trying to save everyone in the ballroom. Suddenly, they hear cries of panic coming from the ballroom. They try to open the doors as hundreds of people knock frantically for help, but they are “blocked with a supernatural barrier” (455). Vivian wills the mammoth to appear, but with all of the noise from the ballroom, she can’t focus enough to summon the creature.