Elatsoe

As Ellie and her father begin their road trip across Texas, she thinks back to her memories of Trevor. Ellie recalls how Trevor got her interested in comic books and how she and her parents came to visit Trevor after he “moved to Kunetai, the Rio Grande, to be an elementary school teacher and father” (88). Trevor married a woman named Lenore, and as they contemplated starting a family, Lenore insisted that their future children would never learn how to wake the dead. After all, “death is a natural end point” (90), and Lenore doesn’t believe in bringing anyone or anything back from the underworld. Ellie and Trevor went hiking through a National Park but got lost along the way.

They encountered an old man, who turned out to be a monster in disguise: the Leech that Six-Great tried to kill years ago by cutting off its cursed hair. The Leech sought revenge against the descendants of Six-Great, but Ellie used her gift to wake up “every mosquito that had perished there” (96). The ghost mosquitoes descended upon the Leech and sucked it dry, and “Ellie had finished Six-Great’s task” (97). Trevor was thrilled and promised that he would “convince [Lenore] that [their] hypothetical children need[ed] to learn [Ellie’s] secret” (98) so they, too, could raise the dead.