A Snake Falls to Earth

“Creator, I was so young when my parents died. Now, I carry sounds without the meaning. Isn’t that sad?”

Rosita’s sorrow foreshadows Nina’s feelings about the historia she has been gifted with. Nina, like her great-great grandmother, also carries sound without the meaning. It is not an easy task to carry on cultural legacies when the original meanings are obscured or lost.

“Nina often wondered if she’d like the Earth one hundred years from now. The future could be a wondrous place of androids, cloned dinosaurs, and VR glasses. That’s what Nina wanted to believe. However, when the anxious hum of the evening news slipped into her bedroom, carrying prophesies of disease and pain, it seemed more likely that the future would be a place of nightmares.”

This quote highlights the theme of Climate Change and the Natural World: Nina lives in an environment of climate anxiety. Even at a young age, Nina feels dread for the future of the world.

“Momma couldn’t give us enough gifts to even the playing field against the world.”

Oli’s mother is just one person, and although she has done her best to prepare her children, she cannot save them from the world. Oli’s struggle to survive in the world alone contrasts with his later flourishing among his Found Family.

“There did not seem to be any kindness in the world beyond my childhood, and I could never return to the past.”

Oli craves the past, when his siblings were always present and he was not alone. When Oli is deep in Robin-kept Forest, the world seems bleak and loveless. The path to anywhere-you-please fixes this by bringing Oli to a home with a family.

“Before Texas became a state, Nina’s ancestors had lived there, and they didn’t ever leave. Not really. When Federal Indian Removal became the law of the land, and bounties were put on Apache heads, her people resisted. In many ways, they still did.”

Little Badger’s novel is grounded in real history infused with magical elements. This is a core feature of many works of Indigenous Futurism. Nina’s family doesn’t simply have a legal claim to the land; it is their home in the way that the fourth peak is the home of the bighorn sheep in the Reflecting World.

“They didn’t hunt the bison for food. The colonizers desired to annihilate another group of humans. Indigenous peoples. They knew that the Indigenous ones relied on bison. So the bison had to go.”

The animal people provide an outside perspective on human affairs that illustrates the cruelties of colonialism, which decimated both Indigenous peoples and the environment. The anecdote illustrates the interconnectivity of humans with the natural world and also establishes the precedent of threats to Earth’s species affecting their Reflecting World counterparts.

“Or would [cottonmouths] always live with our tails in one home and our heads in the other?”

Oli struggles to find his place in the world after being cast out of his childhood home. The dual nature of cottonmouths, who live half in water and half on land, symbolizes the in-between feelings Oli has as he tries to figure out his place in the world.

“The familiarity of its ruin comforted Nina. She’d never seen the orchard flourish, though it must have once, if only for a few sweet years. To her, the emptiness and silence were home. This wasn’t a ghost town. Not when the heart of her family still beat within the land.”

Perspective drastically changes how one views a landscape. The expanse of abandoned suburbs and orchards surrounding her grandma’s house might seem desolate, but for Nina, it is home and is alive and well.

“When you eat a slow-roasted tilapia, Oli, at what point does it cease to be fish and become you?”

Mockingbird, as an animal person who can take on seamless disguises, wonders greatly about the nature of the self. Her philosophical ponderings reflect greater questions about the boundaries between people and their environments.

“‘If everyone came home for just one week, we could do the job,’ Grandma said.

‘The family’s scattered, Mom. It’d cost ten thousand dollars just to fly everyone in. Plus, it’s spring. They’re all busy at school or work.’”

Nina’s family, despite their love for one another, does not have much money. This makes Paul’s legal threats potentially devastating. The family being scattered to the wind means they’ve lost the one potential avenue of fixing up the property that was available to them.

“Listen, I respect the healer, and I’m grateful for her help, but that whole irreversible comment was a guess based on statistics. Just ’cause something usually happens doesn’t mean it always happens, or has to happen.”

There is much pessimism about environmental disaster and collapse in the novel. Oli makes a decision in the face of Ami’s otherwise certain death, showing that actions in the present can change the future even when circumstances seem hopeless.

“It pained me that I couldn’t escape the current. Couldn’t delay my inevitable arrival at the result of a million actions, whatever it would be. All I could do was make the most of the time I had and hope that my actions mattered.”

Despite Oli’s desire to defy the usual course of extinction, he still feels despair and worry. Millions of actions lead to the future, and Oli’s actions are a small drop in the lake. Still, Oli presses on knowing that giving it his all may not be enough.

“Yeah, but who would we pay to stop extinction? Is that even possible? Even if we had a whole bucket of coins, we need human guidance.”

Though money is the root of the problem for fixing the Dallas toad sanctuary, it isn’t enough; fixing the situation also requires human action. Little Badger illustrates that money alone will not solve climate issues.

“If I hadn’t known better, I might have mistaken the statue for an animal. Just like I’d mistaken the herd for the land. It still amazed me how effortlessly the sheep had blended into the mountainside.”

The originator bighorn sheep is part of the mountains, and the mountains are part of it: Oli even wonders if the roots of the sage brush extend into its veins. The species and its home cannot be separated.

“If not for the sky, I might have mistaken the Earth for home.”

The sky is the one difference between the two worlds. Despite the Reflecting World relying on Earth for its existence, it still does not feel like home to Oli.

“How much did the camera cost, anyway? How much had her parents sacrificed to indulge Nina’s hobby, a souped-up diary? Her mother at sea, her father running a business alone.”

Nina feels guilty about her hobby of making private video diaries. This quote implies that this hobby is an outlet for the frustration she feels for her home situation and the struggle for money for her family.

“In their heads, the whole Earth is theirs, and we don’t belong.”

The attitude of the Nightmare and his Knights reflects that of the colonizers who decimated the bison to starve Indigenous people. The Nightmare has successfully colonized Earth as his domain and claims the entirety of it for himself.

“Nina would be rich. She could use half the money to save a species of toad that had been living along the Rio Grande longer than her own people. And the other half? She could rebuild Grandma’s house and fill it to the brim with shiny new stuff. No threats of fines from scheming neighbors would ever frighten the family again.”

Despite the financial struggle that dominates her parents’ lives, Nina only wants to use the money she’s hoping to acquire to improve the lives of others—her grandmother and the toads. She feels a particular sense of obligation to the toads, who have occupied the land longer than any human.

“Once, after a heavy rain in Nina’s homeland, you could step outside and hear the ruckus of a thousand toad songs. I hadn’t heard a single croak. Even when we traveled to the woods, where a toad might live in the leaf litter or within the haunted tunnel, the only sounds had come from birds and insects. And the whoosh of cars on the paved road, beyond the empty palace of concrete and dark glass.”

Oli, who has never been to Earth before, feels the profound effects of climate change. He uses descriptive language that conjures up an image of an empty castle where there was once a thriving, vibrant ecosystem.

“‘We’ve gone in a circle,’ Brightest said, awestruck, as if that meant something deeply significant.

‘The homeland,’ Nina agreed. ‘It makes sense. Compasses don’t work here. Here, where the story begins…’

Here, where the two worlds embraced, and magic rose to the Earth like the enduring water in Rosita’s well.”

Brightest’s emphasis on their circular path illustrates the interconnectedness of the two worlds and their ecosystems. The animal people have returned to where they fell to Earth to help save the Dallas toads.

“That’s the problem with being a shape-shifter. People always assume you’re in disguise. My best friends don’t trust me at all, do they?”

Mockingbird’s shapeshifting abilities more closely resemble Paul’s deceit than they do the false forms of the animal people. When Mockingbird and Paul are disguising themselves, their true intentions and true forms are nearly indetectable. Mockingbird struggles with the suspicion this creates.

“Before long, Grandma’s heartrate settled in a healthy pace, and her breathing calmed. ‘I can really sense it,’ she said. ‘Yes, I really can.’

Nina looked up from the jumped compass needle. ‘What, Grandma?’

The answer, spoken quietly, reverently, barely lifted over the ambient rush of wind against the car. ‘The rightness of home.’”

The “rightness of home” is an important feeling for both Nina’s grandmother and the animal people. Home is a feeling—a connection to a particular place—and has little to do with the legal concerns that Paul makes Grandma consider.

“I don’t know how the joined era collapsed—Oli says the motivation is a mystery—but a handful of human spirits, claiming to be royalty and gods, declared war on each other. Their peaceful fellows were killed or chased into hiding. That includes animal people, who don’t war. Ultimately, all the pain and bloodshed culminated in this: one originator human emerging victorious.”

The human spirits that led to the rise of the Nightmare act as a metaphor for colonizers. Like colonizers, they claim superiority and the right to rule an area that is not theirs. All of the other peaceful spirits are killed or chased off, much like Nina’s family when the Federal Indian Removal Act became law in Texas.