~1.5~

“It’s… my daughter,” Nick said, swallowing hard. “My Karrie Anne.”

“She run away?” Mama guessed. She was a regal figure, sitting on the bench. The van’s low ceiling forced Nick to stoop almost to the point of kneeling before her.

“I think,” Nick said. He was starting to choke up, in spite of himself. “Or… taken. She had this boyfriend… an older man, but no good, you know? Drugs. Guns. Stuff like that. He had a tattoo, a tear drop… they didn’t think I knew what it meant. I forbade her… and she… she…”

“The tribe is not the police,” Mama said. “A man in your position surely has other options.”

“No,” Nick said, shaking his head. “No police. Karen is suing for full custody. She’d love this.”

“She’d love her daughter disappearing with an older man, vanishing somewhere on the streets of Jericho?” Mama asked, raising an eyebrow ever-so-slightly.

“Look, maybe you don’t understand how things work in the real world,” Nick said. “But I can’t go to the police, and I don’t have any other options, so…”

“So you come crawling back to us,” Mama said. “All these years without a word, and now that you have no other choice, you come looking for help.”

“Tribe is forever!” Nick said. “Tribe is for life!”

“You think I need to be reminded of that?” Mama snapped. “I should be telling you that. Very well, Mr. Attorney… what do you want the tribe to do?”

“If she’s on the street somewhere, you can find her,” Nick said. “I know it.”

“And what if she’s not?” Mama asked. “What then?”

“When I was a kid… I mean, I really was just a kid,” he said, “so I’m probably not remembering everything right, and maybe I just imagined it… but the tribe had women who… well, to a kid, it seemed like they could, you know… find things, or people.” He paused uncertainly. “Like… like magic.”

Mama smiled.

“Ah,” she said. “You want a witch.”