Race to the Sun

Spider Woman wakes the children before dawn the next day, urging an early start so that the Diyin Dine’é will see them and open the road. Davery fears that the Holy People will refuse them access, which Spider Woman deems possible but unlikely. She keeps Mr. Yazzie so that he can rest a little longer, promising to send him along to meet the children later. They follow Spider Woman through the dreary pre-dawn. When Mac grumbles about the rain, Spider Woman reminds them that “water in the desert is a blessing” (194).

At the start of the Rainbow Road, Spider Woman cautions them to “stay on the path” and reassures them that monsters cannot harm them on the Rainbow Road (195). She advises that the cart woman’s song is a kind of map, one that shows them “not where to go, but what to wonder” (195). She disappears without clarifying.

They pause to puzzle over the verses, which still don’t make sense to them. They realize that the drying rain is causing the Rainbow Road to vanish, and they know they must hurry. Nizhoni runs, so focused on keeping track of the disappearing rainbow that she tumbles off a cliff.