Free Grave of Hummingbirds by Jennifer Skutelsky

erratic patterns.
    She shrieked and ducked but kept her eyes open, just as one of them dropped in front of her face, where it settled, hovering a foot away from her eyes.
    Slowly Sophie lowered her arms. Her mouth formed an O , and she drew in a hushed gasp.
    It was a hummingbird, fanning her face with tiny wings, poised in place, watching her. Dazzled by its colors, awed at the connection the bird knitted between them, Sophie’s heart stilled to a steady beat. She felt an urge to reach out and raised her hand slowly, palm toward the long curve of its slender beak.
    The bird shimmered, green and magenta colors catching the light, and just as Sophie blinked, it darted away.
    The whirring receded, and she lowered her hand. Ahead of her the path opened up. Climbing to her feet, she scrambled forward and heard Finn yell from the bottom of the hill.
    “Mom?”
    Sophie ran toward him.
    He stared up at her as she moved down the slope. “What happened? Where did you go? We have to get back to the bus.”

    They reached Colibrí twenty minutes later. Stuttering, the bus hissed as it came to a stop, and the driver jumped out to clamber onto the roof, footsteps thudding. Sophie and Finn peeled themselves off the sticky upholstery and moved up the aisle toward the door.
    A child stood behind a stocky old man who lifted a Mickey Mouse suitcase off the overhead wire rack. The little girl looked up at Sophie and tugged on the man’s free hand. He bent toward her in the cramped space as she reached up to whisper in his ear. He straightened and met Sophie’s gaze, his own startled. The child tugged on his hand again, and he said something incomprehensible to Sophie.
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “I don’t understand.”
    “My granddaughter. She thinks you’re beautiful.”
    Again the child pulled on his hand. This time he didn’t translate what she’d said and chided her instead before he shook his head apologetically and turned away.
    People shuffled forward. The bus took a pounding on its roof from the driver.
    When the line stopped moving, the child continued to watch Sophie, the back of her head resting in the small of her grandfather’s back as she looked up.
    Sophie smiled and reached out to touch one of the deep-brown braids draped over a thin shoulder, ends spurting from a black band secured with two yellow plastic balls.
    A thickset woman, her hair also braided but into a single thick rope at the nape of her neck, wrestled her way into the space that opened up as they neared the front.
    The girl tripped down the steps behind her grandfather and turned to wave.
    A cold Sophie hadn’t noticed before hit her like a slap as she stepped out. It rained luggage—the driver still tossing bags off the roof with no concern for their landing. The scratches on her hands stung, and for some reason she couldn’t fathom, she had to fight off tears.

    Finn caught his backpack and left Sophie to reach up for hers, shirt pulling out of her jeans as she lifted her arms to catch it. But the driver didn’t throw hers. He handed it down as though it contained something fragile, ignoring the two male passengers who stepped forward to help her.
    Finn was used to the way people looked at Sophie. When they were out together, he often intercepted glances from men, and women, too. Sometimes men with women. It annoyed him, this duplicity, the admiration of an unavailable man for his mother.
    She was hopeless at masking her feelings, and now she looked frightened and lost, jaw set, eyes wide and wet. She hunched over her bag to adjust the straps, hiding her face with her hair. His mother was a maze of contradictions: rash and stubborn, fearful and strong. He’d learned to read her with patience that was lately in increasingly short supply. He no longer tried to distract her from bouts of wrenching empathy for victims of global horrors.
    Her single-mother insecurity—now that he could do something about. She worried about money, and this trip had