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“Look over there!” George sang. “A skull!” He clambered after it, grinding stones as he tore up the steep incline. I swiveled around to see if I could spot a skull of my own. In the distance, I saw a glint of white. I decided to cut my own path after it.

I shinnied up the bald scarp with nothing to hold on to, no frazzled bush, no craggy rock. The ground was dry, and as I ascended, cascades of tiny stones crunched under my shoes and spilled behind. Dust puffed, circled my head, invaded my nostrils. I could taste grit on my tongue.

We didn’t need to go far to find what we were looking for: a finger bone here, a link of spine there. I grabbed a protrusion as I passed, pulled out a jaw, wrenched out its teeth, and stuffed them into the pockets of my new yellow dress. “George! Three teeth!” I boomed. Dientes! Then I saw how high I’d come.

George was so far away he seemed to be on another mountain. He was small as a bluebottle, spindly black. He did not hear me call out.

He was almost at the top of his ridge. If I could just scrabble a little higher, I would reach mine first, peer over Olympus to the other side. I grew dizzy with the height, the dust, the sun at the back of my head, but I finally came to within feet of the crest. I turned to check George, could not find him, then scaled ahead, anxious to see.

I mounted the peak and looked over. No more than twenty feet away, rising out of the earth, was a white plaster Virgin, her hands spread out in welcome, a grave at her feet. There was a hole in her chest, and inside that, a heart pulsing blue. I staggered. Black stones shifted under me. One foot slid out. I pulled it back.

I turned to where La Granja Azul lay, as neat and as tidy as the scene in my father’s garage. I could see the garden, I could see tables, but I couldn’t see my parents. I leaned out to find them. Then the world started to spin.

I was falling. Tossed from that summit like a boned cat, I slid, bounced, plummeted, flipped onto my head, and skipped down the slope, skull against skulls, spraying bone into air. Halfway down, I landed on a ledge, flapping my arms helplessly, desperately scanning the garden below. My parents stood by their table, looking up at me, rigid as statues. But my footing was not firm, and, as I reeled again, I saw my mother’s face for a fleeting instant. She turned her back and her gold head whirled from view.

There is little I recall after that. I know that Cito bounded up to lift my body out. I know Georgie screamed that it wasn’t his fault. I know my father sped into Lima, swinging around to look at me again and again with tears sliding out of his eyes. I know my mother was bending over me when the anodyne lifted. “Look what you’ve done, Marisi,” she said. “You’ve gone and ruined your dress.”

I blinked and came to. I was in what looked to be a hospital room, wrapped like a mummy, skin tingling. I reached up to touch my head. It was clean as a cue ball, a swatch of gauze on top. My mother held up a scrap of yellow dress. It was shredded, brown with blood. “Look what you did,” she said.

“The apu,” I said, my tongue thick with narcotic. “And the Virgin Mary.”

She tilted her head and focused her eyes on mine. “What do you mean?”

“George and I were hunting for teeth and bones. That’s why the apu got angry. He made me fall.” My legs ached; my head was throbbing.

Mother smiled and dropped the dress on the gurney. “So. Good. The doctor said you might have had a concussion, but I can see you’re all there. If you’re talking about George and bones and apus, you’re the child I remember. Your noggin’s working fine.”

She paused, put one hand on my shoulder, and looked into my face earnestly. Even now, almost four decades later, I remember her words. She would repeat them again and again later: “Look, Marisi. That was no ghost. No evil spirit of the mountain. It was God: God did it. And, while we’re on the subject, there’s nothing wrong with your hunting for bones. Don’t misunderstand