Questions in the Branches

Maya flipped through her history textbook, her long black hair falling across her shoulder. "I don't get it, Felix. How could a city just disappear?"

Felix pushed his untamed red hair from his green eyes. "What city?"

"Cahokia. My teacher said it was huge, like bigger than London back then. But now it's just... gone."

Sketch, Maya's sleek black cat, padded across the wooden floor of their treehouse and pawed at something tucked behind Maya's backpack.

"What's that, Sketch?" Maya reached for the object her cat had found. Her fingers closed around smooth wooden edges.

Felix leaned closer as Maya pulled out an ornate puzzle box. Intricate carvings covered its surface, depicting corn stalks and what looked like ancient buildings.

"Where did this come from?" Felix whispered.

Maya's thumb found a small sliding panel. The moment she pushed it, the box began to glow with warm golden light.

The treehouse spun around them.

Strange New Clothes

When the spinning stopped, Maya and Felix stood in a bustling plaza surrounded by wooden houses with thatched roofs. The year was 1100, though they didn't know it yet.

"Where are we?" Felix touched his new leather tunic, confused by his strange clothes.

Maya looked down at her woven dress and moccasins. "I think we're in Cahokia."

A woman with intricate braided hair approached them, carrying a large clay pot. "You two look lost. I'm preparing corn for tomorrow's harvest festival. Each family must contribute their best dishes."

"Corn festival?" Maya asked.

"Yes, corn is our most important crop. We plant it with beans and squash together in the same hills. The corn stalks give the beans something to climb, while the beans put nutrients back into the soil for the corn and squash."

Felix watched other people grinding corn with stone tools. "That's smart farming."

The woman frowned. "The River Clan refuses to share their special grinding stones with us Prairie Folk. They think their way is the only way. Now the festival might fail."

What we learned: In ancient Cahokia around 1100 CE, people practiced companion planting by growing corn, beans, and squash together in the same hills, which helped all three crops grow better.