Parched Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1 Nandi

  2 Musa

  3 Sarel

  4 Musa

  5 Nandi

  6 Sarel

  7 Musa

  8 Sarel

  9 Musa

  10 Sarel

  11 Musa

  12 Sarel

  13 Nandi

  14 Sarel

  15 Musa

  16 Sarel

  17 Musa

  18 Sarel

  19 Musa

  20 Sarel

  21 Nandi

  22 Sarel

  23 Musa

  24 Sarel

  25 Musa

  26 Sarel

  27 Musa

  28 Sarel

  29 Sarel

  30 Nandi

  31 Musa

  32 Sarel

  33 Musa

  34 Sarel

  35 Musa

  36 Sarel

  37 Sarel

  38 Sarel

  39 Nandi

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright © 2013 by Melanie Crowder

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

  Harcourt is an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

  www.hmhbooks.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  ISBN 978-0-547-97651-8

  eISBN 978-0-547-97588-7

  v1.0613

  For Whitney

  1

  Nandi

  Sniff-sniff. My tail parts tall grass, swish-swish.

  Bright sun up. Heat sizzle in air.

  I jog. My head swings side-side. The pups waddle, stumble over too-long legs, too-big feet.

  Sarel-girl runs with me, hand on my neck, hair flap-flap in wind, feet slap-slap on dirt. Pups nip her skinny ankles. She makes laughter sound of wood hoopoe bird: khee-hee-ee khee-hee-aa-aa-aa. Sarel-girl swats Chakide on rump. Lifts face to wide sky. Makes bird sounds some more.

  Rumbles in dirt. I stop. Head up, I sniff side-side. Engine sound from sun-up side. Black snake tires spin up dust.

  My tail stiff. Pups smell now, sniff-sniff, sniff-sniff-sniff.

  Pups whine. I growl. Pups lie bellies to dirt, ears up, eyes wide.

  Sarel-girl kneels. I show teeth, stand over girl. She lies belly to dirt. No bird sounds now.

  We watch through tall grass.

  Fear scent.

  Man-with-whistle stands in front of house, hands up. Ibubesi, Ubali at side, hackles up. Show teeth.

  Men running, pointing house, pointing kennel, pulling buckets out of well. Shouting, kicking empty buckets.

  Pack in kennel angry bark, fear bark. Let-me-out bark.

  Men lift black sticks, shouting.

  Crack-crack-crack.

  Ibubesi jumps, falls to ground. Makes hurt whine.

  Man-with-whistle falls, face to ground.

  Blood scent.

  Woman-in-window runs out of house onto dirt.

  Crack-crack-crack.

  Woman-in-window flies up in air, lands flat on back.

  “Mama!” Sarel-girl yells.

  I snarl. Sarel-girl gets up on hands, on knees. I step on shoulders, push girl belly to dirt. Sarel-girl makes angry sound, fear sound. LOUD. I hold back of neck with teeth. I growl, soft.

  Thando licks salt drips from her face.

  Fire scent. Crackle sound.

  Engine sound. Black snakes on dirt, spinning dust.

  Death scent.

  2

  Musa

  Scraps of plywood covered every gap in the rusted walls. A rat scampered across the sloping roof. It was quiet in the dim room, except for the sound of shallow breathing.

  A key scraped in the lock and the door swung inward, spreading a rectangle of yellow light across the floor. A boy huddled in the corner, his face buried in the crook of an arm. Flies landed on seeping scabs at his wrists and ankles.

  Sivo crossed the dusty floor, his steel-toed boots tramping out the sound of the boy’s breath.

  “That’s him. That’s the dowser,” Sivo said to the guard waiting in the shadows of the doorway. A scar cut across his cheek and over his lips, pulling at his mouth when he spoke.

  “Musa,” Sivo said. But the boy didn’t move, even at the sound of his name. “Get up.”

  Sivo bent to undo the padlock at Musa’s ankles, and the boy flinched, the chains around his wrists clanging against each other.

  Sivo clipped a leather leash onto the links between Musa’s wrists and yanked him up, dragging him outside. The guard in the doorway backed out of reach, lifting a hand to cover his nose as they passed.

  Outside, Musa closed his eyes against the glare of the midday sun and raised his face to the sky. The rubber toe of his canvas shoes flapped open with each step. A drop of sweat slid down the ridges of his bare spine. He almost made it to the jeep, but he stumbled on a rock jutting out of the hard dirt. Sivo yanked him upright with a sharp tug on the leash.

  Musa crawled into the back seat.

  He lay unmoving, his eyes crimped shut. The jeep rocked as the men climbed in and slammed the doors. As soon as the engine rattled to life, Musa curled into a ball, gathering his bleeding wrists to his chest. The pain that flared up his arms and legs was always at its worst in these moments, when a breeze washed over his broken skin, when the sun glinted off the links of the chains that held him. When life out of that dusty shack, and away from the Tandie, hovered at the edges of his sight.

  The city streets were clogged with rusted-out cars stripped of their tires and tilting at odd angles. Only two men walked the streets under the glaring sun, their black hair matted with dust and their lips cracked and bleeding. They stared at the jeep as it passed, its blaring music fading out of tune as it rattled down the street.

  After winding and bumping through the ruined roads for nearly an hour, the jeep stopped. Musa lurched in the back seat, barely catching himself from spilling onto the floor.

  Sivo stepped out and threw open the back door, shaking a ring of keys as he leaned over the boy.

  Dangling off the edge of the seat, Musa slid to the ground. He swayed on his feet, the weight of the chains bowing his thin shoulders.

  “No funny business,” Sivo said as he bent to undo the padlock holding Musa’s hands together.

  Musa clenched his teeth as the chains grated against the sores on his wrists. There was a click, then the clanking of falling metal. His arms fell to his sides, and blood rushed to fill his fingers.

  “What you waiting for, boy?”

  “Thirsty . . .” Musa whispered.

  “That’s what we’re here for, ya?” Sivo said, his hands bent backwards on his hips. When Musa didn’t move, Sivo reached into the jeep and pulled out a dusty water bottle, its sides nicked with small white creases.

  He held the bottle upside down at arm’s length and squeezed a stream into the boy’s mouth. The water was warm and tasted like the plastic drum it had been stored in for months. Musa swallowed, the back of his tongue clicking against the roof of his mouth for long moments after the stream of water had stopped. An ache rose in his belly and his jaw fell slack.

  “That’s it. Go on.” Sivo shoved a pair of thin forked sticks into Musa’s chest.

  Musa’s arms folded over them. He turned and scuffed away from the jeep. With a stick clasped in each hand, he lowered his forearms until they stuck out from his body like a long-legged insect.

  He closed his eyes, and listened.

  3

  Sarel

/>   Sarel woke, screaming.

  The sound bounced off the walls of the underground room. She lay in a curve of bony knees and elbows, the mortared stones of the grotto floor carving dents into her flesh. Her body sagged, sapped. Her eyelids quivered with memories that kept her from sleeping.

  Sarel clutched at her throat, raw from smoke and screams and hot tears. Her skin was smeared with soot. When she blinked, ash drifted down onto her cheeks. Under heavy lids, her eyes, the color of a tide pool stirred by a storm, stared at the stones. Flat. Empty.

  Thirteen black-mouthed dogs spilled down the curving stairs and pooled on the pebbled floor all around her. The air, still laced with smoke, hung heavy in the small, round room.

  Sarel uncurled, her mind slow with things like how she had gotten there and why she was lying on the ground, a weight as heavy as stones pressing into her chest and shoving the air from her lungs.

  Nandi stood over her, sniffing at her breath and licking the soot from her face. Watching Sarel as if she were one of her own pups, skittish and stunned.

  Sarel hadn’t risen from the grotto floor since the flames had leaped from the roof of the house to race through the tinder grasses, chasing her away from the twisted, still bodies of her parents. Chasing her to this underground place of quiet, and cool stones, and pooled water.

  The sound of agony, of labored breathing and crushing pain, filled the small room. Sarel set her breath by it, and she opened the ache in her chest to it.

  The sound inched closer. It echoed against the curved walls. It pressed against her, nuzzled at her. It cut through the blur in her mind and laid the memories bare.

  Sarel clamped her hands against her ears, against the shouting, the gunshots, the sound of the dogs baying in their kennel. She squeezed her eyes tight. Shut out the sight of her father’s body soaking the ground with blood, of her mother’s hands, limp, still coated with a dusting of flour.

  The memory was gone as quickly as it came, leaving Sarel gasping for air. She curled back into herself, and a wail rose in her throat.

  When Sarel woke again, the sound was still there, but softer and pitched higher. She sat up, blinking. Nandi lay beside her, watching, waiting. Sarel lifted a hand to graze the underside of Nandi’s jaw. The pups pressed in close, ears pricked, tails tucked between their legs. They nipped at Sarel’s ankles and licked her unresponsive face.

  But that sound—it was more than the whimpers of thirsty pups.

  Sarel twisted to face it.

  On the other side of the grotto pool, Ubali lay on his side, panting, each breath a cry of pain. Sarel crossed the pebbled floor on her knees and leaned over him. She drew her fingers along the velvety tip of his ear. His tail thumped once, but he didn’t try to lift his head.

  Sarel’s eyes skittered to a knuckle-size hole in Ubali’s shoulder that leaked maroon blood onto the stones beneath him. She yanked back her hand.

  The word formed on her tongue, and she curved her lips around it.

  Bullet. She had to get the bullet out.

  Panic came in rapid-fire breaths, scraping against her throat and pounding into the weight that crushed her lungs. She couldn’t do this. Not by herself.

  Teeth gripped her arm, startling, steady. Nandi held Sarel’s forearm between her jaws, her eyes clamped onto the girl’s stricken face. Sarel gulped in air until her breath slowed, until the pounding in her head faded.

  She lifted her eyes to the pebbled ceiling and pressed two fingers into the wound, digging, probing, slipping in the place where blood met bone.

  Ubali’s cries slackened.

  With a gasp, Sarel hooked her finger around a lump of metal. Wincing, she pulled the bullet up and out. It fell to the stones, slick with blood.

  Ubali lifted his head off the ground and grunted, twisting his neck to lick the wound clean.

  Sarel stared at her hands. They were covered with blood that clung like webs between her fingers. She would have to go up and scrub them in the sand until they were scraped clean. Up where the air was still heavy with soot. Up where the bodies of her parents lay in the charred dirt.

  Nandi crossed to the stairs and waited.

  Sarel followed, her bloody hands stretched out in front of her.

  4

  Musa

  Musa walked across the empty lot, pushing bursts of pebbles and silt in front of him with each step. Back and forth he shuffled, like a pointer flushing birds out of tall grass. The sticks in his hands stretched out into the air before him and ticked slowly side to side.

  Halfway down the stretch of packed dirt, the sticks swung together, crossing his chest and slapping against his sweat-streaked skin. Musa stopped and scraped a line in the dirt with the rubber toe of his shoe. He listened for any sign of water below, for the buzz that settled in the base of his skull whenever fresh water was near.

  Nothing.

  Still he followed the way of the dowsing sticks, backing up, moving a pace to the left, and stepping forward again. When the sticks crossed in front of his body a second time, Musa etched another line in the dirt.

  Sivo pushed off the jeep, spitting out the straw he’d been rolling between his teeth, eyes intent on the boy’s shuffling progress.

  Back and forth, back and forth. The line of hatch marks stretched straight across the dirt.

  Too straight.

  Musa paused and squinted up and down the line. He closed his eyes, listening. The hairs on his arms lifted off his skin and he bit a corner of his lip, letting it slide through his teeth. The place where his tongue had touched glared red against the rest of his dust-coated skin. His hands fell to his sides, the thin sticks bending as they brushed against the ground.

  Nothing.

  His head bobbed on his neck, too heavy to hold upright.

  “Well?” Sivo shouted.

  Musa shook his head. He took a few wobbling steps away from the line of dead water.

  Sivo stomped after him. “And that’s all you’re good for? A map of every bladdy sewer line in this city?”

  Musa cringed. He lifted the sticks to begin again, the scarred skin over his shoulders twitching and rippling.

  5

  Nandi

  Ibubesi, Thembo, Ganya, all gone.

  Flames chased impala, spiral-horned kudu, spring hares far from this place with smoke in air. Far from this all-death place.

  Bheka and Icibi go to sun-down side. Go where ground is not all burnt. Hunt.

  I stay.

  Pups whine, noses in dust, sniff-sniff. Paw at blood scent in ground, scratch-scratch. Whine for Thembo, for Ganya, for Ibubesi. For Man-with-whistle.

  I stay with Ubali. With Sarel-girl. She does not come out under sun. She lies on stones. Lost in screaming place.

  I watch sun-down side.

  I wait for Bheka and Icibi to bring food. Wait for Sarel-girl to wake from screaming place.

  6

  Sarel

  It was the dogs who got Sarel up off the grotto floor, who washed the dreams from her face and nibbled at the weight pushing her down.

  She felt like the paper-thin husk of a golden berry, ripped apart and trampled underfoot. The pain in her throat and her belly, the angry press of her bladder—she could ignore those things. But she couldn’t bear the pups’ thirsty whines.

  They were her father’s dogs. Sarel had watched while he trained them, had pattered after him while he checked their paws, their gums, their muscled gait. They weren’t just livestock, bred and sold and bred again, not to him.

  Not to Sarel either.

  They were ridgebacks. Lion hunters. Prized for their fierceness and their fearlessness. They could protect themselves, feed themselves. And they would protect her, now that she was all alone.

  But they needed her too.

  There was no water left up there. Not anymore.

  Ripples in the earth and the half-buried shells of long-dead water creatures were the only sign that creeks and marshes had once streamed between the dry riverbeds.

 
Sarel rolled herself off the ground. She gripped the pump handle jutting out of the wall beside her and hefted it up, then down, up, then down, leaning her belly into the grooved steel to coax the water up and out. After a half-dozen tries, water chortled out of the pipes, splashing into the shallow pool and turning the ash-colored stones green and black and deep purple. The dogs rushed forward to lap up the water.

  Sarel watched them drink, running her hands over the pebbled walls, tracing the spiral of stones that surrounded the water spout. Her fingers slowed as a wary thought lodged itself in her mind.

  The men with the guns—this was why they came to the homestead. They were looking for the secret store of water that had sustained the family while the drought sucked the life out of every other living thing.

  They had been searching for the old well. But they hadn’t known to look past the house, to a ring of stones at the back of the yard. They hadn’t known that the stones marked the place where steps curved down into a cave under the ground, with a pump and a small pool set into the far end. A pump that was fed by the deep well Sarel’s grandfather’s grandfather had dug out of the earth when he first settled the land.

  The men with the guns and the blood-red flags hadn’t known to look for a grotto; they didn’t even have the word for such a thing. A grotto belonged in a land where brine and mist filled the air, where water spilled over into every solid space.

  Not here. Not in this place of dust and death.

  There was nothing in Sarel’s stomach, but still she retched, a sob slipping through the bile on her tongue.

  The singed hem of her cotton shirt bunched up her back as she slid to the floor. Her hands fell limp into her lap. Her skin was burned brown as the bark of a guarri tree from years under the fierce sun. Scrapes covered her arms, and char was etched into the lines crisscrossing her palms. A red weal had bubbled across the pads of her fingers, where hot steel had scorched her skin when she lifted the bolt on the kennel door to free the dogs from the fire.