Parched Page 5

  He lifted his hands away from his face and stared at his wrists in surprise. Strips of a green plant with a tough outer skin and a gooey underside were wrapped around them. He lifted a wobbling leg into the air and turned it from side to side. His ankles, too.

  Sivo had never bothered to heal the boy’s cuts and sores—as long as Musa could stand and shuffle around with his dowsing sticks, little things like wrists worn raw didn’t matter.

  Musa lowered his leg. He propped himself up on his elbows and looked around. He was in a large wire cage; there was nothing but dry desert grasses, withered shrubs, and hard dirt beyond. Someone had woven bark through the steel links in the roof, enough to shade a trough for the dogs, the mat he lay on, and another bed of sorts tucked into the opposite corner. A rock held open the chainlink door.

  Musa sank down onto the mat. His arms ached from holding himself up, even for such a short time. The dog crept closer, sniffing at his breath and nudging his fingers.

  The door was open. No one was guarding him, except maybe the dog. But she didn’t seem to want to hurt him. He could leave. He wasn’t a prisoner here.

  Movement outside the kennel caught Musa’s attention. A girl with white-blond hair cut in a jagged line at her chin strode through the yard, a dozen dogs trotting around her. Ruddy skin peeked out of patchwork clothes that hung from her like laundry on a line. She was thin, but she didn’t look weak. Her head swiveled toward Musa, her pale eyes narrowing. Her whole body stiffened and her hands curled into the fur of the dog at her hip.

  The Tandie had said that no one could survive outside the city. But there she was, frowning over Musa, her gaze moving from the dog at his side and back to him again. She shrugged a bulging satchel over her head, knelt beside him, and upended a scattering of fruit onto the ground. Her mouth pulled in a tight line as she sliced through the rind of a thin- skinned mangosteen and pried the halves apart.

  Musa swallowed, saliva trickling into his mouth as he watched her lick a drop of juice off her palm.

  “Why are you helping me?”

  The girl flinched at the sound of his voice. She arranged the fruit on a leaf and slid it over to him, shifting to unwrap the vines that held the aloe in place around his ankles.

  Musa looked away from the angry, glistening flesh underneath.

  “Who are you?”

  Her hands stilled. She didn’t look up when she spoke.

  “Sarel.” She formed the word thickly, as if it were unfamiliar on her tongue. “Eat.”

  Musa picked up a mangosteen and placed it in his mouth. He chewed and tried to swallow, but his throat was too dry and instead he sputtered, choking. Sarel exhaled in a sharp burst and pulled him upright until he was hunched over, spitting the seed into his palm. The dog was on her feet now, nosing her blunt head under Musa’s chin and licking the juice from his jaw.

  Musa stared at the massive head in front of him. “I’ve never seen a dog friendly like this—somebody’s pet. In the city, dogs are wild. They’re mean.”

  “It’s people that make dogs mean,” Sarel said in a clipped voice. “And they’re not my pets.”

  Musa tried another bite. He swallowed, this time without choking.

  Sarel tied off the vines that held the fresh bits of aloe in place around his ankles and moved up to his wrists. She peeled back the yellowed strips one by one.

  Musa didn’t ask any more questions. As soon as Sarel finished the last knot, she backed away from him. She slung the empty satchel over her shoulder and hurried out of the kennel, as if she couldn’t get away from him fast enough.

  The dogs shook as they stood, whipping a spray of dust into the air and trotting after her. Sarel hadn’t gone a dozen steps when the big one with the watching eyes rubbed up against her, shoving her snout under the girl’s hand. The tension in Sarel’s shoulders slackened and her body settled into a shuffling rhythm as they set out again into the desert.

  Musa rolled onto his side and folded his knees into his chest. She was the one acting like a mean city dog—scared and bone-thin and ready to bite. So why was she helping him?

  It didn’t matter. He had made it. He could feel the water, a constant thrum at the base of his skull. Underground, just south of where he lay, wide around as a lake.

  In the morning, when he was feeling stronger, Musa would find a new pair of dowsing sticks and mark out the edges—see if he could find a place where the water came aboveground.

  If it ever did.

  But he couldn’t let her see. If Sarel found out what he could do, she might betray him, like Dingane. Or use him. Hurt him, like Sivo.

  No, he wouldn’t tell her anything. He would have to find the water without her watching. No one would have that kind of power over him again.

  24

  Sarel

  Everything Sarel owned was spread out on the mat in front of her. A bone-handled knife, a square of leath-er pierced with a dozen sweet thorn needles, a long-stemmed ladle, and a blunt shovel blade with a branch lashed to the place where a handle should have been.

  Three deflated water bladders were stacked in her lap. Sarel nodded as she counted, her forehead pinched in concentration. Six more lined the fence, belled out with all the water she could scrape from the grotto pool. There was enough left in the gaps between stones to last the pack the few days more she’d need to find fruit and nuts to equal the water. It took twice as long, gathering food for Musa, too. But she was almost ready.

  She rolled up to her feet and paced the length of the kennel, stepping over the sprawled dogs in her way. Musa was sleeping in the corner, an arm draped over Chakide’s ribs. They had to go, whether he had recovered enough to travel or not. Sarel swatted through a cloud of gnats, slapping at the air long after the swarm had gone.

  Back and forth she paced, back and forth.

  And then she stopped and swiveled, peering across the homestead to the curve of stones that marked the grotto entrance.

  They had to go. But she would take something from this place with her.

  Sarel swiped the knife off her mat and shuffled down the grotto path. She checked over her shoulder, to make sure no one was watching, and ducked down the curving stairs. Her eyes went straight to the spout and the ring of burnished stones that surrounded it.

  Sarel unfolded her knife and dug at the mortar around a white stone with a black vein through its center. She worked carefully, leaning into the mosaic wall and squinting in the dim light.

  With a click that echoed through the small room, the stone dropped from the wall into Sarel’s palm. Her fingers curled around its smooth edges and gripped tight.

  25

  Musa

  The pack returned, tails high, prancing around Icibi and Buttu and Thando, who dragged a bloodied wildebeest between them. Musa watched the dogs, their muscles bulging, drag the animal across the dirt. Weakened by hunger and dehydrated as it was, their kill was still three times the size of the biggest dog.

  Nandi rose and sniffed the carcass. The other dogs waited, licking their jowls, tails sweeping up a cloud of dust. Nandi sank her teeth into the tough hide, the muscles of her hind legs straining against the ground as she pulled. She ripped off a leg and brought it to Sarel, who took the offering and began stripping away the hide, draping lengths of flesh and sinew over the links in the fence.

  Musa winced at the dripping blood. “Aren’t you going to cook that?”

  Sarel ignored him.

  “Won’t we get sick?”

  “Do I look sick to you?” she snapped.

  Musa didn’t answer. Instead, he began collecting sticks and bits of dried grass and tucking them under his arm. Like a chicken pecking at feed, he bent and righted himself again, making a slow loop around the homestead.

  When he returned and dropped his pile of sticks, Musa scraped away a bare patch of earth downwind from the kennel. He paused for a minute, leaning against the steel post, waiting for his breath to slow.

  Next he set out for rocks, his whole body l
eaning back to offset their weight as he carried one at a time and arranged them in a tight circle. Then he turned his back to the wind, dropped a tuft of brown grass into the center of the ring of stones, and hunched low to the ground, rubbing a pair of sticks together until a thread of smoke rose into the air.

  Each day, while Sarel was out foraging for food, he had walked to the dry riverbed, to the edge of the water. His limbs trembling with the effort, he had stood above the vast underground lake, the strength of it humming through him.

  Musa had seen the scorched rectangle where a house had been and the pair of rocky graves in the middle of the yard. He had seen enough to know why Sarel turned away from the fire, cringing as if the dry crackle of twigs grated against her eardrums. To understand why she crouched, ready to break into a run at any moment.

  Musa fed the tiny flame that burst from the tinder until it crackled into a small fire. He speared the strips of meat and dangled them over the flame. The juices popped and sizzled as they fell onto the coals. His stomach gurgled as the oily scent rose into the air, his mouth filling with saliva.

  When a pocket of sap burst, loud as the crack of a gun and scattering a spray of sparks across the dirt, Sarel shot up into the air.

  Musa ducked his eyes away from the terror that washed across her face. He shifted until his back was to her, until his thin frame blocked the dancing flames from her view. He waited until the meat had cooled and he had stamped out the last of the coals before he brought Sarel her share.

  She took it and she ate. But it was late, the stars high overhead, before the tremors coursing through her thin frame finally stopped.

  26

  Sarel

  Sarel picked her way along the path to the kennel, and the dogs padded quietly behind her. It had been a long day, but her satchel was full of aloe spears and wild pears and sour figs.

  It didn’t matter where she walked—the earth was parched, dotted with a few hardy plants that somehow sucked enough moisture out of the ground to stay alive. Even those few were smaller and shriveled and harder to find.

  With a long sigh, Sarel closed the chainlink door behind her, latching the pack inside for the night. Musa’s eyes flew open as the U-shaped bolt clanged shut, and he flung his hands up to shield his face.

  Sarel lowered her eyes while his breathing settled back to normal, squeezing herself between Nandi and Buttu, who were turning in tight circles over her sleeping mat. She rolled onto her back and tucked her arms under her head as the dogs flopped on either side of her.

  Dusk bled into dark, broken only by the lonely call of a banded owl.

  Sarel woke suddenly in the middle of the night, her hair matted with sweat, her cheeks wet. She gasped for breath, blinking back the memory of guns and blood and suffocating smoke.

  She reached for Nandi, but the dog wasn’t there.

  Sarel propped herself up on her elbows and looked around. It was quiet, except for a thin scraping sound to the south. The full moon shone out of a clear, cold sky. White light glinted off the chainlink fencing and the moist tips of the dogs’ noses, off the chalky white deposits that marked the steep hillsides in the distance and the flickering leaves of the sweet thorn trees that danced on snatches of wind. The open kennel door swung inward, clanging like a bell as it struck against the steel post and swung out again.

  The door was open.

  Sarel’s eyes flicked to Musa’s mat. The boy was gone.

  Despite the chill in the night air, Sarel felt her face begin to pulse with heat. Her breath came fast and ragged, and she stormed out of the kennel, eyes scanning the homestead for any sign of him.

  On the bank of the dry river, Nandi sat erect, in the elegant posture Sarel’s father had demanded of all his dogs. Nandi turned her head to watch Sarel’s approach. The pups sprawled around their mother, only interested in using the night for sleeping, no matter where they lay. Every few seconds, Musa’s head appeared then ducked below the cut bank again as he lifted and scattered shovelfuls of dirt.

  “What are you doing?” Sarel shouted.

  Musa spun around, twisting the shovel behind his back, his free hand falling open.

  “You sneak out in the middle of the night, take the dogs, and leave the kennel door unlatched—to do what, dig a hole in the dirt?”

  “I—I was just . . .” Musa bit his lip. He kicked the walls of the shallow hole he had dug. “I thought if I found water, it would help all of us. I wanted to help. I would have died if you didn’t help me.”

  Sarel ignored the pleading note in his voice. “And what makes you think you could dig a hole in the desert and hit water?”

  Musa mumbled into his chest, “I thought, if the river was here once . . .”

  Sarel’s feet were planted wide in the dirt, her stick-straight arms ending in balled fists. “I don’t care what Nandi wants. I don’t trust you!”

  Musa glared back, his nostrils flaring with short, angry breaths. He threw the shovel down into the dirt, scrambled up the bank, and ran to the kennel.

  Sarel watched him go. The dogs twined all around her, rubbing the goose bumps from her arms and licking her fists until they unclenched. Nandi came to stand in front of Sarel, her nose inches from the girl’s chin. Sarel lifted a hand to worry the wrinkles between the dog’s eyes, Nandi’s calm gaze smoothing the raw edges of her anger.

  Sarel roused the pups, and they walked back to the kennel. She lowered the bolt and crossed to her mat. Icibi and Thando stood, shook off the dust that had settled on their coats, and wedged themselves behind her knees and under her ribs, surrounding her on all sides like a warm, breathing blanket.

  Nandi lay in the space between the boy and girl, her ears pricked. She lifted her head, looking from one to the other, and then staring out into the darkness beyond the kennel.

  There was a scuffle, a yowl, and a piercing, short-lived scream. And then everything was quiet.

  27

  Musa

  Musa held a tangle of dry grass in his hands. His legs were crossed beneath him and beginning to tingle. But he couldn’t move. Sarel had told him to sit there, to try weaving a satchel of his own. He was sure that if he shifted his weight even a little, the whole mess would fall apart in his hands.

  In the opposite corner of the kennel, Sarel was counting and separating the water bladders. They were lined up in three little clumps.

  Three days of water. If they were careful.

  “We’re leaving.” Sarel didn’t look at him as she spoke. “Tomorrow.”

  “But why?”

  “Why? We can’t just sit here and do nothing. The water is gone.”

  But it wasn’t. He just hadn’t found where it came to the surface yet. “Where will you go?”

  “West.”

  No. That was wrong. There was no water to the west. It was south, just beyond the dry river.

  Nandi lifted her head where it had been resting between the two of them, yawned with a long flick of her tongue, and nudged her nose under the boy’s hand. Musa stroked the hollows behind her ears.

  He had to tell Sarel. He couldn’t let her leave, let her take the dogs into the desert to die. Musa’s tongue worked in his mouth, worked around the fear that clamped his throat closed.

  He had to tell her.

  “You learned about dogs from your father, right?”

  Sarel’s eyes narrowed. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “I learned dowsing from my mother.” Musa’s eyes flicked up, searching her face. “Anybody can do it—walk around with a pair of sticks, let them show you where the water is. Most people just don’t know how.”

  Musa blew a gust of air to cool the sweat beaded on his upper lip and trickling down his temples. “But there’s more to it. You know how you can smell rain in the air before it falls? Or how a thunderstorm lifts the hair on your arms? It’s the same with water. You just have to know what it feels like, what to listen for.”

  “You’re telling me you can hear water. Water that�
��s under the ground?”

  Musa’s bony shoulders bobbed up and down in a quick shrug. “It’s how I came to this place.”

  “Well, you came here for nothing, then. There’s no water here. Not anymore. Besides, you’re not the only one who knows things. I don’t need any sticks to tell me that you look for water where plants are still growing in the middle of a drought.”

  Sarel flung her arm upward, toward the hill across the dry river. “If there was any water here, it would be there. Those sweet thorn trees are the only green things for miles. What—does water run uphill for you too? Or will you try to dig down as deep as their taproots reach?” She shook her head. “Impossible.”

  Musa looked out at the desert beyond the riverbed. “I could show you if I had my sticks.”

  “It will take more than a couple of stupid sticks to—”

  “It’s here,” Musa interrupted. “I know it is.”

  “Then why haven’t I seen it? I’ve been all over this desert. There is nothing out there. Nothing but dust.”

  “It could be really deep. Water under the ground takes the same shapes as it does above ground—lakes, rivers, even waterfalls. But if we follow the edges of the water, we might find a place where it comes up to the surface.” Musa twisted the mess in his hands, struggling to bend the fibers into place. “I just can’t tell how far down it is. I never learned that part.”

  Sarel crossed the space between them, nudging splayed legs and tails out of the way. She straightened the weave under Musa’s fingers, yanking the brittle grasses tight as she spoke. “That doesn’t make any sense. If anything, the land south of here is even drier. We’ll use every last bit of water we have wandering around, looking for something that isn’t there.”

  “But it is. I know it. You’ll see—the sticks cross when they pass over water.”

  Sarel smoothed the space between Chakide’s ears and dusted her hands off on her ragged patches of clothing. “I don’t believe you.” Her eyes snagged on the puckered pink flesh at Musa’s wrists and ankles.