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  Zunee eyed the end of the rope where it dangled between Deni’s shoulder blades and hung down his spine. Perhaps that was where all the goats had gone. She scoffed at herself as they turned in the direction of their encampment. Perhaps the storm had an empty belly and a greedy appetite.

  Chapter 5

  Lena was not pleased with their failure to bring back fresh meat.

  Zunee’s younger sister stood just inside the tent, her hands on the hips of her colorful skirt, for all the world sounding like an angry wife. Lena tossed aside the rag she’d been holding, striking the woven tapestry of the tent, sending a ripple down the cloth wall. “What do you mean you have brought us no food? You have been gone since morning. Do you think I can feed these children with air? With invisible meat? With imaginary fruit from stories?” Lena growled through her clenched, white teeth and flipped a hand up in frustration. “Do you know how difficult it is to listen to the little ones’ stomaches howling, though they themselves will not ask for food? Everyday I hear this. This is not a sound for anyone to be experiencing. Do you understand what I am saying?”

  Zunee pressed her lips closed and took her sister’s haranguing—she deserved it. There was nothing else she could do but stand there and take the brunt of her younger sister’s anger and frustration. It was the least Zunee could do. The girl was a maligna in her own right, a force of nature not to be played with. Perhaps they should be sending her out into the desert to bring back spoils of the hunt, Zunee mused.

  “Did the sandstorm reach here?” Deni asked. He was still coated with a layer of red dirt. They had not seen any signs of disturbance as they approached the tents—subtle though the markers of familiarity were in a desert—the shape of a dune, the layer of undisturbed silt on the brilliant red sandstone formations. The family settlement was protected both from harsh weather and from attack by a formation of stones, a minor canyon, a rare occurrence in the landscape that was discovered by their forerunners. Though she’d lived there her whole life, Zunee still loved the layers of red and orange worn smooth by the wind, undulating and flowing like a woman’s dress caught in the breeze. The canyon walls that looked as if they were the wind, captured and held still, were her home. Protected by these same walls, Lena didn’t seem to have experienced a strange wind and she had no patience for Deni.

  “What storm?” She waved her hand at them as if they were annoying sand gnats. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s the same here, day in and day out. Always the same problems with no solutions. We are stuck without Father. We can’t leave. We can’t stay. We are starving to death.”

  Zunee considered this for a minute. Their family home, or ya’tuvah, was much, much more than a simple overnight hunting structure. Permanent in nature, its construction had taken tens of men weeks to complete. While their home was large—their father had been a wealthy man—some ya'tuvah were enormous in the extreme and could shelter as many as 300 people. Multiple sturdy banyo tree beams—the very same type of branch that had saved Zunee from flying away into the sandstorm—radiated outward in a starburst pattern inside the ceiling of the tent. Heavy woven fabrics in the region’s signature rich colors—reds, purples, and browns of all shades—kept the heat out during the day and the chill out at night, depending on how they tied up the side flaps.

  The tent was an impressive construction for sure, but also was the only home they had ever known—the only shelter they’d had from the harsh wind that scoured all other surfaces in the desert. Those of her sisters who had been born to other families were too young to remember anything else. Lena was right. They were stuck here until Rav returned. Even if they starved to death. She tried to imagine uprooting her family and leading them out of the desert, the red high plains, guiding them north. That was a joke, guiding them. She had no more idea of what lay outside of the desert than her five year-old sister Yanna did.

  The youngest of her sisters was now patting Deni on the knee, drawing a picture of what looked to be like a bow and arrow in the dust on his skin. He picked the child up, throwing her over his shoulder as he had the goat they’d lost, while Lena protested the dirt he was spreading everywhere, over them and the carpeted tent floor. Yanna’s straight black hair, so unlike the tight curls on the heads of the rest of their sisters, swung as Deni spun around. The child squealed with delight. Lena growled again, stomping away in anger—far more exasperation than her sixteen years deserved.

  “It’s unfair to her,” Zunee said. “It’s not right. At her age, she should have a mother to look after her, not be forced to act as one to others.”

  Deni set down the little girl, who took a few dizzy steps before running off. “It’s not fair to any of you,” he said, cutting to the quick of it as he always did.

  “Come,” she said with a sigh, gesturing outside the tent. She led the way to the shaded part of the canyon in which they lived, her steps sure along the path she’d walked thousands of times before. As she began brushing the dirt off her shoulders, using the wooden bin of fine golden cave sand they kept for just that purpose, she puzzled aloud through her thoughts. “As I see it, we have two options…because we can no longer stay here and watch those children starve.” She didn’t bother looking for his agreement. She knew she was right, even if she had just realized it herself. It seemed she had reached her limit.

  Deni grabbed a handful of the bin sand and scrubbed his arm. “And what are those options?” The practice of sand washing was old as some of the stories their ancestors had passed down to them. This yellow sand contained small bugs, mites of some kind, that feasted on the red dust on their skin. Within minutes, they would be clean. The mites would fly off in a small puff of yellow powder and return to their nest in the bin.

  “We can leave.” She glanced at the elaborate family tent, knowing it meant abandoning everything they owned. “Or we can stay and fight this thing that has stolen every last one of our cabra.” And every one of my sisters, she thought, though she didn’t need to say that part—they both knew it.

  Deni looked her up and down, one dark eyebrow raised, assessing their joint, pitiful state. Two wood-handled spears, four underfed bare-skinned legs between them. It was ludicrous to think they could defend themselves from anything, never mind confront whatever entity might have stolen their herd and their family’s sustenance. Just an hour ago, they’d almost been blown away by a gust of wind.

  Something more than a gust of wind. The maligna’s fury had been supernatural.

  “It won’t be easy to move the little ones. It will be a slow and dangerous process in light of how hungry and weak we already are. Making the little ones walk so long, so far…And where will we go?” he asked, scrubbing with more vigor, as if he were trying to scrape off her crazy ideas.

  “North. We’ll walk at night, by moonlight,” she said without hesitation. If they weren’t going to fight the problem, they would run in the opposite direction. It made sense. Toward the north, she knew, was the great river. Water meant plants, which meant crops and animals. Which meant food for them. Yes, the likelihood of encountering warlords was high. In all probability, the rival families had already uprooted and progressed to the river. Zunee would deal with that problem as it arose. The solution was obvious, now that she had decided they were leaving. “It’s simple,” she said. “We have no more food here, so we must go elsewhere. We go out into the wind and let it blow us to a new home.”

  Deni sighed, and she knew what he was thinking. Though he didn’t have any family of his own left—those same rival families, warlords, had killed them when he was much younger—he felt as tied to her sisters and their family ya’tuvah as she did. He felt the same dread she did of uprooting the children. But what choice did they have? To go further into the desert after their herds, where who knew what awaited them…that was even more ridiculous a thought than a seventeen-year-old girl leading a troupe of children on a harrowing exodus.

  “Lena will not be happy about this,” Zunee said, voicing her next mi
sgiving. Deni shuddered in agreement.

  Chapter 6

  In the darkness of night, in her bunk aboard the creaking riverboat, Mel awoke to a unfamiliar rolling sensation, as if she were in the center of a hammock that was being billowed up and down. Blinking in the dark to clear the sleep fog from her mind, she frowned. The Uptdon river had a strong current, but this dramatic motion went way beyond anything she had felt before. They’d had a few storms, even, but not wild enough to cause waves that could tumble her out of her bunk.

  She sat up, trying to get her bearings. The river boat thrashed to one side and then listed back to the other. Papers and a clatter of writing implements fell to the floor. Alone in the cabin, she didn’t know where Ott had gone. Then she heard shouts from above-decks, men and women’s voices high with panic and fear. Lunging out of bed, she pulled on her leggings, tunic, and sandals, just as the boat lurched. She loosened her knees, adjusting to the pitch of the waves, keeping her balance with difficulty. Pulling on her cloak, she made it to the doorway where she ran into Rav, who was pulling her cloth sling around her baby. Mel helped her friend tie the ends of the sling over her neck as they pitched from side to side in the corridor.

  “Is it a storm?” Rav asked, losing her footing. Mel braced her friend with a firm, supporting hand to her shoulder.

  “No. I don’t think so. There’s no rain. And it doesn’t sound right.” Mel couldn’t hear any wind, or at least none stronger than what they’d experienced this journey so far. Now that she was concentrating, though, she did hear a rumble she couldn’t identify. The floor rose up under their feet and they were thrown against the corridor wall. Rav turned her slender body to take the brunt of the impact and to protect her child. They made their way aloft in halting steps, Mel using her abilities to push strength to her arms and legs so she could keep them both from falling.

  Slippery and cloaked in darkness with only an occasional glint of reflection from the night sky, the deck was even more treacherous than below. Mel guided her friend to a protected railing. “Stay here. Try not to move. It’s too slick and you will fall.” She had to shout above the sound of churning water so that Rav could hear her. A flash of white in the dark—Rav’s eyes—confirmed that she had heard Mel. Above the roar of water and creaking of the wooden boat, the baby’s plaintive cries rose.

  Mel walked without help from the rail, anticipating the boat’s movements, adjusting to the chaotic roll of the deck. As she followed along the camber of the boat with its bowed curve, she found Ott with some of the crew. Half the crew was leaning over the rail, gesturing out at the water. She got Ott’s attention by putting a hand on his arm. He pointed out to the black waters, knowing full well that she, better than any of them, would be able to see what lay ahead.

  “I don’t know what it is, but it looks bad for us. Lutra help us, we’re going to need a lot of luck to get everyone out of this,” he told her, not bothering to raise his voice above his usual speaking level—he knew she could hear him. The boat was a day or two from Port Navio, but his pronouncement meant their arrival was in jeopardy. As were their lives and the lives of every person aboard the boat.

  Mel peered around him. In the inky water ahead, a dark spot had appeared. She focused her eyes and found that it had depth and went deeper into the water. Like a living creature, it moved and widened—no longer a spot, but an eddy. An enormous and expanding swirl, a whirlpool. A maelstrom, which was drawing their vessel closer.

  She’d read about them before. Studying currents had been enjoyable even if only from reading books and not experience, from experimentation and fact-gathering. Two opposing currents clashing, resulting in a downward pull in the center, the force causing the water to swirl. But here on the Uptdon River, the flow was so strong and northward, she didn’t know what to make of it. Such a disruption in the current was unheard of. She frowned, her scientific mind spinning, much like the spiral in front of them. She couldn’t think of a single cause for a disruption in the river’s course such as this. The Uptdon was wide—not as vast as an ocean—but a mile across in places. Why would this happen?

  Then her mind went down darker paths. She and Ott would survive if the boat were destroyed, but Rav, the baby, Bookman, and the others? None of them had the abilities that she and Ott had. She had a moral obligation, a duty to see that Marget and Charl made their way in the world outside the safety of the big house in the north, from which Mel had brought them. They would perish in the cold water. Mel could push strength to her limbs, slow her need for breath, ward the cold away from her skin, and heal herself somewhat. Ott was strong—and further fueled by anger, a berserker’s rage when under duress. But the others? They would die.

  As she stared at the whirlpool, her mind seeking a solution at rapid speed, the darkness at the center of the water increased, and the boat was pulled even closer, and at a faster rate. She unclenched her fingers, realizing her nails were cutting into Ott’s skin. He hadn’t noticed. Maybe his vision was turning red. She knew when he was under duress, when he was driven to fight. But no, he seemed in control at the moment. It was she who was dithering and uncertain, obsessed with collecting and observing the minutiae of this strange occurrence, her comfort in times of uncertainty, a byproduct of her upbringing. She shook her head to gather her wits.

  “We have to get them into the yawl—the small boat,” she shouted. Then the ship cracked. A sharp snap, as loud as a thunderclap meant the main timbers of the boat had been compromised, and she thought they might be too late to escape the pull of the water. Cries of “Abandon ship!” rang out through the dark. Then she heard the unmistakeable slap of bodies hitting the surface of the water as members of the crew began to jump overboard.

  When she made her way back to Rav, Bookman emerged from the cabins. Marget, also, stood silent and brave alongside them, her fierce, stoic northern nature evincing itself in a crisis—even though she looked like a doused candle. Mel approved. A girl in hysterics would be an extra obstacle in getting to the shore. Looking among them, Mel frowned. One of their group was missing. “Where’s Charl?”

  “Take the others to the boat. I’ll go back and search the cabins for him,” Ott told her. “He could be trapped. Or maybe injured or not able to come to us.” Ott’s lack of concern for his own safety made Mel want to smile, but instead, she shook her head in refusal.

  “If he’s injured, I may be able to help him. You go into the boat with them.” She had rudimentary healing skill, though it was more effective on herself. Giving Ott’s arm another squeeze, she encouraged him to leave with the others. When he still hadn’t moved, she gave him a light push though he was a head taller than she, his sandy brown hair looking black in the rain and dim night light. Neither her words nor her touch moved him in the slightest.

  “I don’t like this,” Ott protested, a frown creasing his forehead as he peered down at her, drops of water dripping off the scruff on his face. His rough fingers clasped her forearm—the sole outward sign of his panic, though she could sense the accelerated beating of his heart. “We shouldn’t be apart.” After all, they had been apart before. In the beginning, right after they’d met, they’d been separated by events beyond their control. Mel knew what that kind of separation felt like—not knowing where he was, if he were injured, or even if he lived—and she would like to avoid it now. But there was no time to think about it any longer.

  “Get them to the shore. Take them to Navio,” Mel told him, gesturing toward their friends. “Keep them safe. Rav needs looking after. And Bookman isn’t used to all this.” Taking Bookman into a populated city might be a problem. She didn't know how he would react to the crowds of people, the noisy street hawkers, and horse-drawn carriages clattering by on the cobblestone streets. Humans had been his prey in a former life—he needed to be observed to make sure he was still as human as the rest of them. “You have to make sure they will be all right. I’ll find Charl and bring him to Navio.”

  What their friends thought about Ott getting
into the small boat without her, she didn’t know. Rav had a inkling of her abilities—and Rav had not been brought up with the idea that a woman needed to be taken care of. She’d witnessed Mel obliterate a trog with nothing but her thoughts. In any case, the last Mel saw of her friend as the boat hovered above the churning black water was the stark fear on her face. Fear for Mel. Because Rav was never afraid for herself.

  “I’ll find you,” Ott said to her as he found his footing in the yawl. Shouting now, his face was tight set, his eyes glinting, as green as agamite. Anxiety pulled his face tighter. Sprays of water flattened his hair, darkening it, making him look fierce and feral. The lowering of the small boat jostled his body as he stared up at her.

  “I’ll find you first,” she said, pointing her finger at him—at a face that had grown so precious to her. Then she stepped backward as the small boat lowered down and disappeared from sight.

  Chapter 7

  The riverboat gave a sudden, violent lurch, and spun around, whipped by the whirlpool. The vessel moved faster than Mel had thought possible for one of its size. The change of direction knocked her off her feet. She gave a fervent prayer to whatever God might be listening to see her friends and Ott make it to the shore near Navio—Lady Lutra. The one God of the Toorans. Even the Great Mother who watched over Rav’s people. Mel would accept any divine intervention, blessing, or benevolent interest at the moment. Grabbing the rail and hauling herself up, she worked her way across the slick deck back to the passageway that led to the cabins. Back into the corridor, the floor of which now streamed with water up to her ankles, she was thrown against the wall by another tilt of the boat. Several doors down, she banged her fist against the wood.

  “Charl!” she shouted. When she realized how ludicrous it was to knock while the boat was minutes from going down, she wrenched the knob open. Thrusting her head through the cabin door, she peered in as water slushed past her ankles across the threshold. Empty. She moved to the next. And the next. Three more and they were all empty. Maybe he’d gone overboard already and was floundering in the violent, dark waves. She suppressed a shiver at the thought.