Parched (7 page)

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.

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.

Musa ducked his head under her gaze. He knew why she was staring. He knew what she wanted to know.

“When I was little, and the sea ate up the coasts, the city flooded with people. There wasn't enough food or water for everyone. Anyone with money to buy a way out was gone.

“People said the drought would end, that things would get better. But it didn't. The gangs took over, and they hacked the city into pieces. They took the petrol, so no one could leave. They said they needed it to look for water in the desert, for all of us. But they never found any. And then they just started killing each other and anyone who kept their water to themselves, or tried to survive on their own.”

Musa paused, looking out at the graves and the blackened foundation.

“But you know about that.”

Silence stretched between them like the wide-flung branches of an umbrella tree. Musa's hands began to work again at the weave in his lap.

“We were going to leave. We had a plan, but my mother got sick. My brother, Dingane, told one of the gangs what I could do.”

Musa's hands fell slack, the brittle grasses slipping out of the weave. “I don't know why he did that.”

“And your mother?”

Musa swallowed. “I never saw her again.”

Chakide laid his head on Musa's thigh.

“The Tandie locked me up, and only let me out to look for water. But it didn't do any good. The groundwater up there—it's all gone bad.”

“But you escaped . . .”

The words were barely out of Sarel's mouth when she lurched to her feet, pacing the length of the kennel and back again. Her fist closed over something small and white.

“What if this gang follows you out here?”

Musa rubbed the new skin at his wrists. He didn't know what to tell her.

What he did know, what he had decided in the long days traveling across the desert to get here, was that he would rather die than be caught by the Tandie again.

Sarel dumped an armful of branches on the ground at Musa's feet.

“Show me.”

Musa picked through the pile. He chose an evenly weighted pair, snapping them a hand's-breadth past the forks, trimming and peeling the branches until they swung cleanly in his hands.

“Thank you,” he said solemnly. When Musa curled his fingers around the forked ends, his eyelids fluttered closed, as if relieved to feel their weight in his hands.

“You'd better be right about this.” Sarel tossed the rest to the dogs. They snapped and lunged at one another, growling playfully and prancing ahead, the sticks clamped between their teeth.

They crossed the dry river and Sarel stopped, hands on her hips, waiting. Musa lifted his arms until the sticks jutted out in front of him. He shuffled forward. After a dozen paces, the sticks swung inward, crossing each other and slapping against Musa's chest. He bent and scratched a line in the ground. Then he backed up and over a few paces, starting forward again.

Sarel rolled the smooth white stone around in her palm as she watched Musa's halting progress. The pups watched too, ears cocked, their eyes following the bobbing tips of the sticks, sure it was a game meant for them.

The scratch marks curved toward the hill until Musa's toes scrabbled against the steep rise.

“That's the edge of the water—those scratches?” Sarel asked.

Musa turned, nodding, and stumbled toward her. “Water comes up to the surface at the edges,” he said. The sticks swung away until they slapped the sides of his arms, pointing back to the hill behind him as Musa stepped toward her. “So we—”

“Wait,” Sarel interrupted, holding up a hand and pointing. “Why did they do that?”

Musa peered over his shoulder at the sticks angled back behind him. His hands fell to his sides and he dug the tips of the dowsing sticks into the ground.

“I don't know.”

This was ridiculous. All of it.

Sarel watched frustration ripple through him. Musa wanted her to believe him. Badly. Why? Sarel ticked her head to the side, considering. What if he was telling the truth? What if she didn't have to leave this place after all?

“The wind will sweep away your scratches before the morning is over. If this is going to work, we have to mark your lines with rocks or something.”

Musa's eyes grew wide, and his lips twitched upward.

“I'm not saying I believe you.” She toed a trench in the dirt. “It's just . . . Is it big?—the water. Is there enough for all of us?”

“More than enough. If we can get to it.”

A gust of wind lifted the dust at her feet and spun it around her ankles.

“If we're not going too far from here, then we can come back at night. We can sleep in the kennel. It would be safer.”

Sarel felt Nandi's eyes on her. The dog sat beside Musa, watching Sarel, waiting.

“But you've already decided, haven't you?”

Nandi stood. She crossed the space between them and placed her chin in Sarel's outstretched hands.

“All right, girl. We'll do it your way.”

Sarel settled a water skin into her satchel beside a clump of aloe and a few wrinkled sour figs, and another into the satchel she had woven for Musa. She pocketed her knife and tucked the ladle into her waistband, hefting the shovel like an oversize walking stick.

The homestead was quiet when they left, except for the old windmill, creaking in the early morning breeze. While Musa followed the twitching dance of the dowsing sticks, Sarel kept her eyes on the ground, looking for divots in the earth or bedrock or a cluster of stones that might hide a small spring. Every dozen paces, she scooted a rock to mark Musa's lines in the dirt.

They followed the edge of the water over bluffs dotted with withered scrubs and through dusty flatlands, sometimes following well-worn game tracks, other times picking their way across ground touched only by the scouring winds.

They stopped at midday and rested in the shade of a quiver tree. Ubali rolled over Sarel's outstretched legs, belly up, begging to be scratched. Chakide sat beside Musa's slumped form and licked the sweat and dirt from his face.

Sarel's foraging trips had kept her muscles limber and strong, thin as she was. But Musa still hadn't recovered. He was tired and jumpy, always looking over his shoulder and starting at odd sounds.

They rested for an hour before Sarel called them back to their feet. Musa stood when she stood, and he kicked his legs and leaned side to side, stretching, mimicking her every move.

Sarel went from dog to dog, holding the ladle under their chins for a drink. Tawny tails thumped the ground as she approached, and long pink tongues licked wet jowls as she moved on. Then she tipped the water bladder back, holding it steady as a thin stream of water trickled into Musa's mouth. Finally, she took a few sips herself, swirling the water around in her mouth and letting it slide slowly down her throat.

“Nandi,” she said when the empty water bladder was stowed back in her satchel, “let's go home.”

Nandi lifted her nose and set out across the desert. The pack followed, tails hanging a little lower than they had that morning.

I leave my kennel. Leave place with fire scent in air, fire dust in ground.