The Interrogation of Ashala Wolf (The Tribe) (14 page)

FOUR YEARS AGO

Something tickled my nose. I rolled over without opening my eyes, trying to find a more comfortable spot for my head to rest against the lumpy pack of supplies. The tickling didn’t stop.
Go away, insect,
I thought sleepily. Stupid fly . . . ant . . . wait, spider! My eyes flew open, and I batted at my face until a green bug shot through the air and went splat against a rock. Not a spider.
Sorry, bug.

I stood and brushed myself down, in case there
were
any spiders. Then I realized I was alone.
Where’s Georgie? WHERE IS SHE?
After a scary moment, I spotted her sitting on top of the hill we’d been too tired to hike over last night. She was facing away from me, looking at something I couldn’t see from here and totally unaware of me fighting off imaginary spiders. Yawning, I walked over and climbed up to join her. Georgie didn’t turn around, even though she must have heard me coming.
Great, she’s out of it again.
But when I reached the top and saw what she was staring at, I went all silent and frozen, too.

Stretched out in front of us were waves of long yellowy grasses, broken up by patches of colorful wildflowers and rocky hills that rose up like turtles surfacing from the ocean. And beyond the grasslands were the trees, a sprawling forest of tuarts so tall they seemed huge even from here. The Firstwood. We were
here.
I glanced at Georgie, pleased to find she wasn’t wearing that frighteningly blank expression, the one where she seemed like her mind had gone on vacation and left her body behind. Instead, she looked — actually, I didn’t think I’d ever seen anyone look like she did right then. Except, maybe, in the picture that hung in our school library, the one that showed Hoffman on the day the flood waters had started to roll back from the land and he’d realized humanity would survive the Reckoning after all.

Georgie shifted, her face growing worried, and I thought something might be wrong. Then she asked quietly, “Ash, is this the real world?”

I grinned in relief to hear her say something so normal — well, normal for her. “Yes, Georgie. This is the real world.” I said it with total confidence, as if I was absolutely certain, and I was. But Georgie wasn’t, and never would be, and I understood why. It wasn’t easy for her to keep track of the world-that-was, not when she spent so much time peering into worlds-that-could-be.

Reassured, Georgie went back to staring out over the grasslands.
She’s okay. She’s herself.
I’d gone along with her crazy scheme of creating a life for us in the Firstwood, and it was working. She was connecting again, in her own Georgie way, and she seemed happy, not sunk in gloom the way she’d been in the city.

Now that we were finally here, though, I couldn’t help thinking about the other person who should be with us.
It does no good, Ash. You know it does no good.
I couldn’t stop the entire sequence of events from playing out in my mind as, for the thousandth time, I tried to work out where I’d made my mistake.

This whole terrible thing had begun when Georgie had told me she’d “seen” something bad happen to Cassie. As usual, she hadn’t been able to give me any details. “Looking at the future,” Georgie had once told me, “is like watching clouds.” Which sounded like nonsense before she explained. “You know how clouds make shapes, and sometimes you’re not sure what those shapes are? So first you think it’s a dog, and then you look away, and when you look back, you think it’s a bird instead.” Plus, the way Georgie told it, she had no control over what clouds she saw or for how long. And the “weather” of the future changed all the time, sending possibility upon possibility flitting randomly through her head.

What Georgie had known about Cassie was that something bad was coming, and it involved the government. I’d thought my Firestarter sister was going to be detained, and I’d made a plan for the three of us to run away together. Only, somehow, my parents had figured out that Cassie had an ability. They’d called an assessor, and, exactly as Georgie had said, something bad happened to Cassie. I just hadn’t been quick enough to get Cassie out, or smart enough to realize that the assessor was coming. I hadn’t been
enough.

My chest tightened until I could only take short, shallow breaths. Spots started to appear in front of me, and everything tilted the way it had right after I’d found out Cassie was dead. The doctor in Gull City had said I was suffering from panic attacks. As if I needed to be told. I mean, obviously I was panicked. I didn’t understand why everybody
wasn’t
panicked. Didn’t people realize how quickly everything could fall apart?
You look away for an instant, you spend the day at a friend’s house, and when you come home, your sister is gone. . . .

“Ash!” Georgie tugged my arm, sounding terrified. “Ash! Ash!”

With effort, I forced my thoughts away from Cassie and concentrated on the world around me — the solid bulk of the hill, the hard stones beneath my hand, the wind on my skin. Finally, everything started to right itself again, and I could breathe more easily. “I’m all right, Georgie.”

She tightened her grip on my wrist, her pale eyes fixed on me in a super-focused way that was a little scary. “You’re thinking about Cassie. You told me
I
wasn’t allowed to keep thinking about her, and now you’re doing it.”

“I’m not. I mean . . . I’m . . .” I shook my head helplessly, unable to prevent the words I’d been holding inside from spilling out. “I was so mean to her, Georgie. You remember how she used to follow me around everywhere, and I pushed her away.”

“Because you didn’t know she had an ability. You thought you’d have to leave her behind one day, when you ran from the government. Once you found out she was a Firestarter, you were the best sister anyone could want.”

“I’ve only known that for a year. I wasted all that time, and now she’s gone, and it’s all my fault.”

“It was not your fault! Your mom and dad were the ones who called the assessor. And what about the enforcers? And, and the government? You always say everything’s the government’s fault.”

I had to laugh at that, a short, painful laugh that turned into a cough at the end. “I guess I do.”

She continued to stare anxiously at me. “I
need
you, Ash.”

“I know, Georgie. It’s okay. . . .”

“Because I’m like a kite.”

“Um, a kite?”

“I go flying around from future to future, and it’d be so easy to drift away and fly forever. Except I have you, and you’re the person who holds the string, the one who pulls me back to the ground.” Biting her lip, she said in a small voice, “If you’re lost, Ash, then so am I.”

I put my hand on hers. “Georgie, it was
definitely
the government’s fault.”

She laughed, and so did I, and the tension was broken. We went back to sitting in silence, but a more comfortable one this time. Then Georgie said brightly, “Look, a saur!”

There was a menacingly large black shape approaching from the distance. I clutched at Georgie. “If we’re not on its territory, I think it’ll leave us alone. So what we have to do is go back down to our packs real fast and real quiet. You got that?”

She nodded. I twisted around and began to slither backward. Georgie shifted as if she was about to follow. Then, suddenly, she stood up and ran down the
wrong side
of the hill. I leaped to my feet, slipped, and skidded. By the time I’d clawed my way back, Georgie was out on the grasslands, and the saur was moving in her direction at an unbelievable pace. I belted after her, shouting, “Georgie! You’re going the wrong way!”

But she started skipping toward the monster, and I put on a new burst of speed. I had to reach her before the saur did! I grabbed hold of her arm and tried to drag her backward. She planted her feet on the ground and grinned at me, looking like a naughty kid who was playing a trick on her mom.
What does she think she’s doing? Has she totally flipped out?

The saur was getting so close now that I could hear the ripping of its claws as it tore through the grass. Georgie
still
wouldn’t move. I flung myself in front of her and waved my arms wildly as the saur charged toward us. “You want to eat somebody? Eat me!”

The huge reptile skittered to a halt. It stood there, staring down at me, while I gaped back at it, my knees shaking and my heart slamming against my chest. From this close, I could see it wasn’t all black. There were thin orange stripes running along its scaly body, and it was
huge,
so big that the top of my head was level with the top of its front legs. The beast flicked out a long blue tongue, and if Georgie hadn’t been behind me, I would’ve fled. But I knew I had to keep between her and the saur, so I stayed where I was, watching in terrified silence as it licked at the air above my head.
What is it doing?
Then I remembered — lizards smell with their tongues. And it seemed to be . . . puzzled.

Maybe it didn’t know what we were. It’d been years since anyone had been foolish enough to wander into the grasslands and be eaten by saurs, so this particular saur might not have seen a human before. That could buy us enough time to escape. Or at least, enough time for
one
of us to escape. Without looking away from the beast, I whispered over my shoulder, “Georgie, I want you to go. Don’t run, because I’m pretty sure it’ll chase after you if you do. Just walk back to the hill and off the grasslands.”

There was a moment of silence, during which I hoped Georgie was following my advice. But when she spoke, I could tell she hadn’t moved. “The speckled egg will hatch in the next no-moon.”

What on earth was she going on about?
“Georgie, you have to leave!”

But she’d already caught the lizard’s attention. Its golden eyes focused on her as she continued talking. “You can tell the mother that her last child will hatch with stars.”

A strange, raspy voice demanded,
How do you know about the egg?

My jaw dropped. The saur was
speaking
? But it hadn’t even opened its mouth. The voice came again, and I realized I was hearing it
inside
my head.

How do you know?

Georgie stepped forward and stood beside me. “Because I know. It’s a future.”

The lizard’s eyes flared in something that might have been anger, and I put in hastily, “She has an ability, like a special power, that lets her see things that are going to happen before they do. So your, um, speckled egg will be okay.”

There was a tense silence, during which he — she? — gave Georgie and me a thoughtful stare. He, I decided. I had no way to tell, but I thought the saur was a male. He didn’t seem to know what to make of us, and I certainly didn’t know what to make of him. Or of Georgie, who’d obviously been seeing things she hadn’t told me about. I cast a sideways glance at her; she was giving the saur a cheerful wave.

“I’m Georgie, and this is Ash. What’s your name?”

He stretched out his neck, seeming to preen a little, and rolled one golden eye toward us.
I am Wanders-Too-Far.

Putting as much enthusiasm as I could into my voice, I exclaimed, “Wow, that’s a very impressive name. Very adventurous.”

The saur didn’t reply, but I got the feeling he was pleased. Encouraged, I said, “Well, we just came to tell you about that egg. So we’d like to go now, if that’s okay with you.”

You are humans.

Georgie nodded. “That’s right.”

We have songs about humans. They harm their young.

The way he said that, it sounded like the worst thing in the world. I opened my mouth to deny it, but it was such a blatant lie that the words stuck in my throat. After all, Georgie and I wouldn’t have been here if humans didn’t harm their young. Luckily, Georgie wasn’t at such a loss for words as I was.

“Not me, and not Ash! Ash doesn’t hurt people. Ash looks after everyone.”

Wanders-Too-Far seemed to be considering that, and I put in, “Also, among humans,
we’re
young. We’re . . . babies, really. We’re running away from the adults, the big humans, who are trying to hurt us. So,” I finished firmly, “if you eat us, you’ll be no better than they are.”

Wanders made a hissing sound.
A laugh?
You are not my young, human. Why should I protect you?

“Because . . . because . . . we’re useful! Like Georgie, she told you about the egg, and she could tell you about other things, too. And I can do anything in my dreams.”

He gazed at us unblinkingly, and I got the feeling he was thinking hard. For what seemed like a long time, everything was quiet except for the sound of our breathing — Georgie’s normal, and mine too fast — and the murmur of the grass in the breeze.

Finally, Wanders spoke again.
Humans should not know of us.

It took me a second to figure out exactly what he meant. “You — the saurs — are hiding, aren’t you? That you can talk, I mean?”

Our songs say humans fear difference, and when they are afraid, they will find a way to destroy what they fear. Unless they do not know it is there.