Parched (2 page)

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.

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.

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.

Sarel twisted her hands behind her.

She didn't want to be reminded of the night before, of the hours she'd spent scrabbling in the dirt, trying to gather enough stones to pile into rocky graves over the still bodies of her parents, of the ash that had drifted down on the evening breeze and filled in the cracks between the stones.

She didn't want to be reminded that her parents had died because of this place. This place that was going to keep Sarel alive whether she wanted it to or not.

Sivo had never taken him out after dark before. Musa cowered in the back seat of the jeep, watching the sun smear the sky red and gold as it sank between the crumbling buildings. They had been out looking for water every day that week, sweeping farther and farther from the shack in the middle of Tandie territory where they kept Musa.

Where he huddled in the corner, alone, trying not to move so the chains wouldn't cut into his skin. Alone, except when footsteps scuffled in the dirt and a body crouched on the other side of the wall. When he heard breathing, hiccupped and ragged. Sometimes there was even a voice. A voice he knew as well as his own, whispering his name through the rusted gap in the corrugated steel.

Sometimes it was a relief to hear that voice. And sometimes it was a relief to be far away, where the voice couldn't reach him.

Musa rubbed his eyelid, and a crust of dried dirt sifted to the floor. Even the smallest movement sent spikes of pain shooting through his wrists. It was getting worse. Sivo wouldn't give him a single cup of water to clean the sores.

When Musa was little, his mother used to tell stories from when she was a girl, from a time when you only had to turn a handle and water sprayed down on you—hot, cold, and everything in between—just for washing. A time when she and her sisters would run around the neighborhood splashing through the water people sprayed in front of their houses to make the grass turn green.

Musa and his brother, Dingane, had always laughed at that part, sure she was teasing. The idea—people spraying water into the air because they liked green grass instead of brown.

For some reason, when the boys laughed at this, it only made their mother sad.

Musa flinched away from the searing-hot seat buckle that dangled overhead and swung at his bare skin as the jeep rattled down the broken road. He closed his eyes and licked his lips, imagining cool water sprinkling across his face like rain.

The jeep hit a rut and threw him onto the floor. Musa hit the ground face-first, his arms pinned beneath him. The chains at his wrists bit into raw skin, and he cried out in surprise and pain.

Sivo jammed the brakes and jumped out. He leaned over the side of the jeep, his large hands gripping the boy around the ribs and hefting him upright. Sivo took one look at the fresh blood leaking down Musa's hands and cursed.

“Just my luck.” He felt for the key ring at his waist and unlocked the chains at Musa's wrists. The metal slid to the floor into a heap like a coiled snake. Sivo jumped into the driver's seat and tossed a rag into the boy's lap. “Don't get your filthy blood all over my seats.”

Musa held his wrists over the grimy cloth, watching the blood pool on his skin and slide to the back of his wrists, then fall away.

Why, Dingane? Why?

The engine choked to life and Musa put his arms out to brace himself against the jeep's pitching and rolling. The guard in the passenger seat drummed his fingers against the barrel of the rifle that lay across his lap.

After ten more minutes of bumping and jostling, they pulled over into the shadows a crumbling warehouse cast across a vacant lot. Sivo started to get out of the jeep but the guard shook his head. He spoke for the first time, in a chalky voice. “Not yet. Not until full dark.”

Musa settled his hands gingerly in his lap and stretched his legs the length of the back seat. He didn't care why they had stopped, why they were hiding in the shadows like thieves.

He didn't care, until he looked up.

It was the one thing that never changed as they drove from one end of the slums to another. Red scraps of cloth, flags, and ripped T-shirts hung off the corner of roofs, flapping out of windows, and draped over front doors. The mark of Tandie territory.

Musa squinted. Even in the near dark, he could see that the flag hanging limp from the shattered streetlamp was not red. Cold stole over his skin, down his parched throat, and settled low in his belly.

Musa's breath came short and quick. His mind flooded with memories—a door bursting open, shouting, hands reaching, taking. He squeezed his eyes shut, and a small cry slipped through his lips.

He forced his eyes open again, forced himself to look at the pale cloth, to face what it meant. They had crossed to a part of the city that belonged to another gang.

There was only one reason they would do something so dangerous. The Tandie were out of water.

Musa buried his face in the seat cushions. At least it would all be over soon.

 

After waiting for half an hour more, Sivo sent Musa out into the empty lot with his dowsing sticks. “Be quick about it,” he whispered.

Musa walked out alone, his feet shushing across the dirt. The first stars pricked weakly through the dark sky. Musa lifted his arms and settled into his dowsing shuffle.

The night's silence pressed in all around him. His heartbeat thundered through his ears and chest and fingertips. Sweat beaded on his upper lip.

A bat keened high above, and seconds later, Musa felt the breath of air from its thin wings raise the hair on his neck. He paced back and forth across the dirt. He was almost to the far end of the abandoned lot when a faint click echoed across the darkness.

He paused, one foot hovering inches above the ground, waiting, listening. For a second, everything was silent.

Crack-crack-crack-crack.

Flashes erupted from behind the warehouse, and heavy footsteps kicked up gravel.

A scream ripped through the night, and an answering volley of gunshots echoed across the vacant lot. Musa jumped. He didn't think. He didn't look back.

He dropped his sticks and ran.

A scattering of rain wet the dust, pinning it to the earth for a little while. Wildflowers sprang up out of the ash, spreading clumps of color along the grotto path. Stubborn desert grasses poked up all over the homestead while Sarel slept in the grotto below, the smell of smoke in her nostrils and gunshots cracking through her dreams.

Days passed under the bald sun, and the new growth withered, sinking into the scorched earth as if it had never risen at all. Only the sunlight peeking around the curved stairs separated day from night for Sarel, who was torn in and out of dreams, waking to find her cheeks wet and her throat ragged.

The dogs left the grotto one by one, licking their jowls and trotting up into the sunlight. She was alone, except for Nandi, who kept watch while she slept. And Ubali, who huddled against the opposite wall, licking his wound clean.

The sound grated against her nerves. It kept her from sleeping. It kept her from slipping into the still, silent place between one breath and the next.

With the sound came the memory: Ubali standing beside her father. Snarling. Lunging. And then the guns.

Ubali had tried to save her father. She should be helping him. Her mother would have known what to do. Sarel traced the pale scar that sliced across the inside of her wrist. It had happened in the city, the last time they had gone.

Her family had piled into the car and driven the potholed highway. They were going to visit friends who had a little boy about Sarel's age. When they arrived, the house was dark, the windows boarded up. Hastily packed boxes filled the living room. There was nowhere to sit.

So they walked to a park nearby, where rusted play structures sprang up out of the weeds and a wrought-iron fence enclosed a sunken pool that had been without water so long a massive crack had split the concrete bowl in half.

While the children played, the adults huddled behind the tire swing, talking in hasty whispers about poisoned groundwater and brackish coastal rivers.

Sarel and the little blond-haired boy slid down the slide over and over again, chased each other around the little park, and climbed onto rubber swings, kicking their legs into the sky and shrieking with laughter.

But then Sarel tripped and fell, the tender skin at her wrist snagging on a scrap of rusted metal.

“She needs a shot and antibiotics,” the woman said, her voice climbing high with panic while she clutched her little boy close. “And where do you think she'll get something like that now?”

Sarel's mother mopped up the blood and wrapped a bandage around the cut.

“You see!” the man hissed. “It's not safe here. Not anymore. You should leave too. While you still can.”

Sarel's father drove home, his lips drawn in a tight line while he eased the car over bumps and around gaping holes in the highway. But the ride home was Sarel's favorite part of the whole day. Her mother rode in the back seat with her, cradling her in both arms and singing softly over her head.