“It’s a long story,” I say.
“How long?” he asks.
“Too long, but I don’t really feel like talking ’bout it.”
“No, I mean, how long’re you in for?” Raja says.
I hate to tell him. I might sound like I’m complaining, when, compared to his life sentence, a quarter full moon is but a blink and a wink. But he’ll find out eventually. “A quarter full moon,” I say, keeping my voice flat, trying not to sound either glad or cut up ’bout it.
“Ain’t bad,” he says. “Ain’t good neither. A quarter full moon in here can kill someone as skinny as you.”
“Thanks,” I say.
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to—I been in ’ere so long now I’m not real good at conversating no more. I talk to myself more’n real live humans.”
“At least you’re not talking to a prickler,” I mumble.
“What was that?”
“Nothing,” I say.
~~~
My nerves are coiled tighter’n a rattler ready to strike. Perry seems tense, too, all stiff and silent, so unlike him. The wind’s only gotten stronger from earlier in the day.
I slept away the afternoon so I’d be wide awake for tonight. Now that the time’s come, I’m considering waiting until tomorrow night. How can I focus on the task at hand with everything that’s bouncing ’round in my head?
’Fraidy tug, Perry says unhelpfully.
Now you’ve got something to say, I think. But my wooloo thoughts are just what I need to motivate me to move forward with my plan.
Already the clinks and voices are moving away, soon to be out of earshot. I need to stay close enough to follow them. Relying on adrenaline and chants of ’Fraidy cat! ’Fraidy cat! from Perry, I grab a bar with one hand, trying to think strong and brave thoughts.
I start climbing, shimmying my way up, one hand grip and foot slide at a time. The horny toad dance. It helps that I’ve done it once already, during a panicked life-or-death climb. This time is less stressful, more controlled. In less’n the time it takes for my father to lose his temper I’m at the top and squeezing between the bars, the only prisoner small enough to accomplish such a feat.
Lucky me. Skinny me. I blink hard when I remember what Circ said to me last night. Don’t even think those words about yourself. Don’t even joke about them. Not now. Not ever again. I take a deep breath. Okay. No more thoughts about being Runty, or Scrawny, or Skinny. By trying not to think them, I start thinking them more. I pound the heel of my hand against my forehead, trying to dislodge the thoughts, but now they’re all I can think. Skinny. Scrawny. Runty. Skinny. Scrawny. Runty.
Perry takes up the chant, adding his own flair. Skinniest, Scrawniest, Runtiest!
Time’s a-wasting, but how I can I safely climb back down when my mind’s full of all this blaze? I gotta replace it with other thoughts, better thoughts. Circ’s arms around me, on my hips. His lips pressed against mine. I feel flutters in my stomach and I’m okay again. Ready to move.
Ever so slowly, I ease my way over the edge, the wind battering me, threatening to toss me over the side. Getting up was easy, but I don’t want a repeat of the last time when my only option for getting down was a free fall, broken only when my body smashed into the durt. A dull ache throbs through my legs and ribs just thinking ’bout it. Using my hand as a brake, I slide down the side, opening and tightening my fingers to regulate my speed. When my feet hit the bottom, pride surges through me. Even Perry says a few nice words, although I sense a hint of sarcasm in them.
Time’s a-wasting.
I move out on footsteps so light a hard-tracking Cotee’s ears would have trouble picking them up. The wind is whipping through my hair and I hafta dodge and duck as brambleweeds come a tumbling past, barely visible until the last moment. As cloudless as the previous night was, tonight’s cloudfull. I can’t see a single star behind the heavy blanket of black and gray. The only light comes from occasional glances by the moon goddess as she peeks between the roiling clouds. It looks like a spring storm’s coming, but it’s way too early for that—we ain’t even had our first sandstorm of the winter season yet.
I run and run and run, heading in the direction I saw the prisoners taking with their tools. Visibility is poor, good enough to see my own feet and what’s just ahead, but not nearly enough to see much further; so I rely on my ears to alert me if I’m getting close, hoping against hope that their march hasn’t become a silent one, in which case I might not know I’ve caught up until I run right into the back of one of them, a clumsy end to my brilliant plan. I’m also praying to the sun goddess that there ain’t no packs of Cotees out here. They usually stick well south of the village, where the hurds of tug are plentiful, but you never can tell.
Soon I’m loster’n a blind burrow mouse in a maze of sand tunnels. The wind whips in every direction, starting to pick up bits of sand now, stinging and prickling my skin. If this turns into a sandstorm, I’m knocked. In the morning they’ll find my empty cage, but they won’t find me buried beneath ten feet of sand.
I’m about to turn back—whichever way back is—when I hear it. A clink, instantly lost on a shriek of wind. Then another. Careless tool carriers. Or carriers who don’t care at all.
I make desperately for the sound, covering my eyes against the bursts of sand-filled wind, but craning my ear in what I think is the right direction. My heart leaps when I hear voices. Angry. Mutinous. “This is madness. We’re all gonna die out here, you too, Keep.” A voice I ain’t never heard ’fore. One of the lifers.
“Shut yer mouth and quit yer complainin’!” Keep shouts. “We go back when I say we do.”
I see them, finally. A haggard gaggle of prisoners, bent against the wind and sand, trudging at a snail’s pace through the desert. No wonder I was able to catch up with them. Just as I spot them they stop. I freeze, drop to the ground, get a mouthful of sand as it splashes up.
There’s more grumbling, but no one else is as bold as the last guy. When I peek my sand-crusted face over the dune, I see why. Keep’s got a pointer notched, aimed toward the group, keeping his distance. They could rush him, but he’d take out a few of them ’fore they could get to him. And probably none of them are willing to die for t’others.
They start moving again, and almost right away, the wind dies down, the airborne sand drops back to the ground where it belongs, and the clouds part, revealing the bright and full moon. Strange timing.
“See! What’d I tell yer?” Keep barks. “I knew it’d clear. Just a warnin’ storm. Nothin’ more.”
I follow silently.
It’s a long hike, and now that I’m not worried about a deadly sandstorm popping up, I keep my distance from the prisoners to ensure I’m not spotted. My mind turns to the slight smile and nod my mother gave me ’fore she left the hut last night. She approved of what I was doing, I’m sure of it. My whole life my mother has been this quiet, weak figure, taking everything my father can dish out without even a word against him. But now…now she’s an enigma. She’s still mostly subservient, but it’s like she’s plotting and scheming in the background, delivering cryptic messages to me in prison. I wonder what set her off? Does she know something I don’t? Or has she just had enough of his tirades, of his endless displays of power and authority? I might not be the sharpest pointer in the quiver, but I ain’t stupid either. I know when something’s cooking by the change in the air, the smell. And with my mother, something’s definitely in the pot, maybe not boiling yet, but starting to simmer for sure. An enigma.
Something about the landscape changes, catching my attention. I look down at my feet. The sand has disappeared, replaced by hard-packed earth. Not necessarily unusual for the desert, but that’s not what caught my attention. Green-stemmed plants poke from cracks in the dry earth, sprouting here and there. I kick at one with my toe and it bends all the way to the ground and then springs back up. Doesn’t crack or break like the dried and withered scrubweeds near the village. These are alive. Growing.