“If you’re done fondling her breasts, you can grab my pack and stop this damn tent from flapping.”
Rob grabbed Conner’s pack. No point telling him he wasn’t fondling her breasts. It would just sound like he had been. Silence would sound the same way, too. Didn’t matter either way, so he saved his breath. He carried Conner’s pack and set it on the folded tent opposite where his brother was knotting the lines. The fabric stopped flopping around in that pre-dawn breeze.
“Make a pillow for her. Up here where her head will go.” His brother sounded annoyed. No, something worse than that. Conner wasn’t being himself. He sounded scared and unsure. Rob didn’t like that.
“We should put her head back here and drag her feet-first,” Rob told his older brother. “To keep the wind and sand out of her face.”
Conner studied him a moment. That look. “Whatever,” he said. It’s what adults said instead of: You’re right.
The girl was moved onto the sand for a moment. The bedding went onto the tent, and then the girl went back onto the bedding. All their gear was arranged on the flat canvas, which was now like a sarfer with no skids and no sail. Just two sets of lines to shoulder. It was a long way back into town, but neither Rob nor his brother complained as they adjusted their kers, draped the ropes over their shoulders, and leaned into the task.
“What if she dies before we get there?” Rob asked.
“She won’t.”
“But how do you know?”
“I just do, okay? Now shut up and do your share or we’ll go in circles.”
Rob pulled. He counted his steps. Whenever he could, he counted anything that could be counted. A few years back, he and Conner’s camping trip had come on a windless night, and when the fire had died down to coals and the stars had burst bright, he had counted five thousand two hundred and fifty-eight stars before he couldn’t be sure if he was counting the same ones over again. Numbers calmed him in a way that words couldn’t. If he thought with words, they went around in circles and crashed into each other and grew more dire and terrifying, just like they were right then as he forgot to count steps and remembered that camping trip and worried they were dragging a dead girl across the sand.
“She made it out of No Man’s Land,” Conner finally said, as if he could sense Rob’s worry. “She’ll make it to town.”
Rob didn’t argue. He dug his boots into the sand and tried to do as much work as his brother. He could feel a blister forming on the back of his heel. He was tired. They’d only gone to sleep what felt like a few hours ago.
“What’re the chances someone would show up on this night?” Rob asked his brother. “This night of all nights?”
“Not good,” Conner said. “The same as dropping a grain of sand and then finding it again. Those are the chances.”
Rob thought so too. “She said she had a… a message from Father.” He grunted between words from the effort of the haul.
“She was delirious. Keep quiet and pull. Let’s head to the right a little and around that next dune. Get in the lee.”
Rob obeyed. He kept his thoughts to himself. Which meant he couldn’t know if Conner was piecing together all that hewas piecing together. Coincidences didn’t make sense, but if they did happen, they could get you thinking really strange thoughts. He knew a boy in Shantytown—a kid in his class—whose roof had caved in twice, both times on his birthday, six years apart. It had buried him in drift both times, but they had dug him out. Now he sleeps under the stars every birthday and won’t listen to sense about it. He also hates the number six. And as much as Rob found this silly, he was pretty sure he’d be the same way if that had happened to him.
And now his brain was whirling with all kinds of new facts. People came out from No Man’s Land. That wasn’t supposed to be a thing. So maybe Old Man Joseph wasn’t so crazy after all. Old Man Joseph claimed to have been to the other end of No Man’s Land and returned, but no one believed him. But maybe. And maybe Father was alive out there somewhere. Maybe he had sent this girl to them. And if so, he had sent her to arrive on the night he and his brother would be there. But there was something else about what she had said—
“Hey, Conner?”
“Jesus, Rob, what the fuck is it?”
“She didn’t say ‘your’ father. She just said Father.”
“Save it, Rob. I’m thinking.”
Rob felt the blister on his heel go. Raw flesh began to rub. Sand would get in, and then the real hurting would begin.
“I’m thinking too, you know.” He bit his lip and tried not to limp, tried to be strong. His brother took a deep breath beside him.
“I know. I’m sorry. What’re you thinking, little brother?”
“I’m thinking the way she said Father, it was like hers and ours are the same one.”
They reached the lee of a great dune, and the whispering wind fell quiet and the rushing sand was no longer at their ankles but high above their heads. Conner eventually answered.
“I’ve been thinking the same thing,” he finally said.
37 • The Sand-Filled Screams of the Dying
A pad of paper spelled out the bad news in a single column of numbers. There was more subtraction than addition taking place. Rose would’ve been happy to break even, for every dollar earned to be a dollar spent. But rarely were such balances kept. If there was a zero-sum game, it was played among a host of winners and losers. Businesses like hers going under—literally, more often than not—while riches piled elsewhere to the heavens. Coin was like sand in this way: it only flowed in one direction. And to compound the misery of those to the west, these two currents of woe ran counter to one another. The poor shipped off their coin to the east and got buckets of sand in return.
It was the damn water prices. The cost per liter had nearly doubled that year, which meant a near doubling in the price of beer. And the Ladies of the Balcony still needed their showers. Not so much for their clients to stand them—clients who could hardly be expected to nose their wares over their own stench—but so the ladies could stand themselves. Rose had put it off longer than she should have. She’d have to jack up the price of a pint and hike the room rates again. There would be bitching and moaning when she announced the both; people would act as though she were gouging for the fun of it. Truth was, the whole place would shut down if they had another month like this.
The din of activity beyond her door, of people spending money, served as temporary comfort. News of Danvar’s discovery had the divers in a mood. Even the Lords seemed interested. They were already scrambling for who might have title based on mineral claims, arguing and spilling beer on ancient maps. Rose had seen this play out before. There would be a frenzy of spending all the spoils one hopedto make. This would be followed by the lean times of those same gamblers asking for loans and handouts. People hardly took a breath between these extremes. It was the stagger home of a drunk who could hit every dune on either side as he lurched a thousand paces in what he might’ve crossed in ten.