Rye spent his lunch hours reading. He had begun borrowing history books from the book room, hoping to learn something — anything — about the land outside the Wall, the land that had swallowed his brothers.
But he found very few facts that he did not already know. The story of Dann was like a fable, told always in the same way and with very little detail. It was as if all history had begun when Weld was made, and everything before that was darkness.
The only maps of Dorne that Rye could find were all exactly the same as the one that hung on the wall of the Southwall schoolroom, beside the Warden’s portrait. Rye could probably have drawn this map by heart, having stared at it so often during boring lessons. But still he spent one lunch hour copying it carefully.
He carried the scrap of paper home with the sour feeling that he had been wasting his time. But the following morning, he woke early and looked again at the map he had drawn.
As Rye stared at the map, really seeing it for the first time, his heart sank. He understood why the Warden had been so sure that Dirk, Joliffe, and the other volunteers were no more.
None of the volunteers could have simply lost his way home. Weld dominated the island. Its wall had to be visible from every part of Dorne.
I must accept it, Rye thought fiercely. Dirk is dead. And by now, Sholto is probably dead, too.
But he could not accept it. And as he ran his finger over the map, tracing imaginary paths from the Keep of Weld to the sea, he felt a growing certainty that Dirk and Sholto were alive — alive somewhere beyond the Wall.
Rye knew that he would not be able to explain this feeling to anyone, even Lisbeth. There was no logic to it, no sense. But it persisted, burning in the center of his being like a small stubborn flame that would not go out.
Skimmer season arrived again, more terrifying than ever before. The beasts flew over Weld in such numbers that the walls and roofs of the dark, sealed houses seemed to vibrate with the sound of their passing. It was very hot, and there were wild tales of folk who had run mad in their stifling rooms, throwing open their windows and taking great gulps of night air before skimmers overwhelmed them.
As Sholto had predicted, attacks became more frequent in Southwall, especially in the streets near Joliffe’s home. Deaths were now so commonplace that they were barely noted except by those close to the people who had been lost.
The Warden’s skimmer warning signs had gone up on every corner as usual, but no one touched them. The citizens of Southwall had lost the taste for protest, it seemed.
“And there have been no more riots, in Northwall or anywhere else,” Lisbeth said one evening when the house had been sealed as tightly as a jar of bell fruit preserves, and she and Rye had sat down to eat. “That is something to be grateful for, at least.”
Rye nodded absently. That afternoon, he had counted the buckets of skimmer repellent remaining in the storeroom. He thought there was enough repellent left to last until the end of the present season. But what of the next?
Sholto will be back before then, he told himself.
But a few days later, he came home from school to find Lisbeth wearing two gold flower badges instead of one. Lying on the table was the scroll bearing the Warden’s seal and declaring that Sholto was officially regarded as lost.
“Do not believe it, Mother!” Rye cried fiercely. “Sholto is not dead! And neither is Dirk!”
Perhaps Lisbeth had wept when the Warden’s letter first arrived, but she was tearless now. She shook her head and turned away.
“Stop hoping, Rye,” she said. “We have our home, and we have each other. Let that be enough.”
That night, Rye dreamed more vividly than ever.
He saw Dirk crawling through a dark, narrow space, his face blackened and running with sweat. He saw Sholto sitting in what appeared to be a cave, writing furiously in a notebook. He saw vast, scaled bodies beating water to foam. He saw monstrous feathered shadows flying through cloud. He saw the trunks of trees melting into the shapes of men and women with hair that flew around their heads like flames.
And rising above the rhythmic pounding sound that he had learned to expect, there were harsh cries and the deep, vibrating music of a vast bell or gong.
He woke, shaking, in the darkness and stayed awake till dawn. It was far better to lie listening to the skimmers than to risk dreaming again.
He left home at his usual time, but he did not go to school. Instead, obeying an impulse he could not really explain, he went to the house of Tallus the healer.
No patients were waiting. A scrappy note had been pinned to the door of the healer’s office.
Rye ventured down the hallway and hesitated outside the workroom door.
He had not seen Tallus face-to-face since, as a small child, he had fallen from Dirk’s back and dislocated his shoulder. He had never forgotten the experience.
“See this, young Rye?” Tallus had barked, pulling at the fluff of white hair that ringed his bald scalp. “Once it was as red as yours. Can you believe that?”
Openmouthed, Rye had shaken his head, for a moment quite forgetting the pain in his shoulder.
“Red hair means luck, they say,” Tallus had said. “Luck — and other things.”
For some reason, he had then glanced at Rye’s mother, who had looked worried and shaken her head, very slightly.
“But white hairs,” Tallus had gone on smoothly, “mean old age. And as you can see, I am very old indeed. If you can count the red hairs I have left on my head, you will know how many years I have to live. Will you do that for me? I should like to know.”
And while Rye, fascinated, was trying to find even one red hair in that mass of white, the healer had made a quick movement, and suddenly the arm that had been twisted out of shape was straight again, and the pain had gone.
Remembering, Rye smiled, and knocked at the door.
“What is it?” a gruff voice shouted.
“It is Rye, Sholto’s brother, Healer Tallus!” Rye called. “I need to speak to you … if you please.”
“Oh, very well,” the voice replied ungraciously. “Come in.”
Rye opened the door. He saw a large room lined with shelves of labeled jars. Pots bubbled on the stove in one corner. The room was filled with steam and reeked of skimmers.
Tallus, a small, crabbed figure wrapped in a stained white apron and wearing thick eyeglasses, was standing at a bench vigorously sharpening a thin-bladed knife.
“Shut that door!” he yelled, swinging around and brandishing the knife. “Do you want to stink the whole house out?”
Rye made haste to do as he was told, took two steps through the billowing steam, and stopped dead.
A dead skimmer, the largest he had ever seen, lay on a long table in the center of the room. Foam clotted its snarling jaws and ratlike snout. Its eyes were open, glazed in death so they looked like chips of white china. Its body, covered in pale, velvety fuzz, was as big as the body of a half-grown goat. Its leathery wings, spread wide and pinned flat, covered the table from end to end.
“Yes, they are larger this year,” Tallus said, seeing his visitor’s eyes widen. “And this one is still quite young, by the looks of the wings, which tend to become ragged with age. See how strong the spurs have become, too!”
He limped to the table and with the point of the knife he lifted one of the spines that jutted from the monster’s legs, just above the razor-sharp claws. The spur was half as long as the knife blade and twice as broad.
“The eyes,” Rye murmured, gazing in fascination at the skimmer’s blind white stare. “I have never seen them open before. I did not realize they were so —”