Zuly’s mouth morphs into a frown. “That’s too bad. I thought he’d be the key to our salvation.”
Everyone who met Asher thought he was special. His faith was enormous; optimism radiated from him. But to think he might save us . . .
I wonder briefly if Zuly caught a glimpse of his back when she treated him. If she said something to the wrong person. If she’s the reason why those men attacked Alkali Lake.
“Another soul gone too soon,” she muses sadly.
“Life’s cruel, right? Isn’t that your story?”
“It is, Delta. But that doesn’t mean we can’t grieve our losses. You should grieve yours before they fester. I can see they’ve already taken root.”
Chapter Four
If Asher was still alive, he’d be seventeen, like me. His mother, Silla, would be thirty-nine, like Ma, and our pack would be close to thirty strong, not a meager fourteen.
But they stayed behind.
Silla said it was too dangerous to move. Ma argued it was more dangerous to stay. People picked sides, and that’s how the pack split. Roughly half of us went to Dead River. The rest learned that Ma had been right.
Asher and I were two halves of a whole back then. Always together, until we weren’t.
I wonder sometimes if it would have turned out differently if he’d followed the rules that day when we were nine. We’d been about a click from camp, gathering snow-white alkali from the northeastern rim of the lake. A trader was due soon, and once the alkali was pulverized, the baking soda would look neat and clean, an easy good to peddle. Nothing raised bread quite like the soda from Alkali Lake, and our pack never had to want for much; traders made special trips to us just to restock their jars.
The swampy, stagnant air was thick that day, the sun blistering, and Asher had stripped off his shirt in the heat.
“Put it back on,” I hissed.
The only place our shirts were to come off was in the safety of our huts, for a sponge bath while a roof and walls surrounded us. Ma beat me with a switch just a summer earlier when I’d lifted my hem to wipe sweat from my face. Only a sliver of my back had been revealed, but she went off. “How many times do I have to tell you not to take risks? Show it to no one. Unless you trust them with your own life, keep it hidden. Always.” She brought the switch down again for good measure.
“Aw, come on, Delta,” Asher said with a knowing look. “No one’s here to see. Besides, you can’t imagine how good the sun feels on your skin.” He eyed my thin woven top. I’d already ditched my wool overshirt and was down to my final layer.
“I’m not taking it off.”
“Stubborn devout,” he teased.
“Rusted rule breaker!”
He trudged deeper into the alkali beds and bent to harvest the soda, giving me a clear view of his back and the brand that had been put there when we were five. It practically glistened in the sun, the pale scars standing out against his light brown skin. Lines and dashes and circles and curves. Like mine, it was a map, if you knew how to read it, though no one did.
Across the lake, something glinted—an unnatural flash of light. I ran for the binos. They were our pack’s only pair, and as valuable as the Old World tech is, we were allowed to take them when harvesting in case a flag went up at camp to signal us back.
I brought the binos to my eyes and scanned across the way. On the western edge of the lake, nestled behind a knot of thick scrub, was a group of men. Four of them, dressed in black, scarves pulled over their mouths and long rifles in hand. One held binos up to his face, like me. But he wasn’t looking my way. He was looking at the bank, where Asher was bent over the alkali beds, his back facing the strange men.
“Put your shirt back on,” I snapped.
“Will you drop it?”
“Asher, I’m not kidding. Do it now.”
Something about my tone got to him because he scrambled for his wool top and pulled it over his sun-bleached hair. “What’s got you all raw?”
The men on the other side of the lake were slipping back into the scrub. I thought I could make out a mustang or two as they descended the slope and disappeared from view. Rare animals in these parts, and near impossible to break.
“Delta, are you even listening?”
“We have to go,” I said, lowering the binos. “Now.”
Back at camp, Silla said I was overreacting, that it could have been traders. One was due, after all. But traders don’t move in groups, and they come towing rickshaws or wagons. Folks started to get worried. Asher was just soured that I’d tattled.
“Remember that trader who came through a few months ago?” Ma said around the bonfire that night. “Strange guy. Had a pet falcon with him.” A few people nodded. “He would only trade for maps. Odd, no? Who turns down jars of the wastes’ best baking soda to demand maps? He thought we had one. Maybe even knew we did. Word could’ve gotten around, and now more folks are looking for it.”
“People have searched for the Verdant for as long as they’ve prayed to the gods,” Silla argued.
“Maybe someone heard we branded the kids.” Ma’s gaze cut to me and Asher. He was sitting beside me—even in his anger he wouldn’t leave—but he hadn’t spoken a word to me since I told our mas about the men. “We should move, just to be safe,” she added.
“We’re safer here, together,” Silla insisted. “A move would leave us exposed. And Delta’s not even sure what she saw.”
“I said I wasn’t sure who they were,” I squeaked out. “But I saw them. Four of them. They were working together.”
The pack dissolved into bickering and arguing. Two days later, Ma rounded up a group that wanted to move. Silla had her people wanting to stay. The pack splintered, and I never saw Asher again.
A week after settling in Dead River, a trader brought word of the massacre at Alkali Lake. Dead bodies everywhere. Blood and smoke.
If we’d just stayed, maybe it would have been different. We could have held our ground as a group, fought them off. Maybe, if we’d valued the gods over the security of the map, the raiders never would have come. It was our punishment for leaving, losing so many we loved.
I look across Zuly’s tanker now. The deck is crowded with pack-members seeing to chores. Someone waters the crops. A woman works at the loom. Laughing children knock stones across the deck with brooms, sending the chickens scattering.
I can see what Asher meant when he said this place felt free. At least on the deck, beneath the open sky, it has a sense of possibility I’ve never felt on the desert wastes or in Dead River. Not even at Alkali Lake. It feels truly secure, lifted above.
It’s how folks speak of the Verdant, too. It’s why they search for it, even if it’s been lost for centuries, just like our gods. The branded map on my back is no different from the one Asher had. Scrambled lines and curves. Impossible to read. Maybe we all knew how to read it once, but when the gods abandoned us, that knowledge vanished, too.
Still, we keep hoping, keep trying to understand it. It’s why those men came for Asher at Alkali Lake, praying his markings would somehow lead them to salvation. It’s why our pack continues to pass down the brand, even now. Because only the most worthy among us can find the Verdant, and once they do, they will have divine power over it. They will be blessed by the gods, granted the ability to control who can enter that green paradise and who should be locked out.