Home > Dustborn(6)

Dustborn(6)
Author: Erin Bowman

I’ve been careful on the way in. My waterskin is still half full and will last me until I return home.

The girl sets a candle on the floor, and the walls seem to come to life beneath the flame, glinting and flashing. It’s unnatural. Asher once said that the tanker felt like freedom, that he felt safe during his visit, but I just feel trapped.

“Do you like living here?” I ask the girl.

She shrugs. “It is all I know. But traders bring word of raids in the wastes, of men taking all they want, from goods to homes to women, and I know I’d rather be here. The Ark is impenetrable. We are above the lawless land. Protected. Zuly watches over us.”

I sit on the lower of the two mats, my head nearly knocking the bed above, and try to keep my knees from bouncing.

“I will find you when there is news,” the girl says.

 

* * *

 

I sleep, my exhausted body succumbing to dreams, and when I wake, it’s to my shoulder being jostled. “Come.” The girl motions toward the hall.

When we emerge onto the deck, the aurora still dances low on the northern horizon, a sickly green mist that is so bright it disguises the true time of day. The girl says it’s nearly dawn, sunrise just moments off. Zuly has been with Indie all night.

We pass the dust-covered linens the pack was stringing up when I arrived. A few pack-members are awake already, pulling the sheets down and shaking them out while others right a section of the canopy that collapsed in the wind. Chickens scatter, startled by the snapping fabric. A goat bleats from somewhere out of view.

The girl stops suddenly and points. Zuly is standing at the nose of the tanker, a baby in her arms. I rush forward. The baby has dark hair and paper-thin eyelids, and is far smaller than Brooke’s girl was when she joined our pack. “She ate earlier and is sleeping now,” Zuly says.

A sigh of relief escapes me. “Is Indie sleeping too? I want to see her.”

Zuly frowns. “You misunderstand. The baby was fed goat’s milk. Your sister died during the labor.”

“What?”

“There was nothing I could do. She responded poorly to all tonics. I could barely keep her conscious. Her pulse had fled by the time I cut the baby from her.”

“Cut? You cut the . . . Where is Indie? I want to see her!”

“There’s nothing to see. We’ve burned her remains. She’s at peace now.”

I stagger back, certain I’ve heard her wrong.

“We stripped the body before the burning. You can have her clothes, of course.”

“I don’t want her damn clothes! I want my sister. How could you burn her body without letting me see her first?”

“She’d already sat cold while I worked to save the baby,” Zuly says calmly. “Would you have risked your sister’s soul being damned merely so I could fetch you for a pyre?”

Folks say that the sooner a body is burned after death, the more likely the gods are to accept that soul among the stars, but I don’t care about superstitions at the moment. “I paid you to save her!” I erupt.

“You paid me to do what I could. I saved her child. A life for a life. It could have ended worse, but the baby is strong.” The newborn starts in Zuly’s arms, little fists flailing as a wail escapes her. It is an awful sound, shrill and angry. “You should feed her again,” the woman adds.

“I don’t want to feed it,” I say, backing away. “I don’t want to even look at it.”

Zuly tries to hand me the child, but I turn and flee. My boots pound on the pitched deck. The gardens are a blur in my vision. Suddenly I’m at the other end of the ship, my hands grabbing the railing as my body comes up against the metal.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. If anyone was to die, it was the baby. A stillbirth, maybe, because it came too soon. But Indie was supposed to be fine. We should be heading home together, everything returning to normal. But now she’s gone. My sister, who told jokes and pointed out stars and laughed freely, gone forever.

I don’t realize I’m crying until Zuly reappears at my side and hands me a rag for my eyes. The baby’s missing, off for another feeding probably.

“Do you see that, Delta of Dead River?” Zuly nods toward the horizon. It glistens like a river of metallic liquid.

“A mirage.”

“Yes, but it used to be water. According to our ancestors, there was even a time when this tanker floated on the ocean itself. My pack severed the anchor when we made it our home. The water was long gone, and I didn’t want mischief scaling the chain in the night.” She angles her face to me, and her eyes seem to burn behind the mask. “But there was water here once. Now there is not. Change. Death. Both are a constant in life. So is rebirth. Your sister is gone, but her spirit lives on in her child. Someday you too will die, and a new soul will take your place. The cycle continues. Even in these wastelands, where our gods have abandoned us, life will not cease. I have faith in that, and the stars show it to be true.”

I’m so sick of the stars and blind faith. “What is your point?”

“My point is, you must take the child.”

“I don’t want it. I have no means to feed it.”

“I will give you a goat.”

“I have nothing to pay in exchange,” I point out.

“Consider it a gift, as we do not need the burden of a new child at the moment.”

“Neither does my pack. Indie was foolish, getting herself pregnant. I can’t take the baby back. The journey alone might kill it.”

“It will need a name,” Zuly says. “Pick a good one. And know that she will die if you leave her here. I will turn her out for the vultures.”

“You save her only to let her die?”

“Life is cruel, Delta. It is a cruel, ceaseless cycle, but it is the way of things.” Zuly lifts the mask from her face and pushes it onto her forehead. The formidable healer is gone, replaced with a wrinkled, kind woman. Her eyes no longer seem rimmed with fire, but with pain. She has witnessed things she wishes to forget.

She touches my check softly, and I’m so shocked, I freeze. No one has touched me like this, not even Flint. “Have you not come to me for care before?” she asks, staring intently.

“No. I’ve never left my pack. Not before yesterday.”

“And your blood?”

“No.” I tell her what I told the watchman last night, how before our pack splintered, Asher and his mother had come to the Ark, but never me. Never my blood.

Zuly frowns. “I see in you someone I once knew. Someone who passed through here many years ago. They were stubborn also, defiant. Wanted the world to make sense and for life to be easy.”

“You know nothing about me,” I say, stepping away.

Her hand hangs in the air a moment. “Never mind that,” she says with a sigh. “Your things are in the lifeboat, along with the goat and your sister’s kin. It is up to you if her blood lives on. It shouldn’t be a hard question. Don’t make it one.” She lowers her mask and walks off. After just a few paces, she pauses to look over her shoulder. “How did your friend Asher fare after I treated him?”

“He’s dead,” I say. “Everyone who stayed at Alkali Lake is dead.”

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