Stranger

by Sherwood Smith

  Ross gave him a doubtful glance, then obeyed. Snow circled the yard. His suspicious look changed to a tentative smile, but the smile vanished when he reached Yuki again. “Okay. What next?”

  “Let’s catch up with the patrol. I can explain more on the way.” Yuki nudged Fuego to move, and Snow followed.

  Outside the gates, he started to ride in the patrol’s tracks, which led to the left.

  “Whoa!” Snow was plunging, ears back. “Why’s she doing that?” Ross asked through gritted teeth, clinging to the saddle.

  “Something’s spooking her. You’re spooking her.” He followed Ross’s fixed gaze to the left, toward the cornfields and the ridge beyond. Then he remembered how Fuego had balked at the blood-red singing tree.

  “If you’re scared of something, it’ll scare your horse. They’re sensitive, remember? They tense up if you tense up.” Yuki jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Turn right. We won’t catch up with the patrol anyway. Let’s practice balance.”

  The sunlight brightened as they passed the squash fields, and a flock of hummingbirds zoomed past, signaling to one another with bright flashes of their reflective wings. Kogatana tapped Yuki with her paw. He whipped up his bow and nocked an arrow.

  A coyote scout tilted its tawny ears toward them from behind a bush. It yipped twice quickly, and then a third time. The bushes rustled as the rest of the pack retreated.

  The coyote packs never gave up hope that they might catch a rider off guard, so they sent scouts to check out most patrols. Yuki glanced at Ross, expecting him to be fumbling for his sword atop a skittish Snow. Ross held a knife by its blade—something six-year-olds were taught not to do—but the angle of his wrist and the way he gauged distance suggested that he knew what he was doing. Snow stood perfectly still, without even a toss of her head.

  “Think they’re gone?” Ross asked.

  Kogatana was cleaning her whiskers. “Yes. Kogatana would still be alert if they weren’t.”

  Ross flipped the knife into the air and caught it by the hilt. It was a classic show-off move.

  Yuki was not impressed. “Let’s try the trot.” He demonstrated how to rise and settle into the saddle, matching the horse’s rhythm.

  Ross didn’t do as badly as Yuki expected, and he decided that Ross probably wouldn’t fall off if he held a sword. Yuki was about to give the order when Kogatana squealed in warning. Fuego plunged down and nearly threw him, and a dark shape leaped for the horse’s neck.

  Yuki fought to regain his balance and rip his sword free. Before he could, a tarantula fell away from Fuego. The huge spider curled up in the dust, furry legs thrashing. Red-streaked liquid oozed out around the hilt of Ross’s knife.

  Fuego tossed his head and struggled to pull up his leg. Yuki leaped down. Fuego’s hoof was caught in a sticky web trap. Yuki cut him free and checked his leg. To his relief, the horse was unhurt.

  Ross clambered down, and used his saddle sword to flick his knife away from the dead tarantula.

  “The blood is poisonous. Don’t touch it,” Yuki said, then regretted the words—Ross clearly knew what he was doing.

  Ross cleaned his knife in the sand and didn’t reply.

  “Thanks,” Yuki said. “That was a good throw. But why did you hold it by the blade?”

  “Depends on the balance. This one’s weighted toward the hilt.” He handed over the knife. Yuki tried holding it by the blade. It felt incredibly awkward. Ross repositioned his fingers. “Like that.”

  With Yuki’s hand in his, Ross moved to aim at a distant cactus. Then he slid the knife from Yuki’s hand and threw it.

  The knife thudded into the cactus. Spines shot out in all directions and pattered down on the sand. Ross stepped around them to retrieve the knife. “Just practice,” he said, returning it to his boot.

  Now Yuki understood why Ross had grabbed at his ankles when Yuki had woken him up—he’d been reaching for knives. No wonder Dr. Lee kept warning him to knock.

  All his training had failed to give Yuki reflexes like that. While he’d been drilling endlessly and occasionally fighting animals, Ross had been seeing the world and surviving real dangers. And he’d apparently done it all on foot, with no weapons other than those little daggers.

  “I wish I’d had a bow when that bounty hunter was after me,” Ross said. “I mean, I wish I knew how to shoot one.”

  “Just practice,” Yuki said. But he didn’t say it mockingly. “We better move on. We should get the horses to the stream before it gets too hot.”

  Heat waves shimmered in the air. It was a relief when they finally reached the stream at the bottom of a gully. A shadow flickered over their faces as a hawk rode the air currents above.

  “Damn.” Ross pulled up his mare an instant before Yuki saw a man’s silhouette step deliberately to the edge of the cliff, blocking the sun.

  Ross gripped one of his knives, and Yuki reached for his bow. The man leaned against his rifle, which was pointed upward, not at them, and stood silently, watching as the horses descended toward the stream. Ross turned until he was almost backward in the saddle, his gaze unwavering, until the bounty hunter was out of sight.

  The smooth rhythm of Fuego’s walk had broken. Yuki deliberately relaxed his muscles, breathed evenly, and told himself to be calm. Eventually, Fuego calmed down too. “He could have shot us,” Yuki finally said.

  “He could have shot me.” Ross kept glancing back. “He wanted me to see him.”

  “If he doesn’t want to kill you, then what does he want from you?”

  Ross’s gaze shifted away. “Nothing.”

  Yuki had heard the rumors, from the plausible to the ridiculous: Ross was a claim jumper, he had a dangerous Change talent, he’d stolen King Voske’s crown, he had a map to El Dorado, the Lost City of Gold. But no bounty hunter chased people across the desert for nothing.

  At the stream, the horses lowered their heads to drink, and they dismounted to refill their canteens. Yuki splashed water on his face.

  “When, um, when I first saw Kogatana, you did this.” To Yuki’s amazement, Ross sketched the kanji for kogatana in the air.

  “You remember that?”

  “Where did you learn it?” Ross dipped his canteen.

  “On the Taka,” Yuki replied. “The ship where I was born.”

  Ross straightened, water dripping from his fingers. “You were born on a ship? What kind of ship?”

  Everyone in Las Anclas knew about his past, and most of them had learned not to ask questions. Even Paco avoided certain topics. Yuki was about to fob Ross off, mostly out of habit, but the quiet, nonjudgmental curiosity prompted him to break habit and speak.

  “It was an ‘aircraft carrier.’ Like a floating city. It came from a country called Japan, hundreds of years ago. We sailed in the deep ocean. Every day, we were somewhere different.” Yuki sketched kogatana in the air. “Kogatana. The first character is ‘small,’ and the second is ‘sword.’ Little sword: pocketknife.” His fingers reached up, drawing another pair of kanji: “Taka. That was my ship. It means ‘hawk.’”

  Memories flooded his mind, washing away the desert, the bright-blue sky, and Ross’s curious face. He remembered the smell of deep-sea brine. He remembered riding dolphins and fishing with a spear gun. He remembered the lush greenery of the hydroponic tanks. He remembered the flavors of rice, of sweet red beans, of green tea. He remembered violins playing at twilight. He remembered stepping through the sacred gates to pray to the spirits of rice and wind and ocean. And he remembered his first mother.

  He blinked, and the desert was back.

  “How did you get here?” Ross asked.

  “The Taka was conquered by pirates. My parents put me on a raft, but they had to stay.”

  “Why?”

  “Because my mother was the queen.” Yuki turned away, schooling his face. “If you’ve he
ard people call me a prince, that’s why.”

  Ross looked baffled, and Yuki wished he hadn’t brought it up. “They came out of a storm and took the Taka by surprise.” Memory assaulted him: flames shooting skyward from the superstructure, the crack of artillery fire. The others rowing him away on the raft while he yelled for them to go back, to wait for his parents.

  And, finally, washing up on the beach near Las Anclas. He hadn’t understood until much later that he was the only survivor because the others must have pretended to drink, and had given him all their water.

  He dug his nails into the back of his hand, shutting the door on those memories. He wasn’t on the raft and he wasn’t thirteen. He was eighteen, in Las Anclas, in the desert, right now. With Ross staring at him.

  Yuki felt as if he’d been cracked open like an egg. Then he remembered that Ross supposedly could manipulate people’s emotions. Yuki had begun the ride furious, but then he’d started thinking the guy wasn’t that bad. So maybe it was true.

  On the other hand, Ross had saved Fuego. And if he really could make people like him, Tommy and his Norm friends would have stopped hassling him by now.

  Ross blurted out, “Could you teach someone to read Japanese?”

  Once again Yuki was taken by surprise. He lowered his canteen. “I guess. Was that why you were asking me all that stuff?”

  “I don’t know much about reading,” Ross said to a nearby cactus. “Is it harder than English and Spanish?”

  Yuki almost laughed. Ross’s face and body gave away everything he felt, as if he’d never learned how to conceal his emotions. Maybe he had stolen Voske’s crown. It was easier to believe than his being a sneaky manipulator.

  Yuki almost hated to break the bad news to him. “Japanese has two syllabaries—those are like alphabets—with forty-eight characters each. The hard part is that it also has about three thousand Chinese characters.”

  “Oh.”

  Yuki hesitated. Ross had saved Fuego. “If you’d still like to learn, I could teach you. But it could be years before you could read anything difficult, like a book.”

  “Thanks.” Ross sounded discouraged. “But I won’t be here that long.”

  I won’t either, was on the tip of Yuki’s tongue. But he wasn’t sure he wanted to get into a discussion about prospecting yet—especially now that Yuki had a claim of his own. What if the price of learning from Ross was sharing the sea cave? “Can you swim?”

  Ross’s brows drew together in confusion. “No. I’ve never been around that much water.” No competition for the cave, then. Then he blurted out, “Listen, Yuki. I didn’t want to make excuses. But we really didn’t drink anything. I mean, besides hibiscus tea.” Keeping his eyes on the ground, he added, “I had a bad night. I—I didn’t feel good. That’s why I forgot about the lesson. It won’t happen again.”

  It was clear that Ross was telling the truth, and it was also clear that he wasn’t telling all of it. But he didn’t owe Yuki any explanations. Probably the missing part had to do with the romance he was obviously having with Mia Lee, which was none of Yuki’s business.

  “If you’re sick, you should say so. I would have postponed the lesson. We’re done anyway. You can practice riding without reins on the way back.”

  He mounted Fuego, and watched Ross clamber up on to Snow. To Yuki’s amusement, the mare turned her gray head, as if asking Yuki for permission to move. He clicked his tongue, and they set off.

  After all his suspicions about Ross, and all the wild claims of outlawry and mind control, Yuki thought that the truth was probably simpler: he was a young prospector with trouble in his past, who’d spent his life by himself and wasn’t used to having to explain himself to others.

  Probably.

  In any case, there was no point quizzing Ross now. He looked dead on his feet. Yuki would schedule one more lesson. If Ross showed up promptly and tried his best, that would go some way toward proving that he was trustworthy.

  As the gates of Las Anclas came into sight, Yuki’s thoughts drifted back to his childhood. The Taka was so much smaller than Las Anclas; had it seemed bigger because it had been more sophisticated and mechanically advanced? Or because he’d been so young? If the pirates had never attacked, would he have gazed at the ocean’s vastness one day and felt trapped within his own kingdom?

  28

  Ross

  ROSS TRUDGED AWAY FROM THE STABLES, HIS HEAD throbbing, the afternoon sunlight almost blinding him. Then a shadow fell across his face, and his body automatically snapped into a defensive stance.

  Mr. Preston loomed up. Ross hastily lowered his hands, heat creeping up his neck.

  “You’re fast,” the defense chief said. Definitely the first human words Ross had heard from the guy. But then he reverted to his usual menace. “I’d like to take a look at that book of yours.”

  “I already told the sheriff, I hid it in the desert.”

  Mr. Preston shook his head. “You don’t understand. I’m considering buying it from you. But I can’t make you an offer sight-unseen.”

  Ross stared at him. Mr. Preston used to work for Voske, and had conspired with the bounty hunter. Maybe they were still plotting together. If Ross accepted his offer, what was to stop Mr. Preston from taking the book, keeping the payment, and turning Ross over to his friend?

  “I hid it in the desert,” he repeated.

  Mr. Preston’s pale gaze narrowed. “Do you think someone else here can make you a better offer?”

  “It’s not for sale.” Ross bolted for the surgery, his head pounding sickeningly.

  He’d flopped onto the floor to pull his boots off when Mia pounced. “Ross! You’re back! How did it go?”

  He groaned.

  “That bad?” Mia helped him to his feet. “Dad fixed something for you to eat. We didn’t think Yuki would bother packing a lunch.”

  “You got that right.” Somehow he made it to the kitchen, and sank gratefully into a chair. The Lees let him eat in silence, but he could feel their attention. Three fat burritos, two dishes of shrimp-and-cabbage kimchi, two peach dumplings, and three glasses of cucumber water later, he took a breather.

  Mia sat across from him, elbows on the table. “So, how did it go?”

  Ross shrugged. “Okay, I guess. Once we got going. We saw the bounty hunter in the hills. He made sure we saw him too.”

  Dr. Lee pursed his lips. “I’ll make sure the sheriff knows.”

  “I’ll bet she already does,” Ross said.

  “The Rangers certainly do,” Dr. Lee predicted.

  And Mr. Preston, thought Ross.

  “What’s the use of making sure he saw you?” Mia asked. “I thought he wanted to kidnap you.”

  Dr. Lee nibbled on a pickled shrimp. “He probably wants to intimidate Ross into surrendering the book.”

  Ross nodded. “I think so too. But it won’t work.”

  Mia shot him a significant look. He knew she wasn’t thinking about the bounty hunter, or even about the book. She was thinking about the crystal tree. He got up and served himself another burrito, even though he was too full to eat it. He could feel Mia’s gaze burning into his back.

  Then Dr. Lee spoke. “Ross, Mia told me that your nightmares aren’t only based on memories—that you have a connection to the singing tree beyond the cornfields. How are you feeling?”

  “Like something scraped my skull from the inside.” Ross pictured crystal roots winding around bone and crystal shards piercing flesh, and shuddered.

  “Is it a Change, Dad?” asked Mia. “I’d have thought Ross was too old for that.”

  Ross sat down, the untouched burrito before him. He closed his eyes.

  “Not necessarily,” said Dr. Lee. “Though it’s more common to Change at the beginning of puberty, it’s possible for a Change to occur in men at any time before puberty ends. I’ve heard
of men Changing as late as their early twenties. Ross?”

  Reluctantly, he opened his eyes. “What?”

  “Do you know if you’ve grown at all within the last year or so?”

  “No.” Ross indicated his worn jeans. “I’ve had these for years, and they still go down to my ankles.”

  “It’s probably not a Change, then. In any case, Change is genetic. This seems to be caused by a specific incident.”

  “So you think it’s a sort of symbiosis?” Mia sounded as happily intrigued as if Ross was a machine she was designing. “The tree grew from his blood, so it has a mental link with him?”

  “That’s what I’d guess. It’s also possible that tiny fragments of the shard, too small for me to see, remained in his wound, so—”

  “I don’t care how it got there,” Ross interrupted. If there were still fragments inside his body, couldn’t they start growing again? “How do I get the thing out of my head?”

  Mia and Dr. Lee looked at each other.

  “Once I get a better range on the flamethrower, I’ll burn it for you,” she offered.

  A high, eerie note reverberated through him. “No!” He clapped his hands over his ears.

  Mia’s eyes were wide behind her smudged glasses. “Is it listening to us right now?”

  Ross pressed his fingertips to his temples, but that didn’t shut out the piercing echo.

  “We can talk about it later,” Dr. Lee said. His voice was calm and soothing. “I think first, Ross could use my headache elixir.”

  “Ugh, that stuff tastes bad,” Mia said. “But it works, Ross. Drink it fast.”

  He would have drunk tarantula blood if it would ease the pain. He gulped down the bitter liquid without a complaint. Soon most of the headache receded, but he still felt as if the chimes might sound again at any second.

  A bell rang. Ross’s hand jerked, knocking over his glass. A few drops of milky liquid spilled on the tablecloth.