Daywards

by Anthony Eaton

  Nightwards, the horizon was crimson with the sunset. It painted the silhouettes of the scrubby desert bush into black shadows, and the distant rise of a rocky peak was framed against the enormous red sky. For the want of anywhere else to walk, Eyna wandered slowly in its general direction, eyes scanning the sand for any small twigs or fallen branches that they might be able to use as fuel, to warm themselves for a while against the desert night.

  Once she was well away from the other two, out of sight and out of earshot, Eyna allowed herself the luxury of an enormous sigh, trying to push away some of the foot-weary exhaustion, some of the fear. If she could, she’d have sat and rested, stretched back against the earth, and watched the night come into posession of the sky overhead. She didn’t dare to, though. She knew she’d be asleep almost the moment her head touched the sand. Instead, she forced herself onwards, stopping here and there to grab a couple of twigs or a handful of rough pepperleaves. Under a twisted brush-tree she found several thick branches, the biggest almost as long as her arm, and these she arranged into a crude sled, piling her other finds on top before starting to drag it back towards the others.

  ‘Shi,’ she muttered. It was so difficult nowadays. Dara hadn’t said a word in weeks. Not a sound had passed her lips since Jaran’s death. She wouldn’t reach, either. It was an effort to get her to eat and drink. Ma was still holding on, but Eyna could tell the old woman was paying a terrible price for her efforts. Her skin hung on her bones, and her old face was gaunt and skeletal. The further they moved inland, the hotter and drier the days became, the colder the nights, and the harder it was for them to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

  They had to, though. There was no other choice.

  Nightwards, something rustled in the scrub and Eyna jumped slightly, then cursed softly to herself. She was so tired, so on edge. It was probably why she couldn’t reach properly any more. Slowly, she continued dragging her burden across the sand, skirting this way and that to avoid large clumps of spiky sandbrush.

  ‘That you, Eyna?’ Ma Saria’s voice floated out of the darkness, and Eyna reoriented herself towards it.

  ‘Jaman. Not likely to be anyone else.’

  Ma’s answering chuckle was tired. Forced.

  ‘I wouldn’t be too sure of that. You know they’re out there somewhere.’

  ‘It’s still too early.’

  ‘I know that, girl.’

  Dragging her makeshift sled into the middle of the shallow depression in which they’d decided to set up for the night, Eyna set about piling the wood into a small pyramid.

  ‘Find any tucker?’

  ‘Just these.’ She handed Ma the pepperleaves and the old woman clicked her tongue softly.

  ‘Better than nothing. Not much good for walking on, though. Might be time to crack out that hopper meat, I think.’

  They’d been saving the sun-dried meat for a week. Ma called it their emergency food.

  ‘Is it that bad, Ma?’

  Ma Saria shrugged, the gesture tired and beaten.

  ‘I got no idea any more, child. I never had so much trouble reaching as I do now. Can’t seem to manage more than a couple of hundred metres in any direction. I got no idea if there’s food around, or water tomorrow, or anything. And if there is, I’m not sure I got the energy to catch it any more.’

  As usual, Eyna was left to get the fire set and started, while Dara sat and watched, not saying a single word. The moment the flames took hold and the red-hued light filled the hollow, she returned to her usual crouch, right at the edge of the light-circle, her knees drawn up tight against her chest and her black eyes fixed on the dancing firelight. In the weeks they’d been walking, Eyna and Ma had tried on numerous occasions to draw her out of the shell into which she’d retreated, but without success. Attempts at conversation were met with blank silence, touches were ignored, and both times that Ma had tried to reach Dara, she’d been pushed savagely away, so hard that on the second occasion the old woman had passed out for several minutes and hadn’t dared to try it again since.

  They mixed the remaining meat with the pepperleaves and a tiny portion of water and put it into the flames to stew. The smell set Eyna’s mouth watering. Somewhere in the distance a dog began howling, to be joined by a whole chorus.

  ‘They sound close.’ Eyna shivered slightly.

  ‘Don’t worry about them,’ Ma replied. ‘The fire’ll keep them away.

  ‘What if we have to put it out?’

  Ma Saria shrugged. ‘Then we’ll make do. If we have to put the fire out, we’ll have bigger things to worry about than the dogs.

  The grim words reminded Eyna of the precariousness of their situation, and the ache in her feet spread upwards through the rest of her body. The ‘visits’ were coming more and more frequently now. Two nights ago they’d actually seen the flyers in the distance: bright threads of light combing the desert several kilometres nightwards of their hiding place. They’d spent that night crouched sleeplessly beneath a patch of scrub and then had to march on again, on aching feet and empty stomachs, at first light.

  Hopefully, tonight they’d get a full night’s sleep, preferably with the fire staying lit all night.

  ‘Here you are, then.’ Ma Saria poured Eyna’s portion of the stew into a bowl – one of the few things Eyna had managed to persuade the old woman to take with them from Jaran’s gear – and handed it to her.

  ‘Thanks, Ma.’

  As usual, Dara’s meal was pushed into her hands and there it sat, cooling and disregarded, until Ma Saria moved to feed the girl herself.

  ‘You eat yours, Ma. I’ll do it.’ Eyna took one last slurp of her own dinner, relishing the saltiness of the dried meat. She was so hungry that even the slightly sour sliminess of the pepperleaves tasted good. Then she slid over to Dara and guided her cousin’s hands up towards her mouth.

  ‘Eat, cuz. You gotta keep strong, eh?’

  Dara’s eyes flicked sideways once, just enough for Eyna to catch a glimpse of the Dara she knew lurking somewhere in there. Dara’s hands, in her own, suddenly flushed hot.

  What for?

  ‘Shi!’ Eyna almost leapt backwards into the flames. Dara hadn’t said anything. The only sound was the cacophany of howling still wailing in the distance, and yet Eyna had heard the words, and Dara’s voice, as clearly as if they’d been spoken in her ear.

  ‘What’s wrong, girl?’ Ma Saria threw her a worried look. ‘You all right?’

  ‘I …’ Eyna’s eyes darted around the hollow, trying to assure herself that everything was normal, and then came to rest on Dara again. Her cousin hadn’t moved a muscle and continued to stare into the fire, but Eyna thought she detected the hint of a grin twitching at the corners of Dara’s mouth. ‘I’m fine, Ma. Just jumpy.

  There! It happened again. The faint tic of an almost-suppressed grin breaking the neutral line of Dara’s expression. Eyna took her cousin’s hands in her own again.

  ‘Eat,’ she commanded, and this time she was prepared for the flash of earthwarmth, the manifested voice.

  No.

  ‘Yes.’ She tried to push Dara’s food towards the other girl’s mouth, but for the first time in weeks there was resistance. Dara pushed back, and half her dinner spilled onto the sand.

  ‘Dara! Stop it!’

  ‘What in the sky are you doing, girl?’ Ma was staring now. ‘Talking to yourself and throwing Dara’s food all over her?’

  ‘She’s doing it, Ma.’

  Liar.

  There was no mistaking it, this time. Dara’s eyes met her own, deliberately, and a smirk accompanied the word in Eyna’s head. Abruptly, she released her cousin’s hands.

  ‘Fine then. Starve.’

  ‘Shi, girl!’ Ma Saria stared at her, perplexed. ‘You talking to night spirits or something?’

  ‘I’m talking to Dara, Ma. She’s reaching.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘She reckons she’s not going to eat.’

  ‘Really?’
/>
  ‘That’s what she said.’

  Ma weighed up Eyna’s accusation, before answering.

  ‘In that case, stop throwing her dinner all over the place and pass her bowl here, eh? No point you an’ me going hungry, too.’

  A slow smile spread across Eyna’s face and she went to take Dara’s bowl, but Dara pulled it away, shaking her head.

  ‘You two are no fun at all.’

  ‘What do you know? She does speak,’ Ma said. ‘Why’ve you been ignoring us, girl?’

  ‘I’ve … been thinking.’

  ‘Thinking about ways to be a complete little shi,’ Eyna snapped.

  ‘Don’t get uptight, Ey,’ Dara said. ‘I had things to work out.’

  ‘Shi.’

  ‘Not shi. I needed to think. I needed to shut down and walk about inside my head for a while.’

  Eyna stood up, angry.

  ‘It’s always about you, isn’t it, Dara. You never worry about what other people need. As long as Dara gets what Dara wants …’

  ‘At least I know how to control myself when I’m reaching. At least I don’t go burning people out just because I’m jealous.’ The words were spoken softly but they whipped through the night air like a thunderclap.

  ‘Dara! That’s enough.’ Ma’s rebuke was sharp, but it was too late. Eyna was already on her feet.

  ‘You … you shi, Dara.’

  Her night vision tear-blurred and ruined by the firelight, Eyna stumbled away until she was swallowed by the inky desertlight.

  In the distance, the dogs’ howling reached a new crescendo.

  In the quiet hours of the morning, with Eyna still somewhere out in the desert and the fire crackling low, Dara and Ma Saria woke from exhausted sleep to the scream of a flyer passing low overhead.

  ‘Shi!’ Ma swore, and threw herself towards the smouldering coals, desperately hurling handfuls of sand onto them.

  ‘Don’t, Ma. It’s too late.’ Dara had to shout to be heard over the thrum of the flyer, but the old woman continued nonetheless.

  As the final embers died into a smoky column, the night lit up around them. Hard white light bathed the clearing, making even the deep red sand below their feet seem washed out and illuminating the surrounding scrub in its shadowless glare.

  Dara stared up into the brightness. Spots danced across the back of her vision and her eyes watered, but she couldn’t tear her gaze away from the silver discs. Vaguely, she was aware of Ma Saria’s hot hand pressing into her own.

  What now, Ma? She formed the words instinctively, placing them in Ma’s consciousness almost without meaning to, just as she had with Jaran.

  Wait, I guess. The weariness in Ma’s ‘voice’ was awful to feel.

  Eyna?

  This time Ma didn’t answer in words, but a feeling of resigned hopelessness poured into Dara.

  For what seemed like an age, the two of them stood there, side by side, hand in hand, staring upwards while the flyer hovered overhead, its pounding hum shuddering through the earth under their bare feet.

  What are they doing? Dara wondered, but kept the thought private.

  Then the lights went out and they were plunged back into the darkness. Somewhere behind her watering eyes, Dara caught a hint of movement as the flyer wheeled in the air and screamed off into the night, staying low to the earth and vanishing almost as suddenly as it had arrived.

  ‘They didn’t come down.’ Disbelief struggled with relief in Dara’s voice.

  ‘Sky knows why not,’ Ma replied, and Dara noted that even the usually unflappable old woman had a tremor behind her words. ‘Guess they just want us to know they can take us whenever they want.’

  ‘Eyna!’

  Desperately, Dara ran a few steps out into the darkness, following the path Eyna had taken earlier, but night-blind as she was, she stumbled and tripped, falling to the sand.

  ‘Careful, Dara,’ Ma’s voice followed her. ‘There’s no point hurting yourself.’

  ‘We have to find her.’

  ‘I know, but we’re not gonna do it by rushing off blind.’

  Gradually, Dara’s vision began to return and she cast around, scanning the horizons for any sign of her cousin. All she could make out, though, was an endless circle of black, low scrub, dim-lit in the starlight.

  ‘Wait till sunrise. Then we’ll have a look around.’

  ‘No.’ Dara walked back to Ma Saria, shaking her head as she did so. ‘We need to find her now.’

  ‘We can’t,’ Ma said. ‘Not unless you’re capable of reaching the Earthmother, ‘cause sky knows I can’t do it any more. Too tired. Or too old.’

  Dara hesitated. The last thing she wanted to do was reach. Since the night of the dream, the night of Jaran’s death, she’d worked hard to stay out, to avoid the Earthmother at all costs. During the long days she’d relished every exhausted footstep, every uncomfortable night spent snatching a few hours rest on the hard ground, because all of it – the tiredness, the pain – helped her ignore the nagging tug of the earthwarmth beneath her feet. She couldn’t say why, but the dream with the snake and the tree, followed so closely by Jaran dying, had left her reluctant to allow herself to open up again to that indefinable energy.

  But Eyna was somewhere out there, and so were the Nightpeople.

  ‘Dara, girl?’ Ma Saria was looking at her. ‘You gonna try reaching? See if you can find your cousin before that Nightpeople mob do?’

  ‘I … don’t think I can, Ma.’ Dara looked away, hiding the lie in the darkness. ‘I haven’t been able to reach properly for a couple of weeks now. Like you and Ey.’

  The old woman regarded Dara through narrowed eyes.

  ‘You certain about that? You ‘ent even tried, so far as I can tell.’

  Dara shrugged, unwilling to commit to a bigger lie. In the depths of her consciousness she was vaguely aware of the pulse of the earthwarmth, distant, insistent, begging her to tap into it and flow out into the landscape.

  ‘Dara?’ Ma Saria asked again and Dara, sighing, closed her eyes.

  Even pretending to reach was hard. It was an effort to rein herself back, to stop from sinking into the land. Just closing her eyes she could feel it there, vast and welcoming and dizzyingly close. Quickly she opened her eyes again and shook her head.

  ‘Sorry, Ma. Nothing.’

  Ma Saria’s lips tightened in an expression of disapproval.

  ‘You can’t hold it back forever, girl. You know that, right? I tried once, when I was about your age, but it’s impossible. Better to let things happen like they’re supposed to than fight what’s inevitable.’

  ‘I’m not fighting it, Ma. I’m just exhausted, that’s all.’

  ‘In that case, we’d better go look for your cousin as soon as it gets light.’

  The two of them gathered the items of cooking and water-carrying equipment they needed, and then sat in silence on opposite sides of the remains of their now-cold fire for several hours, until the daywards sky showed the first hints of lightening. Then, still without a word, Ma Saria rose, took up her own bundle and crossed to the point where Eyna had run off. Dara did likewise.

  At first the trail was easy to follow. Scuffed sand and snapped twigs, footprints and trampled desert scrub marked Eyna’s path clearly. But as the girl had calmed down, she’d become more cautious, and after a couple of kilometres the trail became harder to follow, tending more to the hard patches of sand, which weren’t so easily displaced, or from rock to rock where there’d be no trail at all. At times she seemed to have deliberately looped backwards in huge circles, presumably to confuse them.

  ‘She’s as shifty as you are, that girl,’ Ma Saria muttered on one occasion, as Eyna’s trail disappeared into a particularly dense and spiny thicket of desert thorns.

  ‘Yeah, I taught her well, eh?’ Dara couldn’t suppress a small smile.

  ‘It’s nothin’ to laugh about, Dara,’ Ma snapped, ‘If we don’ find that girl soon, then she’s gonna be in a lot of trouble out here,
with no water to get her through the day.’

  Dara’s grin faded and the flasks draped around her neck felt heavier. Ahead, Ma Saria paused, scratched her chin for a moment, and then pointed at a long, dark ridge, a wrinkle in the landscape, stretching across the horizon in the distance.

  ‘I reckon she’s headed there. Even with all her switching back and forth, she always seems to end up goin’ in this general direction.’

  Dara shielded her eyes against the rising sun and squinted towards the ridge.

  ‘How far off is it, do you think?’

  ‘Can’t say. Difficult to judge distance with the sun behind like that. Fair way, though.’

  ‘You think she could have made it already?’ Both women knew that Eyna’s best shot at finding shelter and possibly water would be in the hills.

  ‘No idea.’ Ma Saria closed her eyes and breathed in deeply a couple of times, and Dara felt through her feet the restless eddy in the current of earthwarmth as the old woman tried with everything she had to draw it up into her. After several minutes, the fluttering sensation died away, and Ma opened her eyes.

  ‘Nothin’.’

  They set out again, doggedly tracing Eyna’s track towards the ridge, which didn’t seem to get any larger even as the hours passed. By mid-morning, with the sun pounding down and no sign of shelter anywhere nearby, they had dropped their pace considerably.

  ‘Shi! I’m hot!’ Dara uncapped a water flask and took a small drink. The liquid was so tepid it almost made her gag. Wordlessly she handed it to Ma Saria, who also drank. As they stood there, Dara looked again at their target.

  ‘Strange looking hills.’

  Unlike the rest of the landscape which, with the onset of daylight had resolved itself into a multitude of reds and browns, the ridge had remained obstinately dark, a heavy grey that seemed to absorb the light rather than reflect it. It reminded her of something, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was.

  ‘It’s not hills,’ Ma Saria replied. Her voice was flat.

  ‘What is it, then? An escarpment or something?’