Parched

by Melanie Crowder

  “He found me.” Musa stared after the fading cloud of dust. “I don’t know how he found me.”

  Sarel wiggled out from under the bush and stood, checking each of her dogs for thorns. The rush of energy that had come with the fear was draining out of her, leaving her more tired than before.

  “Sarel, what do we do?”

  She scrambled down the cut bank and up the opposite side. She spoke quickly, to cover the quaver in her voice. “We go back home for Bheka and Icibi.” Sarel looked away from her listless dogs, from Musa’s terrified face. She had failed them. All of them.

  “We leave. And we never come back.”

  33

  Musa

  The dry river forked a kilometer east of the homestead. Tire tracks patterned like snakeskin bit into the dust, turning south.

  “They went the wrong way?”

  Sarel nodded, but the frown didn’t leave her face. “They might be back. We still have to go.” To the west, the little hill was a hazy smudge on the horizon, the homestead still too far away to see.

  “But we can take a minute”—Sarel winced as she swallowed—“to rest. We won’t get very far if we don’t rest.”

  They heard Bheka and Icibi’s sharp warning barks long before the homestead came into view.

  A growl rumbled through Nandi’s chest. The coarse hair along her spine stood on end. The dogs shifted until Sarel was at their center. Ubali trotted out in front of Musa and pressed his body into the boy’s legs, herding him back within the pack’s protective circle.

  Musa let himself be led, but he never took his eyes off the tall, thin figure waiting a few paces away from the kennel.

  “Brother,” Dingane said, his voice hovering in the space between them. “I found you.”

  Musa didn’t answer. He couldn’t.

  Dingane started toward him, but the dogs snarled, bristling. Dingane stopped, and his hands fell to his sides. A beetle leaped away from the ground in front of him, snapping its wings together in a clattering hiss.

  Musa wanted to run to his brother and weep with relief. He wanted Dingane to suffer like he had suffered all those weeks, alone and afraid. He wanted both, and neither, so Musa only stood and stared, swaying to keep upright.

  “I ran away, when Sivo came back that night without you. I left the Tandie. For good. I stole a water jug.” Dingane held the empty plastic jug in the air, his teeth flashing as a smile started, then collapsed, on his lips.

  “And you think they just let you go? You think they didn’t follow you?” Musa waded through the pack of dogs and stalked past his brother. “You led them right to us.”

  “No—it’s not like that,” Dingane called after him, palms outstretched. “I swear. I came to find you. Musa, you have to believe me—”

  “If you want to help, you should go away,” Musa shouted over his shoulder, his voice breaking. “Just go away!”

  Sarel put an arm around Musa and pulled him into the kennel.

  Dingane’s mouth worked in surprise. He settled onto the dirt beside the fire ring.

  Sarel peeled back the tough outer skin of an aloe spear and laid it down beside Musa, who had curled up on his sleeping mat, his back to his brother. “Musa, eat this. Rest. But then we have to go. We can’t stay here.”

  Nandi followed Sarel as she left the kennel and latched the rest of the dogs inside with Musa.

  Sarel’s eyes flicked to Dingane’s face and then away, to the far end of the yard. “You heard him. Go away.” She limped along the path to the grotto.

  Dingane arranged twigs and wisps of grass in the center of the stones. He took a flint out of his pocket and struck it until a spark caught in the dry grass. He blew, and the flame crackled to life.

  “Musa, I never thought the Tandie would hurt you. When Umama got sick, I didn’t know what to do. I couldn’t take care of you both. They promised they would get medicine for her, if you could find a little water for them. I never thought they would take you and lock you up.”

  Dingane’s shoulders twitched as he tossed a handful of twigs onto the fire.

  “I never thought they would just let Umama die.”

  A plume of smoke wove through the air between them.

  “When I heard you had run away, I decided to find you. I snuck into Sivo’s room. There were old maps pinned up all over the walls. Maps of lakes and rivers that dried up years ago.

  “And I saw this place: a big underground lake with no sign of water anywhere for miles around. Sivo had marked the spots he’d already checked with big red Xs—and this was one of them. But I thought maybe he missed something. Maybe after everything else was gone, the water deep underground might still be there. And why would he come back if he’d already checked here?”

  Musa stuck the aloe spear in his mouth. He winced as the slimy liquid slid down his throat. He didn’t care how bad it tasted. It was wet. It was almost water.

  “I knew you would find this place. I knew you’d hear a stretch of water this big from miles away. And I thought I could help you. I may not be able to hear the water like you, but Umama taught me to use the sticks too. Did you know that, Musa?”

  But Musa still didn’t answer. Dingane rummaged in his pack and pulled out a handful of limp tubers. He draped them over the warm rocks to bake.

  “I know that when the sticks swing together, I’m standing right at the edge of it. And I know that if I turn and walk away from that spot and count the number of steps it takes before the sticks swing back, I can figure out how far down the water is.

  “But that”—his arm stretched long, pointing toward the desert to the south—“that water is deep. While I waited for you today, I kept dowsing right up to the edge, turning and walking away again, and the sticks never swung back.

  “If we worked together, I bet we could find a place where it wasn’t so deep. We could help each other. Musa, I think Umama would have wanted us to help each other.”

  Musa didn’t move, didn’t show any sign that he was listening. But he was. All day, all he had wanted was to stop moving, to lie down. And now his mind wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t let him rest.

  Dingane said that when the sticks swing backwards, that’s how you know how far down the water is. And Sarel had said that if there was water anywhere around here, it would be right there, in plain view, beneath the long taproots of the sweet thorn trees.

  When Musa had been practicing with his new dowsing sticks, they had swung backwards at the base of the little hill. Not more than one step away from the steep hillsides.

  Musa sat up.

  That was where the water came up near the surface. Under that little hill. It didn’t make any sense, digging for water on top of a hill. But nothing made sense anymore. His mother was gone. His brother had betrayed him. The Tandie were back, and if they caught him they’d never let him go again.

  Sarel and Nandi limped back to the kennel. The girl’s cheeks were damp, her eyes red and bloodshot.

  “Time to go,” she said, struggling to lift her satchel onto her shoulder. Sarel swayed, her head bobbing on her neck and her eyelids sagging.

  Musa shook his head and helped her down to her own sleeping mat. “Rest, just for a minute. I have to check something.”

  If he was going to try this, it had to be now. And if he didn’t try, they were going to die out there, all of them. Musa left the kennel, Nandi close at his heels. Dingane stood and began to follow him, but Musa shook his head and walked away from his brother.

  The other dogs didn’t move from the kennel floor, but their eyes followed Musa as he hefted the shovel and began picking his way across the homestead.

  Musa and Nandi clambered down into the dry riverbed, following its cut banks straight to the base of the hill. Every step burned in his legs. Every breath scraped through his lungs.

  When Musa reached the top of the little hill, he slid between the trees, looking for a spot to begin. The ground was pocked with divots, places where rainwater had pooled and sunk through t
he porous rock below, the tunnels widening bit by bit, year after year. Maybe there was one that was big enough for the blade of the shovel to fit through, large enough to lower a bucket down and back up, brimming with water.

  Musa plunged the shovel into the sunken earth. The dull blade bit into the ground with a thunk and the dirt hissed down the hillside as he tossed it out of the way.

  Nandi lay beyond the reach of the thorns, her ears pricked forward, eyes focused below on her sleeping pack.

  Musa dug until his palms were red and throbbing, until he could barely lift the shovel. Every few breaths, the back of his throat would close in on itself, and he would gasp and sputter until his lungs opened to the air again. His muscles cramped and knotted. He was tired of shoveling, tired from weeks of hard travel, tired from months of abuse and neglect.

  The sound of movement below reached his ears. Sarel was up, gathering their things, preparing to leave. He was out of time. Did he really think he could tunnel down through a whole hillside, weak as he was? Musa thrust the shovel into the wall of the pit he had dug and carved out a step. He climbed up and out. The fading sun was glaring, shining red across the flat plain.

  Suddenly, Nandi’s head shot up and swiveled to the east. She barked, loud, a throaty warning with a high-pitched edge of fear that lifted the hair on Musa’s arms. Outside the kennel, the dogs were circling Sarel, tails up, hackles up, all pointing south.

  Musa followed their gaze to where four men approached, the desert air blurring the outline of their bodies. Even from a distance, Musa could see their red bandannas and the rifles strapped to their backs as clearly as if they stood beside him.

  The Tandie were here. He was too late.

  The ground seemed to shift beneath him, and his fingers scrabbled against the gummed bark of the sweet thorn tree beside him.

  Musa sidled behind the trunk. Sivo hadn’t seen him yet. He could still slip down the other side of the hill and disappear into the desert.

  No one would ever find him.

  34

  Sarel

  She should run.

  But she was so tired.

  The men sauntered onto the homestead, guns slung over their shoulders, sweat-soaked red cloths cinched tight.

  It was just like before when Sarel had watched through a curtain of heat and dust and waving desert grasses, watched bullets throw the bodies of her father and then her mother to the ground. When the blades of the windmill slashed in lazy circles through billowing clouds. When the dogs in her father’s kennel clawed at the chainlink, barking, snarling, digging to get out.

  Sarel’s nostrils flared, and the wind shifted, washing the smoke of Dingane’s fire across her face. She blinked, clearing her eyes of the stinging, swimming tears. She blinked again, and the last wisps of memory fled from her vision.

  The dogs pressed in all around her, hackles raised and growls rumbling through their chests. Where was Nandi? Sarel sank her hands into the ruffs of the dogs on either side of her, holding them back from the men with the guns.

  “Where is Musa?”

  Sivo. That’s what Musa called him.

  “Where is my dowser?” Sivo slung the rifle over his head and waved it between Sarel and Dingane. Behind him, the other men leveled their rifles at the snarling dogs.

  Why didn’t the dogs just leave? They might make it. They might. Sarel tried to pull them back, but they were too strong. “Go!” she whispered. “Ubali, Bheka, Thando, get back—run!” Snarls pulled their lips up over their teeth. Where was Nandi? Why had any of them bothered to survive, if it was all going to end like this?

  Dingane stepped into the space between the Tandie and the bristling pack, his hands raised high in the air.

  35

  Musa

  Dingane stood in front of Sivo, his bare chest centered on the barrel of Sivo’s gun.

  “No,” Musa whispered. He stepped around the tree. “Don’t shoot!” he yelled, pitching his voice to carry down the steep sides of the little hill and across the dry river.

  The Tandie turned toward the sound, squinting up at him. Sivo lowered his gun and held a hand up in warning.

  While everyone watched Musa pick his way through the trees, Dingane crept around behind Sivo. His eyes flicked up once, to his brother, and then he lunged for the rifle. Sivo threw him off as if he weighed nothing at all. He raised the rifle up to his eye.

  “Dingane!” Musa cried.

  The crack of the gun ripped across the homestead. Dingane’s head whipped back and his body crumpled to the ground.

  Musa screamed. He ran, stumbling, tripping in the dirt pocked with holes, careening down the side of the little hill. His feet slipped on the scree and he smacked the dirt with a force that stole the air from his lungs.

  The ground beneath him buckled.

  And then he was sliding, tumbling through rocks and dirt and whipping tree roots. He was falling.

  Falling into darkness.

  Musa twisted in the air as he fell. Above, the sky was like a blue hole punched out of the earth. A hole in the shape of a ragged oval. A shape like the curve and flex of his mother’s hand closing over his own and lifting the dowsing sticks into place.

  36

  Sarel

  Sarel couldn’t take her eyes off Dingane’s leg, twisted beneath him. It looked so painful. She wanted to reach out and straighten it.

  A rumble shook the ground beneath her feet, and Sarel turned to see a giant cloud of dust boiling up into the air where the little hill had been.

  Nandi burst through the cloud, ears back, baying.

  “No,” Sarel cried. “Nandi, get back—go!”

  But Nandi didn’t listen.

  A sob broke through Sarel’s lips and her grip on Ubali’s ruff slackened. He lunged at the man with the gun pointed at her.

  Crack.

  Ubali yelped. His body was flung backwards as a bullet sank into his chest. Sarel scrabbled to her knees, throwing her arms around Ubali’s limp form.

  “No!” She was screaming now. “No—get back!”

  Crack.

  Buttu slumped at her feet, crying piteously as he gnawed at a bullet sunk into his hip. The rest of her pack swarmed in chaos, half snarling and circling the intruders, the other half whining, nudging warm, brown bodies that leaked hot blood onto the earth.

  Blood beat at Sarel’s temples and her hands clenched into fists. Her mouth opened in a rattling shriek. Sarel ran to the campfire and grabbed a flaming branch. She threw it. Threw it at the men who had come again, come with their guns and their anger and their blood-red flags. She hefted another branch in each hand and ran at them, swiping the flames through the tall grasses and hurling the fiery torches over her head.

  Sivo turned his gun on her then, raised it to his eye and sighted down the long black barrel.

  Crack.

  The bullet shot into the sky, the sound echoing through the smoky air.

  Sarel watched Sivo fall. Watched Nandi lunge from behind and sink her jaws into the skin at his throat. Watched her shake once in midair, snapping the life out of her prey in a single, powerful twist.

  A gust of wind fanned the grasses and swept the flames across the ground. One second, only a few clumps of grass burned, and the next, everything was smothered in smoke-belching fire. Hot winds whipped across the homestead, and the blades of the old windmill sliced through the black clouds.

  The Tandie turned and ran, sprinting to keep ahead of the surging flames. Sarel watched, backing away from the fire until she saw them fall. Backing up, waiting to be sure they didn’t get up again.

  “Nandi! Come!” Sarel shrieked, choking on the smoke and fanning the air in front of her face. She ran, the dogs pressing close beside her. Halfway there, Buttu crumpled. Flames skipped from one clump of brown grass to another, inches from where he lay, yelping in pain. Nandi lunged back, grabbing Buttu’s ruff in her teeth and dragging him away from the fire.

  “Nandi!” Sarel screamed as she ducked down the stairs. The
dogs leaped down into the grotto, spinning to bark at the smoke that billowed down the stairs after them.

  Finally, Nandi backed down into the tiny room, her hind legs straining against the stones, her spine arched, her teeth still clamped into Buttu’s fur. A trail of blood followed them down the stone-studded stairs.

  “Down,” Sarel shouted. “Down!”

  She grabbed Nandi around the neck and pulled her to the floor. What was left of the pack huddled against the curved wall. The dogs lay with their bellies pressed to the ground, eyes watching the smoke sifting into the room, noses twitching and lips peeled back in rumbling growls.

  Sarel ducked her face under her arm and closed her eyes while the whole world above burned.

  37

  Sarel

  When the smoke cleared, when the heat flashing down the grotto stairs faded, Sarel felt her way above­ground. She crawled on her hands and knees, her eyes stinging, her throat ragged and sore.

  Everything was black for miles around. The air glowed orange. The haze the fire had left behind clung to everything it touched.

  The dogs pressed tight against her as she stumbled past her parents’ graves, her eyes skittering away from the charred bodies scattered beyond the kennel.

  Where was Musa?

  38

  Sarel

  Sarel looked across the dry river, to where half of the little hill had fallen in on itself, leaving a blunt cliff jutting into the air. The rest was gone.

  From a dim corner of her mind, from a time before the smoke and the guns and the blood, from a time when they had simply walked hand in hand across a slab of pale stone, her mother’s voice prodded:

  Rainwater tunnels through porous rock, like sandstone or limestone, until it is brittle as a sun-bleached bone; until one day the ground falls away, causing a sinkhole, a yawning pit in the ground that lays bare the world beneath.