"How do you know each other?" she asked. They seemed so different.
Jabari and Gavi exchanged glances. "We went to school together," Jabari said, finally. "And somehow I got stuck with him as a seeking partner." Gavi only shook his head, grinning and refusing to rise to the bait. It didn't really fulfill Isika's curiosity about them, but Jabari didn't go into it more. What was school like for the Maweel, she wondered.
Their camp was close to a small creek. Isika took Ibba and the two of them bathed as well as they could, ducking in and out of the cold water, then pulling their dusty clothes back on. Isika took the braids out of her sister's hair and smoothed the curls down with water, braiding it again. She did the same with her own hair, then wiped some dried mud off Ibba's shirt and looked into her eyes. Ibba looked back at her, biting her fingers.
"I love being with our new friends," Ibba whispered, "but I'm worried that we won't find Kital."
"Shhh," Isika said to her. "Don't worry, love, of course we will. Does Jabari seem like someone who can't find even the smallest thing that he wants to find?"
Ibba thought it over, then shook her head, blinking tears out of her eyes. She smiled, her dimple flashing, before skipping off to the others, pausing to touch each of the trees she passed. Isika watched her, wondering absently if she felt anything in the trees. She didn't know how to ask her, so she followed her little sister and lay beside her, falling asleep immediately.
When she woke to pink light in the morning, Gavi had laid a fire and was boiling water over it. He scooped several large spoonfuls of coffee into the water, then strained it through a cloth into five small metal cups. Isika took one and lifted it to her nose, sighing. "How many amazing things do you have in that bag?" she asked. "Lemons, tea, now coffee?"
Gavi laughed. "I panic if I think I won't have hot drinks nearby," he said. "Jabari's always going through my bag before we set off, trying to get rid of things I want to bring, but he's always happy to have them in the end."
Isika hadn't known how happy good food, and the expectation of good food, could make her. To wake up knowing she would eat, that the hollow feeling would go away! It was incredible.
They started out before long. Breaking up camp was becoming routine as they each found a job and did it quickly. They walked for most of the day, hiking along the road with what felt like endless fields on either side of them, first grain, then tall tomato plants and berry bushes. They saw other farms in the distance, but none of them called to Isika, and she couldn't see any walls. She was glad. She didn't know whether she'd be able to ignore the tugging she felt, even though she really did want to respect the seekers and their work in Maween.
Sometime in the late afternoon, Jabari fell into step beside Isika again. They walked in silence while Isika tried to stop feeling so awkward beside him. She looked down at his hands, swinging by his sides. He walked with long, swinging strides, his shoulders back, somehow relaxed and focused at the same time. He rolled when he walked, like a large cat. She looked away when he glanced at her, embarrassed to be paying so much attention to him. His walk was distinctive. She felt that she would know who he was from a long way away.
Isika thought about what she knew she needed to say to get rid of the awkwardness between them. Finally she forced it past her lips despite the churning in her stomach. She longed for some of the feeling of well-being that the Othra spread, but they were nowhere to be seen. Come to think of it, she hadn't seen them since the night before. She cleared her throat.
"I wanted to say thank you," she began, "for taking us in and helping us find our way. I don't know what we would have done without you. Nothing I guess. We probably would have wandered in circles until we died."
Jabari laughed, a rich, surprising sound from him. "Somehow I doubt that."
But she had broken the ice, and they kept talking.
"How did the Othra convince you to come back to us?" she asked.
He smiled. "Do you really want to know?"
"Of course."
"Nirral picked me up with his talons and put me in a tree, higher than I've ever climbed," he said. "He wouldn't let me down until I promised to return. Even then, he left me there for a while, I suppose, to teach me a lesson."
"You're kidding me."
"No, I'm telling the truth," he said, and he showed her the talon marks in his shirt.
"Did it hurt?"
"Only a little," he said, and shrugged. "The Othra are ancient and wonderful, but dangerous, and they're harder on me than they are on most people."
"Why?"
He shrugged, bending his head to look at her. "They know I'm excellent at everything, so they have to push me." Behind them, Gavi made a sound like he was choking, and Jabari grinned to let her know he was teasing. She wondered, though, why would they be harder on him? Did they think he was arrogant as well, or was there something in him they felt they needed to push?
They came out of the fields and walked along a road lined with trees. These were trees that Isika had never seen before, and as she peered up to see them better, Jabari reached out and broke a fruit off one of the branches above them.
"Try it," he said, pulling the fruit in half and offering a piece to her. "It's called reengu, or traveler's fruit, because it grows on the trees we plant along the roads."
The fruit was a very bright pink, and oblong. She lifted it to her mouth and took a small bite. Juice ran down her hand and arm to her elbow. It tasted bright and soft, like melon, but with some spice. Gavi picked one for Ibba, and Ben jumped up and plucked his own off a branch. They ate as many as they could fit into their stomachs, and when they finished, they were bright pink from the juices, but refreshed. Gavi poured water into their hands so they could wash.
They walked on. Jabari whistled a song for some time, and when he stopped, she saw from the corner of her eye that he was looking at her silently. She waited.
"I was thinking," he said, finally, "that I haven't heard anything about how you came to be with the poison-landers."
CHAPTER 16
Jabari's tone, which was deliberately light, puzzled Isika. He hadn't asked such a strange question; he knew that Workers were normally white-skinned, so it was natural that he would wonder how they got to the village. Why was he being so careful about asking it?
"We came from the desert," she said, "when I was seven years old and my mother was pregnant with Ibba. We walked in the desert for many months, looking for somewhere to live, I think. My mother was very tired of walking, and she always had to carry our sister."
Jabari did a double take. "Your sister? Wait, you said your mother was pregnant with Ibba—you have another sister? Where is she?"
"She… she was sent out four years ago." Knowing how angry he became when they talked about the sending, she was reluctant to say the words. "My mother died soon after Kital was born. I think she died of grief. She couldn't eat or sleep anymore."
"I'm sorry," he murmured. He frowned. "Is it normal that another child would be sent out? I understood that each family only gives one child over."
She shook her head, a lump in her throat. "No, it's not normal." She looked at him. He was staring at the horizon with a thoughtful look on his face. She wanted to ask him about Aria, whether they had ever found another dark-skinned outcast girl—the question was right there, but she couldn't say it.
She would ask him later. Maybe it was a bad sign that he hadn't mentioned Aria right away. Maybe there were sent ones who didn't make it into the arms of the Maweel. They walked in silence for a while.
Heavy tree branches curved overhead, forming a canopy over the path. It was cool in this forest, and small birds flitted from branch to branch. The sun only came through in places, shining a brilliant light on certain flowers or leaves. She thought, as she often did, that she should have offered herself to be sent out instead of Aria. But then who would have cared for Kital when her mother died? Was it right that she had stayed behind? It was a despairing loop she often found herself
in, especially before she went to sleep at night. She heaved a painful breath. Jabari broke the silence.
"Who did you live with in the desert?"
Isika put her chin up to keep tears from springing to her eyes. Her throat hurt with old sorrows. "We lived with only our mother. We moved from place to place, sleeping in a tent that our mother carried. I remember… when we first left the city and went to the desert, there was a man. But he didn't stay long, perhaps he was only helping us leave. I think the desert weakened my mother. She was never very strong again."
"There was somewhere before the desert?" Jabari put a hand on her shoulder for a moment, maybe seeing her sadness over the memories. The sudden warmth of his hand only made tears seem closer. She took a deep breath.
"A place with tall walls. I don't remember much from that place. We left at night and for a while we ran. My mother would never talk of it." And neither would Ben, she thought, but she didn't tell Jabari. Ben had the right to keep his secrets from whoever he wanted, though Isika wished he would share them with her.
Jabari looped his fingers through the straps of the pack he carried. "Who did you live with in the poison-lander village?"
Isika gazed at the horizon. "Our stepfather. The man we call our father. His name is Nirloth. He's the priest of the village."
"Really?" Isika looked at Jabari and saw she had shocked him. It was so similar to the reaction of the entire village over Nirloth's marriage, a marriage to a black woman with four children at her skirts, that Isika smiled bitterly. "I didn't know poison-lander priests married," he said.
"Of course they do," she said. "How else would they bear heirs to be priests? Nirloth married our mother when she came out of the desert. After she died, we children lived alone with him for two years, then he married another woman, Jerutha." She sighed. "It was Jerutha's idea that we take the boat and find Kital. I hated leaving her. She's a good person."
Jabari looked away, and Isika thought that maybe he couldn't quite believe that any poison-landers were good. He was blind, then, she thought. And how many more questions could he have? She was growing weary of her memories. But he had more.
"Do you remember your mother?" he asked, and she looked at him incredulously.
"Of course! She died when I was ten!"
"What was she like?" He was untouched by her scorn.
Isika walked for a while without talking, wondering which of the precious memories of her mother she could entrust to this boy. The canopy opened and she saw that the sky was very blue. Beside them the leaves shook in a sudden breeze. Isika put one hand to her throat and breathed in. Jabari had told her much that she needed to know. She could offer a few memories of her mother.
"Our mother sang a lot," she said. "She seemed to always be singing, even when we walked in the desert for months and she was exhausted. She loved us. By the time we left the desert, she was very thin, though she was near to giving birth to Ibba. I remember how happy she was to spot the walls of the village. It was the first time I saw her cry. She fell to the earth and put her face on the ground and cried. Then we went into the village and Nirloth took us into his home."
For a moment, the forest turned into the dusty brown of the plains around the walled village as Isika remembered. "I'll always be grateful to him for that," she said. "After Ibba was born, our mother grew a little stronger and she planted vegetables, making a kitchen garden. She sang to us in the cool of the day, when evening had fallen. But she was broken and tired, a flower after it has been cut out of the garden."
Tears came then, and Jabari lifted a hand to squeeze her shoulder. When she had wiped her tears away, she went on. "When my father decided to give Aria over, my mother wept and raged until Kital came out of her belly a month early. Two weeks later, she died. She couldn't eat or sleep, she just lay on her bed and stared into the dark. She would barely speak." Isika's voice broke. Jabari squeezed her shoulder. She could sense him looking at her, but she fixed her gaze on the farthest point she could see and went on. She hadn't spoken of her mother like this for so long.
"Our mother was very strong. She was kind and her words carried gentleness, even in a place where few people, including my father, had kind words for anyone."
Jabari nodded and gave her shoulder a final squeeze, then took his hand away. She was sorry when it was gone. He strode beside her with long steps, furrowing his brow.
He looked at her. "And your father?" he asked. "From birth? Do you know anything about him?"
She brushed the last of the tears off her face with the backs of her hands.
"Nothing. I know only Nirloth." She was quiet, reaching out to touch trees gently as she passed them. Little waves of happiness came off them as her fingertips touched the bark, and she straightened her shoulders.
Jabari was quiet too, and they walked in silence for some time. "I'm sorry, Isika," he said finally. "You have had a very hard life."
Isika thought about that. "Yes," she said. "I suppose I have." She smiled at him, and he crinkled his eyes at her in return. It seemed they had found a little understanding of one another.
They walked in silence for some time, and Isika wondered just how much more walking they would do that day, when Jabari suddenly kicked his feet up and turned to face the others, walking backward just as easily as he walked forward. He raised his hands in the air. "Time to focus!" he exclaimed. Gavi groaned. "Yes, it's true, Gavi, it's our favorite time. Time to cross rivers!" He said it as though he was announcing something exciting and fun. Isika didn't see any rivers, not even in the distance. She hid a smile as she looked at him. He slowed to a halt and they stood in a group, gazing down at the road as though a river would just appear.
"How do we cross rivers?" she asked.
From behind them, Gavi spoke, his voice glum. "We swim. It's cold and it takes forever."
Jabari closed his eyes and held out his hands. "It's wonderful," he said, his voice fervent, and Isika looked from one to the other, wondering who she should believe.
They camped for the night because Gavi flat out refused to cross a river with no food or rest. "And this is only the first of many," he said, busy at the fire. At Ben's blank look, he explained. "At the land where the rivers empty into the ocean, they spread out like a fan, and we'll have to cross many of them. We're at the deltas."
Jabari brought Gavi a rabbit, using his bow for the first time. Ben looked on, envious, as Jabari strode back into the camp with the rabbit by its ears. He had yet to pull out his own bow and his hands itched to prove what a good shot he was, but he was nervous about overstepping himself. No one had asked him to hunt. Gavi roasted the rabbit over the fire, adding herbs from his pack. He heated water and made more lemon tea.
"We swim all the rivers?" Ben asked. He pulled his sandals off and rubbed at his sore feet.
"No," Gavi said, grimacing. He turned the rabbit slowly on the spit. "Thank the Shaper. We cross some by boat."
They ate, falling onto their mats after Isika scrubbed their metal plates and cups in a nearby creek. Ben was asleep almost instantly.
"It will be mid-morning when we reach the first river," Jabari announced as they walked the next morning. "We have a lot of ground to cover today, so let's move quickly."
The landscape was changing again. It was still green and lush, but they walked in a different kind of forest; tall straight trees that rustled, with leaves as tall as people. There were wide gaps between the trees, planted in rows, like an orchard, though Ben didn't see any fruit. The trunks were a golden yellow, the branches hung with silvery leaves. They were impressive. Ben had the idea of a great expanse, well-ordered and lovely.
"What kind of trees are they?" Ben asked Gavi as they stopped at a well in the orchard.
"Hoona," he said. "We used them to build homes and furniture."
"You build homes with wood?" Ben said, surprised.
Gavi swallowed and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "Only the main beams," he said. "We build our homes with earth, usu
ally."
Ben took a turn drinking, curious to see this city with homes built of earth and wood. The homes in his village were built of stone. He had never seen wood used in a house.
Later, they passed under trees with leaves that curved upward, like the points on the temple roof.
"Watch," Gavi told Ben, and he paused under a leaf and waited with his mouth open and aimed at the sky. After a moment, the leaf tipped and released a stream of liquid into his mouth.
"What?" Ben said, stunned.
"How did you do that?" Ibba asked in her squeaky voice.
"Look at them," Gavi said. "They release nectar every few minutes or so."
Ben looked around and saw trees all over the grove tipping their leaves and releasing a stream of clear liquid. If you walked under the trees, you'd be wet in minutes.
"I want to try!" Ibba said.
"You can, Little One. Stand underneath and wait. The nectar is good for you. It gives strength." Gavi smacked his lips. "Tastes good, too."
Ben thought he could use a little strength, so he turned his face up under a leaf and waited, feeling silly. He waited for a long time, and when the nectar came, it poured straight down his neck and into his shirt. Gavi laughed.
"That must have been refreshing," he said. "Wait just… here," he directed Ben by the shoulders. "Right at the corner, so it goes straight into your mouth. Go to a leaf that looks heavy in the center, where the nectar is collecting from the tree's heart. That's how you know it's ready to drop."
Ibba stood a few feet away. She got a mouthful of nectar and Ben saw her eyes widen with delight. Just beyond, Jabari was showing Isika how to hold her face to drink the nectar. Ben looked around and found a leaf that looked heavy and full. He tipped his head back where Gavi had told him to, and waited. He flinched as he saw the leaf tip, ready to be soaked again, but this time it poured straight into his mouth. The flavor was like mint or lemon, but more refreshing. He tingled to his toes and headed to another leaf to wait for more.
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