The raw spot on her toe had quickly filled with dirt, and it throbbed as she forced herself ever onward, eyes scouring the vast nothing for any sign of Lynn or Mister. Spatter she’d found the day before, caught up in a bend in the river where debris had piled. Even though the current had carried her past him mercifully quick, the bulging of his blank eyes and the image of his long, lifeless tongue dangling in the water for a perpetual drink had brought a fresh grief that spilled new tears from her swollen eyes even as she was pulled away from him.
Weariness had taken hold again, not relenting until the canyon fell away and the log she’d lashed herself to with its roots came to rest on a sandbar. The peacefulness of the undulations tugging at her feet had urged her to free herself and continue on with the river, to a place where pain and grief would bother her no more. She’d pulled her legs up onto the tree and slept through the cool night, taking what rest she could before facing the desert.
Leaving the river went against all her instincts, but if Lynn were alive, she would head north to return to the highway, and expect Lucy to do the same. The rising sun had felt good as it baked the chill from her bones, and Lucy had a flicker of hope as she rested on the sandbar before leaving. The idea of Lynn dying at all was so foreign to Lucy she rejected it wholly. Lynn would live if the canyon itself were to collapse on her, the tenacity of the life inside of her finding a way to survive against all odds.
But the odds felt longer as the day wore on and the last few mouthfuls of water she’d taken from the river had long since been spent by her body. The heat shimmer began to play games with her head, showing shadows in the form of horses and people that urged her to stray from her northward path with promises beyond her reach. Lucy pushed on in as straight a path as she could, though she feared the dragging pain from her injured foot was pulling her to the left.
She sat down at midday, unable to ignore the pounding in her head any longer. The wound on her temple reopened, and she licked at her own blood as it streamed into the corner of her lips, but her tongue came back coppery and salt covered. Lucy touched the wound and studied the blood on her fingers, reveling in the beauty of the red rivulets against the underside of her hand.
“Lynn,” she said weakly, though she knew there was no one to hear. “I understand that poem now. It’s what I’ve been saying all along about being scared of the bigness, and me being so small. Only it says it better. All I’m going to be here soon, after the sun and the animals have their way, is just a handful of dust. I’ll be even smaller than I am now. I’ll be nothing, and no one will ever know what became of me. Lynn, I think . . . I think I’m dying.”
But there was no one to tell her this was not the case, no strong hands to pull her to her feet and force her to go on, no gentle touch to bring a cool cup to her lips and bring her back from the brink. There was nothing, and there was no one.
Stebbs was not there to tell her any water she witched would be too deep to reach. She’d seen him witch without a stick before, and she called to mind his steady pace and calm demeanor as he would walk with his arms outstretched. She reached out for water with her entire being, eyes closed tightly against the baking sun. Her heart leapt along with her pulse a few paces later, and she fell to her knees.
She dug with her hands, the hot sand packing the tiny cracks in her knuckles, first only irritating the skin but finally breaking through and dotting the ground with black drops of her own blood. She kept on, digging through the pain. Her fingernails peeled back from her dry nail beds and still no water bubbled up, no earthy smell of water filled her nose. There was only the dull, endless wafting of arid air.
Soon she collapsed beside a hole barely two feet deep, her body so dry she could hardly blink her eyes.
And still, she smelled no water.
She had lived rough her whole life, but hunger had never been a true enemy. Lynn’s gun and Vera’s garden had kept food on the table, and the slight gnaw on her stomach she’d always called “hunger” seemed almost pleasant compared to what she was suffering from now. In the overwhelming burn of a desert day, she understood the difference between hunger and starvation. It felt as if the rough rock under her back had bitten through her spine and was making a meal of her stomach lining. The pain curled her body into the fetal position, and Lucy cried tears that never gained the weight to fall.