At dinner, when Radius passes the serving bowl to Bea, I watch her arrange a fat orange yam in the center of her plate and a circle of plump, yellow sea apples swimming in sugary juice around it. Looks like a pretty abstract painting, but my taste buds aren’t salivating, and my belly isn’t rumbling for my own portion one bit.
“Want some, Ruby?” She hands me the bowl, and I dole out a small mound. Mine doesn’t look artful, and it excites me as much as a pile of sand. What’s wrong with me? I have no desire to stick any of that near my mouth. It’s as if I forgot how to chew and swallow. Have I lost this ability between breakfast and dinner? Is this a delayed effect of the Fireseed’s toxic pollen? Has it scrambled my senses into thinking that food is non-edible putty? In all of my days matching minerals and plants and insects, and in all my days of testing the mixtures, I’ve never come across this symptom. It scares me.
Bea’s staring at me, and nodding her head toward my sea apples in a sisterly attempt to get me to eat. “They’re delicious,” she reassures.
Blane’s gaze lands on me, and a cloud of troubled emotion moves across his face. “Aren’t you going to eat?”
“That’s my business,” I snap, and instantly regret it, because he looks down at his plate and his expression hardens. I don’t want anyone thinking I’m a head case, and I don’t want to say what I’m really thinking.
That I pray Dr. Varik comes here soon. I need to see a doctor.
A forkful of yam in her hand, Nevada looks my way. “Ruby, eat up. You need your strength to work.”
She’s right, and it’s nice that people care. Stabbing a sea apple, I bring it to my lips. Force them open with the pressure of the pliable fruit. Push the round, warm blob back with my tongue and then down with a compression of my throat. Swallow again, because the damn thing won’t move any further down.
Coughing, I excuse myself from the table and head upstairs to dislodge the apple. Eating it feels wrong.
All I want to do is to go outside and stare at the sun. Even if it burns my irises and skin, the sun would heal me. I can’t say why or how, but it’s an elemental urge. It’s dark outside though, and the wind is still furious. When I go to the window and study the pools of sand that the storm has whipped up on the tarp, the strange humming starts. It’s as if the plants under it are speaking to me, but also inside my head: Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow they hum.
Tomorrow you will eat.
Chapter 17
The next morning I feel a little better. I manage to stuff a cup of grain in and wash it down with mineral mead though I’m still not hungry. I suppose that’s what the humming meant when it said that tomorrow I would eat. The Axiom Stream blast announces a clear sky:
Huzzah, Fireseeders! George Axiom here. Only days until the finalist picks! I trust that you are polishing up projects on this sunny morning. We’re preparing fun swag for all our favorite finalists. Free drink coupons at Tiki Beach Lounge and entry to Simi-Surf Ride! Surf’s up today, huge breakers by the piers.
Brought to you by Simi-Surf. Catch a wave without breaking your leg.
After breakfast we all go to the field and help clear off sand from the tarp by pushing at it with rakes. Then Nevada sends Armonk and me out on a convoy.
Nevada has washed her hair, which used costly stores of water, and I wonder what the special occasion is. It’s flowing freely, and the wispy blond tips are freshly dipped in green dye. She’s dressed in her best iguana-cell fatigues and form-fitting shirt, cinched with an emerald scarf. Her eyes are rimmed with smoky kohl and she’s wearing her fringed lizard-skin boots.
“We need two dozen water pellets, the large blue size,” she explains. “Also, some northern grains, and vegetables for the next two weeks. Sea beets would be nice.”
Armonk says, “You have to get them from a depot with connections to Northern Dominion, above the border wall.”
I panic, thinking we’ll have to fly back to Depot Man who gets shipments from the north. No way would I go anywhere near that jerk again. As much as I’m longing for a junket, I’m about to tell Nevada I can’t when she gives us directions.
“They sell sea beets at Skull’s Wrath Depot, seventy miles due southwest,” Nevada informs us. I heave a sigh of relief.
The minute I get outside and that strange thrumming starts, I want to fling off my burn helmet and lift my head high. Somehow that makes the humming sweeter, like a thousand tiny violins played by sand fairies. But Armonk would scold me so I keep it on in the glider.