“Didn’t get you very far, did they?”
The voice belonged to a man about our father’s age and height. He wore black boots, a gray sweatshirt, and black canvas pants that fit tightly at his waist. He had longish hair, a thick beard, and a tattoo of a small bird on the side of his neck. His nails were clean, and he wore a single yellow band on his left ring finger. His hands were stroking the fur on the heads of two golden-brown dogs.
I stepped back instinctively, but the dogs remained still. “Are you going to kill us?” I asked.
“Kill you? Why would I kill you?”
“You’ve kidnapped us.”
“I haven’t kidnapped you. We found you on the road. You would’ve starved to death if we hadn’t picked you up.”
“Is that why your men chased us and hunted us down?”
The pirate frowned and stopped petting the dogs. “You ran from them.”
“Because they were pirates.”
“What do you know about pirates?”
I considered his question. Everything I knew about pirates, I had learned in school. They were dangerous, lawless men, who would do anything to steal water, including killing and maiming. But it was true that I had never met a real pirate, and didn’t know anyone who had.
“Pirates steal water,” said Will, “water that’s meant for other people.”
The pirate laughed, deep and rich. His hair bounced on his shoulders like something alive. “Governments steal water,” he said, “water that doesn’t belong to them.”
Will stared at the pirate but didn’t say anything else. Water belonged to whoever drilled or refined it, and pirates certainly did neither. They took the water collected through the hard work of others.
“So now what are you going to do with us?” I asked.
“What should I do?” asked the pirate.
“Let us go.”
“Can’t do that, little sister. How will you get home? It’s dangerous out there for children.”
Of course the pirate was right. There was nothing but rocks and sand between here and home. Even if we could get back across the border now, we could never walk hundreds of kilometers without water. And even if we could, bandits or coyotes would surely get to us. We were trapped with bad men in a foreign republic. I bit my lip to stop myself from crying again.
“We’re not children,” said Will, annoyed.
I expected the pirate to laugh, as shakers usually did when kids insisted they were grown up. But instead he did something strange. He raised his head and looked off into the distance as if he could see something there. “No,” he said. “Of course not.”
“Will you let us go, then?”
The pirate returned his gaze to Will, and then he did laugh. “Do I look like a fool? Let you run straight to the army?”
“We won’t. We promise!” said Will.
“A boy’s promise. That’s pretty.”
“It’s worth more than a pirate’s.”
“You have a lot to learn about pirates.”
I knew what Will was thinking: The farther we went, the harder it would be to get home. The harder it was to get home, the less likely we were to ever see our parents again—traveling with pirates, no less, who knew where or how far? Twenty-four hours ago we had a plan to rescue Kai. Now we needed rescuing.
“We’re looking for a boy,” said the pirate. “About your age.”
“A boy?” repeated Will.
“A boy and his father—a driller.”
I opened my mouth, but quickly shut it.
Kai, I thought. They’re looking for Kai.
CHAPTER 8
The pirate was called Ulysses. He said he was named after an ancient warrior, but I had never heard that tale. I thought of him instead as the king of the pirates. Like a king he rode tall and proud at the wheel in the first truck. He insisted the pirates had no king; they didn’t even have a leader. They were wanderers who went wherever the winds and water took them.
“Why do they follow you, then?” I asked.
“They’re free not to. They follow me because they want to.”
“That still makes you the leader.”
“Are we free not to follow you?” asked Will. He sat pressed up against the door. Ulysses was driving, and I was in the middle. The two dogs—Cheetah and Pooch—sat in a small compartment behind us. Cheetah (or maybe it was Pooch) kept poking her head over the divider and sniffing my face. Although the dogs had frightened me when they first tracked us, up close they seemed like large furry dolls that would rather sleep, lick, and sniff than bite. In fact, I knew, dogs had been pets until feeding them made their masters hungry.
“You’re children. Children don’t have choices.”
“That’s just what shakers always say.”
“They say it because it’s true.”