No matter how much she ignores me, I can’t stop leaning into her line of sight and trying to get her attention, like a neglected child.
Ahead of us, a sudden wind sweeps from night to day, shaping loose soil and rocks into a shimmering fist.
My new bracelet makes my forearm itch, and I keep thinking I feel it vibrate. When I touch it with my eyes closed, I almost feel as though I’m traveling through the night instead of the dusk, on four powerful legs. I wonder if Rose, or one of the others, is out there beyond the side of the road, watching our progress. This bracelet feels like a reminder that I have other friends besides the ones I just left in Xiosphant and Bianca. But also, there’s a claim on me. I owe a debt that I haven’t repaid yet.
Sulfuric dust gets in my eyes, nose, and mouth. With no mountain in the way, the night looks like it’s right there, next to me, calling to me. And over to my right, the unquenchable blaze seems ready to burn me to cinders, like my mother.
* * *
In front of us, the sled jerks and halts, even though Kendrick, the giant with the face piercings, insists he upgraded the motor back in Xiosphant. Alongside piles of leather, ore, dried fruit, and cakes, the sled also has a quilted denim pouch on top, just big enough for two bodies to squeeze inside. That’s the sleep nook, and we’ll all take turns inside, sleeping two by two. The front of the sled seats two: Omar and Mouth. Four of us walk alongside the sled, two in front and two in back, carrying packs and rifles. Bianca’s had a bit of rifle training, but I don’t even know how to hold mine properly. The youngest smuggler, Yulya, keeps promising to give me some lessons, and maybe also teach me some Argelan—she already tried to explain about something that sounded like “Anchor-Banter,” which she says is a major concept in Argelan culture.
Mouth keeps nudging Omar and pointing out a million dangers on the road, from sinkholes to storms to deadly wildlife charging out of the night. The two of them have a whole shorthand that doesn’t sound like language. I keep watching out for the horseflies that will descend without warning and eat a person whole, or maybe infect you with a flesh-eating disease. Yulya keeps saying you can go from safe to dead in an eyeblink out here.
As soon as we’re away from Xiosphant, Omar adjusts his clothes, lets down his mane of dark hair, and wraps a big scarf with an elaborate pattern around his neck. Some time later, I hear him say to Reynold, “You know, Khartoum built all the computers on the Mothership, and then they got shafted.” Then Omar looks over his shoulder at Bianca and me, because of course you’re not supposed to talk about such things in Xiosphant, and he can sense our discomfort. “Better get used to it.” He laughs. “Everywhere else, you better believe we talk about this stuff.”
To hear Omar tell it, New Shanghai built the Mothership’s life support, food supply, and gardens before leaving Earth, while Calgary built the water reclamation and sewers. And then once the Mothership had launched, those two compartments ended up in a position to demand whatever they wanted—and all this time later, their descendants still rule Xiosphant. That’s not the version we were taught in school, and it makes me wonder what else we were taught that nobody else believes.
* * *
Not knowing the time makes me feel young and ancient at once. I don’t know if the shutters are up or down at home, whether people are eating sweet pastries or savory pies, if the children are playing in the scrapyard. I could get used to seeing a dark horizon and a line of bright red occupying the same sky more easily than this unawareness. I don’t even know how weary I am. The knapsack straps gnaw on my shoulders, and I keep zoning out as I walk.
All those people who paid Hernan to lose track of the passage of time could have just come out here, to the deadlands.
A few times, the trail slopes downward, and the night rises up, making a hillock or cliff against the darkness. Maybe I glimpse a shape standing on the cliffside, a big shadow on the edge of night, flexing tentacles and a great pincer, or maybe I’m dreaming on my feet. Even if I could survive walking into the night, the smugglers would think I’d gone delirious if I even tried.
I brought a toothbrush, but there’s no spray and I just have to use some weird soap they gave me. And I’ll never get used to squatting behind a rock to go to the toilet, and then running to catch up with the sled.
Every time I catch sight of Bianca—her still eyes downcast, shoulders caving under her own giant pack—I forget to breathe. She’s the only thing worth looking at, even with the coruscating light coming off the mineral deposits on the rock formations. But she watches her own footfalls, without seeing much of anything.
But then I hear the tattooed man called Reynold mutter in Xiosphanti: “Waste of food. Why do we even bother to keep these two girls alive when there’s no way they’ll make it to Argelo in one piece? If you ask me, we should just—”
I charge forward, overtaking the sled, with my face searing hot and my fist already wound up. My knuckles connect with Reynold’s jaw, and I hear a sound like a door slamming. The big ugly man falls and rolls out of the way of the sled’s wheels right before he gets run over. He looks up and has a good view of the fury in my eyes.
“Sorry,” Reynold blurts. He stumbles to his feet and jogs to catch up to the sled, where Omar laughs in his throat.
“So, that’s going to leave a nice bruise,” says Alyssa, who’s also walking up front. “I like this one. She doesn’t need to talk, she expresses herself just fine.”
A massive storm comes over the horizon ahead of us, but dissipates before we reach it.
I see shapes on the edge of the night, but nothing comes to try its luck—and I never even glimpse a Gelet, though my bracelet still keeps throbbing, especially whenever I veer toward the light.
My entire body throbs from the repetitive motion of stepping on the hard ground, over and over, steadying my load with each footfall. I brought my best pair of mountain-climbing boots, but they’re already wearing out. The sky feels like it’s crushing me under its gray weight.
Maybe I’m dead already, just condemned to keep walking forever, with the angry ghost of Bianca by my side.
* * *
Long after I’m sure that I’m going to fall and they’re just going to leave me in the dust, Omar announces it’s time to change sleep shifts. Kendrick and Yulya slide down out of the sleep nook in a smooth practiced motion. But when Bianca and I try to climb inside with the sled rolling, we misjudge our leap, falling in the dirt while everyone laughs and cheers. We make it on the third try.
I’m lying face-to-face with Bianca, in the blindfolded warmth of a quilted tube just big enough for us, resting on all the precious leather. I breathe in a hint of the floral soap Bianca always used, laced with our sweat and the tang of rawhide. My knees rest against her thighs.
“I’m sorry about your friends,” I whisper in Bianca’s ear. “I know you think you could have saved them somehow, but you would have just died with them. And if anything had happened to you, I couldn’t even…”
“Let’s just sleep,” Bianca mutters. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
I’m sure I won’t be able to sleep, but then I black out. For once, my sleeping mind doesn’t replay scenes of cops pulling me by the armpits, or hunters hauling a wounded Gelet away. Instead, I remember a time that never was, when Bianca and I lived in a hollow space carved into the center of a tall rock face, which was perfectly round on the inside, like a globe. The two of us furnished the space with a hundred kinds of fragrant grass, and brewed hot drinks that took a whole lifetime to steep.
* * *
When I wake up, someone’s screaming.
“Omar! Fuck. It got Omar! Fucking, it fucking ate Omar. Kill it! It’s getting away!”
Bianca and I have as much trouble getting out of the sleep nook as we had climbing in, and we tumble onto the hard ground just in time to see the lower half of Omar’s body vanish into the night, in the jaws of a bison. Muscles ripple underneath ochre fur-covered plates, and a forked tail thrashes so hard it carves the air around us. The sled careens, in danger of tipping over, without anyone left to steer. Mouth lunges across Omar’s seat and wrestles with the steering levers.
Kendrick takes a shot at the bison, but misses. Omar’s face has a look of dismay, but not pain, as if the razor-sharp threads in the bison’s mouth severed his lower half too fast for him to feel anything.
The sled stops moving. Everyone just stares at Omar’s head and torso, then at each other. Mouth still leans over from the passenger seat, her hands shaking. She mutters something under her breath, and I realize that it’s a prayer in the original language, No?lang: something about the Elementals, and footsteps in dirt. Next to the driver’s seat, Alyssa’s hands splay, rigid as claws.
mouth