19 · Drenard
The winds howling out of the Wadi canyons were deafening. Anlyn and Coril had begun their march by angling away from the Rite shelter, and once they were out of the building’s lee, the flap of their Wadi suits in the stiff breeze had begun to erode their hearing. They soon pulled back their thin and shimmery hoods, tucking them into their collars to keep the fabric quiet. Walking side-by-side, they let the gusts push at their backs, driving them toward the deepening canyons while they discussed the looming Rite.
“I’m pretty sure Aunt Ralei meant for us not to go there,” Anlyn complained, still trying to convince her cousin that revealing the scars had been a warning of sorts.
“You can go wherever you like,” Coril shouted. “I’m going to catch the Wadi that scratched her.”
Anlyn turned and looked back over her shoulder. Even squinting into the wind, she could feel it desiccating her eyes. Off in the distance and laboring to catch up to them, she saw Gil’s bulky form standing out on the horizon. The poor kid had followed along after the other two boys for a thousand paces before finally breaking off in the girls’ direction. Anlyn felt a hollow tugging in her chest. All she should’ve been thinking about was the completion of her own Rite and getting back to her studies, and now she found herself dealing with a frightened relative on the one side and a zealous and overeager one on the other. It was like the hot and cold sides of Drenard hemming her in.
“If you’re gonna insist on hunting Wadi, you might want to wait for Gil. He’s at least got a proper lance.”
Coril looked back at their larger cousin, still quite a distance behind them. She didn’t slow her pace. “He’ll catch us before we get to the dayline.” She looked down at the egg graspers and sunshields the two of them had been given. “You make a good point, though.”
Sure enough, Gil caught up to them a dozen or so paces from the dayline. He arrived huffing, his eyes wide.
“Thanks for waiting up!” he said, his sarcasm nearly lost between his pants for air.
“Aren’t you supposed to be doing your Rite alone?” Coril asked with a mocking tone.
Gil looked back and forth between his female cousins. “Well, why do you two get to hunt together?”
Anlyn shrugged. “That’s the rules, Gil.”
“Well, I don’t like the rules. Besides, what’re they gonna do to me if I come back with an egg? Tell me I’m not a Drenard? So what?”
Coril shook her head and turned away from the two of them, seemingly disgusted by her cousin’s attitude. She walked toward a near section of the dayline that stretched across the wide and deepening canyon. Anlyn patted Gil on the back and hurried to catch up.
As she joined Coril, Anlyn saw her cousin had her map out and folded in thirds to keep the ends from flapping. Ahead of them, the canyon split off in two, a sharp wedge of a cliff rising up in the center and bisecting the dayline. Coril stopped and surveyed the tall feature. She looked back down at her map, then rotated it to match the direction she was looking.
“I think we’re at the edge of the egg canyon,” Anlyn told Coril. She pointed off to one side where a shadowpath hugged the base of a cliff, the first smattering of Wadi holes visible along its smooth face.
“You can go down there if you like,” Coril said. She looked up and pointed around the other side of the narrow wedge. “But that’s where Aunt Ralei was telling us to go.”
“I still think she was warning us to not go there,” Anlyn shouted above a ferocious gust of wind.
Gil lumbered up beside them, still short of breath from the long and hurried hike. “Who warned you of what?” he asked.
“You should go with Anlyn,” Coril said. She folded her map and tucked it into her supply belt, right behind her thermos. Reaching up to her shoulder, she unstrapped her sunshield and brought it around in front of herself. Her egg graspers were attached to the back of it. She pulled the device out of its clips and held it out toward Gil.
“Take this.”
Gil looked at the graspers, which were just a long set of telescoping rods with a trigger on one end and a padded set of clamps on the other. He reached out and accepted the graspers, then glanced at his Wadi lance. Coril held her hands out for it.
“I’ll need it back,” Gil said, so quietly they could barely hear him over the wind and the howling of the canyons.
“I’ll even clean the blood off it for you,” Coril said snidely. She took the large weapon from him and pulled it toward herself. Anlyn couldn’t help but notice how it dipped down and nearly touched the canyon floor, the heft of the thing taking Coril by surprise.
“What about the sunshield?” Gil asked.
Coril looked to the path leading off toward the egg canyon. “Do you really think you’ll need it?”
Gil peeked down the canyon as well. He shrugged. “Maybe.”
Coril sighed. “Alright then.” She handed over the shield.
The three of them stood still for a moment, and Anlyn’s mind raced as she tried to sort out what was about to take place. This was not how she had imagined her Rite going. Gil turned away from Coril’s glare, pulling on Anlyn as he went.
“Hold on a second,” Anlyn told him.
“C’mon,” said Gil, urging her toward the egg canyon.
Anlyn pulled her sunshield off her back and rested its edge on the ground. The top came up to her waist, and the thing was only two hands wide with its panels retracted. She kept one hand on it and reached around to unclip her thermos.
“Take this,” she told Coril, holding out her full vessel of water.
Coril glanced down at it, then back up to Anlyn. “Are you really not coming with me?” She didn’t move to accept the thermos.
Anlyn felt her shoulders sag as her cousin’s disappointment swirled around her on an eddy of wind.
“Who do you think you’re gonna impress?” Anlyn asked. “Do you really think this will change anything? Do you think a single door will crack for you if you do this? Because they won’t. What few paths you do have will just slam shut.”
Coril frowned. Gil tried once more to tug Anlyn away.
“I don’t give a flying Wadi about any of that,” Coril finally said. She stepped closer to Anlyn and pushed away the thermos. “I don’t care how they measure me by this. I really don’t. I simply mean to measure myself.”
She clasped Anlyn’s arm. Her face flashed a glimpse of seriousness before her famous smile came back to wash it away. “Good luck on your Rite, Cousin,” she said.
With that, Coril lifted the heavy lance in both hands and trotted away, aiming for the shadowpath on the other side of the tall wedge.
Anlyn watched her go, fearing it would be the last time she ever saw her dear cousin alive.
“C’mon,” Gil said. He pulled Anlyn toward the egg canyon. “Don’t worry about her,” he shouted into the wind. “Nothing bad ever happens to Princess Coril!”
Anlyn reluctantly turned away. She followed after Gil as her large cousin strode toward the dayline and the wide path of shade snaking along the base of the canyon wall. She unclipped her egg graspers from her sunshield and tried to remember where she was—what she was supposed to be doing. Looking back, she saw Coril had already rounded the wedge of rock, disappearing up the canyon her aunt had shown them. She felt a powerful urge to run after her, to either bring her back or to join her, but not knowing which was the right action somehow paralyzed Anlyn into doing neither.
So instead, she simply followed Gil down the dark path ahead, past that line in the rock where eternal day abutted an endless night.