The moonlight showed him the break in the earth, that dark crack as real as a line on any map. Conner watched sand tumble in and blow past. How many millennia had it done this without filling that hole to the brim? Here was a wound incapable of healing, a slice in need of a stitch. People age day by day, he used to think. Minute by minute, much as a dune is built one grain at a time, much as one region of the desert overlaps and fades gradually into another. But here was a truth keenly felt: that some moments were like great rifts in the earth; some moments as discrete as a young boy’s leap. Life was divided into these ages. Here one moment, in the great beyond the next. An eyeblink, and a boy becomes his father.
With barely more than a large stride, Conner crossed what in youth had required a lunge, and this renewed ritual filled him with courage. It was a symbolic break with all behind him. All that was left was the thunder to march into, as so many others had marched before him without coming back. Behind, nothing but sad wails would be left, wails he would not have to listen to. Despite the dread in his marrow, he told himself that this was not final. Four days’ march out and four back, that was all. Four days to see what was over the horizon. And then he would return. He told himself this just as he was sure all those before him had. Just as his father had. He hiked toward the drums, promising himself he would return, and the wind picked up and cried at him for being so foolish—
But not the wind. That was not the wind crying. Ahead, in the pale moonlight, some different, anguished wail.
Conner crept forward. He pulled his knife from his belt, expected to find a cayote homing in on his scent or warning him away from its lair. And there, on all fours, sure enough—
But the cayote lifted its head into the moonlight, and it was the gaunt face of a human looking up at him. A boy.
Conner put his knife away and hurried forward. Some stupid kid from Springston. Someone there to dare the gash. He scanned the darkness for the other boys he knew would be there, the friends who had to witness who was courageous and who chickened out. Conner was pissed at having his more serious ritual disturbed by this petty one of youth. And so it was with anger that he rushed to the kid, ready to haul him up and toss him over the meaningless crack in the earth and back to his friends—
But Conner drew up as he approached. What had looked like a boy was a gaunt girl, her clothes in rags, crawling on hands and knees, the remains of a shoe dragging behind by its laces. Reaching ahead, she dug her fingers into the sand and pulled herself forward, seeming not to know Conner was there, simply staring ahead as if toward the glow of the distant fire.
“Be still,” Conner said. He dropped to his knees, and the child saw him at last. She clutched at him. Wide eyes and parched lips and skin pale as milk and moon. Conner held the frail child, the anger in him gone, but this was even more intrusion than daring boys. Drums beat in his chest. Where were her friends? He scanned the sands and saw no one. Probably left her out here alone. Or a cayote had nipped her and scared off the others. She trembled against him, senseless and moaning.
Conner lifted her up—found she weighed less than his pack. He’d have to carry her across, back to the tent, and Rob would need to look after her and get her home. She had played at a boy’s game, and look what it had cost her. She was lucky he had been out there. He would get her to the tent, could still vanish while Rob was occupied. This changed nothing. It was simply his first act as a free man. It was a life saved for a life lost. An even trade.
The step across the gap was more treacherous this time with the girl in his arms. It wasn’t just the extra weight, it was being unable to see. He shuffled forward until his lead boot felt the edge, extended his other foot, and leaned forward into blind faith. His boot found the far side. And a story leapt up in his mind as he hurried toward the tent, a reason for him being out in the middle of the night.
“Rob!” he called. “Rob! Wake up!”
There was a glow inside the tent a moment later. Conner started to set the child down outside the tent when the flap parted, his bleary-eyed brother peering out. “What time—?” Rob began.
“Help me get her inside,” Conner said. And Rob did. The girl was unable to move on her own. The two boys got her into the tent, and Rob closed the flap on the wind. The dive light dangling from the tentpole threw light and shadows across the disheveled bedding. Conner laid the girl out, then unbuckled his hip belt and shrugged off his pack. He caught Rob studying the heavy load as he set it aside.
“Don’t just sit there,” Conner said. “Get her some water.”