Whisperworld
Chapter 18
As soon as the sky lightened, Jacks wanted our injuries examined. Zach bit down on his belt and nodded when he was ready. The Whitefinger who had taken care of us before — France, apparently — grabbed Zach’s thick bicep in one hand, the bolt shaft in his other and then gave it a sharp pull. The crust of congealed blood that had built around the wound tore loose and bright red welled up in the hole.
France said the bolt had missed the artery and that the infection was mild so far. Getting sand packed into an open wound wasn’t good for your health, he said, but the desert was actually pretty sterile.
“This is going to hurt,” France told Zach.
The Whitefinger sprinkled salt into the hole in his bicep to slow the bleeding. Zach took it better than I would have, but he still left bite marks in his belt that never did come out.
The Whitefinger healer produced more of the salve he had used last time and daubed it over the hole before binding it. Then France turned his attention to me. I bit my lip and let him examine the cut running down the back of my thigh. Thanks to the dressings Zach and I had already tied on, it was still fairly clean. I stopped France when he got out the salve.
“I can put that on myself,” I told him.
My cheeks were burning, but France wasn’t blushing and his pants were reassuringly absent of bulges. Still, this wasn’t really the first impression I wanted to make on the Whitefingers. I might not have minded if Kiyu had volunteered… But she didn’t and I managed on my own. When I was done applying the medicine, one of the other Whitefingers tossed me something black and dusty. It was my boot.
“I found that about half a mile from your hole,” he told me. “Jacks was going to give it to Diesel, but I guess you’ll be wanting it back.”
“Yeah, just a bit,” I said by way of thanks.
Jacks portioned out the supplies and we had to carry our share, which didn’t include any weapons. The Whitefingers set out at a brisk pace, making Zach and I struggle to keep up. We were both injured and had only begun to recover from starvation and dehydration, so we lagged behind. All things considered, though, I’d like to think we did well. Zach and I had been Blackthumbs for years and worked hard to stay fit, but I doubted the Whitefingers were very impressed.
The land sloped away to the west as we crossed the indistinct line between ancient Angel City and down into the Pacific Desert. I pulled my goggles down over my eyes to protect them from the glare off the sparkling salt flats. After a few hours, my boots had picked up a thick coating of white dust and I chuckled to myself. It wasn’t going to take long before we were true Whitefingers.
I looked over at Zach to share my thought. He was going to have to accept our new situation. It would be tough on him. The least I could do was help. This was all my fault in the first place. But when I turned to joke with Zach, I saw a flash of light behind us. I stopped walking and found the same twinkling spot of brightness that had plagued us ever since Zach discovered me busily dying in the ruins.
“Hey, do you all see that?” I asked in a loud voice.
One by one, the Whitefingers stopped and peered back.
“It’s just the sunlight reflecting off of something,” said Kiyu.
“But Zach and I saw it days ago, when we first left Angel City,” I told her. “If it’s the same thing, then it’s got to be moving.”
“Diesel,” Jacks called.
The dog trotted up from the back of the short column. Jacks crouched, scratching between the dog’s pointed ears. Diesel barked once and then loped off in the direction of the light.
“Let’s keep moving,” said Jacks. He turned west again and resumed walking. “If it is following us, let’s get some more distance. If not, I don’t want to lose a day of travel worrying about it.”
“What about Diesel?” I asked.
“If it’s something that intends us any harm, Diesel will be able to sense it. He’ll catch up and let us know,” said Jacks.
I couldn’t help a look back over my shoulder every few minutes, though. Kiyu teased me about it.
“Are you worried about Diesel?” she asked. “I thought you didn’t keep pets in the ‘Ward.”
“We don’t. It’s hard enough to feed the humans,” I said. “Can that dog really sense if something wants to hurt us?”
Kiyu nodded and I wished she didn’t have her face covered. “Diesel’s warned us of a dozen mutants and other predators since we left the warren.”
“Was he the one who found us?”
The Whitefinger girl lifted her chin and looked at me. I thought she might be smiling under the cloth covering her mouth.
“No,” she said. “I may not be terribly sensitive, but I heard you. You’re lucky we were close, though. Distance makes it harder.”
“So it’s easier to sense what I um… feel now?” I asked. “Since I’m closer?”
“I can pick up strong emotions,” said Kiyu. “I could certainly tell if you wanted me dead.”
I’m sure I blushed. What had Kiyu felt from me? Oh shit, could she sense my embarrassment? From there, it was a swift downward spiral of thought, making my mortification worse and worse. And presumably easier for Kiyu to pick up on.
“So… Diesel will know?” I asked, desperately trying to think of something else.
“Absolutely. Dogs are very sensitive and empathic. They’re almost always yins,” said Kiyu. “Seldom yangs. But Diesel can only sense strong stuff, like the intent to kill. Snakes and scorpions out here usually attack on instinct, either to hunt or to protect themselves. So sometimes we don’t get much warning.”
“Like with Lekan, right? That was his name, the dream– the yin who died?”
“Yeah.”
Kiyu fell silent.
Hours passed and Diesel still had not returned, but Jacks didn’t seem worried. We had no idea how far off that reflection was. We had to stop for the day and Jacks surveyed the sky carefully before deciding that it would be safe to remain out in the open. There would be no storm tonight, at least. The Whitefingers laid down their cloaks like blankets and began pulling out more rolls of rice and smoked fish meat.
I was hungry enough that I was sure even the most brain-dead yin-empowered dog could have picked that up. Zach glanced at me when my stomach gurgled, but then his did, too. I chuckled and thought of making a crack about our secret Blackthumb language, but not all of the Whitefingers seemed as open to us as Jacks and Kiyu, so I kept my mouth shut. It wasn’t easy for me, but my dry tongue served as incentive.
“Here,” Kiyu said. She handed me one of her rolls.
“Spread it around,” Jacks ordered.
The Whitefingers portioned out the food for seven of us.
“Maybe we shouldn’t feed them until we get back to Lago and a real yin reads them,” one of them suggested.
“Shut it, Ahmet. I’ve made my decision. It holds until we get home,” Jacks said sternly.
“I’m not saying we should starve them to death. Just enough water to make it back to the warren,” Ahmet said.
But he divided up his food like all of the others. I made a point of thanking everyone except Ahmet.
When Zach finally spotted Diesel, I jumped to my feet along with my partner, but no one else did. They just waited while Diesel padded straight to Jacks, who filled a bowl with water and set it down before taking the dog by his furry chin.
“Did you find the shiny thing, boy?” Jacks asked. “Was it dangerous?”
Diesel barked once and stuck his face into the bowl of water, drinking noisily. Jacks nodded and returned to his meal, apparently satisfied.
“Well?” I asked. “What the hell did that mean?”
“Whatever’s out there, it’s no danger to us,” said Jacks.
Zach released a long sigh and sat down again. I reached out and found his hand, giving it a squeeze. He was scared, but we were in this together and I wanted Zach to know I still had his back. That I always would. He looked at me and for a moment, I thought he was going to embarrass us both by crying. I didn’t think I had ever seen Zach cry, not even when Thorn pronounced our death sentence. I didn’t want to start now.
But Zach just smiled back at me and squeezed my fingers in his. I swore and told the big bastard to ease up before he snapped my hand in half.
We walked for days. Zach and I only really had each other for company. Jacks and the other Whitefingers didn’t speak much and even though Kiyu seemed to be watching us — or me, if I felt like flattering myself — we didn’t talk much after that first night.
The Pacific Desert seemed endless and the dry, salty wind made speaking unpleasant. We walked with our goggles down to protect our eyes from the glare off the salt dunes and our bandanas tied firmly over our mouths. The Whitefingers wrapped cloth around their faces and even wore thin blindfolds to cut down the light.
There wasn’t much living out here, but what little there was, the Whitefingers knew how to find. A lone saguaro grew in the shelter of a stand of rocks. I could imagine biting into one of the fruits so vividly that I could taste it. Hell, I was thinking about it so hard that Kiyu and Diesel could probably taste it. But I didn’t see a single bud on the cactus.
Jacks used a mirror to look down into the boot that had formed at the base of the cactus. A snake had made a den of the hole, but Kiyu lifted it safely out with a wave of her hand. One blow of a rock later, we had snake for dinner. Jacks reached into the cactus boot and pulled out a pair of water skins. Apparently, the Whitefingers hid caches of supplies when they traveled, and it made sense. No one from the Whisperwards could survive out here and it wasn’t even easy for the Whitefingers. I could see why — if we had ever lived in the wastes like this — Thorn had no desire to return to such a hard, scrabbling existence. Not that understanding made me hate the sanctimonious prick any less.
No wonder Jacks and Kiyu had decided to press on with their mission even after losing Lekan. It was a long and dangerous trip back to their warren, so popping home to replace their lost yin wasn’t a casual option.
I looked up at Jacks and wondered at how different he was from a Greenguard commander. We reported back to Gregory every day to receive orders from him or guidance from older Blackthumbs. Gregory consulted constantly with High Gardener Thorn on policy and enforcement — and probably how to tie his own shoes.
Out here, the wastes bred leaders. Given his mission to investigate the Stormsphere’s call for help, Jacks had to determine how to get there, how to infiltrate Angel City, what to do when their mind-reader died and when Kiyu got caught trying to finish the mission. Not to mention deciding the fate of a pair of troublesome Blackthumbs. Twice. Even Kiyu had to make her own calls after sneaking into the city and stealing the key from Gardener Byron. Maybe she had made the wrong decision, but I had trouble imagining most Greenguard taking that kind of initiative.
It was really a wonder that I hadn’t run off to join the Whitefingers sooner. Although that was precisely the point in recruiting me to the Greenguard, wasn’t it? Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Was I truly an enemy of the Gardeners, though? I didn’t like them and I hated Thorn, sure. But enemies…? They had tried to execute me and I killed three Greenguard, so I guessed we were.
The white desert was broad and empty. The relentless sun and dry air were threats enough, but on the fourth day, a large shadow swept over us and I looked up. My goggles tinted automatically against the light and I picked out a huge winged shape falling out of the sky toward us. Diesel growled deep in his throat. The Whitefingers’ blindfolds weren’t as good at filtering the bright sun as my goggles and they shaded their eyes, trying to see what the dreameater dog was snarling at. Jacks and the rest spread out, but couldn’t see that the oversized mutant eagle had already targeted Ahmet.
I charged him. If he had been watching me instead of the sky, the Whitefinger might have assumed I had finally turned on them. The eagle dove with a shriek like tearing metal and I jumped, tackling Ahmet to the ground. The wind of the bird’s wings buffeted us into the salty earth. I rolled away and scrambled to my feet. There were claw marks in the hardpan three inches deep.
The eagle climbed skyward again, but Kiyu was running after it. Rocks yanked themselves out of the ground and hurled up at the bird. A chunk of stone as big as Kiyu’s entire body slammed into its wing and the eagle tumbled down from the sky.
Jacks was on it in a heartbeat. Diesel sank his teeth into its leg above a set of huge yellow talons, but the eagle screamed again and threw the dog off with a single thrash of its foot. Jacks leapt on the bird and put his weight behind his spear. The point sank into the greasy feathers and the eagle screamed even louder than before. Six-inch hooked talons lashed out, but instead of ripping through Jacks, they jerked to a stop in the empty air.
Kiyu stood with her hands out, sweat beading on her forehead where her hood had fallen back. She held the oversized eagle there, pinning it with her will until the other Whitefingers moved in and finished it off.
Zach and I heard the Whitefingers do something similar to the snake while escorting us away from their den, but our eyes had been covered. Seeing Kiyu in action was something else entirely. I liked Kiyu and was willing to try her way of life, but old fears died hard in the face of power like that. I had to wonder why the Gardeners called people like her dreameaters and not rock-throwing-fucker-uppers.
The Whitefingers cut into the bird to see if its flesh was safe to eat. Ahmet dusted himself off — not that his clothes weren’t already stained white by salt — and graced me with a reluctant nod. I gave him a smug smirk, but it vanished just as soon as the wastelander turned his back on me. I slipped over to Zach, who stood a few yards off from the Whitefingers. He was staring at Kiyu, too.
“Hey, Zee,” I asked quietly. “Are we doing the right thing, trying to join these people?”
“We have to, Julia. This is the only way for us all to survive,” he said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Listen, Julia–”
Zach didn’t get to finish whatever he was going to say before Jacks called us over to help carve out any edible meat. We trotted closer and Kiyu smiled at me. It was hard to flirt over the carcass of a giant mutant, but I smiled back a little. If we were going to be Whitefingers — even our carbon microfiber fatigues were turning white now — then we would have to pull our weight.
Zach and I were now apprentices to the Whitefingers that we once hunted. My smile became a smirk. Even if our decision to join the Whitefingers wasn’t wise, it certainly was interesting.
The next morning, the western horizon was dark. There was a storm brewing.
The Whitefingers were tense and packed up their camp quickly. Zach and I needed no prodding to get moving. My leg was stiff and still hurt like hell, but I didn’t let that slow me down. As we walked, I scanned the Pacific Desert through my tinted goggles. There wasn’t much cover. I spotted a low ridge of rock worn down into shallow ripples across the crusty white ground, but nothing substantial. Old Angel City was far behind us now, even the ruins refusing to enter the salty and desolate desert. But that meant no shelter from the coming storm. I quickened my pace to catch up with Jacks.
“The storm is coming,” I said.
Jacks snorted.
“You have a hiding hole nearby, don’t you?” I asked.
“Not here, no,” he answered.
“So what do we do?”
“Keep moving. We’ll stop in an hour or two.”
Jacks was intent on covering as much ground as possible and refused to answer any more questions. Though to be fair to him, it was really just restating the one: how do we not die? I fell back to limp alongside Zach again. My partner looked nervous, too. He pulled his hat down low over his head and leaned into the rising wind. Grains of sand and salt began pinging off the lenses of our goggles.
Jacks called a halt after only half an hour. I guess even he didn’t trust the storm to hold off much longer. With a few short commands, the Whitefingers went to work.
“Here, take this,” Jacks said.
The big man tossed something to Zach. It took us both a moment to figure out that it was a collapsible shovel.
“That belonged to Lekan,” Jacks told us. “Treat it well until we can return it to his family. Now get to work.”
Zach nodded and folded out the shovel’s handle. The Whitefingers were digging several long pits disturbingly similar to the graves in the cactus fields and orchards. Even Diesel dug frantically alongside Jacks, dirt and sand flying from between his hind legs. Zach fell in beside the others.
“What can I do?” I asked.
Jacks looked up from the ground, but kept digging. He jerked his head to one side. “Set up the spears about twenty yards out toward the storm. Drive them in deep.”
“Got it,” I said.
Ahmet peered at me suspiciously when I came to collect his spear, but he handed it over and returned to digging without commentary. I made sure that the sections of each spear were screwed tightly together and stabbed them into the ground as hard as I could. One of them leaned precariously and I had to find a new place to set it up. The storm might blow one loose — sand and lightning were dangerous enough without a spear flying around, too. I ran back to Jacks.
“We’re rosy,” I told him.
“What?” he asked.
“It’s done,” I said.
Jacks grunted in answer. Sweat beaded on his brown skin. There were no extra shovels, so I just stood in the swirling dust, nervously watching the storm grow closer and wondering how fast it was moving. The sky had turned black and flashed uncomfortably green. Shit. I could only watch for a few minutes before I got down on my knees and dug with my hands like Diesel.
“Kiyu, can’t you… I don’t know, push the storm away? Like you protected Jacks from that bird’s claws?” I asked.
I winced as salty earth bit in beneath my fingernails. Kiyu shook her hair out of her face and concentrated on digging.
“It’s too big,” she told me in between dumping out shovels full of dirt and salt. “Each grain of sand may be small, but there are millions of them. Together, it weighs tons. And it’s complicated, all those moving little particles. It would take a hundred yangs to even try.”
I worked up a rhythm with Kiyu, scooping out loose dirt while she emptied out her shovel and the hole slowly deepened. I didn’t look out at the storm anymore, but the wind was whipping my braid into my face and thunderclaps echoed across the dunes. The hair stood up along the back of my neck and down my arms. Every breath had a charged, metallic taste.
“Enough!” Jacks shouted.
I wasn’t sure I agreed with that, but I didn’t think we had much choice.
“France and Peter! Ahmet and Zach,” he called out, pointing to each hole in the earth. “Kiyu and Julia!”
Ahmet shoved Zach into the hole they had been digging. Jacks jumped into his own and Diesel climbed in after him. Kiyu grabbed my hand and yanked me down into the earth with her. She pushed me onto my back and lay down on top of me. Kiyu pulled up her hood and wrapped her cloak around us both.
“We’re still in the open,” I hissed. “The storm!”
“There’s resin in the cloaks,” she said. “It’s non-conductive and insulates us. The spears will draw most of the lightning. Just stay low and the storm should roll right over us.”
“…Rosy,” I managed to gasp.
“If we don’t get buried too deeply,” said Kiyu. “Sometimes the storms can lay down a few feet of sand.”
I twitched and Kiyu hissed in pain as I jabbed her side. She shifted on top of me, trying to find a comfortable position that kept us both covered. The Whitefinger girl held her cloak wound tightly around us. It smelled strange, half sweet and half musky. That must have been the resin Kiyu was talking about, I decided. Then her elbow poked into my stomach.
“Ow! Would you stop moving around?” I asked.
“You moved first! Besides, would you rather be stuck in a hole smelling Diesel? Or crushed under Peter?”
“No,” I stammered. “This is um… fine…”
I trailed off inelegantly. We lay together in the darkness and listened to the wind howl like a demon above us. Kiyu’s heart beat fast against my chest and her breath warmed my cheek. She was more or less still now, but I was all too aware of her slender body on top of me, of her legs draped over mine. Her breasts were small and firm against my own, and my nipples swiftly stiffened at the contact. What good was the dark for hiding my blush if Kiyu could feel me poking her?
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“I’m scared,” I admitted.
“I’m always scared during storms, too.”
We waited quietly again. Kiyu shifted and her breasts moved against mine. Was it my imagination or was she as stiff as me? I was getting awfully wet.
“Can you, um, feel it?” I asked.
“Feel what…?” Kiyu’s voice was unsteady.
“What I’m feeling. With your powers? That I’m… scared?”
“Oh.” Kiyu’s small body shifted on top of me, rubbing lightly and I brutally stifled a moan. “It’s hard to tell.”
“It is?” I gasped.
Kiyu’s lips were right next to my ear in order to make herself heard over the loud hissing of the sand and wind. “It’s hard to tell if it’s you that I’m feeling… or if it’s me.”
I turned my head, brushing my cheek against hers. Kiyu moved her head slightly and we struggled with the cloak when a drift of dust blew down beneath the edge of her hood. When we were settled safely under the insulating cloth once more, Kiyu’s face hovered in the darkness in front of me. Flashes of green light strobed and backlit her through the cloak. I couldn’t see Kiyu’s eyes and her face was just a silhouette. My heart slammed inside my ribs.
In the dark, I could see nothing, only feel everything. I lifted my head and gently touched my lips to Kiyu’s. She went very still for a moment and I cursed my impatience, but then I felt her lips press back. Her cheeks brushed my skin, as smooth and soft as flower petals. My head fell back into the earth at the bottom of the hole. Kiyu followed me down and kissed me again. I opened my mouth and traced her lower lip with my tongue. She tasted salty and sweet.
I kissed Kiyu and her fingers curled into my sleeves, pulling me tight against her. I shivered and could no longer silence the moan. I wrapped my arms around Kiyu’s narrow waist and held her close. For us, in that moment, the storm vanished.
