Whisperworld
Chapter 19
We were trapped there in the hole for hours. Kiyu and I didn’t have a lot of room to move around and the weight of sand burying us eventually put a damper on what would otherwise have been one hell of a great afternoon. But it was good to be held. Kiyu’s heartbeat was reassuring in the darkness and we kissed as the sand pressed us together.
The Whitefingers knew the salt desert and had their tricks to avoid the sandstorms, but the storms could be unpredictable and prove deadly even to the best-prepared wastelanders. When it was over, Kiyu and I had to dig through about a foot of loose sand to get back to the surface. We came up coughing and gasping. For all the sweetness of sharing Kiyu’s breath, the air had grown alarmingly stale. Jacks and Diesel were clawing their way out of the dust, too, along with Zach and Ahmet.
“Shovels!” Jacks shouted.
We fell on the fourth hole where the other two Whitefingers had taken shelter. France and Peter had dug their trench in the lee of a small boulder, but the storm must have changed direction and instead of protecting them, the stone had created an eddy in the howling wind and buried them under several feet of sand.
We dug with shovels and hands and paws. I felt tangled cloth beneath my fingers and gave a shout. Jacks and Zach hauled the other Whitefinger men up out of the hole. Jacks’ scarred face was drawn with worry. France and Peter were limp and unmoving on the ground. Jacks put his good ear close to their mouths, listening.
“They’re not breathing,” he said.
With his fingers, Jacks probed Peter’s mouth for sand, but there was nothing. He pinched the other man’s nose shut and put his lips over his mouth. Kiyu knelt beside France and did the same. I felt a jolt of jealousy as Kiyu kissed him, but it swiftly faded when I realized that she was actually blowing air into his lungs. In between breaths, Kiyu and Jacks put their hands on the other Whitefingers’ chests and pushed rhythmically, working their lungs or maybe their hearts like bellows.
France began gasping and spluttering almost at once, but Jacks worked on Peter for five minutes before the smaller man finally gave a great, retching cough and rolled over onto his side, vomiting into the sand.
I released a breath that I hadn’t known I was holding. I glanced at Zach, but he was looking back to the east. His mouth was turned down in a worried frown before he tugged his bandana up over his face again.
“You okay, Zee?” I asked.
“Yeah. Rosy,” he said. “That was… I don’t know. Something else.”
“It was,” I agreed and wondered if I was smirking. I doubted Zach enjoyed his time underground as much as I had. He gave me an arched look and I stuck out my tongue.
We had survived a storm out in the open, without the protection of the Stormsphere. But I shared some of Zach’s doubts. It would be a while before I forgot the fear on Jacks’ face as he pulled his unconscious men up out of the sand. We could survive the sandstorms outside the Whisperwards, but it was dangerous. Two men had nearly died. Life was hard and risky out here.
But when I thought about returning to the Whisperward — assuming that Zach and I could ever prove ourselves innocent of dreameater control — I could only seethe at Thorn and the other Gardeners, their secrets and half-truths… Kiyu and her life may have had their risks, but it still made more sense to me than anything else. I didn’t want to go back to the Whisperward, I realized.
The sky behind us was still dark and tinged green, but France checked Peter out — and then himself, a bit more awkwardly — and declared them both fit for travel. Peter was wobbly and the other Whitefingers watched him with concern, but after a small meal, we moved hastily on.
“We can manage a few more miles before dark,” said Jacks. “So let’s get moving.”
The Pacific Desert sparkled as if the storm had polished the white dunes. They turned orange and then red as the sun set. Jacks called a halt, but Kiyu told me that we were getting close to the warren now. She was trying to reassure me, I thought. Kiyu smiled and I wanted to take her hand, but I worried about what Zach would think. Or Jacks. I smiled back through the fading dayglow and Kiyu blushed high in her golden cheeks.
It occurred to me that I could have a lot of fun seeing just how much of my mind Kiyu could read, though poor Diesel might get the wrong idea. Would he understand that Kiyu very much enjoyed how I was attacking her?
We slept close together that night, but not under Kiyu’s cloak and only brushed trembling fingertips a few times. In the morning, I squirmed back from her bedroll before Zach could wake up and notice. Kiyu was smart, beautiful and resourceful, but she was still a dreameater and I couldn’t forget how frightened Zach had been when she pulled him out of the ground.
When we set out after breakfast, I saw that the perfectly polished whiteness of the Pacific Desert was an illusion. The rocks and ridges were simply so thickly encrusted with salt that from a distance. And with the white sky and dayglow scrubbing out every shadow, I couldn’t distinguish them from the rest of the desert floor or even the sky.
Except the fissure. Rolling hills and dunes of salt hid the wide crack down into the earth until we were almost right on top of it. The crevice had to be at least a couple miles long and a hundred yards across. It cracked jagged and black across the stark whiteness of the desert like the impossible shadow of a huge lightning bolt. It would take us at least half a day to detour around it and I was really tired of walking. My blisters and injured leg ached their agreement.
“Uh, Kiyu? How do we cross that?” I asked. “Do you have some special trick or secret bridge or something?”
“We don’t cross it,” Jacks answered for her. I guess only one ear didn’t hinder his hearing too much. “We go down.”
“Down?” I asked.
“That’s the warren,” Kiyu said.
“That…?” asked Zach. “A hole?”
Was he thinking of the one we had fallen into? Or about the trench where we waited out the storm and hoped not to be buried alive? The Whitefingers did seem to spend a lot of time underground.
“It’s not a hole,” Kiyu corrected primly. “It’s Lago Warren and it’s your new home.”
Zach’s brows knitted into tight, unhappy furrows. “Maybe.”
“Come on, Zee,” I said with a grin. “It’s got to be better than that squat you called home in the ‘Ward. You’re a slob, you know.”
“Bugshit,” Zach grumbled, but he didn’t offer up any more constructive criticism of the Whitefingers’ choice in homemaking.
Jacks led us to the edge of the fissure and along a narrow path carved into its side, but it only went a few dozen yards down to a lower ledge. I followed the other Whitefingers at a nervous distance. I couldn’t see much down in the black crevice, but it seemed like a long fall. The Whitefingers were visibly relaxing, though. Kiyu removed the wrapping from her face and was smiling beneath. Diesel wagged his tail and practically bounded in a five-legged skip.
At the edge, the Whitefingers disappeared one by one. I approached cautiously and peered over. To my surprise, scaffolding had been erected from the ledge and led down into the shaded depths of the trench. Jacks climbed down a ladder alongside Diesel, who was being lowered in a basket attached to a rope and pulley. The dog leaned his head over the side of the basket, pink tongue lolling from his mouth in excitement. Diesel barked at Jacks as though urging the human to climb faster. Maybe he was — the dog was psychic, after all.
“Come on, Julia,” Kiyu said. She turned and began descending the ladder.
Zach looked east one last time, back toward Angel City. I braced myself for some final outburst, outrage or pain at being forced away from his home and out into the desert. But Zach just pulled his hands out of his pockets and shrugged.
“I guess this is the place,” he said.
I nodded. “Guess so.”
I went down after Kiyu, moving slowly on my injured leg. It was a lot like climbing down from the highrises in the Whisperward. A network of ladders, ramps and walkways zigzagged down into the darkness. The temperature dropped rapidly and there was a wet tang to the air like I was standing near the wells in the Houses of Angel City.
As my eyesight adjusted and I removed my goggles, I discovered that it wasn’t as dark as I first thought. Sunlight filtered down into the fissure and I could see holes everywhere. There were caves cut right into the sheer stone walls, homes hollowed out of the rock and draped with curtains for privacy. Children played along the walkways and three — three! — of them ran home into one cave.
The Whitefingers kept animals, as well. I saw familiar caged lizards and snakes, but there were birds, too. Diesel barked to another dog padding along a rope bridge behind a dark-haired old woman, a single echoing note that seemed to communicate more than I could understand. A sinewy, slender creature with black fur and mismatched eyes watched us for a moment and then suddenly sprinted away.
“Gone to tell the elders,” Kiyu said.
“Is… that thing a dreameater?” I asked. I probably should have used their word — yin or yang — but I had a lot of adjusting to do and vocabulary was pretty low on the list.
“Maybe,” Kiyu said. “The smarter ones, like dogs, can sort of communicate to us when they develop skills. But cats like to play it sly.”
Voices echoed up through the chasm, overlapping and mingling into a soft murmur so much like the Whispers of the Stormsphere. But these voices weren’t in my head. The whole Whitefinger warren was disturbing in both its similarities and differences from the Whisperward.
I guessed that we had made it maybe halfway down the fissure — though I had no real idea how deep the trench went — when Jacks stopped us at a line of semi-circular openings that led into small, single-room caves. There wasn’t much inside except a hammock strung up between bolts drilled into the rock walls and a flat-topped bucket.
“You can stay here,” said Jacks. “We need to talk to the elders, but they may want to see you. Don’t go wandering off. And I already warned you about what happens if you run.”
Right, hunt us down and rip the memories out of our heads like pages from a book. I nodded.
“I’ll see you later,” Kiyu told me.
She looked at Zach as an afterthought and said bye. Then she and the rest of the Whitefingers were gone, climbing down into the shadowed depths of their warren.
“We should get some sleep,” said Zach.
“Yeah,” I agreed. My leg and hip ached. “I feel like I could sleep for about a week.”
I poked my head into the second cave and found it much the same as mine. The mottled brown and gray walls were rough, but more or less even. Zach and I made a few tired jokes about the bucket, but then bade each other safe dreams and each went to our own little caves.
I left the door curtain open to let in the weak sunlight and wondered what happened here at night. I didn’t see a brazier or oil lamp anywhere in the room. There had to be some kind of light or else I was going to end up walking right off a ledge and falling to my death.
I climbed slowly into the hammock. It took me a few minutes to get the balance of it, but then I was settled. It was a bit like when Kiyu had lifted me out of the hole. I let my muscles finally relax and weariness swept over me.
But I couldn’t fall asleep. The sounds and smells of the Whitefinger warren were too strange, and there were too many questions fluttering around in my head. And you know how good I am at ignoring questions.
Kiyu said that they used to be protected from the storms, something better than lying in hand-dug pits and just hoping not to smother under feet of sand. What was it? What happened to that lost secret? Was it the same thing that was happening to the failing Stormspheres now? Was the old protection that Kiyu talked about the same as whatever was inside the black spheres? I could hardly imagine my ancestors dragging one of those huge black orbs across the desert with them, though. Maybe rolling one…? But even that seemed ludicrous.
High Gardener Thorn had my answers, I was certain of it. I knew now that we hadn’t always lived behind the Whisperward walls, but that put me in what I assumed was a pretty small group. Fucking lying Gardeners. Had Byron known? Did he realize that the girl trying to steal his key wasn’t some alien monster, but a human woman who might have been his own distant relative?
I squeezed my eyes shut and told myself sternly to go the hell to sleep, but little flowers of color bloomed behind my eyelids and reminded me of something Martin said. Byron had been working on the flowers, breeding them for better nectar. Why? The nectar was just an offering. I had seen the sorting and preparation of the flowers and nectar, seen Torres escort them into the Tear of God.
Was Byron’s plant-breeding program somehow aimed at saving the Stormsphere? What about the milkweed? Of all the plants preserved after the Wrath, what could God or anything else want with that poisonous little weed?
The questions swirled around each other until plain old thirst finally ground them all to a halt. I sat up in the hammock and promptly fell out. I landed more or less on my feet and contemplated kicking the damned thing. It didn’t seem worth the effort, though. I imagined Zach running over to make sure I was okay and finding me tangled up in the stupid net-bed. I could envision his smirk all too well.
I poked my head cautiously out through the curtained doorway and then walked to the next cave. Everything smelled salty and tangy. Quietly, I called Zach’s name a few times, but there was no response from inside. He must have been sleeping — the lucky bastard — so I turned back toward my own cave and just about jumped off the path into that fatal final dive I had worried about earlier. A big white bird with gray wings and webbed feet perched on the rope strung along the edge, regarding me with shiny black eyes and clicking its hooked yellow beak. It didn’t try to kill me or anything, though.
“Uh, hi,” I said, feeling like an idiot. “Can you go tell the elders or someone that I need help? I don’t have any water.”
“That’s just a seagull. It doesn’t understand you.”
I jumped again and spun. The bird took wing with an indignant-sounding squawk. I clenched my hands into fists on instinct, but I found my opponent was a small girl of about ten, dressed all in dark green. Her unbound hair was a black puff framing her face, which was cocked to one side curiously. I relaxed my hands.
“Um, hi. Who are you?” I asked.
“I’m Angelica. What’s your name?”
“Julia.”
“You must be new,” Angelica said. “You have funny clothes.”
“Yeah, I guess so.”
“They’re ripped. I can see your butt.”
Angelica giggled and then laughed again as I turned a circle trying to see my own ass. My fatigues were still slashed open down the back of my leg where Woods had cut me and I wished I had thought to grab a pair off one of the other Blackthumbs.
“Yeah, well, I don’t have any other clothes,” I said.
“You need help, right?” Angelica asked.
“Uh, yes. I need some water.”
“That’s all? Follow me.”
The girl ran off along the nearest bridge, heedless of the huge drop just a few feet to either side. I hesitated. Jacks told us that we weren’t supposed to wander. And what if Zach woke up and found me gone? But I was so thirsty… and maybe a little curious. I started off after Angelica and reasoned that I could bring back some water for Zach. That made the trip important, didn’t it?
Angelica made her way along the ledges and bridges that crisscrossed the fissure, confident as a lizard. Her home was on the other face of the wide stone chasm. I slowed as I crossed the narrow rope bridge. Assuming I hit the next one down, it was still a thirty-foot fall if I went over. Considerably longer than that if I missed any of the other walkways and went all the way to the bottom. Angelica was already on the far side. The bridge creaked beneath my weight, but seemed stable enough and well maintained, so I hurried to catch up.
I glimpsed Angelica slipping through a curtained doorway. A few more paces behind her and I would have missed it entirely. All of the cave holes looked pretty much the same to me. Hell, chances were bad that I would even be able to find my way back to my own cave alone.
“Hello?” I called, knocking on the stone.
“Come in!” said Angelica’s voice from within.
I pushed the curtain out of my way and ducked inside. Angelica’s cave was much bigger than mine and I wondered if I should be jealous. The stone floor was covered with a thick rug. There were chairs and tables, with food and dishes stored in shelves carved into the rock or in nets hanging from the ceiling. They seemed to be woven from the same dark green-black fiber as the bridges. Something like lamps lay nestled in smaller hammocks and wall niches — they were cylindrical, but there was no flame. Instead, they glowed with a soft blue-green radiance. There were two more curtained entrances off the central room.
Angelica stood on her tiptoes to pull down a lidded jug from a high shelf. One of the door hangings parted and a tall man stepped through. He had Angelica’s dark skin — or she had his, I supposed — and long-fingered hands white with salt. His brow furrowed when he saw me. I gave him an apologetic wave.
“Angelica…?” he asked.
“The new lady needs water, Dad,” she said.
Angelica’s father hurried to help her with the full pitcher. Some water splashed on the stone floor before he managed it and I gasped at the loss.
“Just… just a drink,” I said in a tight voice. “If that’s alright.”
“And a bath. She’s all dirty,” added the girl.
“Angelica,” her father admonished gently.
“She’s not wrong,” I said.
He poured clear water into a metal cup and passed it to me with a smile.
“Here you are,” he said. “I’m David. I hope Angelica didn’t drag you away from anything important. She’s quite the handful.”
“So was I at her age.” I winked at Angelica.
“You are new, though?” David asked. “Some of the people from Bridge City ended up here. Are you one of them?”
I blinked and almost choked on the water. I had thought Zach and I were the only ‘Warders here, but now I vaguely recalled Jacks saying something about it.
“There are people from Bridge City here?” I asked.
“A few. The hunting parties have rescued a few and they decided to stay.”
“I’m from Angel City. Me and my partner came in with Jacks and Kiyu. We were…” I hesitated. “We were sort of banished from the Whisperward. They were going to execute us.”
I wasn’t sure why I was telling David — and a ten-year-old girl, no less — all of this, but it felt good to say it to someone. For a while, I didn’t have to worry about upsetting Zach or looking weak in front of him.
David waited for me to go on, but any more and I would start crying. I didn’t think I wanted to share quite that much. I gulped down the water instead and after a moment, David nodded and gestured to one of the other doorways.
“I’ll draw water for a bath and you can clean up.”
“Thank you,” I said. I cleared my throat and rubbed my eyes until the sting of tears subsided.
“It’s much better here than the cities,” Angelica told me. “You’ll like it.”
“How do you know?” I asked a little too sharply.
Angelica shrugged. She was still young enough for that absolute certainty in matters she knew nothing about.
“I like it here,” Angelica told me. Clearly, that was all the reason she felt I needed. “Are you going to stay?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I think so.”
“Maybe if you’re nice, I’ll be your friend.”
I accepted her offer as the gracious gift that it was.
Twenty minutes later, I thought that David had made a mistake with the bathtub, or had done something stupid like spend his whole family’s water rations for someone who wasn’t even really a guest in their home — the tub was full nearly to the brim.
“Go ahead,” David told me. “Take a soak. It’s just salt water.”
Before I could ask what the hell that meant, David left and let the curtain fall down over the door. I kicked off my Greenguard boots and flexed my blistered toes. They had been trapped in those shoes for something like a week now. Well, one of them had.
I held my breath and bravely removed my socks. My fatigues were full of salt and sand. My slashed and bloody pants went into the dirty pile, too. Biting my tongue, I unwound the bandages around my leg carefully. Blood stuck to them and pulled at the tender skin beneath, but it felt good to finally uncover the cuts.
I shed the rest of my clothes and then eased into the bathtub. I hissed as I stepped into the cool water. My skin pebbled as a cold shiver went up from my knees to my back. I sat on the rim of the tub and scooped handfuls of water over my legs and arms, then bit my lip nervously and slipped into the bath. I almost screamed aloud when the water hit the back of my injured thigh, but I guess it was healing because the burning subsided after only a minute or two.
I had never been immersed in water before. It was harder than it looked. I kept bobbing up in the tub, but it felt fantastic to have the weight off my feet and the water was wonderfully cool on my wounded leg now. Next, I went to work on my hair, scrubbing and combing my fingers through the dark tangles until I had undone the worst of the damage.
The water had turned a revolting brown, but I floated there, reluctant to climb out. I could get used to this… I lifted my hands out of the water to examine my nails and gave a little shriek. My fingers were shriveled and pale like those of a corpse.
I jumped out of the tub and scrambled away, gasping. I quickly examined the rest of my body. The wrinkling seemed limited to my fingers and toes. There was no pain, but I worriedly rubbed my hands together until I spotted the towel David had left for me. I scrubbed my body briskly, even my wounded leg. I didn’t want whatever poison was in the water to do any more damage. I dressed hurriedly, suddenly unsure if David and Angelica were as friendly as they appeared.
I found them in the front room, talking to a woman with angled eyes like Kiyu’s, as well as Kiyu herself. The yang girl stood up when she saw me.
“I brought dinner and some things for you and Zach,” Kiyu said.
“How did you know I was here?” I asked.
“There’s only a few thousand people in Lago. Everybody knows each other here, so it’s not hard to find anyone. Come on, I brought some food.”
“Kiyu, they tried to poison me,” I hissed.
“What?” Kiyu asked.
David blinked and his wife’s face turned bright red.
Angelica just looked confused. “Dad, what’s she talking about?”
I held out my pale hands. Kiyu laughed and took one of them. Her touch was soft and warm.
“That?” she asked. “That’s just what happens when you’re in water too long.”
“It… is?” I inspected my wrinkled fingers. The damage didn’t seem so bad now. My skin had smoothed out and the color was returning to a healthy pink.
“It goes away after a little while,” Angelica told me. “You really thought we would poison you?”
“Um…” I said eloquently.
“You’ve never been swimming, have you?” Kiyu asked.
“No.” I ducked my head and looked back at David and his family. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize…”
David still looked shocked, but Angelica and Kiyu laughed. Her mother smiled indulgently and invited me back for dinner sometime. My cheeks were flaming as I agreed and hurried out the door after Kiyu. She was still laughing. I followed in silence, half embarrassed and half just concentrating on crossing the tangle of swaying rope bridges. I never thought that a ladder leaning up against the twentieth story could feel so stable by comparison, and I found myself holding my breath as I crossed the fissure.
“So, what do you think of Lago Warren?” Kiyu asked when her giggles subsided and we reached the far end of the bridge.
“It’s a lot like the Whisperward,” I said.
“What?” Kiyu protested. “No, it’s not! You have Gardeners and Greenguard and the Stormsphere.”
“Yes, but you have your elders and your yins and yangs. Your job is the same as mine. Well, as mine used to be.”
“I only fight to protect the warren, though. Or sometimes the hunting parties.”
“That’s what I thought we were doing, too,” I said. “Zach and I only wanted to help.”
Kiyu left that in silence for a moment. She brushed her hair back behind her ears. “Yangs don’t just fight, though. We help clear rocks away and bring up water, too.”
“We didn’t just fight, either,” I said. I wasn’t sure why I felt the need to defend a profession that I made no secret of hating. “There really weren’t all that many mutants to kill. There was birth control, too. And mostly we protected people from ordinary criminals. Zach and I investigated them. Not that our last case ended well…”
Kiyu stopped outside a cave entrance that I assumed was mine, but it looked identical to a dozen others. I gave it a closer inspection this time, searching for some distinguishing characteristic. There was a cracked stone above the curved opening that was patched with reddish clay. Okay, I thought I could pick my place out of a lineup now.
Kiyu went inside to begin unpacking the woven bag she carried. I went to the next door to wake Zach and banged on the stone.
“Hey, Zee!” I called out.
I heard a grunt from inside and then bootsteps before Zach appeared at the door, blinking. There were dark circles under his eyes. Had he slept at all?
“What is it?” Zach asked. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Come on, Kiyu brought us some stuff.”
Zach followed me slowly along the roped-off ledge to my cave. Kiyu’s sack contained several jars of different sizes and I wondered how the small woman had managed to carry so much. Had she used her psychic powers to take the weight? There were jars of food and a big, lidded jug of water for each of us. A third one was frothy with soap that Kiyu told us was to wash our clothes. I picked up a smaller glass jar full of cloudy water and started to unscrew the top.
“No, not that one,” Kiyu said. She took it from my hands and gave it a brisk shake. The water inside began to glow a pale blue-green, like the lights in Angelica’s cave. “It’s a phosphorescent algae. For light.”
Kiyu set the jar to one side.
“Algae?” I asked.
“From the sea.” She saw my face and held up a hand to stop the next question. “The water. You’ll find out all about it. Just use this stuff for light. Oil is hard to get out here and we can only use it in the front rooms where the smoke can escape.”
“Well, we’ve only got the one room and one door,” I pointed out.
“These are just temporary,” said Kiyu. “We can get you moved somewhere bigger in a little while.”
“Then maybe you can take me on a tour and tell me about this sea?” I asked.
“I’d love to.”
Kiyu smiled and blushed a bit. I badly wanted to kiss her again.
“…Both of you,” she amended. “I mean, I’d like to give both of you the tour.”
“So what happens next?” Zach asked.
He scratched his cheek. Dark stubble covered his jaw. He could really use a bath, too. I made a mental note to warn him about the shriveling finger thing so he wouldn’t freak out.
“Diego will likely want to talk to you,” said Kiyu. “We’ve never had Blackthumbs out here before. And you’re the only ones who spoke to Thorn about the Stormspheres.”
“Okay, we’ll tell him anything he needs to know,” I said.
“As long as it doesn’t compromise the safety of Angel City,” Zach added quickly.
“Zee, they don’t want to hurt anyone. Thorn was the one who tried to have us killed.”
“I remember. But that doesn’t mean I want anyone back home to die,” Zach said. “It was Thorn, not the people of Angel City who sentenced us.”
“They didn’t try to help, either,” I said more bitterly than I intended.
“Julia,” Zach admonished. “They didn’t know what was going on. They saw Greenguard doing their job, even if it meant staking out their own.”
I stared down at my hands, twisted up together in my lap. The wrinkles were gone now. Zach was right, of course. When I thought about the Greenguard I killed during our escape, it didn’t feel good. I couldn’t stop thinking of Woods struggling to get away as I tried to choke the life out of him. I hadn’t felt any loyalty to the Gardeners, even when I was their official enforcer, but I didn’t really want them to die.
Except for Thorn. God could call that prick home any time He wanted.
Kiyu had fallen silent, but now she smiled at both me and Zach. “That call is still going out from the Stormspheres. Diego and the other elders may have another idea about how to help.”
“You Whitefingers don’t know anything about the old science,” Zach said. “I don’t think you can help.”
“We can try,” Kiyu told him.
She shook the sack to make sure it was empty and stood. With a nod to Zach and one to me, she stepped outside. I followed. Kiyu turned and regarded me, looking nervous but still smiling. Maybe she wondered if I would kiss her. I wondered the same thing, but I had something important to tell her.
“Thanks for trusting us, Kiyu. And for saving us. We would have died out there if you hadn’t heard me.”
“I’m glad I did,” she answered. “Maybe you know something useful about what’s happening in the Stormspheres.”
“I doubt it. We’ve already told you everything we know. Will I see you tomorrow?”
“Yes. I’ll bring you some more food and water.”
“And maybe that tour?”
“I’d like that.”
I inched in closer. Kiyu fidgeted with the sack in her hands, picking at the drawstring. I leaned in. And then Zach stepped out of the cave and I straightened up quickly. Kiyu jumped back and then hurried away without waving.
“What was that?” Zach asked when I glared at him.
“Nothing,” I answered too fast.
He stood in the door, thick arms crossed over his thicker chest. “You like her, don’t you?”
“So what if I do?” I socked him in the side since my favorite punching arm was still bandaged up.
Zach watched Kiyu climb nimbly down a ladder to the lower depths of the warren. “Julia, you don’t want to get involved with that girl. She’s a Whitefinger–”
“So are we. We’re sure as hell not ‘Warders anymore.”
“–and a dreameater. She’ll hurt you,” Zach finished.
“You don’t know that, Zee!” I protested. “Kiyu’s done nothing but help us.”
“After she murdered Byron and ran away. Twice,” Zach said. He grabbed my arm in a gentle but firm grip and pulled me back into my cave. “Julia, listen to me. Kiyu… seems nice enough. But don’t forget what she is, what she can do.”
“What she can do pulled us out of the ground after my stupidity nearly got us killed,” I argued.
“And that’s… I don’t know what that is. Good, I guess. But what if she gets frightened? Or angry? What if you two have some argument and Kiyu smashes you into one of these walls with her mind? Or throws you right over the edge? She could kill you without even trying, Julia. I don’t want to see you hurt.”
I sat down and grabbed one of the jars, twisting the top. Zach had a point, but I couldn’t bring myself to tell him so. I poked the round, pale green things in the jar. They smelled strange, but Kiyu had said they were food.
“Come on, Zee,” I said instead. “Let’s have dinner and then I’ll take you to meet Angelica. Maybe her parents will let you take a bath.”
Zach lifted his arm and wrinkled his nose. “Yeah, okay.”
