Mirage (18 page)

Before she slept, she examined her legs. There wasn’t enough water to wet the new patches of thick skin, and the growing scales looked pale and unsure, as if they had only halfheartedly decided to form. She couldn’t even tell what color they would be. The bones in her ankles had started shifting. She could still walk, but her feet now bent back and forth much farther than before. If anyone saw her bare legs, they would know something was wrong.

More things shifted, too, preparing her for the time when her scaled legs would fuse together into a single tail. She’d struggled to hide herself during their trek, worried that Dash would notice. Stupid, really. They were too close to sundeath to be paying attention to such things. The pain had come two or three times a day, but it didn’t drive her to the ground anymore. She’d managed to grind her teeth and keep walking.

She looked at the fire, a vast sadness swirling with hunger inside her gut. A part of her had wanted to see the tail before she died.

She slept to conserve what little energy she had left. Tayan cried out once in the night, but Aluna could find no sign of a snake or critter that might have bitten her. In the morning, Aluna scanned the horizon for Dash. Nothing but endless golden flats and scrub, mocked by the cool promise of mountains in the distance. Their peaks loomed closer now, but still not close enough.

“Aluna,” a voice whispered.

Tayan had somehow survived the night. Her face had no color, like the pure white of dead coral, except for flecks of red on her cheeks. Aluna hurried to the Equian’s side and swapped out her fever-stained pillow for fresher clothes.

“Do not . . . want to die like this,” Tayan said, her voice mangled and weak. “Please. I am a warrior. You know.”

Aluna pressed a cloth against her forehead, although they’d run out of water to dampen it.

“I do know,” she said. “I know that a true warrior never surrenders. Not in battle, not to sickness, not to anything.”

Tayan’s eyes closed, and she struggled to swallow. “I hate you,” she whispered.

Aluna smiled with cracked lips.

Up in the sky, the sun’s ever-present face continued to blaze. Aluna returned to the fireboxes and positioned them in a little square. Then she carefully piled her massive collection of branches on top of all four of them at once.

The flames and smoke were magnificent. Even an Equian word-weaver would have felt at home around her bonfire.

Satisfied, she returned to Tayan and managed to get the Equian’s head into her lap. Tayan didn’t stir. Aluna ran her fingers over the girl’s head wrap as if it were hair, just as her sister Daphine used to do to her when she was sick.

And soon, sunsleep took her.

A
LUNA FELT HANDS
lift her and put her down again. She heard voices but not words. Her eyelids felt stuck to her face with jellyfish goo. And sandy dirt. It invaded everything. Her mouth, her nose, her ears. Dunes of it wafted around inside her lungs. She tried to breathe, and she could feel it everywhere, burning hot and sticking to her like barnacles.

The voices receded, replaced by the rhythm of hoofbeats and a persistent scraping sound. The fingers in her right hand clutched at the ground but found slick plastic instead. Her head bumped against it. She tried to squeeze her eyes closed even more, afraid to see what was happening. She knew she was being dragged across the desert, but she didn’t want to know who was doing it or why. She only wanted sleep and darkness. Soon she found both.

She awoke later, although how much later she couldn’t say, and in darkness. She opened her eyes slowly, expecting sand, but there was none. Her hands went to her legs immediately, but she found them safely under a thick layer of bedding.

“You are awake,” Dash said. Immediately, he was kneeling at her side. “I was not sure . . . I did not know if . . .”

“Tayan?” Aluna croaked.

“Still in danger, but alive,” Dash said. “Her Equian heart is strong — it may compensate for the failing Human one.”

“Tal?”

“Fine. Eating far too many mushroom jellies for her own good.”

Aluna tried to swallow, but her throat was too dry. Dash handed her a clay cup, and she drank. She’d never tasted anything better.

“We are underground,” Dash said. “In Coiled Deep, the last of the Serpenti cities.”

“Serpenti,” she said. “Your allies.”

He nodded and pulled out a sash he’d been wearing under his tunic. It had threads of bright red and orange braided together with strands of gold. Had he been wearing that when she’d first attacked him, months ago, in the broken SkyTek dome?

“It’s beautiful,” she said.

“Nathif gave it to me the night I helped him escape Shining Moon.” He rolled it between his fingers. “I never expected him to return the favor.”

“I’m glad you did,” she said.

He looked up from the sash. His eyes glittered like eelskin. “So am I.”

She smiled. Already she could feel strength flowing back into her limbs.

“Are we safe here?” she asked.

Dash nodded. “The Serpenti are peaceful. There are too few of them left to be warlike. They are cautious of visitors, though, as they are still being hunted by the herds.”

Aluna studied the room. It was spherical with a flat bottom, like a bubble resting on the palm of a hand. She reached out and touched the wall. Cool, sandy dirt, covered in a clear sealant of some kind. “The whole city is underground?”

“Yes. I must admit, it is far cooler down here than in our settlements in the sun. No place to run with four hooves, but that has never been a concern for me.”

“I should visit Tayan and meet our hosts,” Aluna said, and sat up. The world spun wildly but soon righted itself.

“You are recovering quickly from sun exposure,” Dash said. “Perhaps all that smoke you made shielded you from the worst.”

“So it worked? You saw the smoke?”

“Aluna, there are people living in the
stars
who saw that smoke.” He offered her an arm to help her stand. “Tal and I would have found you without it, but not as soon. The smoke saved your lives.”

She checked under the bedding and saw her familiar trousers covering her legs. Even her shoes and foot wrappings were still in place. She grabbed Dash’s arm and stood slowly. Her legs ached and wobbled, but she couldn’t tell if the weakness was due to her fatigue or from her growing tail. She nudged one leg forward and was pleased when it obeyed. They hadn’t fused together yet. They could still hold her weight.

When she found her balance, she reluctantly let go of Dash’s arm. He took a step away but hovered close enough to catch her if she fell.

“I’m ready for my tour,” she said finally. “Do I look presentable?” She looked down. Although her face and hands and hair had been washed, her clothing hadn’t. She looked as if she’d been swallowed by a whale and spat back up again.

Dash laughed. “Let us hope the Serpenti are not a fastidious people.”

They walked slowly out the arched doorway and into a hallway lined with other bubble-shaped rooms. A Serpenti boy must have heard them. He slithered out of another room, shut the thick plastic door behind him, and came to meet them.

The boy’s sand-colored hair almost perfectly matched the color of his skin. His eyes were a light, vibrant green, the color of kelp in the sun. He wore his hair short, cropped close on the sides and back, but longer on top. A clump of it fell into his face and partially concealed his stunning eyes. Aluna liked his features immediately — they were wide and open, marred only by an old scar that cut deeply across one cheek.

The boy’s loose-fitting tunic, very similar in style to the Equians’, was made of a thicker material and decorated with intricate patterns sewn with colored thread. Below his waist, the boy’s tail swept forward for balance, then curved back under him and undulated on the floor in waves. It was so much longer than a Kampii tail, two or three meters at least. Its tiny scales glittered brown and tan and gold.

“Aluna, this is Nathif,” Dash said. “He brought you back from so close to sundeath that I think our great sun may feel cheated.”

“Brother Dashiyn is too kind,” the Serpenti said, grinning. “It is a pleasure to see you awake, Sister Aluna.”

Aluna bobbed an easy Kampii bow. “Good to meet you, too. Thanks for saving me.”

“Think nothing of it,” the boy said. He waved his hand, as if he’d only given Aluna a drink of water. “We are forever pulling mermaids from the desert these days.”

“You are?” she said, confused. How could other Kampii even get here?

Then she heard Dash chuckle. “You will have to get used to Nathif and his jokes. They sneak up on you like thieves.”

She looked back at Nathif, his expression now one of exaggerated innocence. “Oh, I see how it’s going to be,” she said.

“You should know right up front that I am not well liked, even by my own people,” Nathif continued easily. “There was talk of trading me to the Humans for a camel and five stacks of wood.”

“A terrible bargain,” Dash said. “I would not pay more than three.”

Aluna laughed.

Nathif leaned in toward her and said, “You see? Dashiyn risked his life and his honor to save me, and even he does not like me.” He leaned back and sighed, his eyes sparkling. “I wish I could take you to see your friend Tayan, but she is still unconscious and needs rest. I would ask you to wait a little longer.”

“We will do as you wish,” Dash said.

“I’m surprised you’re trying to save her,” Aluna said. “After everything between you and the herds.”

The boy didn’t flinch. “It is true that Brother Dashiyn’s tribe killed my mother and gave me this lovely scar, but we Serpenti do not hold grudges. It is our philosophy to remember the past and to honor it, but to give the future more weight in our thoughts and actions. Even if Tayan herself had struck the blow that sent my mother into endless sleep, we would try to save her.”

She looked at Dash. “Is this a joke, too?” He shook his head. She turned back to Nathif. “I haven’t met many other people who think like that. With the world the way it is, being so forgiving seems . . . dangerous.”

“It is,” Nathif said. “We consider forgiveness our greatest strength, even as we recognize that it may also be our greatest weakness. But we never want to be the people we were before our war with the Equians. And, truthfully, we don’t have much time left. We will survive this generation and the next, but not many more. The Serpenti will end. We have chosen to live out our time in peace, in the hopes of atoning for our past.”

“You do not seem as upset about your fate as the Equians would be,” Dash said.

Nathif smiled. “To be upset about the inevitable would be a waste of energy. We have better uses for our time . . . like pottery and singing!”

Aluna laughed again. She couldn’t help herself. Something about Nathif reminded her of Hoku.

“Dashiyn, do you see how Aluna appreciates me? Even though we just met?” Nathif said. “You might try something similar.”

Dash reached up and clapped Nathif on the shoulder. “I will laugh when you are funny.”

“So cruel,” Nathif said, hanging his head. In a flash, it popped up again. “But come! I will show you our city. Perhaps we will find the pharos, as I know they wish to meet you.” The snake-boy slithered up the corridor. He moved slowly, his long body pushing him forward with its wave motion. Dash tugged Aluna’s elbow, and they followed.

The Healer’s Hall, as Nathif called it, opened into a vast bubble room twenty times the size of the last one. Aluna could see other ball-shaped rooms in every direction.

“It’s like someone stuck a tube into the desert and blew a cluster of huge bubbles deep in the sand,” she said. She turned, trying see all of it at once. “The walls glitter.”

Nathif laughed. “Once again, you are astute, sister. The ancients did almost what you suggest! Except their bubbles were lined with a sealant that lets air in and keeps the sand and desert creatures out.”

“How big is this place?” Dash asked.

“Far too big for the numbers we have now,” Nathif said. “As a child, before my sister grew sick, she and I vowed to explore every nodule. We spent months, but I daresay we never made it to half.”

A few clusters of Serpenti slithered across the room, barely pausing to look in their direction. Nathif was right; there were far too few for a city this size. Mirage and Shining Moon had been teeming with Equians. In contrast, Coiled Deep was an old, weak city, drifting slowly toward death.

“So you have a leader, a pharo, just as the Equians have a khan?” Aluna asked.

“We have two pharos,” Nathif said. “One rules over the material world and the realm of the body. He guides our warriors and healers, our cooks, our farmers and mushroom growers, and other Serpenti who deal mainly with the physical world.”

“The other pharo is of the spiritual world,” Dash said. “He guides the artists and singers, the holy ones, the thinkers. At least, I believe that is what you told me.”

Nathif grinned. “You remember! How pleasing that you actually listen to me at times. Although Pharo Rashidi passed into endless sleep, and a woman, Pharo Zahra, guides us now.”

“It seems like there’d be a lot of crossover,” Aluna said, thinking about the Kampii hunters who carved their spears with shark heads and dolphin motifs. And Kampii fighting, with its complex forms, was almost as much an art as it was a warrior skill.