Athel (11 page)

Back
upstream, on the other side of the river, people are so busy working around the
burnt structures that nobody seems to have noticed what just happened.

As soon as
the thunderous steps are nothing but a soft hum in the distance, we exhale a
sigh of relief.

“I almost
wet my pants,” Wes says.

“What do
you think it was referring to?” I ask.

“I hope
it’s not the droid leg,” Lukas replies. “That’s what I used to make Scrub, my
microbot.”

“You think
they’d fuss this much over a droid leg?” Athel says. He balls his fists and
bites on his lower lip. “The bastards. They steal from us every day. They
scavenge the gorge for metals to use for their own technology. It’s our land,
yet they get to keep what it has to offer. And now they accuse
us
of stealing?”

Wes looks
down at the debris scattered at our feet. “Maybe they want their scavenger
droid back.”

“That’s
absurd,” Lukas says. “We barely have technology for our own people, let alone
enough to make a whole new droid.”

Athel
stares vacantly ahead, his eyes lost in deep thought.

I touch
his arm. “Athel?”

He jumps,
jerks away from me and wades back into the water. “There’s nothing to see here.
We need to go back to the other side and help build the new structures.”

But then,
as soon as we reach the other side of the river, my brother runs back to the
Tower without offering a single word of explanation.

Chapter Ten

Athel

Day Number: 1,585

Event: The droids destroyed our fishing
platforms

Number of Mayakes left: 429

Goal for today: Find out what the sniper
droid was talking about.

I watch the destruction spilling
down the river and cringe. The air reeks of smoke, and the water is polluted
with ashes and charred wood.
Tahari was
right
. The Gaijins are tightening their grip on us. He was right about the Mayakes
being completely helpless, too. I just saw it unfold before my eyes.
 

I leave
Wes, Lukas and Akaela behind on some lame excuse, and then run back to the
stables. I’m pushing Taeh’s limits, making her ride day and night like this.
And yet, after I groom and feed her, as soon as she sees me pick up the saddle,
she stomps her hooves with excitement.

“We have
to go back, girl,” I say, adjusting the underpad on her back.

Something
was hiding under the oak the tree. Something or
somebody
.

Was it all a dream
?

No.
Someone was lying inside. And then Tahari and Aghad came and scared it away. On
the bright side, I now know the
chavis
are hidden inside the cylinders, even though Yuri robbed us of ours.

The fact
that Tahari picked me, of all people, to help him find the remaining keys,
blows my mind. Yes, I know he chose me because I can see in the dark. But I’m
still a minor, one who was sentenced to Wela just a few weeks ago. Mayakes
don’t forget things like that.

I dress
Taeh for another ride, the sweet scent of her sweat tingling my nostrils.

“We’re on
a mission to find five
chavis
!” I
tell her.

Truth is,
all I want right now is go back to the forest and find the old oak again, the
ravine, and the niche at the bottom of the ravine. There was something in
there. It was alive.
Breathing
.
Whatever it was, I have to see it again.

I mount
Taeh, and at the click of my tongue, we gallop back toward the forest.

Past
Beacon Rock, the forest gets thicker and more hostile. My memories of last
night are jumbled, making it harder to find my way back. At a fork in the trail
Taeh takes a left. A wall juts out from below the roots of a large fir, but I
don’t recall seeing it before. I click my tongue and rein Taeh around. I
examine every oak along the path and yet none of them look like the one I’m
looking for.

I should’ve brought Kael with us
.

But if I
had, Mom and Dottie would’ve known I was away instead of helping with the
reconstruction of the fishing platforms.

I stop and
dismount, my steps crunching over a thick bed of leaves. A squirrel crosses my
path and scuttles up a tree. The sun filters through the foliage and blinks in
my eyes.

I pat
Taeh. “We might as well go looking for the
chavis
,”
I say, even though I’ve no idea where to look or why Tahari insisted I should
be the one looking for them.

The gargle
of a creek emerges over the muffled sounds of the forest. Taeh pulls away from
me and leaves the trail, stomping over a bed of ferns and wild vines. I wade
through the thick vegetation, following her. As soon as she finds the water,
she dips her head and drinks.

A flash of
white glints behind a spruce. I turn and it’s gone. Cautiously, I peer around
the tree. All around it, twigs and shrubs look freshly stepped on. I freeze,
the familiar feeling of being observed crawling under my skin. A faint rustle
makes me jump. Could be Taeh, could be the wind. The rustle comes closer, from
behind.

I turn
suddenly, on pure instinct, and duck. A thick tree branch flies over my head
and misses me by an inch. As soon as she realizes she missed me, she tosses the
branch and runs.

I run
after her. It.
The creature
.

“Wait!”

She may
know how to fling tree branches, but she’s not a fast runner. After barely a
few hundred feet, she stumbles and rolls in a bed of ferns. She quickly sits
up, doubles back against the trunk of a tree, and raises her hand, her fingers
wrapped around a rock. She bares her teeth and hisses.

I stop and
catch my breath, every neuron in my brain asking the same question: Who is she?
And…
what
is she?

I might
know the answer to the second question, but the possibility is so remote I
refuse to believe it. I keep my open palms up and crouch so I look less
threatening—though I’ll admit the rock clutched in her graceful fingers
doesn’t look too friendly. She hisses some more, showing small white teeth
between thin red lips. Her face is round and flushed, her eyes the color of the
sky, and her hair so light it looks white, clumped in tiny braids that flop
over her shoulders like tentacles. That’s all I saw last night, when I found
her sleeping in the niche under the oak tree—the drape of white braids,
almost silver in the darkness.

And she
has freckles, just like my sister. Freckles all over her cheeks and nose. I
smile at that and she frowns, though the rock comes down a tiny bit. For a
moment I wonder where Dottie got her freckles from—no other Mayake has
them. Who knows, maybe the strange girl with the white braids and I share some
genes. How old is she, anyway? Sixteen, maybe eighteen? No older than that.

The rock
snuggled in her fist lowers another notch. She starts panting and suddenly I
notice how pale she is. Maybe they’re all that pale—her people, I
mean—but this one looks almost ivory. She leans back against the tree and
I finally see it.
Her right arm
. She
holds it against her chest, tightly wrapped in a bloodstained cloth.

There’s
something wrong about her forearm.
It’s
too short
.

I swallow,
suddenly realizing what’s happening.

“Can I
help you?” I say, stepping forward.

She yelps and
jerks her left hand up again, her fingers clutched around the rock.

I shoot my
hands back up in the air. “It’s okay,” I say. “I’m just trying to help.”

Her frown
relaxes and her gaze strays past me, a sudden look of surprise dawning on her
face. I turn. Taeh comes out of the trees and walks toward us, her head low.

The girl
stares at the horse with her mouth open, her blue eyes almost popping out of
their sockets. I smile, get up, and brush my fingers along Taeh’s neck.

“This is
Taeh,” I say, even though I’m not sure the girl understands. “Taeh,” I repeat,
rubbing the horse’s nose.

Brows
squashed against her hairline, the girl finally drops the rock. Judging by the
look on her face, she’s either never seen a horse before or she thought they
were magical creatures that never really existed. I try my luck and beckon her
to come closer.

“She’s a
friend,” I say, rubbing Taeh’s nose. “You can touch her. Feel how soft she is.”

The girl
tilts her head. She gets up and slowly peels her back off the tree behind her,
her hand gingerly coming forward, itching to touch the horse.

That’s
when I make a stupid move. I try to grab her hand to pull her closer, but she
anticipates my move and immediately jerks away, screeching. And man, she can
screech.

I’m left
there standing like an idiot, wondering what happened to her right hand and at
the same time refusing to speculate about it. Because deep inside I know what
happened to her right hand, and somehow the notion hurts.
 

I grab
Taeh’s reins and hop onto her back. “Remember this spot, Taeh. Remember it
well, because we need to come back.”

*
 
*
 
*

She’ll die if I don’t help her.
I’ve no idea how she got here or why. The Gaijins never cross the mesa. They
know our blood is contaminated with the bug that exterminated most of their
people. We’re immune, but they’re not. That’s why they built a barrier between
us. Somebody told me they’ve built barriers among themselves, too, that it was
the only way they could stop the spread of the bacterium. They banned any human
contact within their society, making it some kind of pride, a sign of an
advanced civilization, they claim.

So where
did the girl come from? And …
why
?

One thing
I know for sure: my people will kill her if they find her. And if they don’t,
she’ll die anyway. Her skin felt hot when my fingers brushed the back of her
hand. If the blood we saw at the foot of the gorge is hers, she’s lost a lot
and she’s harboring an infection. She won’t last long without nanobots or
implants to boost her immune system.

I ride
across the solar fields and can’t repress the nagging voice in my head.

You can’t be sure the blood is hers.

The cloth she used to wrap her arm in was
soaked. No other Mayake was injured.

And her shirt is the same color and texture as
the piece of fabric Kael found
.

It had to be her
.

Why are you doing this, Athel
?
The droids just destroyed the fishing
platforms, the Mayakes’ primary source of food.

Let her die.

No
.

I swallow.
I looked her in the eyes. And she looked back.

I can’t
let her die.

Back at the
Tower, I notice with relief that everyone’s out by the river, hard at work to
clean up and rebuild. We have chickens and goats, we grow rice and wheat, but
most of our protein intake comes from fish. We can’t go a single day without
our fishing platforms and cranes.

Akaela and
Mom will be busy for a while threading new nets with the other women. As I take
a peek down the riverbank, I spot small children running along the shore and
jumping in the water, their laughter and playfulness clashing with the dismal
view of destruction.

I let Taeh
graze in the clearing outside the Tower, catch the elevator up to the fortieth
floor, gather all the medications and herbal remedies I can find in our
bathroom cabinets, and then dash back down.

As we once
again gallop across the solar fields, I spot a cordon of our fittest people
heading over to the forest. I swallow, as I should’ve seen it coming. They’re
getting lumber for the new fishing platforms and cranes. I press my heels
against Taeh with renewed pressure. I have to warn the girl that they’re
coming.

We sprint
along the edge of the fields and then south toward Beacon Rock. The men seem to
be headed slightly west of the rock, but they’ll be out there for days, cutting
timber and hauling it back to the bank. Somehow, I’ll have to communicate to
the girl to stay hidden and away from all the commotion.

The Gaijin
girl is back by the creek, her feet in the water. She jumps when she sees me,
but this time she has no energy to react. She looks at me with her big blue
eyes and then turns away and dips her right arm in the water. She’s left the
bloodied cloth on the grass, and now that her wound is exposed, I see her right
hand is missing, severed at the wrist. The lump of her arm looks like an
unfinished sentence, the flesh around the wound purple and swollen, riddled
with pus. She bends over the water, soaks the dirty wraps, then presses them
over her wound, fresh tears rolling down her cheeks.

I’m sorry,
I think.
This is all my fault
.

That’s not
what I say, though.

The girl
tightens the wraps around her wound, pain etched all over her face. I dismount
the horse, slide the backpack off my shoulders, and empty its contents. I show
her one of the bottles I brought from the Tower.

“Brings
down the fever,” I say. I step closer and leave the bottle on the ground, a few
feet away from her. “Helps with the pain, too.”

I don’t
know whether she understands, so I point to her arm and then again to the
bottle. She gives me one of those priceless looks that in my head translates
to, “It ain’t gonna give me my hand back, you idiot.”

I didn’t
expect her to run for the bottle and gulp down the medicine. So I came
prepared. I take two packages out of my backpack, set them on the grass between
us, and carefully unwrap them. One is a ball of steamed rice, the other is
leftovers from last night’s dinner—a casserole Mom made with nuts,
raisins, and goat cheese.

Judging by
the look on her face she’s either never heard of a casserole or the infection
has done a number on her appetite. I go back to my backpack and retrieve one
last item. Hopefully this one will be more convincing. It’s my mom’s old hand
prosthesis. Akari made Mom a new one with the hand we stole from a scavenger
droid last month, with flexible fingers and a powerful grip. Mayakes never
throw away anything, and Mom’s old hand was left in a drawer to catch dust and
cobwebs. It’s not fancy, just a silicone cup that attaches to the maimed limb,
and a clamp on the other end.