OTHERBORN: IN THE WASTELANDS ALONE

CHAPTER 1

MADDIE

There's a spot in the valley where the sun shines different. I go to this isolated piece of land to watch the dawn fork through the high, narrow cliffs at the edge of our camp and pattern the rocks like an aurora projected on granite. Fox speaks to me through the radiant squiggles, or at least I imagine he does. He'll leave messages in them that only I can read.

I'd asked Kai if he understood the messages, and he shook his head. We have both concluded I am different. It feels like being psychic or a prophet, and there's a loneliness to that, because I want to share my gifts with the world, but would anyone be ready? Our planet is a shell of what it was. We often encounter nomads in the open wilderness, and a few of them have claimed to be government workers with insights on cities far north of here, so far north that we'd need an airplane to get to them. These cities are apparently full of pits and craters, yellow and orange lava oozing out into the streets and burning everything black and bare.

I keep my head up, because here, things aren't so horrible. At least we have our people, our little crew. We're all children, but we care for each other as if we were adults. We chop brush wood and set fire to it during the colder nights. We harvest the scattered grains we find in the skeletons of forests, and we boil them in water we find in the shallow lakes twinkling along the southern cordillera.

And every morning, I read sunlight.

Now and then I'll see pictures in the luminous patterns the dawn casts, pure and affectionate on the waiting earth. I ask Fox out loud: "Where do we go next?" He replies with new shapes in that glowing tapestry, and sometimes he sends letters—I've worked out that his Ws are for west and his Es for east—other times pictures, and still other times simple intuitions like hope, resilience, and trust.

My brother Fin says he can see what I see in the light, but if I quiz him, his answers don't match mine one bit. He seems determined to be like me, and I tease him that he'll never be as tall, though I'm sure when he hits puberty he'll tower over me like an oak.

Hmm, oak.

I haven't seen those in a while.

The vegetation is scarce, but we carry on down the crumbling roads, bivouacking at night, scavenging at the day's first glimmers.

Lucky, despite being blind, walks mainly without her cane now, since the land has gotten fairly level in its barrenness. "We're not lost," she often says, "because nobody's ever really lost so long as they've got somewhere to go."

And Fox leads us.

Since I am the only one he communicates with, I guess that does mean I lead, truly, though I dislike thinking of myself as leader. Before all this, when I was in school, I was only ever known by my classmates as shy, reserved, and unexceptional. And that was what people who knew I existed thought; to most I was invisible.

Now everyone is seen, too seen, and it's no fun to be seen these days.

What people see when they see us now is an opportunity, be it to steal our resources, to kill us, or to join us—often with ulterior motives. Attention isn't what it used to be. I remember a time when popularity meant being celebrated, photographed, and ushered into limousines to be pampered and spoiled.

I saw a limousine a few days ago.

It was torn almost in half, smashed in at the front, the engine gone, the tires deflated, several crows perched atop jutting sections of the roof.

Two months later, our group migrates. Fin and his tiny friend Silas trade ideas about how they'll make new weapons out of sticks, and I remind the younger children that first we must find sticks that aren't weak and brittle.

We creep through the barrens, following a scent Kai led us to with enthusiastic hollers: "This is promising! This is promising!" It could be the smell of barbecue, but it's been so long since I've sniffed such a delightful odor, and the Mag—as it scorches and bubbles—does on occasion deceive us into thinking the aromas of destruction are in fact those of apocalyptic cooks preparing Armageddon meals.

I fall to the rear of our group.

"What's wrong, Maddie?" Fin peers back at me with his brows furrowed and his little arms tight at his sides.

"Keep ahead," I instruct him and the others. "It's Fox. He wants to tell me something in private."

Not that they'd hear anything, anyway.

Yet the group proceeds onward, though it is Kai who hesitates the longest, glaring as if I'm too far gone, despite his promise that he believes I have a connection to the Mym and all their wonders.

"You've got people looking at me funny again," I mumble but more to my mind voice.

They'll come around, answers Fox in my brain. You're close.

I scoff. "Close to what? Insanity?"

Just stay put for now. I've been orchestrating this for a while, and soon you will know you are not crazy, never were.

"You expect me to trust you?" I knock on my temples like small doors. "Okay, you've been right pretty consistently, but we're kinda in the middle of nowhere, and . . ." I pace, kicking at stones and weeds. ". . . and, gosh, dude, I wish I could just see you already. I mean, are you a literal fox or aren't you? Are you some kinda hybrid?" I pause, wait. "And now you're not answering me. Lovely. Every time I start needing something physical, something real, you go all quiet like a freaking ghost. And you expect me to convince myself, let alone others, that I'm sane?"

The wind blows my hair over my face as the valley howls.

"Nice." I glance at my crew, far enough now that I can speak at a louder volume. "Well, I guess you'll just continue to be my little phantom, and I'll get no evidence from you. Lemme guess, this is a faith thing." I snap my fingers and gasp sarcastically. "Aha! That's gotta be it. You want me to believe!" I do jazz hands. "Follow your dreams and all that hullabaloo? That your game? Wowzers, bud, you're real original! Lemme guess, you bring gifts every Christmas—but we've been too naughty to get anything but coal? And lava, and earthquakes! Fun. Real fun."

A lizard crawls on my shoe and blinks up at me.

I frown. "Now, what the hell are you looking at?"

The lizard slithers off into a dry old shrub.

"Whatever, Fox." I cross my arms. "Have it your way."

Something clicks at my back.

I whirl about, and I am staring into the barrel of a shotgun.

"Are you the same as you were?" demands the teenage boy holding the weapon, his voice hoarse and . . . familiar? "Well? Answer me!"

My mouth slowly opens. "Jayden?"

"Answer my questions!" His fists tremble around the gun they've leveled at my head. "I've lost too many people to this desert madness!"

You wanted something physical, whispers Fox to my deepest parts. So here's one of your classmates from before the world ended. How many months, years has it been since you've seen him? Thought he was dead, didn't you? Well, here he is. Do me a favor and tell him you're still you before he blows your brains out, eh?

I gawk at Jayden, twitch my lips, and shriek, "WHAT THE FUCK?!"

~~~/