Desert Wake ✔

Ch. 15, pt. 1: Chosen by Spirits

Seems we'll always be lookin' over our shoulders. Could be Callen and his boys on our tail again, could be other lawfolk -- that's what the others think at least. I ain't so naive as to reckon we're home free, but if we're being followed, it ain't Callen who's on the chase. Ro's been educated in the ways of the desert. He believes in its spirit the way children believe ghost towns really got ghosts in 'em. So it don't take him long to figure I know what I'm talkin' about when I say the desert has done in our former captors once and fer all. He just looks at me and nods whenever Tegan questions him on it. "If May says they're dead, then they're dead, Tegan. Callen won't be bothering us again."

Maybe Callen won't be, but we all figure that lawfolk in every corner of the continent aim to bother us if they cain. We got ourselves out of a mighty jam, but that don't mean another one ain't waitin' fer us around the next bend. And purdy soon, we won't have the desert to help us git rid of our law-abiddin' burdens.

'Fore you know it, we're through the semi-arid zone with its familiar misery and on to the mountain pass. It's an alien land of grey and white—sich a different sort of severity then the kind I was raised with on the edge of the desert. The tips of my fingers ache as I scoop up snow from what Gina says is the remnants of last winter's ice pack. I hold it gently, like it's a hen's very first egg, until it's all but melted to a tiny pebble. I place that bit on my tongue, but it ain't got no taste to it.

And then it's gone.

It cain't help but make me think of home, of how my farm and the land beyond it has been savorin' its own remnants from a time when rain came with a seasonal regularity. The drought's been with us fer years, but we're still dwellin' on that past. When that remnant dries up, it will slide into memory, and people will have drunk up their last drop without realizin' that's what they was doin'. Don't matter how long they've had to git used to the idea, it'll still be too late.

I gotta turn my mind away from the farm, from everything that's behind us now. I'm lookin' to the west. Cuz it's August, the mountain pass ain't as formidable as I thought it might be. It'd be easy fer that twisty trail to take a life come winter, but right now, it's just another obstacle and it don't seem nearly as difficult to overcome after what we've been through already. We push past them towers of stone on into a new world so green my eyes water just thinkin' 'bout it. To be in a land full of life—you ain't got no idea the wonder of sich a thing unless you was raised without it. All sorts of plants grow on the west side of the mountains, in the Southwest Region. They don't need no coaxin', no pleadin'. There's whole fields of wild berries, streams runnin' with fish, trees laden with fruit and nuts. Ain't caused no one much effort at all to make it that way.

I could stay in them valleys ferever, 'cept of course, it ain't safe fer us here. The traders move Ro and me through at a steady pace. The closer we git to the coast, the more nervous we all become. We gotta be on the lookout fer lawfolk—lawfolk with just as much cause as Callen to wanna send Ro and me swing from the gallows.

We travel at night, hide ourselves durin' the day. One time, as we're shelterin' in the loft of an old barn, we're very nearly found out. In fact, we are found. Tegan raises her gun at the sound of someone climbin' a ladder up to our hidin' spot. But it's just a little girl, maybe five or six, her eyes grown wide at the sight of us.

"We're spirits." A sing-song voice in my proper Regions accent fills the loft. "We've chosen to appear before you, and that makes you very special. Your life will be filled with blessings, and you shall always eat as much honey as you wish."

The girl giggles and I place my hand on her head like I'm givin' her my blessin', all personal-like. "Only you mustn't tell anyone you've seen us, my dear. The magic will be destroyed completely if we are not kept a secret. Do you understand?"