I've been told Earth once had four seasons. That was before my time, before the war. The war burned the Earth alive, leaving it monotonous in both colour and season – orange and a never-ending summer. Before, there was fall, when green leaves on trees turned yellow and red before drifting to the ground. There was winter, when it got cold and snow fell, turning the land white. There was spring, when the snow gave way to new growth and life and things turned green again.
"He who controls the weather, controls the world," my dad says.
I've never known this world to have a climate other than hot. The orange sun hangs in the orange sky and bakes us. The sand is orange too. The mountains are orange. If there were any rivers or lakes left alive, they'd be orange.
I'm 12 and my daily chore is to get the water for my family. Mom and Dad also have two younger children, my sisters, to look after so now that I'm old enough to fetch water – this is what I do. It's tough work but I'm able. It is dangerous work but I go. We have no choice.
We live in the mountains where water is the only thing that moves freely down the peaks. But not for long. The last of the glacier is dying. Melting. Gushing down the rocks and drying up by the time it gets to the valley floor. It's my chore to climb up the stonewalls and fetch the water we need for the week.
I dress in the remnants of one of my mother's old cotton skirts, an ancient button-down blue shirt and brown hiking boots. (Vegetables were traded for the boots last year. They only fit me now.) I grab a grey scarf and wind it around my neck. It'll stop the sweat from tickling my back.
I'm ready to go.
My father ties two buckets to my back, kisses my forehead and sends me on my way. Not without a warning to watch out for Waterstealers. He also warns me to make sure no one asks too many questions.
"Don't talk to strangers," he says as I head out the cave door, the entrance to our family's home.
I'm not the only one making the trek up the mountain. There are all sorts and all ages. Some days, there are climbers younger than me. They're smaller than the buckets they carry. A couple of the little ones will cry the whole way up. I'll tell them stories so they'll stop sniffling.
The walk to the top is hard. Gruelling work. I start when the heat is at its lowest, when the sun is in the eastern half of the sky. When the sun reaches the middle, I take the scarf from my neck and put it over my dark curly hair. Sometimes, the sun's rays poke into my scalp and burn it to the colour of blood – red.
On my journey, I'll often stop and take a break. Only after I've hurried through the corridor, a dark tunnel made of granite and black-and-white banded rock that I have to pass through. I never want to meet what's hiding in the shadows so I go as fast as I can and wait for an open space before I sit on the rocks for a rest, trying to catch my breath. Sometimes the wind whips at my chest and steals my oxygen. I beat it by pulling my scarf around my face. It's a short pause. I'm off again.
The water is at the top of my climb. There it is, sparkling in the sunlight. Babbling merrily as if the planet is still as healthy and vibrant as it had been 20 years ago. The glacier is shrinking and shrinking. It's cold to the touch and you're not allowed to walk on it. It's a rust colour from all the dust that blows around here. I have been told the glacier was all white at one point in time. My mother said the mountains used to be covered in snow. Pure white frozen water. Not anymore.
Today, dozens of people wait in long lines beside the glacier to fill their containers. The water looks clear and clean but it's laced with poisons leeching out of the contaminated ground. There's not a grain of sand that hasn't been touched by chemicals. But we need to eat and drink. So we boil our water in the hopes that we won't get sick.
When it's my turn for water, I sink the buckets into the stream. Lift them out and set them down. They're awkward and heavy and cause me to lose my footing.
"Whoa," I say to the jugs. "Stop pushing me."
"Sorry,' says a soft a voice. Looking over to see who took responsibility for my clumsiness, I see a tiny boy with a container that needs filling.
"It wasn't you," I say, giving him a quick wink.
"Will you help me?" he asks. "I can't get my bucket full."
He's so small and the jug is so large there's no way I can refuse him.
"Okay."
I take his pitcher, filling it up to the top. I hand it back to him. It's heavy for me so I know it'll be a burden for him.
"Thank you," he says. Smiling.
"You're welcome. Which way are you going down?"
"The south side."
"Me, too," I reply. "I'll come with you."
That makes him smile again.
Walking up the mountain is hard enough. Walking down is worse. It's dangerous. Not because of the mountain itself but because of Waterstealers lying in wait. They are too lazy to get their own water so they'll watch for one person, who struggles with his or her containers, and then they'll pounce.
My father warned me about Waterstealers. He told me many folks have died because they wouldn't give up their buckets. Children are the easiest to target. With no one to protect them, the Waterstealers simply take the jugs. If the child fights back, he or she is tossed off the peak. One of my neighbour's teenage daughter died this way. Her crumpled and bloodied body was found a few hours after she didn't return home.
Adults don't try to stop Waterstealers from taking advantage of the children. They think, "better them than me."
Dad says I'm to give my water away if I come face-to-face with the bandits. I haven't seen any Waterstealers in my time on the mountain. They haven't preyed on me but they most likely would seek this boy as their victim. I'd better keep him company on the march home. Two is better than one.
I wouldn't make this trek if it weren't necessary. Certainly my parents don't want to send me to my death. But without water there's no way for us to survive. There's no way to live.
"My name is Naia," I tell the little boy.
"I'm Jude," he says.
"Well, Jude, let's go home."
Jude struggles with his full container. I have two buckets to carry and try and make sure not one drop of the precious liquid is spilled. I lose about a cup every journey home even though I walk carefully and watch that the water doesn't slosh over the top.
We're at the tail end of the adult hikers with other kids tagging along. Jude is slow and we fall further and further behind. He needs to take breaks about every hundred metres. During the stops, he fills me in on his family. He's talkative. Unlike most of the settlers here. It's easier not to care when you don't know anything about a person, or this case, a skinny kid, but Jude prattles on. He lives with his mother and has a sick baby sister. He's the only one who is able to fetch water.
By the looks of him, he is poorer than my family or any family I know. His face must constantly hurt from the bones poking out of it. I swear his arm is about as thick as my index finger. His clothing is almost see-through and his shoes are men's sneakers and a million times too large. He was not one of the kids I've seen crying. He's tough.
"We need to hike faster," I say to Jude, scanning up and down the path. It's not good. I can't see anyone in front of us or behind us. We're dead last. Dead. Last. However, a few more paces and Jude needs a rest.
We're about a quarter of the way down the trail when we take a seat on a big flat rock. I get a piece of bread out of my pocket and see the gleam in Jude's eyes. Food is tremendously scarce. Growing crops is mostly out of the question. A lot of people dig close to where supermarkets used to be to find cans of this or that. You never know if what's in the tin is safe to eat.
"What's that?" Jude asks, pointing to the bread. I doubt if he has ever seen bread before. I doubt if he knows food like this can be made by growing wheat out of dusty soil.
"It's bread," I say.
"Bread," he repeats. He isn't asking for a piece, simply echoing a foreign word. I sigh because I know I can't eat it all in front of him.
Bread is rare and now I wonder if I should have let Jude know I have it. He won't expect any. Since food is hard to get, no one expects handouts. No one complains if they're hungry. No one expects you to share.
My family tended the grain that became the bread. Our most valuable item is a couple of bags of wheat seed. No one knows we have this treasure and it's important they never find out. My parents plant the crop in a hidden location and travel a long way to tend it.
"Don't tell anyone I gave you this," I say before tearing the chunk in two. "Got it?"
I hand him some. The protruding bones in his face collapse into a giant smile. He's so thankful for that one morsel you would have thought I had given him a whole loaf.
"Thank you! Thank you!" he says before gobbling it all up.
The way he eats shocks me. I know there's a lot of famine around but I've never really thought about it. Until now.
"What do you usually eat, Jude?"
"Anything my mom can find. Sometimes I get so hungry I eat dirt. At least it fills my stomach for a little while. Kinda."
The kid has had a terrible life. When we start walking again, I only make him go fast through the stone tunnel. He's shuffling as quick as he can and water spills over the lip of his jug. He stops.
"Oh, nuts," he says, his voice echoing in the dark tunnel.
"I'll give you some of mine when we get to the Forks, at the bottom," I say, my heart pushing against my ribs. "We have to keep going. To avoid Waterstealers."
At the mention of Waterstealers, his feet get faster. We clear the passage and my heart stops wanting to jump out of my body. It's not until we're down the mountain and at the Forks that I truly loosen up. Waterstealers aren't known to come close to the villages.
At the Forks, the path splits into three ways. I pour some water from one of my buckets into Jude's jug. I say goodbye to him and he goes right and I go left. I turn and watch him stumble along the trail home with his load. His feet drag, sending puffs of dust into the air. The walk and heat must tire him, like it does me, but I have some strength left.
"Jude!" I call out. "Wait there. I'll drop my water off and be back to help get you home."
He smiles and waves an acknowledgement so I leave and make the short walk home.
"I have water," I call out.
My father lifts the curtain hanging over the entrance to our cave.
"There you are!" he says. He walks out of our home and takes the heavy buckets of water out of my hands.
"I'll be back," I say.
Running to where I had left Jude, there's no sign of him. I walk down the trail leading to his home, calling his name. Silence replies. When I go back to where I had left him, I notice fresh scuffmarks on the ground. Heading up the hill.
Waterstealers?
"Jude!" I cry out. My voice ricochets off the rock walls. Answering my own call.
A chill chains itself to my heart. I take off racing up the hill, panting heavily after a few metres. This isn't normal. I'm in shape. I've been going up and down mountains for two years yet I have no energy. The incline, my adrenaline and the danger Jude could be in is pulling me down. I'm hardly moving.
What's that sound? Did I hear a shout? A voice? I run to a group of grey boulders where I think I heard the noise. Rounding the rocks, I come upon a scene that stops me dead. Jude. And two despicable creatures that I'm sure are Waterstealers.
One is tall, so tall that her head and shoulders stick up over the tall boulders. Her thin brown hair sticks to her face like a beard, accentuating the deep hollows of her cheeks. The bright pink sweater she's wearing over greasy brown leggings doesn't do anything to brighten her pale, pale skin. It only makes her look green.
The guy with her is a touch taller than me but many pounds heavier. He has a beard, a reddish one that's so bushy and big that his eyes are almost hidden by it, and a thick torso. He's wearing suspenders stretched over a green plaid shirt that's tucked into a black kilt. The Waterstealers have little Jude by his thin arms, pulling him towards the edge of the mountain.
"Help me, Naia!" Jude cries when he sees me. His eyes are huge, almost popping out of his head. He's trembling and there's a dark stain on the front of his pants.
I had promised to keep him safe.
The Waterstealers know I'm here. They don't care. I'm a girl with no strength or power to do anything. But I can try.
I propel myself towards the Waterstealers, ignoring the voice in my brain shouting warnings.
"You're helpless," it says. "You can't do anything," it repeats.
My fist smashes into something hard, the woman's hipbone. I push against something soft. The man's stomach. I kick at their feet. I scream as loud as I can, hoping that someone passing by might stop. In the middle of the melee, there's a flash of blue light. The bright blast doesn't come from over top of us or underneath us or beside us but from us. From between us, by one of us. The light's so intense it blinds me. Makes me dizzy. Makes me...
I wake up on the ground. Alone. Where is Jude? Where are the Waterstealers? I race over to where the mountain drops off several metres. There he is. Sprawled on a ledge jutting out from the side of the cliff.
"Jude!" I scream.
He doesn't move. He is still. As still as death.