And youre a sand diver, Rob said, his voice full of awe, as Violet paused to catch her breath. All the nights of hiking and thinking and being alone made her want to say everything all at once.
The diving was easy, she said. The walking was the hard part. It was twelve days of walking. It took Father nine, but he said it would take me twelve, that I would have to count and time it right. It was very important, the day I left. Which day. He drew a picture of the mountains and showed me which was the Pike and that I would keep this just left of my nose and the star to the north directly over my right shoulder, and on the twelfth day I would see smoke and on the twelfth night I would see fire, right past a crack in the ground that he said I could leap over at the narrowest
He knew wed be camping, Conner said.
Violet nodded. He said if I missed the fire I would come to a big wall and a small town, but that if I found the smoke and the fire that I would be home right then. And I was doing good, walking at night and sleeping all day and being careful with my water. Until a wolf came
A wolf? Rob asked.
You you call them cayotes,
I think. In camp, they had different names for things, talked a whole other language. I grew up with both, so I forget which goes where. Dad used to say my accent was like theirs. The cayote came for the last of my jerky while I slept on the ninth night. I shouldve just let him have it, but I was scared and so I fought back, and he ripped me good, tore open my pack, and I ran. My last bladder was torn and all the water spilled out, and I ran all day thinking the cayote would come for me, but it didnt. I was real tired and thirsty after that, and I had two days more to find the crack in the ground, and my knees were messed up and my stomach hurt real bad, so I went and went all day and night and then on the twelfth day, I was falling asleep while walking and I would wake up on the sand, and the sun would be hot, and I had bad dreams, and my hands and knees were burning, but then I saw the smoke like Father said, and the night came and I saw the fire, and then I had a dream that you were there.
She looked at Conner. Took deep breaths. Realized she was winded, that shed been talking and talking. But there was another sip from the jar for her efforts, and when her second mom Rose wiped the hair off her head and tucked it behind her ears, it was with a different look on her face. Her hand stayed on Violets shoulder. Everyone else in the room was looking at her with wrinkles of worry, but Violet just rested against the pillows and enjoyed the feel of the sheets and the grumble of her belly around the water. She wasnt worried. She had made it. Just like Father said she would.
42 The Letter
Down the balcony and through a door, Rose could hear a drunks labored grunts. Valeries room. That such baseness could occur alongside events of staggering significance was like a joke from the gods. Rose fought the urge to bash Valeries door down and slap the drunk off her, to yell at them both, to shut it down, all of it down, not just the Honey Hole but the entire exercise of going through the motions, living life, being there among those dunes. If what the girl said was truethat the elsewhere her husband had disappeared into was worse than this placethen the dream of so many for an easy escape was really just another hell beyond their reckoning.
Rose leaned over the rail, wondering what was taking Diana so long. She caught Conner staring up at her. Rob looked up as well. They were just boys. Just boys. But they possessed something like protective ownership of the girl. Conner had even referred to Violet as his sister, after shed fallen back to sleep. Another sister, this girl who would cause a storm. Yes, her story would lead to chaos once it was out. News of Danvar was nothing. The sands would not sit still for this.
Hard to believe it was only the day before that the boys had arrived with the girl in their arms. Rose had nearly turned them away. She had very nearly refused them when they showed. She did plenty of patching after the occasional brawl, and was the one her girls came to after one of their clients got too rough, but she didnt want it known that just anyone could be brought in with wounds from elsewhere. Then Conner had explained just how far elsewhere, had said this girl came from No Mans Land, and that she had a message from their father.
Half of such a sentence as this could fry a womans brain. The whole had taken over her limbs. Rose barely remembered carrying the child up the stairs and to her room. She barely remembered cutting the foul clothes from her, getting the sand out of her cuts, sewing her up like a pair of torn stockings. It was as though shed watched anothers hands apply a salve and pour water between the girls lips. Someone else had yelled at her ten oclock to come back later. No, that was her. She remembered that. And she remembered telling Diana to get rid of the clothes, which were little more than bloody rags with bits of wire in them.