only more prickly stalk and leathery leaves. I am nearly two meters tall, and
my reach is another half above. They must be three meters, maybe more. I
bet their heads are bigger than the moon.
“Moon. Moon, moon of mine,” I sing softly as I skip the thirty skips
through the sunflower patch, up the rise to the city green where the
children play. Seventy more steps—it is the widest green in the city, and
the grass is still damp from the groundskeeper’s hose—and I am in the
orchards that surround the royal garden.
Dried grass sticks to my wet feet as I carefully tread the last fifty
steps that separate me from my destination. There are snakes in the
orchards. They hide beneath the grass clippings, lurking in wait for the
rodents that feed on the apples the orchard workers miss. More than once,
I’ve felt a strong serpent’s body brush my bare foot, heard a rustle and a
hiss as a viper slithered—
her arms held out and her head bobbing like one of the giant flowers.
I’ve never seen so many flowers. Flowers, plants, fruit, green things
bursting out all over. When we first crawled from the caverns, I stumbled in
the face of it. I fell, and my hands felt alien against the soft, wet grass. The
smells devastate me. I don’t have Desert People or Smooth Skin names for
them, can’t tell where one smell ends and another begins. The land under
the glass dome overwhelms with its life.
Fierce, vicious life. Stolen life. Paid for with the deaths of my people.
We’re starving. The children first. Their skin cracks and bleeds. They
cry until they have no strength left, and their silence is worse than their
moans. The tribal medicine men have become death dealers. Better to eat
poison root and have the pain over in an instant than to die slowly.
The autumn harvest of cactus fruit has bought the Desert People
time, but only a little. We must have the roses. According to our chief’s
visions, they are the key to the magic that keeps the land under the domes
flourishing and abundant.
“Take them at any cost,” Naira said when we left our camp a month
ago. “Die for them. Kill for them if there is no other way.” Our chief is a
peaceful woman. But these are not times for peace.
Or mercy. If the girl sees me, she’ll scream. The guards will come.
They’re everywhere. They were here a few minutes ago. I hid in the
orchard, but they’ll come again, and I might not be so lucky next time. The
moons are so bright, it’s practically daylight under the dome. I have to act.
If Gare were here instead of on the other side of the city, he would have
already slit the girl’s throat and wrested a plant from the soil, and would be
halfway back to the caverns.
It took generations of digging to build the tunnel down to the
underground river. It will take generations more to find another way in if
we fail, generations we may not live to birth. This path will serve us only
once. When the Smooth Skins realize what we’ve done, they’ll shore up
their underground defenses, build another impenetrable wall. They already
suspect an attack will come. Their guards shot arrows at our scouts as they
circled the city. This is our only chance.
.
I flex my hands. My claws grow loose inside the grooves above my
nail beds. There’s no choice. There’s no time.
I step from behind the thick tree, out of the shadows, into her line of
sight. I bend my knees and bare my teeth. My claws slick from their hiding