Mirage (7 page)

“This is perfect,” Calli said. “Thank you.”

Hoku went straight for the pitcher of water and filled three ceramic cups. Aluna took hers gratefully and downed it in one gulp.

“I must return to my father, but please,” Tayan said, “do not lose faith yet. He listens to Weaver Sokhor because the Weaver is powerful in his own right, with many allies in the herd. But he listens to me, too, and to my brother, Dantai. We will help him see the honorable path.” And she was gone.

Aluna didn’t go after her. Her body ached. She wasn’t sure her muscles would do what she wanted even if she begged. And besides, the Equian pillows felt smooth and soft as a sea slug on her fingertips.

Hoku flopped onto a rug and closed his eyes. “Wake me up when it’s time for the Thunder Trials.”

“If my mother knew I’d gone so many weeks without a bath, she’d disown me,” Calli said. She tossed her pack by a table and headed to a washbasin. “I swear, we spend half our days cleaning our feathers and preening.”

Aluna reluctantly let go of the pillow. After their trek through the desert and their frustrating meeting with the khan, there was only one thing she needed more than sleep: some time by herself. She grabbed two round pieces of food that she hoped were fruit, shoved them in a pouch tied to her belt, and headed for the exit. “I need to look around.”

Calli looked up from the washbasin, her face caked in silvery soap. “You’re going to look for Dash?”

Aluna sighed. “No, not yet. I think he’ll be safe until his trial. I just need . . . space.”

“Days in the open desert, and you’re craving space.” Hoku chuckled, his eyes closed. “Some things are as changeless as the tides.” His eyes popped open. “Hey. Keep an eye out for cool tech, okay?”

“You know me,” Aluna said, pushing open the tent flap. “That’s all I ever think about.”

She wandered slowly through the settlement, choosing paths randomly and trying to ignore the stares of Shining Moon’s Equians. Some tried not to look interested in her and merely stole glances as they washed clothes in basins of sand or stood sewing fabrics in the shade of their tents. Others stopped and stared, making no secret of their distrust. No hands went to hilts or bows, but tails swished and hooves stomped. Even if she’d been born with a horse body herself, she was an outsider to these people. A person not of the desert. That set her apart more than her lack of hooves.

The layout of the settlement fascinated her. Shining Moon had to fit everything they needed across a flat plane, unlike the City of Shifting Tides, where nests could be dug out of the coral at different heights. It seemed so limiting, and yet the Above Worlders always made it work. Smaller tents seemed to be storage areas. Dwellings were larger. Big enough for at least five Equians, she guessed, and maybe even ten. The largest tents — the ones big enough to hold dozens of Equians at once — seemed to be work areas. She identified one for cloth makers, another for food preparers, and a blood-red tent housing the medics and the wounded. Foals and yearlings filled a cluster of tents and open areas apparently used for schooling and training. Aluna paused to watch the smallest ones stumble on knobby legs and try to mimic their elders.

On the edge of the settlement, she found the weapon makers. Tall anvils sat near forges spewing black smoke in the air. Bowyers and fletchers stood in groups, talking as they carved huge curved bows and pile after pile of arrows. Underwater, the Kampii could only reclaim metals from shipwrecks and ancient submerged cities or sharpen shells and animal bones for their spears. The Above World people had metal and wood, which they could shape into a much wider array of weapons and objects. Aluna was beginning to understand the truth about why the Kampii Elders had chosen isolation. In any war with the Above World, the Kampii would lose.

Her fingers itched to pick up a bow. The Aviars had used smaller ones occasionally, but preferred their spears, talons, and crossbows. During her imprisonment at Skyfeather’s Landing, she’d never gotten a chance to learn how to shoot.

She headed to the animal enclosures next and stopped to marvel at the horses. Their shiny coats glistened in the sun and heat. She saw black, dark brown, reddish brown, gray — some speckled with white on their foreheads, some with dark patches around their feet, as if they’d stepped in mud. They came in the same variety as their Equian keepers. How strange it must be for the Equians to look at them and see a part of their past.

Every single horse wore white and dark blue in its tail and mane, woven in with colored beads, strips of cloth, or painted feathers. The way they pranced and played in their sandy field made them seem proud, as if they knew they were Shining Moon and would settle for being nothing less.

Reluctantly Aluna moved on to the rhinebra enclosures, which didn’t interest her nearly as much. She hadn’t been on one of the huge, horned pack animals since their escape from the SkyTek dome a few months ago, and she wanted to keep it that way. She didn’t actually dislike the beasts, but it was hard to forget those long days of riding without a saddle.

She took a step toward the mysterious netted bird area, and her gut spasmed as if she’d been kicked. She collapsed on the ground, suddenly breathless. Her cheek slammed into the packed sand and her mouth filled with hot granules. She spat them out while invisible knives stabbed her legs. She barely controlled her screams. They came out as gasps and groans instead.

Only two Equians stood nearby, one in the horse enclosure and one shoveling feed with the rhinebras. Neither seemed to see her.

Normally an episode passed after a few seconds, but this one felt endless. Her legs burned as if flames had engulfed them. The invisible knives kept stabbing. With shaking arms, she pushed herself to her knees, just in time to retch up the fruit she’d eaten. Black circles swam before her eyes.

“Hoku,” she whispered. “Hoku!”

Silence. She’d walked too far from their tent, out of range for their Kampii hearing devices. Her fault. She should have known. Her insides twisted, and she rolled back onto the sand, avoiding the mess she’d made.

“Hoku, where are you? . . .”

She squeezed her eyes shut and clutched at her stomach.
One more second
, she told herself.
Breathe and make it through one more second
.

She tried to picture her sister, Daphine, calm and perfect, even with an Upgrader’s scope instead of an eye. Daphine used to run her fingers through Aluna’s short, tangled hair whenever she’d been sick. Daphine hummed, too. Some old song that their mother must have taught her before Aluna was born.

One more second. And just one more
. And the agony started to fade, the wave of pain pulling itself back out to sea. She took a deep, shuddering breath. She felt hot tears on her face but couldn’t remember crying.

Something soft brushed her cheek, and for a moment, she thought it was Daphine’s hand, somehow made real from her memories. She squeezed her eyes shut harder and curled onto her side, wanting it to last.

The second time it brushed her cheek, she felt wetness. Then a puff of air and a snort, and the smell of cactus. Reluctantly she opened her eyes. A horse stared down at her.

Its head was long and tapered, dark gray except where it faded to black at its muzzle and around its wide-set eyes.

The horse nuzzled her face a third time, and Aluna laughed weakly. “Your nose feels just like an octopus. Did you know that?” She reached out her hand — slowly — and when the horse didn’t jerk away, rested her fingertips between its big, open nostrils. “I didn’t think you would be so soft.”

She craned her neck to see the rest of the horse. Hundreds of tiny white specks dappled its dark-gray coat, like a field of stars at dusk. Knots and sand tangled in its inky-black mane and tail. Its four slender legs also ended in black from its knobby knees down. But its coat surprised her the most. Unlike all the other horses — the ones in the enclosure — its coat looked mangy. Battered. Completely unkempt.

“Don’t care much about your appearance, do you, girl?” Aluna said. The horse reared its head with a quick snort, then lowered it back again, in range of Aluna’s fingers. Aluna laughed, even though it made her stomach hurt. “I guess we have something in common.”

The horse swung its head to Aluna’s legs and nudged her knee with its nose.

“Oh, they still work,” Aluna said, “but not for long. I’m growing my very own tail, which is perfect for life in the ocean. Where we aren’t. Where I’m not sure I’ll ever be again.”

The horse swished its own tail, and Aluna chuckled again. “It’s not exactly the same as yours, no. Imagine your back two legs fusing together into one long, scaly, flexible tail. . . .”

The horse’s eyes widened and its nostrils flared. It twisted its neck to look back at its own legs. If Aluna hadn’t known better, she would have sworn she saw the animal shudder.

Aluna froze. Did the horse understand what she was saying? Was it like Hoku’s raccoon, Zorro, some mix of tech and animal? It certainly seemed friendly, but that was no excuse to let down her guard.

She rolled slowly onto her hands and knees and tried to push herself to her feet. When she got halfway up, the world started to spin — sand above, sky below — and she fell back to her knees.

“This is going to be harder than I thought.”

The horse shuffled its feet, and suddenly it had one foreleg bent on the ground and the other out straight toward her. It was kneeling!

“Are you . . . trying to help me?”

The horse shoved its muzzle into her arm, almost knocking her off balance.

“Tides’ teeth, I get the idea.” She shifted her weight and lifted her hand to the top of the horse’s head, just behind its pointy, black-tipped ears. She dug her hands into its mane and gripped as tightly as she could.

Slowly the horse lifted its head. Aluna hadn’t intended to lean on the animal much, but when her legs quivered, she had no choice. She hefted her own body up and leaned it against the horse’s neck. In a few moments, the black eels swimming in her vision dispersed, and the world seemed right-side up.

Aluna stood, keeping one hand on the horse, until she felt confident that her traitorous legs would support her. Only then did she let go.

The horse stood back up and whinnied. There was something so triumphant in the sound, as if they’d just killed a shark all by themselves.

Then again, maybe it
was
the same sort of victory.

Aluna touched two fingers to her heart, as she’d seen the Equians do, and bowed to her rescuer. “I am Aluna of the Coral Kampii, from the City of Shifting Tides, and I am in your debt.”

The horse responded by lowering its nose to hers and snorting gently. Aluna breathed in the warm air it had just exhaled and laughed.

“Pleased to meet you, too.”

H
OKU PULLED THE SCREEN
separating his part of the tent from the girls’ and washed up. The Equians had laid out a clean tunic and head wrap, but no clean pants. Which made sense, since they didn’t have Human legs. He spent a moment trying to envision a horse wearing pants and decided they’d made a wise decision.

When he joined Calli, she was already halfway through her plate of food. His stomach growled. “Hey, save me some of the good stuff. If I have to eat another piece of dried cactus, I’m going to . . . well, I guess I’m going to eat another piece of dried cactus.” Calli laughed and handed him a skewer of grilled meat. He took it without even asking what it was. Anything was a delicacy compared to cactus.

Hooves shuffled outside their tent, and a voice called, “It is Dantai khan-son, and I have come to visit the honored guests of Shining Moon. May I enter?”

Hoku looked at Calli. She shrugged, then wiped her mouth and tried to finish chewing. “Yes,” he called. “Uh, please enter.”

The flap opened, and a young Equian male clomped in. His horse coat was reddish brown, almost the exact color of the hair hanging in dozens of tiny beaded braids around his head. His desert tunic covered his Human torso, but Hoku imagined muscles. Lots of them. The Equian had the sort of confidence that almost
required
physical strength.

“I am Dantai khan-son,” the visitor said again, doing that weird little bow Equians seemed so fond of.

“I’m Hoku,” he said, bobbing his head. He pointed to Calli so he could introduce her, too, but she was already on her feet and making a clumsy yet adorable bow of her own.

“Calliope,” she said. “Of Skyfeather’s Landing.”

If he didn’t know better, he’d say that Calli was blushing. At Dantai. At a person who wasn’t
him
.

“The Aviar!” Dantai said. “My sister tells me you are the daughter of the bird khan. Is this true?”

Oh, yes. Calli was definitely blushing now.

“My mother is the leader of our people,” Calli said. “Not of all the Aviars, but of all the ones who live in Skyfeather’s Landing.”

“Where they don’t allow boys to live,” Hoku blurted out. It had sounded important in his head, but when he said it out loud . . .

“Truly? No men?” Dantai asked. “Fascinating! You must tell me more.”