CHAPTER
TWENTY-EIGHT
Lowanna leaned forward against the camel’s furry hump and fell into the rhythm of the animal as its soft padded feet traveled across the sandy terrain.
The grass of the prairie had now almost completely given out. It still stood in sparse patches here and there, but they now traveled through a true desert.
She had learned how to ride before she’d ever even seen a horse. Being born near the Tanami Desert in the Northern Territory, it wasn’t so strange in that part of the world for feral dromedaries to share territory with her people. In fact, her parents had tamed the beasts and had started a dairy. Other kids grew up learning how to ride a bike, she’d grown up riding camels.
The motion of the camel as it walked had always felt to her like the movement of a rocking chair. She scratched the side of the large animal’s hump as he trotted eastward. “You let me know if you get tired, okay?”
The big animal let out a gurgling noise that sounded like a human trying to cough up some phlegm. But to Lowanna it clearly communicated to her that the big bull was not tired; also, he wanted to know whether she was thirsty, because he smelled water up ahead.
“If there’s water, let’s stop so we can both drink.”
The camel shifted his direction to the southeast, veering off the east-west path that they’d been traveling. Within ten minutes, she saw the first signs of palm trees.
Camels weren’t famous for their ability to detect scents generally, but when it came to sniffing out water, these big guys knew what they were doing.
As the camel trudged down a rocky slope toward the oasis, Lowanna saw a small lake with a dozen palm trees lining its edge. She’d seen such bodies of water in Australia. They were created by cracks in the bedrock and an upwelling of water from the water table below. The result was a natural well.
Lowanna hopped off the camel and approached the shore. A two-foot-long yellow lizard basked in the sun; it hissed a warning and scooted away. She rubbed the side of the camel’s neck and said, “Ignore him. He was just scared you were going to step on him.”
The lizard settled on a rock twenty feet away and gave one last hiss.
The camel snorted and flared his nostrils, unimpressed by the reptilian machismo. He dipped his lips down to the water and began drinking.
Lowanna scanned their surroundings, paying careful attention to the palms. She walked over to the trees and saw that they had been picked clean of dates. There were date pits strewn along the shore.
She crouched down and picked up one of the pits. Its surface was dry, but the pit hadn’t lost all of its moisture to the air yet.
Other than maybe bringing the animals to the lake to water them, there really wasn’t a reason for the group to come to this oasis. They had plenty of water still, and if Marty’s vision was right, they only had two days left before they arrived at wherever it was they were supposed to go.
Which was what, exactly? A way home? A trap? The Sethians’ home base?
Hearing a chirp, Lowanna walked over to the nearest palm tree and found a nest with a sparrow in it, gray-breasted, with brown and black feathers in its wings. “Hello, little one. Have you seen people like me recently?”
The bird hopped up onto the edge of its nest and peered at her. It tilted its head and stared.
“Have you seen any humans around?” she tried again. “Any Two-Legs?”
Yes.
“Did you see any today? Since the sun came up?”
Yes.
“Where?”
The bird just stared.
Lowanna pointed north. “Were they that way?”
No.
“That way?” She pointed south.
No.
“That way?” She pointed east.
Yes.
Interesting. People east of here. “One person?”
Yes.
Lowanna’s eyes widened. A single person wandering around the wilderness had to be an unusual thing. She was herself a bit nuts to be doing it, but then again, she was with a big brute of a camel, so she wasn’t really alone. She looked at the bird, who was still staring at her. “Are you sure it was only one person?”
Yes.
She pointed east again. “And he came from that way?”
No.
“Wait a minute, I thought you said . . . was there more than one person?”
Yes.
Lowanna waved at the stupid bird and gave up trying to talk to it. Sometimes the animals she encountered were simply not very useful to talk to.
She walked over to the camel just as he lifted his head from the lake. Lowanna pulled a fig from her pack. “Come here, big boy, you’ll like this.”
She held out the yellow fig for him. The camel used his thick leathery lips to grasp the fruit, then chomped down.
Lowanna rubbed his neck. “Did you like it?”
The camel turned his head and wrapped his neck around her shoulders, giving her the equivalent of a camel hug.
“Aww, you’re welcome.”
Lowanna looked up at the sky; it wasn’t quite yet noon. She could scout out the path east for another couple of hours before having to turn back. “Let’s go a little farther and see what else we can see.”
The camel knelt down and Lowanna hopped onto his back.
✧ ✧ ✧
Lowanna and her one-humped companion trotted eastward. They were covering a lot of ground, and so far, other than the oasis, she hadn’t spotted anything of interest.
With the sun just past noon, Lowanna heard the cry of a hawk. At the same moment, the bird itself blurred past her and slammed into a mouse who’d scurried out of his hole at exactly the wrong time.
The camel stepped sideways a bit, skittish over the surprise appearance of the raptor.
She patted the side of his hump. “It’s okay. No need to be worried, my friend.”
The gray-colored hawk was big, almost two feet long from tail feather to beak. It settled on a twisted log. Lowanna called out to it. “Have you seen other humans nearby?”
The bird of prey squawked. Many. You will see them.
Lowanna’s eyes widened and she pointed east. “That way?”
Yes. The mouse’s tail hung from the hawk’s beak like a book ribbon from a Bible.
“How many?”
Many, the bird responded. It swallowed what was left of the mouse, shrieked, and vaulted into the air.
Lowanna patted the side of the camel’s hump. “Let’s keep going straight, but let me know if you see or smell anything unusual.”
They resumed their brisk canter.
Did the hawk know better than the sparrow? Were they both wrong, or too stupid to understand her questions?
Might a bird lie to her? Animals could be stupid . . . could they be venal?
It was time get back.
She stopped and scanned the road ahead. A faint yellow haze clung to the eastern horizon.
She scanned to the north and south and the horizon didn’t have the same look to it. Normally, heat would create a haze in the distance, but it just made things slightly out of focus, like a smear of petroleum jelly on a camera lens. This haze had color.
The camel continued east as Lowanna focused on the horizon. She heard the susurrus of mice and snakes, but they had nothing useful to say to her. As they drew closer to it, the yellow haze became more pronounced.
Taller.
She wished she had Kareem’s or Surjan’s eyesight.
Having spent the first half of her life in terrain just like this, she knew that the horizon was not much more than three to four miles away across a flat surface.
An eagle perched on one of the top branches of a desiccated and skeletal tree. Lowanna pointed to the east. “Hey, what do you see in that direction?”
The eagle fluttered its wings and stared down at her.
Danger.
A chill raced up Lowanna’s spine and she patted the camel’s hump. “Let’s stop.”
The camel immediately came to a halt and Lowanna called out again to the eagle. “Can you tell me more about what’s ahead of me?”
Men.
Men?
Lowanna stared to the east, a knot of uncertainty in her belly.
The eagle might be right. That yellow haze could be the dust being kicked up by people on the march. By a lot of people on the march.
Who?
She leaned forward and whispered, “Let’s go back, quickly!”
The camel turned around and she yelled back at the eagle, “Thank you!”
The eagle flapped its wings and took off with a loud squawk.
It’s not the men that are the danger.