Chapter 23
Saffron
The Badlands were as hot and dangerous as the stories said. The ground was hard and dry, and cracked like glass. The sun bleached the sky and the piles of bones scattered haphazardly about. Not haphazardly precisely---they were too big and uniform to be an accident, but whatever internal logic had led the builders was lost on Saffron.
As was Jane’s unhesitating help.
She might be a particularly baffling Enclave girl, but she had a compass, and a good knowledge of geography. Honestly, the most Saffron knew about the Spirit Forest was that it was vaguely north-east. She might have walked in circles for weeks. As a plan, it was kind of embarrassing.
Jane led them up the main street that cut through the Core and clear out of the City through the suburbs and beyond. It had been a highway once, when everyone had cars. She said it stopped at another small lake, but they’d have to go around. There might still be villages scattered about but freshwater lakes always belonged to the Directorate. They’d have farm domes and soldiers and land mines. The villagers were left alone if they stayed away from the water and the Jacks; it was easier to turn a blind eye when they have something to trade.
Saffron tried to keep up but her tag was raw and hot. She was weak and it infuriated her. They’d escaped the Dust but there was no escaping the relentless sun, and there was no water. They’d emptied the canteen hours ago. Sweat crusted salt into her eyelashes. Her arm was on fire. She could barely lift it. She’d never be able to throw a dagger like this.
“We don’t even know if we’re going in the right direction anymore,” Saffron muttered. She wished Killian was here. Or more specifically, that she was back at home with him. She hoped Oona was all right. She felt useless. Thorns grew inside her chest.
Jane tucked her damp hair behind one ear. “The Spirit Forest is north-east and that’s the direction we’re travelling in. I’ll double check with the star positions tonight but the compass doesn’t lie.”
Saffron was moderately impressed despite herself. “How do you know how to do that?”
Jane shrugged one shoulder. “We have mandatory survival training. Just in case.”
The clay hills undulated all around them, sky to sky. Layers of red clay and white silt and dried nearly-blue mud stacked on top of each other. It was beautiful, in its own way. Saffron wasn’t keen to die by beauty though.
“We should keep moving,” Jane said, coughing fine dust out of her mouth. “We need to find shade. Can you keep walking?”
“Yes,” Saffron snapped. “Of course I can.”
She took a single step and her legs gave out. Her vision went grey and spotty.
“You should put on the mask,” Jane said quietly.
Saffron hissed out a breath.
Jane held up her hands placatingly. “I don’t want it.”
“I don’t want it either,” she muttered.
“You should still put it on. It’ll make you stronger.”
Saffron clenched her teeth because she knew Jane was right. She’d avoided it as long as she could. And since it felt like she was dying anyway, what was the harm? She refused to acknowledge that her fingers trembled as she fit the mask over her hair. She wasn’t quite ready to put it over her face like a parasite. It felt like dandelion fluff and burned wheat stalks on her head. She couldn’t tell if it was trying to give her energy or suck her dry.
“Let me put more antibiotic cream on your arm,” Jane said, fishing a tube of white ointment from one of her many pockets.
“Seriously, why are you still helping me?” Saffron asked. The cream was cool on her raw skin. It soothed the itch if not the feeling of poison sliding through her veins like worms.
“We have an alliance, remember?”
“The alliance is why I’m letting you help me, not why you’re helping me.”
“You’re letting me help you because you have no choice right now. You can barely move.”
They walked for a long time until Saffron only knew the heat from the sun and the heat under her skin. They finally stumbled onto small hills, narrow canyons running between them like dry riverbeds. The shadow of clouds raced over them, screening some of the brutal sunlight. Saffron could almost breathe again.
Jane stopped at a divot in the hard ground. A sheet of plastic was staked over it, with a stone balanced in the centre to create a kind of hammock. “What’s that?” Saffron mumbled through her chapped lips. “Animal trap?”
“Solar still,” Jane replied. “For gathering water. Which means someone lives around here.”
Saffron automatically fumbled for a dagger but it slipped through her fingers. Sunlight and moving shadows and red clay made dizzying pattern across her eyes. She had to blink several times before she realized there was a coyote watching them from the crest of a striped hill. His ears were pricked forward on alert, russet fur short as a paintbrush.
“That one’s not wild,” Saffron noticed a collar of braided leather and bones around its neck. “Which means we’re not alone. Don’t make eye contact,” she added. There were wild dogs in the Core sometimes, and everyone knew not to look them in the eye. She tried to say more but her lips were swollen, her words bloated, her tongue shrivelled. It was all wrong. She was dizzy, disoriented, dazed. The leaves in her hair were crumbling to ash.
The coyote stalked closer, sunlight flashing off the copper worked into his collar. There was a leather satchel of sorts strapped to his spine and water sloshed invitingly when he paced closer. His shadow stretched across the clay, touching her.
As if it was a signal they’d been waiting for, more coyotes materialized out of the narrow dusty valleys. Beside them, two men and three women armed with bows and spears. And behind Saffron and Jane, suddenly, a woman with a spear worked with bronze, vulture feathers, and coyote teeth. Dots of white paint followed the curve of her lower lashes.
“Stand down,” she ordered.
Saffron would have made some kind of an answer, preferably with a knife, but she was sliding into the red earth, like a melted candle. Fire raced up the wick of her arm. Jane stood over her and Saffron could see the fine tremors going through her limbs. She wanted to tell her not to worry, the tag would kill her before the others could. If Jane was smart, she would barter her survival gear for her life. Or her gifts as a Numina. But Saffron couldn’t say any of those things. She could only watch, screeching internally with frustration. She was as ensnared as one of the coyotes would have been in a steel trap. She could practically smell the blood; understood perfectly the compulsion to chew off one’s own limb.
“I’m Jane,” Jane replied. Her voice sounded as if it was coming out of a tunnel, like the damp echoing passages that led into the markets. “This is Saffron. We mean you no harm.”
“The solar stills belong to us,” the woman snapped. Her dress was loose, long, and the colour of sand. There were tattoos on her fingers, more dots and lines like rings.
“We didn’t touch anything,” Jane said quickly. “We’re just lost.”
Saffron wished she could kick her. You didn’t go around announcing your weaknesses, even when they were painfully obvious. Maybe especially then.
The woman made a sound of disgust.” “I am Shanti. By the laws of our people, if you are lost and ill, I must offer you three days of hospitality.”
One of the men strode forward and scooped Saffron up. She moaned, partly in pain, mostly in humiliation.
Shanti smiled. “After which time we are free to kill you.”