6

Selah tipped her head to home in on the sound. Wagon wheels. Horses. Sliding from her perch, she snatched up her backpack and sank behind the boulder. It took a good ten minutes for them to arrive. How had she heard them that far away? And what else could she do out of the ordinary? Smells. She could smell the horses before she saw them. Could she really smell Father? The familiar mix of his body scent and her mother’s special-made herbal soap was unmistakable.

The team came into view, pulling a wagon. She’d recognize those bay horses anywhere. The one on the right was a light copper red, the left one a dark mahogany. Both horses tended to pull to the side, so Father had trained their manes to lay in the direction they pulled. The horses were positioned with their black manes toward the center between them to draw them toward each other, thus moving in a straight line.

Father manned the reins, Raza beside him. The AirStream was lodged in the bed of the wagon. Raza must have left to get Father right after she’d quit arguing with him yesterday. Her opportunity to speak to Cleon alone had evaporated. The wagon passed by the boulder and stopped about halfway between her and the barn.

Father stood up from his seat and looked around. Selah pressed herself into the ground.

“What’s the matter?” Raza scanned the bushes.

“I don’t know,” Father said. “Something’s not right. I feel like there’s a Lander nearby.”

Selah shrank away from the rock. Her mother had told her this could happen. At least knowing Mother was right helped to bolster her resolve.

“Cleon has him in the barn. Good, he must have kept the mark. I didn’t wait to see, fearing I’d miss you at the Borough meeting.”

Father shook his head. “No, it doesn’t feel quite right.”

It took until this very moment for Selah to realize she and the boys had never questioned how or why Father had honed the perfect ability to track Landers. Funny how one piece of information connected so many pieces of the puzzle. She saw so many things clearly now.

“You’re out of practice. We haven’t caught one in a couple months.”

“I don’t think so, but you may be right.” Father patted Raza’s back. “I’m proud of you. You’re becoming quite the hunter.”

Selah balked. Raza probably didn’t tell Father she’d actually done the hunting and all he did was the stealing.

“Are you going to accompany us up north to the Mountain?”

Father sat and signaled the horses forward. “No, I have other business. You two boys will be fine. This isn’t your first time alone.”

Father looked back over his shoulder one last time. Selah pulled her head back but peeked at him through the bush without so much as twitching a muscle.

“Goodbye, Father,” she mouthed.

Selah had never needed a devious nature in the past. Well, she didn’t count getting one over on her brothers. But this new mode felt foreign. She’d never have time to free the Lander here. She’d have to follow and grab him while they slept. But how could she keep up? They were traveling by wagon. Think.

She watched as Cleon waved and darted back in the barn. Father and Raza unloaded the AirStream and directed it to the storage bay beside the barn. She thought about taking it but knew Father could electronically trace its whereabouts if he noticed it missing. Granted, he wouldn’t be able to signal the boys, but he could take the other machine and catch up to her, so that wouldn’t work.

Bodhi came into view, hands and legs shackled to allow him only tiny steps. He didn’t deserve that kind of treatment after saving her. She made a mental note to slip into the barn after they left and grab the spare set of keys for those shackles.

Bodhi shuffled slowly, kicking up little puffs of dust from the worn hardpan surface in front of the barn. It looked as though he were taking extra-small steps just to annoy Cleon, who urged him on by prodding him in the shoulder. Father stepped in front of him. Bodhi glared. Father looked him over and inspected the mark on his forehead. No words were exchanged.

Seemingly satisfied, Father patted Raza on the shoulder, unhitched the horses, and directed them into the barn. When he finished grooming and feeding them, he’d head past the barn to the lane leading up to the house and Selah would never see him again.

She could hear their conversations two hundred feet away as though they were standing next to her. She’d have to learn to use these skills to her advantage.

“Come on, move it! I don’t have all day.” Cleon pushed Bodhi’s shoulder again.

Bodhi tripped forward. As he caught his footing, he looked right at her.

Selah froze. Was she visible? No, she couldn’t be. The foliage on the bush had grown lush with the constant rains this summer. Yet he’d looked right here.

She didn’t know anything about Landers. Another blank spot in the learning she should have acquired before deciding to hunt them. Since Mother had explained about her father’s—correction, her stepfather’s—abilities, she guessed all Landers had the same discernment. She hitched a half smile. Wait till Bodhi got a look at who he was sensing. Or could he tell that it was her? Her smile faded. Would he be angry at her for causing his capture? There was no expression on his face to give her a clue. She’d seen his fighting abilities. What if he wanted to hurt her?

Too many questions and not enough answers.

Raza and Cleon hauled Bodhi up into the wagon and loaded supplies in behind him, probably to make it more difficult for him to slip out unnoticed. They lifted several short cage crates covered with loose tarps into the back end. What were they? Maybe food for the trip? No, neither of them ate meat and they wouldn’t carry fish in a cage. Maybe they carried big snakes to sell to the tanner on the way to the Mountain. Both anacondas and Burmese pythons were rare this far north, but on occasion a traveler would lose one or two at a Company station en route and it would take up residence, decimating the local small game population.

Next they rolled out an RU. The Reclaim Unit would convert moisture in the air and give them fresh drinking water for the trip. Neither Raza nor Cleon would drink stream water. They were so much like Father. He’d invested much bio-coin to buy the unit several years ago. It cost precious amounts of fuel to operate, but Father felt it was a necessity for travel so they didn’t have to drink from unknown water sources.

That gave her an idea. The horses and wagon, with three people and the supplies, could probably get to the Mountain in several days depending on how much they pushed. They’d have to follow about two hundred miles of meandering roads around the rubble and ruin of ancient cities and towns, but she knew where they’d settle in for the night. The areas were full of good pasture and streams for the horses. If luck was on her side, Selah could cut across land and travel straight as the crow flew, beating them there. Granted, she might have to traverse some large kudzu-infested areas, but she felt confident she could stay ahead of them at any of the stations.

Her heart pounded against her ribs. What made her think she could do this? Doubt crept into her mind, making her hands shake. She smashed them to the ground. Stop it! Selah bit her bottom lip hard enough to make herself yelp and taste blood. Her mother’s words rolled through her head loud and clear: Okay, that’s enough with the self-destruction. Get on with the task at hand. She needed to plot a travel route.

She planned the first leg of the trip in her mind while she watched Bodhi. With his head hung low, his blond hair fell across his face, masking his rugged features and sea-blue eyes. The first time those eyes stared at her, she’d hyperventilated. At the time she’d convinced herself that it was his sudden awakening that had startled her, but now, with time to think about it, she felt a stirring deep within her better left untouched.

She shook her head to dismiss the visual of those eyes, then looked up to see Raza reach over the side of the wagon and rip Bodhi’s shirt from the back of his neck.

Selah rose on her haunches to stop him, then huffed under her breath and pulled back. She couldn’t give herself away or she’d be of no help. Her brother tore Bodhi’s linen shirt to shreds and laughed. Raza used a remnant of the fine material to wipe the sweat from his brow, then threw the fabric to the dirt and ground it into the road with his heavy work boot.

She seethed. Captive or not, Bodhi would sunburn and need salve and extra water to keep him alive until they reached the Mountain. Logical reasoning was the one skill she held over her brothers. They were crude and basic and acted on any whim, while she had spent her time learning the lessons Mother diligently drilled into her. Patience is a virtue.

She tried to tamp down the anger. Mother said hotheads made stupid choices. She glanced from Raza to Bodhi and her breath caught in her throat. Bodhi’s arms and torso possessed the well-defined muscles of a fighter. And although he didn’t appear to be expending the energy it took to sweat, moisture glistened on his fair skin, radiating a glow from the sun overhead. It compelled her to stare.

His skin looked close to translucent after the protective linen was stripped away. Selah averted her eyes as a tingling crept up her chest and settled in her throat. A gulp pushed it back down. She reminded herself that this was not about his looks but about the condition he’d be in after hours in the unrelenting sun.

Bodhi lifted his head. The hair fell back from his face. He opened his eyes and turned to stare in her direction again. She swallowed another invading lump. He couldn’t possibly see her.

He smiled . . . and winked.

Her world screeched to a halt.

Selah’s eyes widened as her hand flew to her chest. Not sure why, maybe to see if her heartbeat was still there. He smiled again.

Selah squinted. It was as though he could read her thoughts and was responding.

Raza came around the side of the wagon carrying more supplies. He turned back to the barn and glanced up at Bodhi. “What’re you grinning about?”

Bodhi shut his eyes and hung his head without answering. He seemed calm, almost too calm. She would have been rabid with rage at being trussed, but he seemed to have moved beyond his physical state. He sat erect, eyes closed most of the time. It unnerved her that every once in a while his eyes opened and he would calmly look in her direction.

Even though she sat still, sweat dripped from her temples and slid down her chest. The sun crept toward its noonday high. Raza and Cleon were beginning to show large wet spots under their arms and down the backs of their shirts as they loaded the wagon.

Selah remembered shorter trips than the normal several days’ ride because they were afforded the opportunity to hop a Company AirStream at one of the stations. Those jet-propelled hovercrafts traveled near the ground but averaged fifty miles an hour.

A thought slapped her. If they arrived at a station at the right time and hopped a Company AirStream before she could rescue Bodhi, what was she going to do? She would have no recourse left to stop them or catch up.

Having no recourse was not an option. She’d not thought that far ahead. Maybe the sun was getting hotter, but she felt a sudden flush to her skin. Was it fear?

It took another half hour for her brothers to hitch up the spare team and head out. The dust had barely settled back to the road when Selah grabbed her backpack. She tiptoed to the barn and peeked inside, hoping her father had already left through the back door. He had.

She grabbed the keys from the nail inside the door and scraped the soft flesh of her thumb on a jagged piece of timber. She yelped. A trickle of blood oozed from the slice. She brought her thumb to her mouth to clean away the blood. Great. First blood and she wasn’t even out of the barnyard.

She trotted across the tall-grassed hayfield to the left of the barn and disappeared into the tree line at the break in the encroaching kudzu where the animals normally grazed. For her, it would be about a two-hour journey to the first travel station, where her brothers would bed down for the night. The wagon and team would take the better part of the afternoon to get there.

It felt good to trot. For most of her life, Selah had enjoyed running. Mother had encouraged her to depend on her feet instead of mechanical forms of travel. She felt they made people lazy and fat. Seemed another one of Mother’s lessons was proving fruitful.

Selah’s backpack hung firmly cinched to her body, offering no resistance to her movements. She’d keep up this pace until she got tired and then stop at her favorite stream for water and a short break.

She used the compass Mother had given her for the tenth Birth Remembrance. Funny how so many things she’d learned now seemed important when at the time they’d felt useless and so out of place. The emerging culture of most Boroughs grew dependent on Mountain technology, and the old ways were slowly disappearing. She remembered scowling and tossing the compass into her box of dolls, which were much more important to her at the time. Now she silently thanked Mother and headed due north.

Normally she’d have to be right on top of the pig farm before she knew to veer off to the right to find the stream, but the stench reached her nose long before the large oaks, apple orchard, and curing sheds told her to turn.

There were several Boroughs raising and eating pigs. Pork was one meat that Mother would not let her eat. She said pigs didn’t sweat, so any impurities they ate were kept in their meat. But Selah loved the smell of cooking slab bacon. The heavenly aroma caused her stomach to rumble with hunger . . . until the day Father came home from a Borough meeting and told Mother the farmer they usually bought apples from had died while feeding his hogs, and the animals ate him as an extension of their meal.

Selah forever gagged at the smell of cooking pork, thinking about the poor man becoming part of the meat. The tale haunted her to this day. She was glad to give wide berth around the farm without seeing any animals.

The clear, swift-moving stream was a welcome break after less than an hour of travel. She’d gotten here much faster than normal but suffered no fatigue—in fact, she felt invigorated as though she could run for hours. Strange. Selah plopped to the ground at the edge of the water, pulled off her pack, and shimmied on her belly to the edge. A few handfuls of the clear, cold water refreshed her. She wandered to a nearby apple tree, plucked a huge, dark red specimen, and bit into it.

She could afford to rest for fifteen minutes. She stooped beside the stream as she ate. The sky was beautifully clear and the sun warm. It felt good considering it could have been a rainy, damp day, forcing her to travel wet. She amused herself watching the minnows dart in little side pools where the current stayed at bay. A hawk played chicken with a group of three tiny birds, swooping and diving as the three annoyed little ones tried to chase him away.

Maybe she wouldn’t linger here. She’d never noticed the pig smell to be this strong near the stream. Usually it was only this rank near the fields being plowed and rooted by the swine herd, and those fields were easy to spot by the turned-over clumps of root, no grass, dark soil, and fallen trees. She sniffed the air again.

Off to the left and behind her, a twig snapped. It came from a safe distance away, but Selah rose, spit out the apple seeds, and leisurely picked up her pack. Her heartbeat started its ramp-up to a pounding. She began walking north away from the sound. The place shallow enough to cross to the other side was still about a half mile upstream.

The bushes in front of her rustled. Selah took a deep breath. A free-range sow weighing at least two hundred pounds plowed through the brush and grunted her displeasure. Selah stopped in her tracks. On her right came the playful grunts of a litter of piglets in the high brush near the stream. She was between the sow and her babies, which never ended well. Her legs began to tremble but she forced herself to back up. Getting out of the middle would improve the situation.

Selah darted back the way she’d come. A boar ran from the tree line, considerably larger than the sow and bearing four tusks that looked five inches long and sharp enough to poke holes in her that a fist could pass through. She skidded to another stop. A wall of pork hurtled at her.

Trapped between the two, she swung her backpack. The boar impaled it on a tusk and tried to jerk it from her hand. Selah yanked back. For a moment, a virtual tug-of-war ensued. He dropped his head and the bag slid free. In the process of trying to pull it back, Selah lost her balance and stumbled backward. She recovered just as the boar charged again.

Selah took her only option. She clutched her pack to her chest and flung herself into the stream, landing in a crouch. Water covered her head and sharp rocks on the bottom tore at her knees and elbows. Struggling to her feet in the slow current, Selah coughed and spit out water invading her lungs. She swung around. The boar looked uninterested in climbing down the embankment. Selah exhaled a huge sigh and coughed up more water as she slogged to the other side and scrambled her way up the slippery bank. Her feet squished in water-logged travel shoes as she headed off across the field. She really hated pigs now.

Selah raised her hand to shade her eyes and peered at the sun in the afternoon sky. She had run twenty miles. In her usual regimen she would gain a second wind, as her mother liked to say. The endorphins would kick in and flood her body with happy juice, making it easy to push on. But today . . . was it her imagination, or could she have traveled another twenty miles? Whatever she felt, there was no need to go farther today. The travel station sat less than a hundred yards away.

She crossed the field to the road, followed it around the bend, and jerked to a stop. A Company AirStream sat on the landing pad in front of the building. Its occupants were coming out of the station.

Selah muttered to herself and backed into the bend. She’d beaten her brothers here and now would be bested by a stupid Company transport.

While she ranted to herself about her misfortune, the officers climbed back into the vehicle and lifted off. Selah dashed into the protective cover of the tree line. With a soft hum, the AirStream rose above the road and disappeared around the bend.

“Yes!” Selah charged toward the station. She peered in the window. Empty room. She quickly entered, the cool interior of the rocrete and stone composite building offering welcome relief from the sweltering heat. Her clothes had dried at least an hour ago, so heat was no longer being drawn off her body. She’d sit here for a few minutes before setting up a hiding place.

Selah dropped her backpack on a bench along the far wall and spied a poster on the Company bulletin board.

Attention: By the order of the Company, bounty on Lander subjects shall be raised by 25 percent. Total bounty will be paid as follows: 25 percent in credit, 75 percent in energy.

Her stomach lurched. Selah wanted to tear the poster to bits. She reached out.

“What do you think you’re doing?” a male voice said.