The runt was a useless pile of skin and bones.
Rasia didn’t know why she’d saved him. She’d been racking that moment in her head ever since. She killed the skinko but had attracted the attention of the others. With them all bearing down on her, Rasia had to make a choice. Either abandon the skinko she’d expended so much effort to kill or save the runt.
Everyone had always said he was sick, but no one had ever explained his limitations. At first, Rasia had figured it was something she could work around, but how was she going to slay a dragon with a kid who could barely run half a vibration?
She should have left him.
Rasia was no stranger to danger, but she was used to going at it alone, and before that, she’d had Ysai. He had listened to her, he had respected her, and he wasn’t so easily breakable. This was the second time, first Neema and now the runt, that someone in her vicinity had almost gotten themselves killed. Maybe there was a pattern here. Maybe it was her.
Nah. Fuck that. She wasn’t going to blame herself for their shortcomings.
Nevertheless, she couldn’t sit here and continue drifting with the wind. Rasia took a breath and stared unflinchingly at the sun. She bit down on a piece of rope and pushed against the misaligned rib. She screamed into the palm twine as she adjusted the bone back into place and quickly wrapped her shroud tight around the injury. Her ribs were far worse now than they had been before. A fracture now broken.
Rasia lolled her head toward a nearby scurrying sound and found the runt staring at the garish wound in shock. Finally awake.
“You,” Rasia seethed.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen.” The runt quivered, like some cowering mouse. “What can I do to help?”
“What the fuck can you possibly do?! Are you capable of doing anything of actual use?! No, you aren’t! Stay the fuck away!” Rasia threw her boot at him for lack of being able to get up and hit him herself. The runt flinched when the boot hit his shoulder. He should be grateful she didn’t hit him in the face.
The runt curled into his arms, like a grubworm, and didn’t come back up for air.
Rasia slapped her hands atop the deck, then pushed through the pain to stand. She tied off her other boot and left her bloodied shirt on the ground. Barefoot and in nothing but her bandeau and pants, she hopped toward the steer. She leaned against the bone protrusion like a cane and angled the windship headward, toward a trail that wound through mountainous sandstone. During the rainy season, a full river ran through the narrow channel, cutting through the deep gorge.
The blended sandstone narrowed, and Rasia carefully steered the windship through the precarious stone teeth gnawing up from the ground. Most kull ships wouldn’t have been able to navigate the sharp twists and turns, but her ship was smaller and a damn fine steer. She guided the ship all the way inside the gorge and parked in front of a yawning, cavernous mouth. Greenery populated the cliff rocks and dry riverbed.
Rasia decided to take the steps down, figuring they were safer. She tossed a foot on the worn steps.
Then slipped.
Her head hit the hull before she crashed down to the rocky ground. On top of it all, she bit her tongue. Rasia stared, stunned, at the bright sky. She blamed the sun for all the bad luck she seemed to be soaking in.
The runt leaned into her field of vision, wide-eyed and concerned. She shoved a hand right into his stupid face.
Rasia squeezed her eyes shut, took a breath, and forced her limbs to move. Every part of her screamed. It had been a long time since Rasia had hurt this badly, not since the shadowcats. She’d had Ysai back then, but now she didn’t have anyone but herself.
“Let me help you,” the runt insisted uncertainly, offering a tentative hand but never quite touching her. She hated how uncertain he was with the way he moved and the way he spoke, too scared to move about the world. It annoyed her. Besides, he barely looked as if he could hold his own weight, much less hers.
Rasia pushed him away, again.
She focused on getting her knees under her. There was a cave, so she didn’t have to bother expending energy setting up the windship for camp. All she had to do was create a fire so she didn’t freeze at night. Then she could pass out and sleep this off.
Rasia found her feet, then lost them. She tipped over, and that’s when the runt surged forward, catching her before her face became reacquainted with the ground. How pathetic of her. She couldn’t find the energy to break his hold.
“I don’t need your help. If I were out here on my own, I’d have no choice but to push through and get done what needed to get done.”
“But you’re not alone.”
“I might as well be,” Rasia said, even as she clung tighter to the runt’s arm to make sure she didn’t fall. It took too much effort to stand, nor did she feel like falling again.
“You’re right,” the runt said as he adjusted her over his shoulder. “I can’t do much of anything. I’m no healer. I can’t fight or run very far, but at the least, you can lean on me to help you stand. You saved my life when you didn’t have to, and I refuse to let anyone else die for me. You can keep pushing me away, but I’ll keep coming back.”
Rasia spat at the ground and watched her feet shuffle forward with every one of his steps. “I’m not dying, especially not for you.”
“Good.”
It felt like an eternity trying to reach that cave. They were both breathing heavily by the time the runt sat her down against the damp cave wall. He wiped sweat from his forehead and looked around the shelter in confusion. There were ash marks of past fires and the faint impressions of old footprints. A rock ramp led to a higher level where Rasia knew bedrolls and supplies were tucked away into shelves. A faded charcoal symbol of the trinity had been etched into the cave’s entrance—a rod for the Elder, a horizon for the Desert, and a circle for Death.
“It’s a kull camp,” Rasia explained. The kulls had these camps all throughout the Desert, specifically to prepare meat they couldn’t take back to the Grankull before spoiling. “They should have some herbs and fresh bandages stashed, but first we need a fire. Can your twig little arms even do that?”
“I can make a fire.”
“I’ll believe it when I see it.” A lot of kids thought they knew how to make a fire until they were stuck with naught but their bare hands. “Good luck finding the right wood for a bow drill.”
The runt gave her a hard, disbelieving look. “Where do you keep the flint? In the hatch under the mast, steer, or the nest?”
Rasia admittedly paused. She hadn’t thought he had been paying any attention. For that, she’d let him call her out on her horseshit.
“The mast.”
The runt nodded and immediately set himself to the task without complaint. He disappeared out of the cave into the harsh light of the sun.
At least he listened.
Rasia adjusted her bandeau to relieve that nagging back pain and closed her eyes. She took a moment to bask in the coolness of the cave. She smelled the water in the air and heard the wellspring drip deeper in the tunnels. During the rainy season, rain trickled and filtered through the sandstone cliffs to overflow the wellspring and form a river vomiting up the cave’s mouth. The kulls hung herbs from the ceiling in bat bushels to avoid the rainy-season river.
Rasia slid her eyes open at the distinct crackling sound of fire. The runt had returned and was now nursing a small flame in his nest of kindling. He placed it under the tented dry sticks and twigs he’d gathered from outside and breathed his tiny flame into a campfire. Rasia watched the light tiptoe on his small, satisfied smile.
He looked at her, the smile gone as if it had been a figment of the shadows. “What’s next, now that we have a fire?”
Rasia shimmied into a sitting position. “I grabbed some scorpion meat from your jih and put it in the underbelly. It needs to be cooked before it spoils.”
Rasia watched judgmentally as the runt found the spit frame and dragged it over to the fire. He set it up correctly and soon had the scorpion meat dripping fat into the flames.
He cooked. That much was obvious. So . . . one not useless thing. That was sure to be helpful against a dragon.
Rasia couldn’t believe she was stuck relying on the runt, of all people, for help. Every time she shifted and felt the sharp, stabbing pain of her ribs, it made her angry. She didn’t make mistakes like this.
“I thought this is what I wanted,” Rasia bemoaned. She hit her head back against the rough cave wall. “I was going to crush Shamai-ta’s record for the Forging, then become a kull leader just like him. But being on a team sucks. I have to constantly worry about other people and no one listens to what I have to say . . . but they listen to Nico! Despite the fact she obviously doesn’t know what she is doing. I just . . . I don’t understand how tah did it. Why is this so hard?”
The runt looked at her, then quickly returned to rotating the meat over the fire.
“What? Do you have something to say?”
He shrugged.
“Spit it out.”
The runt looked back at her, opened his mouth, closed it, scrunched his brow, and, after a slow, torturous moment of silence, he finally replied, “You don’t need a kull.”
“Well, yeah, no shit.”
Rasia couldn’t believe after all that waiting, he says the most obvious thing in the world.
“No. I mean . . . A windship is so large that everyone on the kull has their assigned tasks, right? Everyone is important and essential in operating the windship. But you’ve designed your windship to only need one person to operate it. Your windship no longer has space or room for other people.” He paused, “I’m surprised you didn’t go after the dragon alone.”
“I’m not stupid,” Rasia said, hotly. “I can defeat a dragon by myself, but I don’t have the time. I would have to memorize the dragon’s movements, I’d have to set traps, and I’d need to collect the supplies for those traps. It would take me blinks of planning to go at it by myself. If I am going to kill this thing by the time the Forging ends, I need help. But I . . . I’ve never been good with people.”
“People have never been good with me,” the runt said in turn, with a shrug. He handed Rasia a leaf bowl of meat and wild figs he had foraged from the gorge during her brief nap. It was annoyingly well-cooked.
She looked at the runt with a sudden thought.
“What was your plan in all this? How by the Elder were you going to help me defeat a dragon?”
The runt said, completely serious and straight-faced, “Distraction? I figured it’ll take a while for a dragon to eat me.”
Rasia gave a sharp laugh and groaned at the pain of it. “We are small enough for a dragon to swallow us whole. It’ll only take a vibration.”
“I guess I am entirely useless then.”
“I don’t know about that. You can cook,” Rasia said. She inhaled the last of her portion. She looked over to where the runt picked at his own food, frowning at it. “Out of all the kids at the oasis, you were the only one who agreed to join me. You confronted a skinko with a bow you didn’t know how to use. For all your patheticness, you are brave, and that counts for something.”
The runt stared at Rasia, caught off guard by the compliment. He quickly dismissed it. “Bravery is not the same as idiocy. It was certainly the latter.”
“Sometimes bravery and idiocy are the same,” Rasia said, amused.
Rasia laid down on the ground, twisted to find a position that didn’t hurt so much, and settled in for sleep. She yawned. “Take watch.”
After a moment, she peeked an eye open and glanced at him.
“You can, at the very least, yell for help?” He looked at her grumpily. “Don’t look at me like that. I didn’t know you could talk until yesterday. Who’s to say you won’t run out of breath screaming?”
“Go to sleep, Rasia.”
“I’m just saying. And don’t forget to feed the fire. If that fire goes out on your watch, I’ll murder you.”
“I imagine it wouldn’t be too hard.”
Rasia snoghtered (that’s a snort + a laugh) as she turned over and mumbled into sleep, “And for fuck’s sake, stop making me laugh. It huuurts.”
Rasia slept most of the day. She woke several drums into the night and found the runt dutifully minding the fire. She imagined him crouched over the flames, studying for any signs of wilt or hunger, for drums on end. Judging by the considerable lack of dusty footprints in other parts of the cave, that’s probably exactly what he did. Rasia’s endless curiosity would have compelled her to explore under every rock and poke her head into every crevice. Rasia studied him as if he were the strangest creature she had ever come upon in the Desert.
Rasia rolled across the rocky ground, all the way around the fire, toward him. The unexpected movement jolted the runt from his feet, then he looked down at her strangely, as if she were the strangest thing he had ever come upon in the Desert.
“Are you feeling better?” He asked.
“Better than before. Now get some sleep. Shoo. It’s my turn at watch.” He stared at her a moment longer, then nodded. He took her place along the cave wall and curled into the warmth she had left behind.
Rasia really did feel better. She still hurt, but at least it felt less like her insides were going to come spilling out at any moment. She watched the runt sleep for a few vibrations, took a deep breath, and rolled to her feet.
Perhaps she couldn’t hunt a dragon by herself, but it didn’t mean she shouldn’t try.
She packed her belongings and a few extra items from the kull stash onto the windship. As she packed, she didn’t understand this ugly feeling of guilt in the pit of her stomach.
It’s not as if she could take the runt with her. He’d surely end up dead, nor was she leaving him behind to die either. He had water and food here, and she’d decided to leave the spare flint behind. He could survive until the end of the Forging or until his jih found him. He’d live, so why did she feel so twisted up inside?
The ugly truth was that Rasia enjoyed his company. They got along, and Rasia never got along with anyone. He listened and trusted her judgment. He was funny and aware of his lack of skill and experience. He was the one that said, “Okay.”
For a brief time, Rasia had regained that easy camaraderie she once had with her big jih. A selfish, ugly part of her wanted to keep it. A more vulnerable, soft part refused to admit she didn’t want to be alone anymore.
Better lonely than to get someone killed because he couldn’t keep up. She wasn’t her tah, and that transparent truth scraped harsh across her bones. She wasn’t the leader he was. People liked Shamai-ta like they liked Ysai, but Rasia, for all the feats she could accomplish, couldn’t inspire people to follow her.
The runt was right. Rasia could only be herself: a kull of one.
Rasia prepared the windship to sail. From atop the deck, she took one last look at the cave and froze at the sight of the runt standing at the entrance. She wondered how long he’d been standing there. She felt awkward and wondered if she should say goodbye. But she refused to apologize for doing what she had to do. He was dead weight. She couldn’t afford to bring him along.
“I understand,” he said, face without a hint of anger or betrayal. He looked resigned. “I hope you slay your dragon.”
And that frustrated Rasia the most, because he understood. He didn’t argue. He didn’t hate her for it. He wished her all the best.
Rasia despised being stuck in a corner like this. Her tah had once told her that her true strength lay not in her sword arm, or in her foolhardy fearlessness, but in her imagination, in her ability to look not at what a thing was supposed to be, but what a thing had the potential to be. Where others saw a corner, she saw a springboard.
It hit her like thunder. First tingling in her toes, then traveling with excitement up her spine. She looked at the runt and saw him for the first time—not what he was supposed to be, but what he had the potential to be.
“Kai.”
Broken rib forgotten, Rasia jumped from the windship (terrible idea and she’ll pay for it later). She scrambled over to him, catching him by the shoulders. “What do you know about windships?”
“. . . nothing . . .?”
“Perfect,” Rasia cheered. “That means you have no bad habits. I can teach you how to steer a windship. Think about it. All it requires is knowledge and skill and experience with the terrain. Even you, with your disability, should be able to do that much. With you steering the ship, it will open me up to all kinds of offensive maneuvers against the dragon. It could work. What do you say? Want to be my windeka?”
Kai responded without hesitation.
“Okay.”