Everyone talked of rain, but it had been the same overcast high noon for the past few days, nothing but parched air and an endless sweep of clouds that passed them by.
Nico and the other Forging kids had stopped for a break at the base of the mountain range a couple of days out from the Yestermorrow Lake. Nico walked away from camp, both to scout the area and avoid Suri’s ever-present scrutiny. The sand shifted under the soles of her gonda leather sandals as she sat on her haunches and spread the Grankull map across her thighs. Nico drank from her water gourd and spat with intention over the map.
The magic-infused droplets landed at disparate places in every direction, coalescing in five distinct globs of spit. She marked the places with charcoal circles. A sudden wind blew, and her last circle ripped the papyrus along the dampened fault lines. The Grankull-issued map, given to every kull at the beginning of the Forging, split into two rough damp pieces.
“You need a new map.”
Kelin stood over her shoulder. His eyes scanned the ripped markings, and his initial amusement fell to an expression of concern. “What are you doing?”
Nico sighed. Well, she couldn’t hide her intentions forever. “These circles indicate all the other Forging kids that I sense out in the Desert.”
“. . . so?”
“We have four gonda, Kelin. That’s enough for twenty, and there’s twelve of us.”
Kelin looked at her, in disbelief for a moment, before throwing up his hands. “We’ve only got fifteen days before the end of the Forging and look at those circles! The windships left from every direction of the Grankull. We can’t possibly save them all.”
“I know that. But shouldn’t we at least save as many as we can?”
“They could be scavengers! There’s a price on your head, if you don’t remember. It’s a risk, and even if they are Forging kids, some of them could be from the Tents. I can assure you I’m not the only faction that was hired to take you out.”
“I changed your mind. I can change theirs too.”
The brass of Kelin’s feather earring glinted in the sun as he turned his head to look out at the sand dunes. He had a habit of always carrying himself sharp and lean, like a jackal on alert. “This is the moment I was going to assassinate you. Right here. On our way back with the gonda. Away from everyone. You and me, alone.”
“You’re a terrible assassin.”
“I am a great assassin. It’s not my fault I was given an impossible task. I was expected to kill you and kill a gonda. I’d like to see any other Tent assassin take down a fucking gonda. I’ve eaten one, sure. I’ve seen one dead, sure. But I never would have guessed the sort of crazy it took to take one down. And then there are the giant fucking scorpions, and the giant fucking spiders, and the giant fucking dragons. I once laughed at the kullers and their Forging. Thought it easy, compared to Tent life.” He clicked his tongue. “I’ll never laugh again.”
“Well, we’ve got our gonda. What now?” she asked.
“Now?” Kelin said as he crumpled into a pile of arms and legs beside her. “Now, I’m a terrible assassin.”
She smiled and swept her high ponytail of dark brown hair to her other shoulder to see his face.
“It was the perfect plan,” he said mournfully. “Except you were nothing I expected you to be. It’s not some act. You . . . care,” he glanced down at Nico’s torn map, “about everyone, even at your own expense. But I’m tired, and I want to go home. Do you know what it’s like to deal with the fretting of twenty-six tahs? It’s endless.”
“That’s why I’ve planned to go off on my own. I can’t ask you or anyone else to further risk your Forging for me. I’ll find as many as I can and meet back up with you at the northern oasis. Without the gonda to weigh me down, I should be able to move a lot faster and cover more ground.”
“You can’t steer a windship by yourself.”
“With magic, I can. I’ll figure it out.” Nico noted the conflict on Kelin’s face. “You’re going to worry about me?”
He scoffed, but when she nudged his shoulder, he broke into a begrudging smirk. He quirked an eyebrow. “Are you going to tell your little embers about your plan?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Nico said, pretending she wasn’t aware of all the kids tripping over themselves to cater to her every whim.
“Poor Ohan, charring bones wherever you go.” He touched her shoulder and hissed, wagging his finger as if the touch had burned. She laughed at his dramatics and swatted at his hand.
“Oh, you shut it,” she teased. She sincerely valued their relationship and the surprising ease of it. “We’ll remain friends, right? Even after the Forging and everything changes?”
“What else would I have to brag about?” he asked, with that sharp cutting laughter he clutched tight around himself like a protective cloak. Then, for a moment, his shoulders dipped and that tension ready-to-reach-for-a-dagger-at-any-moment gusted out of him. He looked so young suddenly. Kelin said to himself, surprised, “I don’t think I’ve had a friend before.”
It was said that forging flames never last, but forging friendships are forever.
Nico did her rounds of the camp, checking in with everyone as they rested. She was concerned for some of them. All, except Suri and Kelin, have been traumatized by their experiences with the scavengers. Some bounced back the closer they came to the Grankull, some pretended it never happened, and others, like Loryn, preferred to sleep all day.
One person was missing. Nico had to reach out with her magic to find him. She climbed one of the windships and then scaled further up the mast. Faris sat folded into the small circular space of the scout’s nest.
Not wanting to intrude if she wasn’t welcome, she simply asked, “Are you okay?”
Faris glanced at her, then scooted to make room. Nico joined him. She stretched her legs out of the rim and her toes pointed toward the stars, but Faris kept his legs pleated underneath him like a baby bird, his arms wrapped tight around his knees. Together, they overlooked the camp.
All but this windship were overturned, which hadn’t been needed with their meager numbers. The other ships created makeshift camps out of the wingsails and comfortably sheltered everyone down below. Under the translucent sails, the campfires danced like fireflies. Too many ships. Too much gonda. They had enough to share.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Nico asked. Faris didn’t respond immediately, which was alright. Nico was learning how to accept silence when it was given to her. But he did respond eventually, when the clouds grew heavy in the sky and shrouded the gibbous moon.
“I was supposed to protect them.”
“You did all that you could,” she said, to both herself and to Faris.
“I watched so many of them die,” he said. “From the heat or lack of water. Many didn’t make it out of that windship hatch alive. I still have the stink of their bodies clogged in my nose. So many cried for their tahs in the end. I don’t . . . after this, I don’t think I’ll ever step on a windship again.”
Faris had lost a lot of that strength and confidence from when Nico first met him at the oasis, but from what she had heard, he was the one who kept the others going. She pressed a gentle hand on his arm, and after further consideration, pulled him into a hug.
“You got them this far. You made it,” she told him, and he shook in her arms. “Let me carry the rest. It’s okay. I’ve got it from here.” He compressed further and sobbed, hiding his face in the darkness.
It wasn’t fair what these kids had to go through, all because of politics, all because someone on the Council had a vendetta against her. Nico promised that she would find out who placed the hit on her head and somehow, give these kids justice.
“Sometimes I wanted to give up,” Faris said, his voice a tiny broken thing, “but I couldn’t because they were all depending on me. How do you do this? How do you lead so effortlessly?”
“Trust me, I don’t,” she said. Her thoughts lingered on the first half of her Forging and how she spent most of it chasing after her jih. “It’s all mistakes and lessons learned. I didn’t get here easily, either.”
“How is this supposed to work?” he asked. “We didn’t hunt these gonda. It was your kull that lured the gonda into the Graveyard, trapping them all. It was your kull that ultimately killed one. Even if we make it home, the Council might not approve our faces.”
“No. I refuse to allow the Council to deny your face because of their machinations. We play their scheming game, and we beat them at it.”
“I could tell my granta the truth,” Faris said. His granta was the Claws Councilor of the Council.
“Would he grant you your face, knowing?”
“No,” he admitted. “He’d be angry and upset since I didn’t kill a gonda myself. I’ll never be an adult in his eyes. I don’t . . . this doesn’t feel earned.”
“Slaying a gonda doesn’t make you an adult,” Nico said, bitingly. “Nor does slaying a dragon. It must be more than that. You have faced Death, Faris, and survived. You deserve your face. You deserve a name that recognizes the strength and resilience of your bones, and I won’t stop fighting until that is true.”
“I . . . thank you,” he said. He unfolded, stretching his limbs like the falcon in the stories he was named for. They perched together atop the nest and watched the dark horizon.
A drop of water landed on Nico’s cheek. She startled, surprised.
“Is this you?” Faris asked as the drops grew in weight and frequency.
Nico could move water, shift it from one place to another, but she couldn’t create it out of thin air. Her powers were as limited as what the Desert provided.
“No, it’s not me,” she said, delighted. “It’s the first rain of the season.”
A shout rolled through the camp. Sleepers jolted awake and, one by one, people poured out from under the wing-sails. Kids who were haggard and feeling defeated by the scavengers came alive under the warm shower of rain. In the Grankull, no matter what time, no matter what you were doing, when that first rain fell—you danced.
Nico and Faris climbed down from the scout’s nest to join the drenched crowd. They spun, twirled, and swiveled their hips. Someone overturned pots and added rhythm to the symphony of notes that played every time a raindrop struck the ground.
In the sea of merriment, Nico spied Suri watching her dance. The reed-thin young female stood still amid the revelers, and Nico’s eyes wandered over the soaked clothes that clung to Suri’s body. No. Nico deflected her eyes and reminded herself that they were not friends anymore. That relationship ended because of Suri’s prejudices against the Tents. To this day, Suri still hasn’t apologized to Kelin for it.
Suri disappeared behind the thickening sheets of rain. But the joy was too infectious to be weighed down by broken friendships. The First Rain always came gentle and warm; not yet one of those ferocious downpours that caused flash flooding deeper into the season. In the stories, the First Rain represented new hopes and new beginnings and the cleansing of the dust from the past.
Nico unabashedly cupped Faris’ face. Tears trailed the lines of laughter around his mouth. “We can’t save everyone,” she said. “Doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.”
Then Nico held her breath and jumped the raindrops, leaving the camp behind. She climbed each droplet like stairs and sailed the fertile clouds across the sky. She surfed the First Rain to cover vast distances and landed at one of her map’s charcoal circles.
She stepped across the crunch of saltpans. She dipped her head underneath the wing-sail of a broken windship and two children scrambled up at her appearance. She offered her hand.
“I am Nicolai, and I am here to help.”