In a Handful of Dust

Stebbs was not there to tell her any water she witched would be too deep to reach. She’d seen him witch without a stick before, and she called to mind his steady pace and calm demeanor as he would walk with his arms outstretched. She reached out for water with her entire being, eyes closed tightly against the baking sun. Her heart leapt along with her pulse a few paces later, and she fell to her knees.

She dug with her hands, the hot sand packing the tiny cracks in her knuckles, first only irritating the skin but finally breaking through and dotting the ground with black drops of her own blood. She kept on, digging through the pain. Her fingernails peeled back from her dry nail beds and still no water bubbled up, no earthy smell of water filled her nose. There was only the dull, endless wafting of arid air.

Soon she collapsed beside a hole barely two feet deep, her body so dry she could hardly blink her eyes.

And still, she smelled no water.

She had lived rough her whole life, but hunger had never been a true enemy. Lynn’s gun and Vera’s garden had kept food on the table, and the slight gnaw on her stomach she’d always called “hunger” seemed almost pleasant compared to what she was suffering from now. In the overwhelming burn of a desert day, she understood the difference between hunger and starvation. It felt as if the rough rock under her back had bitten through her spine and was making a meal of her stomach lining. The pain curled her body into the fetal position, and Lucy cried tears that never gained the weight to fall.

Night brought a wicked chill, the desert playing its cruel trick of burning her to death during the day and leaving her to freeze at night, along with a moon so bright it made the hills of sand seem like snowdrifts. Images of her long-lost uncle Eli floated by, teasing her with snowballs and a smile so bright it made the moon seem insignificant. The sharp pain of a grief remembered brought her back to full consciousness, and in the white light of the cool desert she could see what the mirages of the baking day had hidden from her. The road. The dark spine of the desert stretched before her east to west, and what had once held nothing but fear for her was now welcome.

She crawled the last few feet to the pavement, her cracked and dry skin absorbing the heat of the road the desert night had stolen from her body while she slept. The warmth invigorated Lucy, bringing her to her feet and reminding her there were worse things than pain. If there was a trail of red blood behind her on the road from her dragging foot, it meant she still had blood to shed, and her veins weren’t rotting under the sun, noticed by no one. If she was going to die, she would do it where someone would see, and the trail of blood behind her would show how damn hard she’d tried to make it.

“Like Lynn would,” she said to herself through shredded lips as the road pulled the blisters on her naked foot open. “Like Lynn.”

She’d anchored her mind so deeply onto the idea of Lynn that when she came upon the actual woman, she thought she was a mirage and nearly walked past her. Lynn sat sprawled in the barest shade offered by an electric tower, the black lines of its shadow zigzagging across her legs, her pack and half-full bottles scattered at her feet. Her eyes flickered when Lucy shuffled past, but there was no disbelief in them once she’d focused.

“Hey there, little one,” she said, her voice dry and shaky.

Lucy fell to her knees in the dust. “I didn’t think you were real,” she said, touching Lynn’s face.

“I’m real enough,” Lynn said, breath hitching in her chest as she pulled herself to her feet.

“Drink,” Lucy said quickly, twisting a cap off one bottle and offering it to Lynn before gulping it herself.

“You drink.”

Water spilled down Lucy’s neck and chest as she gulped, sweeping through the dirt that covered her like a shroud.

Lynn gently pulled the bottle away from her, finally taking a drink herself. “You’ll make yourself sick,” she warned.

The water pooled into her tightly clenched stomach, forcing it open and bringing on a gag reflex that Lucy struggled against futilely. The water came back up, as warm coming out as it had been going in.

“Uh-huh,” Lynn said, as she watched Lucy retch.

“Sorry,” Lucy said, spitting out the last gritty mouthful. “I wasted your water.”

Lynn pulled up the edge of Lucy’s shirt and cleaned the girl’s face as best she could. “Don’t know that it matters much now,” she said.

The finality of her tone brought a swift despair that overwhelmed Lucy, causing her now-empty stomach to convulse again. “So now what?”

Lynn held out her hand to help Lucy to her feet, the long, tanned fingers casting dark shadows in the dust below them.

“We keep walking.”