In a Handful of Dust

“It is what it is,” Lucy said, turning to stand shoulder to shoulder with Nora as the storm passed them by.

Twenty-Nine

Lucy felt a distinct sense of unease when she went out to witch with Ben the next day. She could easily picture him sacrificing Nora’s daughter, allowing her to be taken by the big cat to further his own ends. Lucy struggled for nonchalance as they walked out of the shadows of the city’s buildings, into the bright white stretch of desert.

The rain had refused to fall the night before. The clouds had taunted the city as they slid past. The sky was as clear as glass when Lucy stepped out of the shade and into the sun, the sand throwing the heat back up at her and baking her skin from below.

“C’mon then,” she said testily to Ben, who was struggling with an armload of flags. Lander had been overly optimistic when giving them a hundred of the wire flags used to mark buried water lines, but Lucy hadn’t wanted to crush the hope in the big man’s eyes.

“I’m coming,” Ben shot back. “These keep poking me. I don’t see why you can’t carry some.”

“I need my hands free,” Lucy said.

Ben caught up to stand next to her. “So how’s this work, anyway? You walk around with your hands out ’til you feel it?”

Lucy stifled a sigh. “Something like that.”

“No, really, tell me. I want to know how you do it.”

“It’s not something I can teach. People either can, or they can’t.”

Ben made a face at her and she walked away from him, closing her eyes and holding her hands outward, hoping the show of concentration would keep him quiet. Lander had cut her a forked stick from one of the trees in the garden, and while it lacked the smooth contours from years of her grip, it would do the trick.

The power to find water was so sacred that Stebbs had lowered his voice when he spoke to her about it, even in private. Lynn would prefer to never speak of it at all, keeping Lucy’s gift in a quiet place where it would draw no attention. But Lucy had always reveled in the spasm of power that water sent toward her, crying out to her it was there and wanted to be found.

“Here,” she said. “It’s not very deep though.”

Ben pulled a flag from his bundle and jabbed it into the ground. “That’s good, right? Easier to get to.”

“Easier to get at, yeah, but if it’s shallow, it might not last long.” Lucy wandered off in another direction, letting her feet go, her mind drift while waiting for the water to talk to her. The heat was drawing her own moisture straight out of her skin, dotting her pores with beads of sweat. A rifle shot echoed across the flat plain and Lucy jumped, drops falling off her forehead and evaporating on the hot sand.

“Shit,” she said. “Scared me.”

Ben looked back at the city, the flags slung across his shoulders. “Your mom. She’s rather basic, isn’t she?”

“What do you mean?” Lucy asked, her sudden clench making the stick jump in her hands.

“That water?”

“The stick wants to hit you and I’m stopping it.”

Ben smiled, whether he thought she was funny or because he enjoyed getting under her skin she didn’t know. “I mean she’s one-sided. She wants her gun, and she wants to shoot things, and that seems to be about where her interests stop.”

“Well, she’s good at it,” Lynn said, repositioning the stick and walking away from Ben.

“You ask questions about the garden, and our people. You want to know how we manage, but all she wants to do is get her gun and move on.”

“Yes, she does,” Lucy agreed. The stick leapt in her hands, viciously jabbing downward, but she felt no rush of pride. “Here.”

Ben planted a flag, eyes still on Lucy. “What if she wants to go, and you don’t?”

“What about it?”

“Would you stay?”

“I don’t…” Lucy looked off into the distance at the blue mountains not unlike the ones Lynn had nearly died getting across, all because Lucy had asked her to. She dropped her stick and glared down at Ben, unsure how he could look so smug when he had to look up to meet her eye. “Lynn and I go together or we stay together. End of story.”

“That’s a shame.”

“What do you care?”

Ben dropped his armload of flags to the ground. “I wouldn’t say I care. It’s obvious you like it here and your mom doesn’t. Did you mean what you said about finding us a clean source of water and moving on?”

“Yes,” Lucy said, taking the bottle of water Ben handed to her from his backpack.

“Because that’s what she wants, or what you want?”

The odd-tasting water slid down her throat, coating her tongue with the residue she could never quite wash away. But it was water, and two weeks ago she would’ve licked puddles off the hot road to save her life.

“I don’t know,” Lucy said, handing the water back to Ben.

His smile was honest, and it nearly made his awkward face handsome. Lucy smiled back, unable to help herself. “You almost looked like your dad there for a second.”

Ben rolled his eyes. “Better than my mom.”

Lucy dried her palms on her jeans before taking the stick back up. “What’s she look like?”

“Bailey’s my mom.”

“Bailey? The nurse?”