Marta Mitchell's Arc

Chapter 3 of 7

By the third afternoon, the wind started pulling at Marta's sleeves. She had walked east of the truck den until the bones were out of sight, then cut south again. Her canteen sloshed thin against her hip. She pulled the glass droplet the old man used as a gauge from her pocket and held it to the light. The water inside it sat below the painted line. Half a day, maybe less. She needed a well before dark. The wind rose while she walked. Sand began to skim across the flats in low ribbons. She tied her scarf over her mouth and squinted south. A dark shape sat in the distance, square and crooked against the rising haze. A hut, patched from scrap wood and bent metal. Past it, the ground dipped around a low stone ring. A well. She broke into a stiff jog. The storm caught her halfway. The sky turned the color of rust. Sand hit her cheeks like grit thrown from a fist. She lost the hut, found it again, lost it. She kept her left shoulder to the wind and pushed. When her hand slapped wood, she clawed along the wall to the door and shoved inside. The hut shook. Sand hissed through every seam. She crouched against the inner wall and waited, counting breaths, until the worst of it passed and the light through the cracks went pale brown instead of red. Then she searched. A shelf held three rusted cans and a coil of wire. A tin cup. No water. Under a bench she found a folded paper map with a hand-drawn arrow pointing at the stone ring outside. Someone had written DRY across it in pencil. She read it twice. She went out anyway. The wind had dropped to a steady push. The well stood ten paces from the hut, its rim crumbled, green moss clinging to the wet-looking stones. She leaned over. The shaft smelled of old mud. A shallow puddle gleamed at the bottom, brown, ringed with scum. She lowered the tin cup on the wire and drew it up. The water inside was the color of weak tea. She sniffed it. Rot. She poured it out and watched it darken the sand. The pencil had not lied. Marta sat down with her back to the well. She took out the glass droplet and looked at the line again. She had what she had. She tipped a careful swallow into her mouth, capped the canteen, and stood. The hut would hold against the next gust. The map on the bench had other marks on it, further south, that she had not read yet. She went back inside to read them before the light went.