Ninka Evertrue's Arc

Chapter 12 of 29

From above, Ninka watched her father's car turn off the ridge and roll down the dirt track toward the ring's edge. He drove slow. He was reading the land the way she read a page. Her body lay in the hammock a mile below. The spider sat on her chest. Luna sat by the door with a knife across her knees. Ninka had no plan. She had minutes. She pushed closer. Her father's window was down. On the passenger seat sat a cloth doll with crude stitches and dangling threads, the face blank where a face should be. She had seen it before, in visions when she was small. It was how he found people. He would press a thumb to it and a face would rise up on the cloth, and then he would drive to that face. Right now the doll was empty. He had not fixed her yet. He was hunting the ring by feel. She circled the car and felt for a weak place in him. She found one. A tired spot behind his eyes. He had been driving all night. If she pushed there the way she pushed him out of the vision when she was seven, she might buy an hour. Maybe less. It would cost her the rest of her gift. She would wake up empty and blind. She lined up to push. A light moved on the ground below her. Not the car. A person, walking up the track from the low side, a backpack on one shoulder. Tall. Thin. Locs braided with feathers and shells. He stopped when he saw the car and stepped off the road into the grass. She dropped down beside him without thinking. He could not see her, but his head turned anyway. He whispered, "Somebody's here." "Please," she said, though she had no mouth. "Please hear me." He set the pack down. He pulled a small tin from his vest and opened it. Salt, and something dark. He poured a line across the track in front of the car. His hands were steady. He did not look scared. He looked like a boy fixing a hurt plant. The car reached the line and stopped. The engine kept running. Her father tried the door. The door did not open. He hit the wheel. The doll on the seat twitched and went blank again. The boy on the road looked up toward where Ninka hovered. "Whoever you are," he said, "go back to your body. I'll hold him till sunrise." She went. She fell into the hammock hard. Her eyes opened. Luna was already standing. "There's someone at the ring," Ninka said. "He stopped my father. Get the door." Her gift was gone. Her father was pinned. A stranger with light hands stood between them, and dawn was an hour away.