Zia Sunroot's Arc

Chapter 13 of 17

By dusk, the fire is small and the bearded dragon sleeps on Teo's pack. Zia sits with the wooden horse in her lap. Her mind is not here. It is back at the southern oasis, where no one is turning the water or speaking to the reeds. She has been gone too many days. Something there is starting to thirst. "I have to send help back," she says. "Before morning. Or I will return to dry stalks and dead things." Teo watches her open her satchel. She lays out what she carries: a teardrop of agate she pulled from the pool before leaving, still wet, still glowing soft blue and green. A handful of cactus blossoms. Reeds. A scrap of her own hair. She works fast. She shapes a tall, slim figure with flowers at the crown and vines down the long body. She presses the agate into its chest. The figure stands. It blinks once with painted eyes. "Go home," Zia says. "Tend the pool. Keep them alive until I come back." The dryad bows its green head and walks into the dark, soundless, carrying the glow of the water inside it. Zia sits down hard. She has never sent one of her made things away from her on purpose. Every creature she built stayed. This one will not. She pulls Jarek's unfinished tortoise from her pack and turns it in her hands. She carves through the night while Teo sleeps. By dawn the shell is whole, set with chips of quartz and a sliver of lodestone at the throat. She sets the tortoise on the sand facing south. "You too," she says. "Find the oasis. Walk slow. Watch." The tortoise lifts its blind head and begins. She watches both shapes shrink into the pale morning. The oasis is no longer only hers. She has given pieces of it away to keep it. When she turns back to the fire, Teo is awake, watching her with her sister's eyes. "Now," she says, "we go west." Her hands are empty. The crater is closer than it was yesterday.