Cobalt Groundfoot counted the empty nests and knew the dry season would finish what the drought had started. Five troops of indigo monkeys once shared this valley. Now their sleeping grounds sat cold and scattered, each family clinging to its own dwindling water. If no matriarch pulled them together before the streams failed, they would drift apart for good. Cobalt was no matriarch. No male could be. So he set out to find the one monkey left who might rally them all. He climbed the ridge to the old fig tree where the last silverback grandmother kept her camp. Kala Silverback had led three troops in her prime. Cobalt had trusted her since he was small, when she pulled him from a flooded gully by his wrist. He found her hunched over a fire, chewing bark, her gray mane wild in the wind. "The valley is splitting apart," Cobalt said. "You could still gather them. They remember you." Kala did not look up. She spat the bark into the flames. "They remember a strong back and quick hands. I have neither now." She lifted one arm. It shook badly, and she let it fall. "I cannot climb to the high nests. I cannot lead a march to new water. A matriarch who falls behind gets no troop. She gets a burial." "There is no one else," Cobalt said. "Then there is no one." She turned her sharp eyes on him. "Wanting me to be strong will not make it so, Cobalt. I taught you better than to beg." Cobalt argued. He listed the empty nests. He named the families already wandering south alone. Kala only shook her head and pulled her worn shawl tight. When the fire burned low, she lay down and closed her eyes. The conversation was over. Cobalt walked back down the ridge in the dark. The wind carried the smell of dust off the dry hills. He had come for a leader and left with a refusal. The one monkey who could unite the troops had told him plainly that she could not. Halfway down, he stopped by a bank of tall grasses. Their blades caught the last light in bands of amber, coral, and rose, still bright where everything else had gone brown. He had passed them a hundred times. Now he saw what they meant. These grasses grew where water still ran underground. A new thought took hold of him. Kala said a matriarch must lead a march to new water. But what if he found the water first? What if he brought the troops proof, a place they could survive together, before he asked anyone to follow anyone? Cobalt broke off a fistful of the bright reeds. Kala had refused to be their leader. Fine. He would give the scattered troops a reason to gather that did not need one.