Parched by Melanie Crowder Read Free Book Online

sees boy, runs to me, eyes, scent, all, fear-fear-FEAR. Shakes like isundu leaf. Points finger, yells, “Attack! Nandi—attack!”
    Buttu jumps up, snarls, tail up.
    I show teeth.
    Buttu lies down, belly to dirt. Bheka whines. Eyes to me, eyes to girl. Eyes to me, eyes to boy.
    â€œNandi,” Sarel-girl whines like pup.
    Boy stumble-walks close. Sour scent, blood scent. Legs thin, wobble like onogola bird.
    I stand, walk to Sarel-girl. Look into her fear-fear-FEAR. Walk to boy. Sniff blood at hands, blood at feet. Circle. I stand in front of boy, show to pack.
    Bird-legs-boy with water song has come.

22
Sarel
    Sarel balled her fists, the breath stuck in her lungs. Nandi stood in front of the boy, the coarse hair on her back nearly reaching his ribs. Sarel knew that stance, the protective set of Nandi’s shoulders.
    The boy just stood there, arms hanging limp at his sides. Wide brown eyes darted around the pack of dogs that surrounded Sarel. His skin showed through caked dirt like fissures in the earth. He said something—something about water. And then he swayed and crumpled to the ground in a puff of dirt.
    Sarel stared at the heap of skin stretched over too-thin bones. She knew that sound—the sound a body made collapsing in a heap, the dust settling over it, the life slipping away from it. She knew the silence that followed.
    Nandi stood over the boy. She sniffed his face and licked his sores, first at the wrists and then the ankles. She circled the body once, her tail swinging low.
    â€œNandi,” Sarel pleaded.
    Nandi settled onto her haunches beside the boy, lowering her chest slowly to the ground. She watched Sarel under heavy lids.
    Sarel spun on her heel, kicking the pebbles out of the path on her way to the kennel. Chakide followed behind her, nipping at her heels and chasing down the bouncing pebbles, only to spit them out again, lick and sneeze the dust off his muzzle. Sarel pulled out her knife and sliced down the center of her sleeping mat. She stared, hands on hips, at the two mats lying side by side on the dirt.
    Sarel tucked a toe under the boy’s half and kicked it to the opposite corner of the kennel.
    Stalking over to where the boy lay, she grabbed him under his arms and stumbled backwards, his heels drawing twin lines in the dirt. The skin over the boy’s ribs pulled tight and his shorts slid down, revealing sharp hipbones that jutted out to each side. Sarel squatted down and rolled him off her, wrinkling her nose at the stench.
    She lurched to her feet, her eyes roving from the boy’s festering sores to his bony elbows and knees. His lips were cracked and bleeding, and his eyelids hung slack, the whites of his eyes yellowed and tacky. His pulse raced beneath paper-thin skin and his legs twitched as if he were still stumbling across the desert.
    What was he running from?
    The sores on his wrists and ankles looked like the marks a collar might leave, if it was bound too tight. Sarel’s father had told her of people who collared their dogs, chaining them to one place so long that sores sprung up on the skin.
    Who would do that to a little boy? A shiver rippled across her shoulders.
    Who
was he running from?
    The dogs swiveled, all at once, ears pricked, eyes fixed on a jumble of rocks just past the homestead. A chittering alarm sounded, and the small hairs at the back of Sarel’s neck stood on end. Seconds later, a dark blur dove out of the clouds. The raptor screamed, then banked away from the rocks, a wriggling dassie rat trapped between its claws.
    Sarel’s hands were still clenched as she turned back to the boy lying at her feet. “I don’t know why you want to keep him.”
    Nandi ducked her head under Sarel’s fingers, twisting her neck to look up into the girl’s face.
    Sarel felt the resistance leave her body in a long breath. The boy would need water, and food. Not that they had any to spare.
    Sarel opened her woven grass