He wished for a river. He had never seen one, but Nodin said the chief had described it to him once; a river was a well so wide and deep that it split the land in half, with so much water that beasts lived inside it, and people made containers in the shapes of leaves to sit on top. "What for?" he'd asked, only half listening. They were shirtless in the heat at the worst time of year; Ezhno was irritable because he was almost a man and no longer permitted to be naked, and if only Nodin's father had given that goat to Chahliye as an offering instead of eating it, maybe she wouldn't be spiting them with this miserable weather. What fool would try to scam a goddess? Nodin simply shook his head and smiled. "I don't know. I'd like to visit one someday. I hear they're blue, like a clear sky."
Ezhno needed a river.
The cut on his side burned. Several days old, it was bleeding, the flow sluggish, nothing life-threatening. He reached for it absently and pressed a thumb into the mess until it started up again. He heard something that sounded like a fragment of a laugh from a thousand miles away, and when he touched his hand to his mouth he realised it was himself.
In the desert, where water was its own religion and rationed sparingly, you only drank when the thirst became unbearable. Even plates were washed with sand. They had not seen rain in months. But if he had a river, then- If he had a river, then Nodin could-
Other people had mothers to talk them down. Ezhno had Nodin. Except now he didn't. Now he-
He palmed his chest, feeling for the wound that must be there. Scabs tore and reopened. Breath whistled out of him. It must be a hole, because there was a wind blowing through where much of him used to be that hurt more than the chief's firebrand or the despair in his eyes. His nose was clotted with the smell of dead flesh. He could not tell if the flies were real, and his lashes, gummied with blood; was that real too?
...Maar's son. He laughed again. "If that's true, then undo the damage you did," he whispered.
When sleep still had him in the early hours, he'd held out his hand in midair before he remembered, and slowly clenched it into a fist. "Help me, Ehane, or strike me down where I stand."
And then the priest came.
(( Chahliye is a made-up goddess, akin to Mother Earth, believed to govern nature and fertility. Ehane means 'father.' ))
