When she opened her eyes, she was in the same place, with the same storm bearing down on her. No one was coming for her. She had to get herself out of this mess.
Okay, Silver. What would a dragon rider do? She wiped her face with her scarf, scratching the delicate skin of her eyelids, and winced. A dragon rider wouldn’t be here in the first place. Nowhere for a dragon to swim.
She laughed at her own train of thought. When she got home—if she got home—she would become the model daughter. She would take up jewelry making with great passion. She would burn all her charts and drawings. She would never get in trouble again.
Silver put one foot in front of the next. She counted.
One. Two. Three. She counted to one hundred, then to one thousand. The dunes never came back into sight. Silver’s legs turned to jelly. She didn’t dare open her mouth, for fear the sand would fill her entire body.
She fell, letting the soft, cool sand envelop her like a blanket. Her eyes drifted closed.
DREAMS BEFORE DYING were the loveliest things.
In Silver’s, she was weightless. Her aching muscles held up hollow bones; her clumsy limbs were tucked in close to her body, as though she were being held and rocked gently. The last time she remembered being rocked was by her mother. Then, Sersha had sung to her ancient ballads of desert lore. In the melody Silver heard in her dream, it was the sand itself that sang, rolling and lifting and fading its melancholy notes into her ears.
Silver hummed along with the desert song.
Moisture trickled down her throat. A succulent tea, but not the same that she’d always known. This one was fruitier. Dozens of layers of flavors and very fragrant. Cool.
She coughed.
Water was everywhere. In her face, her eyes, up her nose. Silver sat, and hacked up the contents of her lungs. How could she be drowning when she was buried alive in the desert? She was scared to take a breath, for fear she’d take in only sand, not air. Her head pounded, and her chest was on fire.
A familiar voice. “Breathe, girl.”
“I can’t!”
“Breathe.”
Silver squeezed her eyes shut even tighter. Her body wouldn’t listen to her brain. Without her permission, her lungs sucked in.
Air. Not sand. Sweet, sweet air. Silver took another greedy breath, then another.
She dared to open her eyes, but she couldn’t see anything. They stung like they’d been pricked by Flying Black-Eyed Scorpions.
“Here.” A hand tipped Silver’s head back. A wash of water went over her face, followed by a soft cloth. This was repeated several times, until the sand was flushed from Silver’s eyes and nose and mouth and ears.
“Is that better?”
Silver sat up again. Opened her eyes. Saw the sparkle of a pale-blue gemstone before it disappeared behind cloth again. Nebekker. Nebekker was out here?
“What are you doing over the dunes?” Silver said.
“I should have left you for the scorpions.” The old woman frowned at her. “What kind of common sense have you misplaced? I always thought highly of your parents, but if they let you out wandering in this weather, I’m changing my mind.”
“They don’t know I’m here.” Silver peered at the sky, bright with the first blush of morning. The world had settled. The storm was over. “At least, they didn’t know. They probably do now. I’m supposed to be in my room.”
Suddenly, a roar of anger filled Silver’s ears.
“You left!” she said, accusing Nebekker. “When I needed you most.” Silver leaped to her feet, swayed, and fell back again. That was when she realized she wasn’t in the open desert anymore. Before her, narrow trees rose into the sky. Slivers of blue appeared between their trunks. It was an oasis.
Silver had only heard of them. The air was as salty as ever, but it was damp, too. When she strained her ears, she could hear water—dripping and flowing—from somewhere in the distance.
The marvel of the oasis almost softened Silver’s heart, but her anger was too great.
“You disappeared, and I had to finish the suit by myself,” Silver cried. “Brajon tried to help, but it was a disaster. Sagittaria Wonder laughed at me. She said … She said…” But Silver couldn’t bear to repeat what Sagittaria had said to her.
Nebekker’s frown deepened. “I’m sorry it didn’t go well with Sagittaria. But you weren’t the only one who needed me.”
Silver bit back tears. “Who needed you more than I did? There’s no one else out here.”
Nebekker’s lips twitched. “It’s a bit complicated. There is someone. Two someones, actually. But I’d rather you didn’t … Oh, too late for that.”
Nebekker’s gaze focused on something in the sky. Silver followed its direction and saw a black dot in the distance. As she watched, the dot grew larger … and longer.
“What is it?” Silver whispered.
“My great secret,” Nebekker said. She stood as the thing in the sky approached.
ELEVEN
What Silver thought at first must have been a very large hawk turned out to be nothing of the sort. It was blue. The blue she’d always imagined the oceans were. Its wings and tail were tipped with white. On a day when fluffy white clouds danced in the sky, the creature would be perfectly camouflaged. When it disappeared in the center of the trees with a splash, Silver got to her feet and began running, forgetting her aches and pains completely.
“Wait,” Nebekker called, lifting her flowing trousers and running after Silver.
Did I see…? Is it really…?
Silver burst through the greenery surrounding the lake.
“Hoowawrrrrr!” The roar nearly lifted Silver off her feet. A head almost as big as her bedroom greeted her. Its mouth opened wide to show off a double row of razor-sharp teeth and a long, slithering pink tongue. Its black eyes glinted.
Silver scrambled backward. The creature shook its head, spraying water everywhere. It stepped forward, its sinewy muscles rolling under scaled skin. It licked its lips. Opened its mouth to roar again.
“Kirja,” Nebekker said sternly. “Knock that off!”
The creature—Kirja—immediately rolled to its back. Its tongue lolled out the side of its mouth, and it panted.
Silver’s jaw fell nearly to her feet. She could hardly breathe. Blood rushed to her ears, and her hands shook.
Nebekker put her palms on the creature’s belly and rubbed quickly. Kirja’s stubby legs shook happily in all directions.
“You’re too much a baby to be a—” Nebekker looked at Silver sharply. “Never mind. Kirja, this is Silver. She’s all right. You don’t have to eat her. Silver, this is Kirja. My Aquinder.”
Silver reached out an arm, then pulled it back again.
Belief. It was a hard thing to find. In some tiny corner of her heart, Silver had always known Aquinder were real. But seeing one shocked her.
She thought back to looking at the night sky with Brajon and seeing a moving thing that blocked strips of stars. Could it have been…?
In that moment, everything felt like an impossibility. An Aquinder, living in the vast desert, belonging to an old woman. Maybe Silver had died. Maybe this was all just a dream.
Then again, the Aquinder’s breath had been pretty stinky. It would have had nicer breath if this were all her dream.
“You can touch her,” Nebekker said, beckoning Silver closer. “She won’t hurt you.”