Shale surged with hope. "It's goin' t'work its way over to the edge," he said, awed.
Mica gaped. "I thought they were dumb."
Noise filled Shale's ears. Water was roaring past, but the sound he heard was inside his head. Everything was muddled up, pressing in on him, making his brain ache. Later, he thought. I'll sort it all out later. "Let's meet it," he said.
"What?" Mica asked, not understanding.
"Let's meet it. Once it gets to the bank I reckon it won't be able t'climb up without help. It's too muddy."
Already the beast had moved across another two rows. It clung to a tree, resting, gathering strength as water tugged at its body. Raising its first three segments out of the water, it clasped the trunk with all its front legs. The great head turned to look at them, blurry black eyes gazing out above mouthparts that fitted together like the pieces of a puzzle.
"Oh dust, it's beautiful," Shale said. He pulled away from Mica, who looked at him as if he was daft, and ran to a spot further down the wash. "Down here, I think," he called back over his shoulder. "Come, we gotta try t'catch him and help him up the bank."
"We can't haul somethin' that large," Mica protested, but already the pede had plunged through the water away from the last of the trees, struggling with all its pairs of legs, thrashing even with its feelers in an attempt to close the gap to the edge. "It'll never make it!"
"Yes, he will."
Shale started to scramble along the lip of the bank, looking for a way down. The flood bucked and plunged past in muddy skeins, and the closer he came to it, the more disoriented he was. He lost sight of himself, became at one with the water, unable to distinguish where he began and the river ended. He stumbled and sat down hard, clutching at his head, and felt himself begin to slide into the wash.
Too much water, he thought. There's too much. And it won't stay still. If only it'd just stop so I can think.
As the myriapede drew near, he slipped further down the slope and his feet plunged into the flood where it gouged at the bank. The flow tugged at him, plucking powerfully at his ankles and calves. His senses exploded. The hugeness of the expanse of water overwhelmed him; terror made incoherent nonsense of his thoughts. There was nothing that distinguished him from that expanse. He was part of it, not a boy any more. He was just water, unshaped, without boundaries.
When something touched his face, sliding across his skin in jags, he focused on it. The pede; it was the pede's feeler reaching out to him. He grabbed it and fixed all his attention on the physical reality clutched in the solidness of his hand. The water receded from his mind, and the turbulence within him ebbed. The beast scrabbled against the bank, its feet churning up mud. Shale held tight. He slipped further into the water and struggled to dig his heels and his elbows into the mud of the bank. Terror returned as he realised he was about to be swept away. He lost his footing and swung out into the current. He tightened his hold on the feeler. As long as he had that, he could also hold on to what was real. He could keep the terror at bay.
Water washed over his head and instinctively he held his breath and closed his eyes. The feeler, caught in the flow now that it was weighed down by his body, floated alongside the pede. Shale bumped hard against the body segments. Wincing, his head broke the surface and he opened his eyes. The black shiny side of the pede rose above him, slippery and wet and impossibly high. It blocked his view of the bank and of Mica, but even over the sound of rushing water, he heard his brother screaming his name.
He shuddered with shock. The water wanted to enter his mind again, but this time he wouldn't let it. He grasped the feeler tight and scrutinised the pede. Mounting handles. It's got to have mounting handles somewhere. He could pull himself up.
Towards the head, he thought, and began to haul himself along the feeler in that direction. The current tugged at him, but he ignored its clutch. The pede wasn't moving. It's hooked itself 'gainst the bank, he thought.
When he saw the toehold slot carved into one of the segments, he knew he had the right place. He first hooked his fingers, then a foot, into the slot and levered himself up out of the water far enough to reach for a mounting handle. He hung there for a moment, then clambered up, slipping and sliding, until he was on the top of the beast where the saddle had been.
His brother stared at him from the top of the bank. Mica was wet and covered in mud-and he held the pede reins in his hand. He was leaning back to keep them taut, braced against the weight of the pede in his effort to stop the animal drifting away. He swore at Shale, a nonstop string of obscenities.
Shale grinned sheepishly back.
The pede's feet found purchase on the floor of the wash as the water level dropped, and with Mica hauling on the reins it began to edge its way upwards. It dug the points of its feet into the earthen slope and finally humped its way over the top edge, Shale riding triumphantly on its back.
I'm a caravanner, he thought. A pedeman ridin' me own beast 'cross the plains.
For a precious never-to-be-forgotten moment of make-believe, he was free of the settle, independent of his father, unencumbered by poverty. He was Shale of the Gibber, leader of men, emerging victorious from an adventure.
As he slid reluctantly to the ground, reality returning, Mica punched him on the shoulder none too softly. "I'll kill you if you do anything so pissing stupid ever again, you sandwitted wash-rat!" he cried. "You could have died in there!"
Shale blinked. "Died?" He hadn't been afraid of dying. He'd been afraid of losing himself. Of not knowing what or who he was. Of becoming part of a larger whole, of being like a jug of amber spilled into a cistern until there was nothing of the original recognisable.
"Yeah," said Mica. "Don't you know you can suffocate in water? Like chokin', 'cause there's no air."
Shale furrowed his brow, thinking about that. He didn't remember choking. He didn't remember not being able to breathe. His fear had been that he was melting, disappearing as a person. He wanted to explain, but didn't think there were any words he could find that would make Mica understand.
Beside him, the pede shivered with a clatter of segment plates, sending water streaming out of the joints. Then it reached out a feeler and touched the two boys one after the other, running the tip over their faces and bodies as if it needed to assess them, and remember.
Tentatively, Shale reached out and touched the animal's head. For a moment it regarded him, then it slid its first segment down over its eyes, tucked its feelers back along its body and carefully rolled itself up into a tight ball, legs inside. The edges of the segments were embroidered with a lace fringe, tattered now, and several of the segments themselves were carved-a common custom among the Red Quarter people. They sculptured their personal myriapedes with pictures of all their journeys, so that the pede carried stories with it wherever it went, commemorating both its life and the life of its driver.
"Reckon it's gone to sleep," Mica said, after it had stayed that way for a while.
"I'm never goin' to eat pede again," Shale announced reverently.
Mica gaped at him, baffled, as if unable to see what had prompted that statement. About to ask, he was diverted by the indescribable sound of earth on the move. On the other side of the wash, where the squatter shanties huddled, the bank had been undermined by water. Shocked, helpless, they watched several houses-including their own-slip down the wall of the wash and vanish into the water.
"Ma," Mica whispered. "I'll be shrivelled, I hope Ma wasn't inside."
Shale's heart clenched painfully. He scanned the figures rushing to and fro in front of the remaining houses. "Nah," he said, relief loosening the tightness in his chest. "Look, that's her there. No one else has a belly like that."