As usual, a storm is coming, and a fierce one at that.
“Patience,” my mother says, and then leaps forward, the half-smile gone, her face hard with concentration. Her blade cuts toward me.
Clang!
I whip my own sword from the sand and narrowly manage to deflect hers away. Not that she would’ve hit me. But she would’ve pressed the point tight against my skin and lectured me on always being prepared, never letting my guard down, or any number of her favorite “Rider Lessons.”
For a while we forget about the Soaker ships, forget about the cheers erupting from them as they passed, forget about everything but our own bodies, moving, slashing, blocking, fighting, preparing for…for what?
Finally, my mother puts down her blade.
“A storm is coming,” she says, but I don’t think she means rain and lightning and thunder.
Though we both know we should run for shelter, for the camp, we sit on the sand for a while, just watching the gulls play on the gusting wind. Seems the storm isn’t close enough to scare them yet, and the birds are usually right.
“I hate them,” I say to the ocean.
“Who? The birds?” my mother says, and I can feel her smile on my face. She can be intense during training, but when she’s just my mother again she’s different.
“The Soakers,” I say, looking at her quickly, matching her brown stare.
She knows why, so she doesn’t ask, doesn’t say anything, just throws an arm around me and pulls me into her chest. Her heart beats firmly against my face.
“Don’t be so quick to grow up,” she finally says.
I pull away, embarrassed that I gave myself the comfort of my mother’s tenderness. I’m not a child anymore. “I’ll be a Rider soon,” I say, frowning. “Is Father trying to delay it?”
“Your father loves you,” she says, “it would do you well to remember that.”
“Father’s a coward,” I say before I can stop myself. But why should I stop myself? The words are on my tongue most of the time, why shouldn’t I speak them? They’re the truth, after all.
“Your father’s a hero,” Mother says.
Something red and hot and sizzling with energy tears through me, like lightning striking a lonely tree. I shudder, breathing heavy, trying to control my anger like Mother has taught me. I want to swallow the words in my mouth, if only because I love my father, despite his weaknesses, despite all his wise words and no action, despite the coward that he is. But I can’t, because of Sorrow. Because of Sadness. Because of Loss.
Because of Paw. My brother. My lost brother.
“He let him die,” I say through tight lips.
“He tried to save him,” Mother says.
“He was too weak.” My jaw aches from grinding my teeth.
“No, you don’t remember. You were too little.”
I slam my eyes shut, squeeze them so hard, like maybe if I push enough, I can force my head to remember. I want to ask her to tell me, to tell me what happened that day, the cold, hard truth, but I won’t. I can’t. I have to remember it on my own so I know it’s real. Plus, I’ve asked before, and she wouldn’t talk about it. Why won’t she talk about it?
Faint images flash in the darkness behind my eyelids. A cold, rainy night. From the little my mother has told me, I was three, Paw was four.
I remember. I remember.
We are playing together, Paw and me. Some silly game with stones and sticks. He tosses a stone, clapping and laughing when it bounces and rests on the stick. I frown, stamp my little foot. “No fair,” I say, even though I know it was perfectly fair.
I throw my own stone, but it clatters away from the stick. “I win again!” Paw yells, his arms over his head in victory.
I cross my arms and refuse to look at him, but then he’s there, with an arm around my shoulders, saying, “You’ll win the next one,” and I can’t stop the smile, because Paw is the best big brother I could ever ask for, and because I love him, and want to be just like him, and because we’re both going to be Riders one day…
Screams in the distance. Angry screams. Scared screams. Violent screams.
Torches surround us, flying through the air, carried by dark bodies. Riders, rushing to arms, to get their horses.
But it’s too late. Too late.
The Soakers are upon us with swords and knives and clubs, somehow managing to sneak in, already in the camp, slashing, cutting, killing…
The memory starts to fade, like it always does at this point, but I squeeze my eyes shut tighter still, smack the heel of my hand against my forehead, forcing it to show me—
—Paw’s death.
I have to know why I survived and he didn’t.
Thunder crashes, heavy and loud and close.
“We have to go,” Mother says and my eyes flash open. When I look up, the gulls are gone.
~~~
We’re drenched by the time we reach our tent. I duck inside first, with Mother right behind me. Father looks up from a piece of wood bark, where he’s writing something with a piece of chalkstone. We’ve startled him.
Thunder booms overhead and his eyes flick upward, as if the tent might cave in on top of us. As if he’s just realized there’s a massive storm.
I know what that means. He’s been gone. Not physically, like how Mother and I were down at the edge of the ocean, but mentally, spiritually—gone. Off in his own world, doing his Wisdom Man thing, discovering our fates by studying grains of sand in a water skin or herbs in a clay teapot. In other words, doing nothing, wasting time—while we trained for the next battle with the Soakers.
“A bad one?” Father says when we sit next to each other on a blanket, drying off.
Mother shrugs. “No worse than the last one.”
As the name suggests, storm country is a place where nature fights against itself constantly, warring in the skies—not with swords and shields and horses and ships, but with lightning and dark clouds and—
Boom!
Another heavy clap of thunder shatters the brief silence, momentarily drowning out the drum of the rainfall on the tent. Father twitches slightly. Mother and I stay as still as stones.
“What are you doing, Father?” I ask, motioning to the marked tree bark.
His eyes meet mine and I see the fear in them as they widen. “I had a vision,” he says, and it’s all I can do not to laugh out loud. He’s always having visions, but none of them ever seem to make any sense. Just because one Man of Wisdom said he would become a Man of Wisdom when he was a baby doesn’t mean it’s true.
“Tell us,” Mother says seriously. I shoot her a frown, which she returns with a clear warning on her parted lips: don’t.
I turn back to my father, sigh, say, “Yes, tell us, Father.”
“It involves the Soakers,” he says, which isn’t at all what I expected, and suddenly I find myself inching forward, lifting my head, interested—actually interested—in what my father has to say.
“Are we going to fight them? Are we going to kill them?” I ask eagerly, forgetting that his visions don’t mean a damn thing.
Now it’s his turn to frown, turning our happy family gathering into a frown party. “Sadie,” he says, and I can feel the lecture in the way he speaks my name. “Our existence is not all about killing Soakers. Sometimes the more important choice is not when to take a life, but when to spare one.”
Spare one? Is he talking about the Soakers? Because I refuse to offer any of the wave riders my pity. “Is that the choice they made when they killed Paw?” I say, my voice rising.