Format: Hardcover, 432 pages
Release Date: April 20, 2021
Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers
Source: Publisher
Genre: Young Adult Fiction / Science Fiction / Apocalyptic & Post-Apocalyptic
Delta of Dead River sets out to rescue her family from a ruthless
dictator rising to power in the Wastes and discovers a secret that will
reshape her world in this post-apocalyptic Western mashup for fans of Mad
Max and Gunslinger Girl.
Delta of Dead River has
always been told to hide her back, where a map is branded on her skin to
a rumored paradise called the Verdant. In a wasteland plagued by dust
squalls, geomagnetic storms, and solar flares, many would kill for
it—even if no one can read it. So when raiders sent by a man known as
the General attack her village, Delta suspects he is searching for her.
Delta
sets out to rescue her family but quickly learns that in the Wastes no
one can be trusted—perhaps not even her childhood friend, Asher, who has
been missing for nearly a decade. If Delta can trust Asher, she just
might decode the map and trade evidence of the Verdant to the General
for her family. What Delta doesn’t count on is what waits at the
Verdant: a long-forgotten secret that will shake the foundation of her
entire world.
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Chapter One
There’s a storm coming.
I can see it out across the plains, a cloud of haze along the
horizon that’s bearing down on Dead River like a blanket of shadow. It’s
a good four clicks off, maybe more, but dust storms move fast. Already
the threadbare flags on the huts flap wildly.
I hurry on to the
lake. “Big storm to the west,” I call out to Old Fang. The wrinkled
trapper is kneeling on the dock beside the dam, checking my traps for
frogs or fish, not that we get many of either anymore. Dead River’s been
slowly dying for years, the lake drying up and the banks growing wider.
I’ve had to extend the dock several times just so the traps can still
sit in water.
Old Fang searches out the storm. The churning
clouds crackle and glint with lightning. “That’s the second one in ten
days. We can’t get a break.”
It’s not untrue. “Any catch?”
He shakes his head. We should have moved in the winter, but now the
endless stink of summer is ahead of us. There’s no chance of a
pilgrimage for at least four moons, not unless we want to die in the
heat, and even the damn frogs have had the sense to move on. Of course,
frogs can’t read the stars, and I know we need to have faith. The night
skies warn of dangers ahead, of dry land and dust-caked tongues, but if
we just sit tight, they also promise a bounty. Flowing rivers. Green
land. There’s to be a rebirth. I’ve seen it with my own eyes, and even
before I could see it, there was Indie pointing it out to me in her
sisterly way, and before she could read the stars, there was Ma,
pointing it out to both of us. Still, it’s hard to keep believing the
sky when every sign here, on the land, shows nothing but death and
decay.
Old Fang squints at the empty buckets I’m carrying,
secured to the piece of driftwood I’ve got propped on my shoulders. “You
grab the haul,” he grunts. “I’ll rally the pack.”
From back
near camp, Ma’s voice is audible on the wind. She’s already shouting
orders to our people. I also catch the twinkle of my bone chimes, and
once those start singing, it means a hell of a storm. Ma’ll need all the
help she can get.
I give Old Fang a quick nod, and he hobbles
off. I pull my scarf over my mouth and nose, looping the loose end over
my head to protect some of my hair. Then I scamper down the bank and
sprint across the cracked, parched lakebed, the buckets clipping my hips
as I run. Used to be I could grab a haul right from the bank. The river
might have always been “dead,” flowing only in the spring or after a
rare rain, but the lake was a beauty when we first arrived. Now I have
to go out a ways to reach water. Not even the dam helps much anymore.
The hard earth becomes damp dirt underfoot, then sticky mud, then
shallows. I trudge out to my shins and throw down the buckets, listening
to the glorious sound of water gurgling into their depths before I
heave them back out. The flags along the dam are whipping like mad now,
and the hazy cloud to the west is looking more like a wall of dust.
“Rot,” I mutter. I can’t run with the buckets full, but I’ve
perfected a straight-legged scuttle over the years, and I start back as
fast as I can.
Once I’m up the bank, I can see the huts
clearly. Our pack is scrambling—pulling scrub-woven blankets over the
struggling crop, yanking clean clothes from the lines, ushering our four
goats and lone mule into the stable, and tying down sheets of scrap
metal to shield the animals from the worst of the dust. Flint was
supposed to bring fresh meat soon—jackrabbit, he’d promised—but the
trader’s not going to make it in this storm.
The wind picks up,
pushing at my back. Instinctively I angle my head down, wishing for my
goggles. They go everywhere with me and are a prime good pair. Real Old
World tech, nothing like the cheap, slapdash ones the traders carry that
are made of glass and fraying binds. Mine fit true, practically
adhering to my face and blocking out all debris, and though the eyepiece
can fog like glass, it won’t crack or break like the ones the traders
peddle. I’m not sure what sort of magic they’re carved from. The leather
head strap’s failing for the first time in all the years I’ve owned my
pair, and I started patching it this morning. Should have waited until
sundown and repaired them from my bed mat. It’s not worth going anywhere
without them during the day. You never know when a storm might hit, and
here I am without them, having dropped them on the table, half mended,
as I raced for the buckets when the wind kicked up.
Squinting
through the dust, I can tell most of our pack has retreated to the
safety of their huts. Old Fang is barking orders at his granddaughter,
Pewter. “Just leave it,” he shouts from the mouth of his home. At barely
thirteen, Pewter’s no match for the heavy sheet of scrap metal she’s
trying to use to smother the central bonfire. “The dust’ll see to it.”
True, but there’s always a chance the wind will knock embers into a
hut first, and then the scrub and straw-packed roof would be ablaze in
minutes.
Pewter’s eyes cut across the camp to me, my buckets.
Water would kill the flames instantly, but it’s too precious to waste. I
give her a curt nod, telling her I agree with Old Fang. She leaves the
scrap metal flopped over the bonfire and runs for her grandfather. I
watch her long braid duck past him, and then he’s inside too, lowering
the blanket across the hut’s doorway and cinching it tight.
“Delta!” Ma is waiting in the mouth of the place we call home, waving her arms feverishly.
Water sloshes down my side as the strengthening wind batters my
frame and rubble pelts my back. I’m nearly to the hut when a crack of
lightning strikes the scrap metal Pewter had been struggling with.
Sparks fly. I flinch with shock, lose my footing. My knees hit earth,
and I reach out instinctively to stop my fall. That’s all it takes. With
the weight of the buckets off kilter, one of them plummets and hits the
ground. I lose the other trying to save the first.
The greedy soil soaks up the water.
“No.” My hands fly over the damp dirt, patting, slapping, as if I can will the water back into the bucket.
“Delta!” my mother yells again.
I scramble to my feet, grab the empty buckets, and stagger the
last few strides to our hut. Ma grabs my arm and hauls me inside.
“Right foolish of you,” she scolds. “What good would water do when we can’t even boil it under the hold?”
“The lake’s cleanish. Some water sounded better than none.”
“We’ve got plenty of purified water stored.”
“Last I checked, we had four jars.”
“It’s enough.”
“Not if the storm lasts more than a day, and with Indie being pregnant, I fig—”
“Delta!” There’s a crease in her brow, an edge of fire in her
tone. I suck my bottom lip to keep myself from saying any more, and I
taste dirt. “Just get under with your sister.”
I leave her to
securing the door and head into the cellar, which isn’t much more than a
crawlspace. We’ll spend the next few hours—maybe even days—hunched to
half-height beneath the hut, old sheets pinned overhead to keep rubble
and dust from falling on us. Only thing this cellar is good for is
storage and sleeping. It’s cool, this far into the earth. I especially
don’t mind it on summer evenings. But being stuck down here when you’re
not sure when you can go back up is a kind of torture.
At the
bottom of the wooden steps, I find Indie reclining on her mat, the curve
of her belly heaving as she breathes. “Thanks for trying with the
water,” she says. “It was kind of you.”
“It was foolish,” Ma
repeats, coming down the steps behind me and yanking the door shut. The
cellar is swallowed in darkness until Indie gets a candle going with the
flint.
Overhead, the storm front crashes into the hut with a
howl. Dust filters through the door, and pebbles gather in the hanging
ceiling sheets with soft pfffits. Someday, one of these storms is
going to cause the hut to collapse on us, or maybe just last so long
that we suffocate in the cramped, clouded air.
Rotten place. Rotten weather. Rotten land.
We need to move.
We can’t move.
Like always, there’s no good answer.
Ma pulls our jars of water from the shelves—bottled just yesterday
after boiling—and passes them out. One for me, one for her, and two for
Indie. Skies damn her for getting pregnant. It’s one thing to want a
romp and another to do it when the window’s not right. And with Clay, of
all people. That trader couldn’t keep his mouth shut if his life
depended on it, and half of what he says is a farce. I bet he jawed her
ear off even during the act.
Curse him and Indie. The
pack doesn’t need another mouth to feed. A fresh set of hands, sure, but
the babe won’t be any real help for at least five years, probably more.
I take a tiny swig of water—just enough to clean the dust from my
lips—then screw the lid on, marveling at how it fits perfectly, even
after all these years. I spend a bit of time hobbling together
inventions for our pack—like the lake trap or bone chimes—and I can’t
even guess at how you’d make these jars and their locking lids. I could
say that about all Old World tech, though.
“Did you talk to Astra yet?” I ask as Ma settles onto her mat.
She breathes out a tired sigh. “It won’t help.”
“If anyone can change Old Fang’s mind, it’s her. She’s his niece.”
Our pack is mostly female, but Old Fang still has the final say on all decisions because he’s the oldest.
Indie raises a brow, then says, “Old Fang won’t move us unless the
Gods’ Star fell into his hands and instructed him where to travel, and
even then, he’d probably be suspicious.” I snort, and Ma shoots us a
look. Indie smoothes her skirt. “Besides, nothing good comes of
leaving.”
“Yes,” Ma agrees. “Think of Alkali Lake.”
I
don’t need to think about it. It haunts my dreams, and my back prickles
at its mention even now, the brand on my skin seeming to burn. But
nothing good comes of staying, either.
I was a kid when we left
to settle at Dead River—just nine years old—and the half of the pack
that stayed behind didn’t live longer than another week. According to a
trader, it was a raid. He trudged into our camp with his rickshaw and
the gruesome news, and Old Fang’s been spooked ever since.
I
used to think it was cowardly, giving in to fear like that. But lately,
every time traders come through, they bring stories of grisly deaths and
broken homes. There are bands of raiders roaming the wastes. The only
safe place is one you can defend. We can barely do that, but no one
wants our dying chunk of land. There’s no future here.
“We
won’t have enough water to make it through another summer,” I argue.
“This one, maybe, but not next. The well’s practically dry, and the lake
will follow. Maybe if we knew how to read the map . . .”
“No one knows how to read it.”
“Then if we just tried Powder Town, found someone there who can.”
“We show that map to no one, Delta. Not unless—”
“We trust them with our lives,” I finish. “I know.”
I don’t add that it’s been ages since I believed the map led
anywhere. If it did, our pack would have found it long before the
markings were branded onto my skin. But at this point I’m willing to say
anything—propose anything—that might spring us to action.
“Besides,” Ma goes on, “Powder Town is a good fifty clicks north, and there’s no guarantee we’d even make it there alive.”
“The traders make it,” I point out.
“The traders are young. Healthy. One lone man, with nothing to
defend but himself and his goods, and even then, think of how many times
Clay has shown up here telling us that his most valuable wares had been
robbed.”
“Because he’s a rusted idiot,” I mutter.
Indie shoots me a wounded glance, and I fall quiet.
“We are fourteen people, mostly women,” Ma continues. “Old Fang is
nearing seventy. Brooke’s girl is just four, and Indie will have a
newborn in a matter of weeks. That is no herd fit for moving. We’d be
easy prey.”
“We’ll be easy prey here, too, once we’re dehydrated and starved. We’ve gotta go someplace better. Anywhere
but Dead River. The crops are struggling. Potatoes and turnips smaller
than we’ve seen in years. And the corn should be taller by now, right
Indie?”
She opens her mouth to answer, but Ma cuts her off.
“We’re not leaving, and that’s the end of it. The stars say a bounty is
coming. The earth will be fertile again soon.”
“They’ve said soon for years and could say it for decades more.”
“Where is your faith?” Her eyes bore into me, sharp and vicious.
“This is why the gods deserted us. This is why we’re stuck on this dying
earth. We are being tested, Delta. If we prove we are worthy, they will
return, as will the riches of water and crop.”
The wind howls outside, as if to agree. Rubble plinks above, joining what’s already gathered on the blankets.
“I’ll have no more talk of this.” Ma turns to the shelves. “Here. Eat.” She passes a strip of jerky to each of us.
“Delta only wants what’s best for us, Marin.” Ever since Indie got
with child she’s been calling Ma by her given name, as if it proves
she’s not a kid herself anymore. I don’t think we’ve been kids for a
very long time. Certainly not since Alkali Lake.
Ma just humphs
and lies down on her mat. I gnaw on my jerky and take another small sip
from my jar. Smack dust from my limbs. Unbelt my boots by their leather
straps and kick them off so they can dry.
When Ma falls
asleep, Indie says, “I grabbed your goggles. Thought you’d want to work
on them while we’re stuck down here.” She passes them over, along with
the tools.
“Thanks,” I say, and immediately go to work,
punching holes through the leather head strap with the awl. Indie
watches me in silence.
“Think if we polished a piece of quartz
real good, we could convince Old Fang it’s a fallen star?” she says
finally. “Argue it’s a sign from the gods that we need to move?”
“He won’t buy that.”
“You’re right. We should polish a turd instead.”
I snort again, and she giggles, one hand on her belly.
“So, are you going to do the honors of gathering patties from the stable, or is it on me?” she asks.
We snicker together until Ma mutters in her sleep. Indie pats the mat beside her, and I scoot nearer.
We sit shoulder to shoulder, our backs against the dirt wall. I
set the awl aside and move on to stitching. I can still remember when I
was smaller than her, my head only coming up to her shoulder. She’d tell
me stories passed down through the pack, or on clear nights, when we
weren’t stuck underground from a storm, she’d point at the glinting sky
and marvel at its beauty.
It still amazes me, how it can be so beautiful while everything down here dies.
As though she can hear my thoughts, Indie whispers, “In all
seriousness, Delta, we shouldn’t talk about the stars that way. The gods
might hear.”
“In the cellar? When we’re half buried in dirt?” I
raise an eyebrow, and she smiles. It’s not a real smile, just an
I’ll-humor-you one. She’s been doing that a lot since she got pregnant,
still making jokes but then seeming to regret it, forcing herself to be
the parent between us. Her green eyes glimmer, and I’m struck by how
unalike we are. We share a mother, but our pas are different, and in the
candlelight it’s obvious. Her with green eyes, me with brown. Her nose
broad and mine a narrow bridge. Her hair a shade of straw and mine as
dark as the night. We’ve never met our fathers, though, and in this way,
we’re the same. Tied to Ma. Tied to the pack. Tied to Dead River.
“They’ll come back for us—the gods. You have to believe that.”
“I believe it, Indie.” I tighten a stitch. “At least I’m trying to.”
Her eyes go wide.
“Blasphemous, I know,” I tease, but she’s not laughing. She’s
looking only at her lap, her mouth twisted in concern. “It’s just hard
to accept that they’ll return before it’s too late. I know what happened
last time we lost faith. I’ll never forget what happened to Asher, or
all the others we left behind at Alkali Lake, but if we—”
Indie’s hand clasps over my wrist, stopping my work on the goggles.
“Delta?” she says, her voice small against the raging wind. “I think my waters just broke.”
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