Chapter Four: The Dust Desert
The sky changed at the edge of the desert.
It was the first thing Codette noticed, and it took her a long, uneasy moment to understand what was wrong. For four days the heavens over the Kingdom of Pate had been the same: a slow, glowing, unmoving sunset in orange and plum, as though the world had been dipped in warm honey and left to set. But as the four of them crested the last low hill and the land fell away before them, the sunset simply stopped. There was a line, sharp as a ruler’s edge, running across the sky from one horizon to the other. On the near side, amber dusk. On the far side, a hard, blinding, cloudless blue, with a white sun standing straight overhead like a nail driven into the sky.
“Noon,” said Phillip, in a hushed voice. “It’s always noon over the Dust Desert. I’d read it, but—” He shaded his spectacles with a paw. “Goodness. It’s really quite aggressive.”
Below them, the desert rolled out to the horizon: a vast, unbroken sea of dunes, gold and pale and shimmering, ridge behind ridge behind ridge, without a single tree or rock or blade of grass to rest the eye. The light struck the sand and bounced back up in a glare that made Codette’s eyes water. A hot wind came up the slope to meet them, smelling of dust and baked stone.
“I hate it already,” said Tom.
“You haven’t even been in it yet.”
“I can feel it. It’s looking at me.”
“It’s a desert, Tom. It doesn’t have a face.”
“That’s exactly what a desert with a face would say.”
Smile, who had been standing a little apart with his head cocked and one ear turned toward the wind, said nothing. He had been quiet since the morning. He walked with his usual loose, careless gait, but Codette had noticed that his right paw was a little stiff, and that every so often he flexed it, as if testing a bruise. She had asked about it at breakfast. He’d said it was nothing. She had decided, for the moment, to let him have that.
“Is there another way around?” she asked Phillip.
Phillip unrolled his map, which had acquired a smudge of lavender and a long yarn-colored scorch mark since the Yarnwood. He studied it for a long time. “There is,” he said. “It adds approximately eleven days. Through the Brambles, around the Salt Flats, and back along the coast. It’s very safe. It also passes through two villages where, according to this note, I once wrote—” He squinted. “‘Do not ever return to Mossmere.’ I don’t remember why.”
“We’re not going to Mossmere,” said Smile.
“I don’t think anyone wants to.”
“Then the desert it is.” Smile turned. For a moment his eyes met Codette’s, and she saw something move behind them, a flicker of calculation, of worry, there and gone. “It’s not so bad. Cats have crossed the Dust Desert before. We just need to keep to a straight line, stay on the high ridges, and not stop for anything.”
“What happens if we stop?” said Tom.
“Probably nothing.”
“Probably.”
“I’m an optimist,” said Smile.
They filled every water skin they had at a trickling spring in the last green hollow before the sand. Tom drank for what felt like an entire minute, and then, to Codette’s mounting horror, drank some more. Phillip meticulously wrapped his glasses in cloth. Smile coiled his rope over one shoulder, hung a bundle of dried grass from his belt, and tied a long scarf of faded red wool around his neck.
Codette tightened the straps of her backpack. She pulled the yellow hood far down over her forehead, and checked, twice, that every curl was tucked inside.
“You should take that off,” said Phillip, glancing at her over his spectacles. “The hoodie. It’ll be ferociously hot.”
“I’m fine,” she said.
“You’re already perspiring.”
She froze. She hadn’t realized it showed. A bead of sweat was, in fact, trickling down her temple, and she wiped it away with the back of her sleeve, aware, too late, of the careful, curious tilt of Phillip’s head.
“Is that—” he began. “I don’t think Goldens—”
“Southern thing,” said Smile, appearing at her shoulder with the effortless timing of a magician’s assistant. “Very sweaty. Whole family. You’d be amazed. We call them ‘the dripping Goldens.’”
“Do we?” said Tom.
“It’s a regional joke.”
“I haven’t heard it.”
“Because you’re not from the south.” Smile reached up and tugged the end of his scarf loose, and — with a casual flourish, not looking at Codette — looped it twice around her neck and tucked the free end up over the lower half of her face, like a bandit’s mask. “There. For the dust. Keep your face covered. Nobody’s going to see you drip.”
It was soft and warm and smelled faintly of woodsmoke and wool and catnip. Codette’s cheeks flushed under the fabric.
“Thanks,” she muttered.
“Don’t mention it. I’ll deny it.” He turned away. “Right. Everyone ready? Let’s go lose a few pounds.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Tom darkly.
They stepped out of the amber dusk and into the noon.
The first hour was almost tolerable.
The sand was packed firm along the ridge-lines, and the four of them fell into a loose single file, with Smile in the lead and Phillip close behind him, murmuring bearings from his brass compass. Tom lumbered along third, muttering to himself. Codette brought up the rear. The heat was a physical presence, a hand pressed flat against her face and shoulders, and within a quarter of an hour her hoodie was soaked through at the back and sticking to her skin. The scarf over her mouth made every breath hot and damp. Her feet were slipping in the sand with every step.
But there was something else, too, something she could not quite name.
The dunes were moving.
Not fast. Not in a way you could ever catch. But when she looked down the long slope of a ridge, she would see the pattern of ripples on its surface shifting, slowly, steadily, like the tide coming in. A crest would soften and sink. A hollow would swell. Over the course of a minute, a whole valley might fold itself into a hill. She stopped, once, to watch one, and when she looked back up, the ridge they’d been following had quietly drifted a good ten paces to the left.
“It rearranges,” Phillip called back, without turning. “It’s perfectly safe, as long as we keep our bearings. The accounts say it’s responsive to the movements of living things. It’s a sort of — a vast, slow breathing.”
“That is the creepiest thing I’ve ever heard,” said Tom.
“It’s poetic.”
“It’s creepy.”
“They’re not mutually exclusive.”
Codette smiled, tiredly, behind her scarf. She was glad of them. Glad of the banter, glad of the noise. It kept her mind off the heat, which was getting worse, and off the thin, strange, dizzying sensation that had started to creep up behind her eyes. She tried to put her finger on it. A sort of floatiness. As though the ground had turned a fraction too soft under her sneakers. As though the whole bright, glaring world were a picture painted on silk, and someone were slowly, slowly pulling the silk.
“You all right?”
She started. Smile had dropped back to walk beside her. He had matched his pace to hers without seeming to, and was looking up at her with a crease between his eyes.
“Fine,” she said.
“You’re swaying.”
“I’m not swaying.”
“You’re doing something very sway-adjacent.”
“It’s just the heat.”
“Mm.” He studied her. “Drink.”
“I just—”
“Drink, Codette.”
She drank. The water was warm and tasted of leather, and it was the best thing she’d ever had in her mouth. When she lowered the skin, Smile was still watching, and he gave a short nod, as if something had been confirmed.
“From now on,” he said, “I walk behind you.”
“What? Why?”
“Wind’s picking up.” He didn’t look at her. “And you’re the one in the middle of the wind, the way things are going. I’ll take the back. You take the middle.”
“Smile, you don’t have to—”
“I know I don’t have to.” He slipped around her, just behind her left shoulder, where the breeze would hit his back before it hit her. “I’m choosing to. It’s an entirely different thing.”
She didn’t argue. The truth was, he’d been right. The wind was picking up. It came in long, hot gusts now, snapping at the ends of her scarf, whipping fine, pale dust off the ridge-tops in curling veils. Far to the west, at the very edge of the sky, something was gathering: a smudge on the horizon, tan and brown and ominous, that wasn’t there an hour ago.
“Phillip,” Tom said, uneasily. “What’s that?”
Phillip stopped. He lifted the compass, then lowered it. Then lifted it again, with the stiff, deliberate motion of someone trying very hard not to show alarm.
“That,” he said, “is a sandstorm.”
“A big one?”
“The sort that has a name.”
“Does it?”
“I’m not going to say it,” said Phillip faintly.
“Run,” said Smile.
It came down on them like a wall.
One minute there was a ridge, a horizon, a flat bright sky. The next there was nothing but a wall of roaring, boiling, red-brown dust that swallowed the sun and turned the whole world into a howling dusk. Codette staggered. The wind hit her in the chest like a fist, nearly knocking her off her feet. Sand scoured her face through the scarf, a thousand tiny needles, stinging her eyes shut. She threw up an arm and bent double, fighting for a breath of air that was not half grit.
“Rope!” She could barely hear Smile over the roar. “Everyone grab the rope! Hold on!”
She found it by touch, a thick, rough cord stretched taut through the dark, and wrapped her fist around it. Ahead of her somebody was coughing. Somebody else was yelling something about “my notes, my notes.” The world lurched sideways, and then upright again, and then sideways. The sand under her feet had turned liquid, shifting, sucking at her ankles, dragging at her soles.
“Phillip!” Tom was bellowing. “Phillip, which way?!”
“I’m — I’m trying—”
“Try harder!”
“The needle’s—” Phillip’s voice cracked. “It’s spinning! It won’t — I can’t — the sand’s full of iron, it’s — it’s magnetic! It won’t hold a direction, it’s just going round and round—”
“Phillip!”
“I don’t know!” The little cat sounded close to tears. “I don’t know, I don’t know, I counted, I always count, but I can’t count what I can’t — I can’t—”
“Phillip,” said a quiet voice, so close to Codette’s ear that it startled her. “Breathe.”
It was Smile. He had come up behind her in the darkness, one paw on her shoulder, the other on the rope. Somehow, through the roar, his voice carried: calm, unhurried, with just a hint of his usual dry amusement. He pushed closer and pressed in against her back, a small, warm, solid weight, shielding her from the worst of the wind, and with his free paw he drew something from the pouch at his belt.
“I’ve done this before,” he said. “Don’t panic. We aren’t going to die. It’s very rude of the desert to try, but we aren’t going to oblige.”
“What is that?” Codette shouted.
“A compass.”
“That’s not a compass! It’s a tin plate!”
“It’s a Catnip Compass, and I’ll thank you not to insult it.”
It was a tin plate. A shallow, rimmed dish about the size of her palm, half-filled with water, and floating in the middle of it, bobbing gently, a single slender dried reed no longer than her finger. Smile cupped it between both paws, shielding it from the wind with his body, and bent over it with fierce attention.
“Sand-lilies,” he said, in an undertone, as though speaking to himself. “The old nomads taught me. Out in the dust, there’s a flower that only blooms when its face is turned toward the greatest concentration of magic in the Kingdom. It grows wild across the whole desert. It blooms all year. You can smell it a mile off if you know what you’re doing.” He fumbled at his belt. “The reed’s cut from a catnip stalk. It leans toward the scent. Magnetism can’t touch it. But it’s faint. It needs something to sharpen it.”
“What?”
“Essence.” He looked up. His eyes, in the whirling dark, were very bright. “I’m out. You’ve got the vial.”
She had forgotten. It was still in the pocket of her jeans, the little glass tube he’d given her in the windmill, a third full. She dug it out with numb fingers and pressed it into his paw.
“How many drops?”
“Three. Maybe four.”
“Don’t waste—”
“I’m not wasting. It’s a — I’m investing.” Smile pulled the cork with his teeth, tipped a single glinting bead of green onto the surface of the water, and held his breath.
The reed shivered.
For a moment it just trembled, spinning slowly. Then, with a slow, deliberate, impossible grace, it turned — and leaned. It tilted its pale tip toward a point somewhere in the roaring dark, like a dog catching a scent, and held there, perfectly still.
“There,” said Smile, with fierce satisfaction. “North-northeast. Straight toward Banana. Phillip! Phillip, look!”
“I’m looking!” Phillip was almost sobbing with relief. “It’s — it’s marvelous! It’s — it’s — I should have known! Of course, an organic substrate—”
“Not now, scholar!”
“Right! Sorry! North-northeast!”
“Everybody grab the rope,” said Smile. “Move!”
They moved.
It was the longest twenty minutes of Codette’s life. They walked bent double into the wind, in a single line, hand over hand along the rope, with Smile in the lead and the little tin plate held out before him like a lantern. The sand tore at her skin. Her head swam. The heat was a roaring, bone-deep, buzzing thing, and the soles of her feet were burning. At one point she realized, with a distant, bewildered sense of surprise, that she had stopped being able to feel her own hands.
She was dimly aware that someone had fallen into step directly behind her. A small, warm weight, bumping against the back of her knees every time she faltered. A voice, not much louder than a purr, saying, “Left foot. Right foot. That’s it. You’re doing fine. Left foot—”
“I’m fine,” she tried to say, and it came out as a croak.
“I know. You’re doing wonderfully. Keep—”
The ground gave way.
It didn’t happen all at once. First there was a low, dull, thunderous whump, somewhere far off to the left, like a drum being struck underground. Then the wind dropped, just for a heartbeat, and in the sudden hush Codette heard a sound she’d never heard before: the long, dry, hissing, slithering whisper of ten thousand tons of sand beginning to slide.
“Codette,” Smile said. “Codette.”
She looked up.
The dune beside them had a face like a cliff. It rose forty feet above the path, steep and pale and glittering, and the whole front of it was rippling. As she watched, a long crack opened along its crest, black as ink, and with a rumbling sigh, the entire slope began to fold forward.
“Move!” Smile screamed.
She couldn’t. She knew she should. Her brain issued the command and her legs failed to hear it. She stood in the middle of the path like a rabbit before a truck, watching the dune lean over her, and thought, with a perfectly detached and ridiculous clarity: So this is how it ends. I never even got to apologize to Mum for the thing with the dishwasher.
Something hit her in the back.
It was not gentle. It was a flying, desperate, small-but-surprisingly-strong body, and it slammed into her with all its weight and sent her sprawling to the left, off the path, into the soft, hot slope of the neighboring ridge. She tumbled, rolled, and came up on her hands and knees, coughing, with sand in her mouth.
Behind her, the dune fell.
It made no sound at all, at first. It simply arrived. A curtain of pale gold came pouring down across the path where she’d been standing half a second before, burying it, roaring, tearing at the ridge where she lay. She flung her arms over her head. Grit pelted her back. Something heavy caught her ankle, dragged at it, and was gone.
And then silence, and the long, hissing patter of settling sand.
Codette raised her head.
The path was gone. Where it had been, there was only a smooth, new, glimmering slope, as if nothing had ever stood there at all. And at the edge of it, half-buried in a drift of gold, lay a small, motionless, white shape.
“Smile!”
She scrambled to him on her hands and knees. Her fingers closed on the red wool of his scarf — she’d forgotten she was wearing it — and then on his shoulder, and she dug and clawed and pulled until she’d dragged him free of the sand. He came out limp and coughing, and she turned him over and cradled his head in her lap.
“Smile. Smile. Say something.”
His eyes fluttered open. They were dazed, unfocused, and clouded with grit.
“Hello,” he rasped. “Did you see that? I pushed you. Very heroic. I’d like it noted.”
“You idiot.”
“Yes, but a heroic one.”
“You could have been killed!”
“That’s — hm. Yes. I did consider that.” He coughed again, wincing. “In my defense, I made the decision in about a quarter of a second, and I think it was a reasonable allocation of—”
“Don’t joke.”
“I always joke.”
“Don’t.” Her voice cracked. She was shaking. She hadn’t known she was shaking until she saw it in her own hands, where they rested on his fur. “Are you hurt?”
“No.”
“Smile.”
“A little,” he admitted.
She looked. A long, ragged gash ran down the outside of his right foreleg, from elbow to wrist, where something sharp in the falling sand had caught him. It was not deep, but it was bleeding freely, a thin, steady red line seeping into the white. His paw lay curled against his chest in a way she didn’t like.
“It looks worse than it is,” said Smile, in the tone of someone saying it very firmly to someone else. “Honestly. I’ve had worse from a door.”
“We need to—”
“Codette!” It was Tom’s voice, hoarse and frantic, somewhere to the right. “Smile! Are you — is anyone—”
“Over here!” she shouted. “We’re all right!”
“Phillip’s gone!”
It took a moment for the words to land.
“What?” said Codette.
“Phillip!” Tom came lurching up the slope, covered in dust from nose to tail. His eyes were wild. “He was behind me. On the rope. And then the dune came down, and the rope jerked, and I looked back and he wasn’t — there’s a — there’s a hole!”
They went.
The hole was a hundred paces away, in a wide, shallow bowl between two dunes where the storm had begun to thin. It was perfectly circular. It was perhaps ten feet across. And the whole surface of it was turning, slowly, silently, in a long, glittering spiral, as though a giant hand were stirring the sand with a spoon. At its center, the dune was sinking.
Phillip was in it up to his chest.
He had not made a sound. He was clutching his satchel against his chest with both paws, eyes wide and fixed, perfectly still, in the grip of the kind of terror that comes beyond screaming. And beside him, floundering and thrashing and yelling for all he was worth, up to his waist and sinking faster, was a very large, very striped cat.
“Tom?!” cried Codette.
“I went in after him!” Tom bellowed, with a kind of baffled outrage. “It seemed like the thing to do!”
“You’re making it worse! Stop moving!”
“I can’t stop moving! It pulls!”
“Everyone stay calm,” said Smile.
He had come up behind her. He was swaying on his feet, ashen, one paw cradled against his chest. There was blood on his fur, and sand in his whiskers. But his eyes were clear and steady. They went from the hole to the two cats to the rope on his shoulder, and Codette watched, with a slow-dawning awe, as something in his face changed.
The old Smile came back. The nomad. The cat of the road. The cat who had spent half his life learning that panic was the only thing in the world that could kill you faster than the thing you were panicking about.
“Right,” he said briskly. “Quicksand. Not deep, but fast. We’ve got about a minute and a half before the surface closes. Tom, stop kicking. Spread your arms out wide. Wide. Lie back on it. Don’t fight.”
“I’ll drown!”
“You won’t. Sand’s denser than water. You’ll float.” He was uncoiling the rope as he spoke, with quick, sure, practiced motions. “Phillip, I need you to look at me. Phillip. Phillip. You’re doing the right thing. Stay still. Hold the satchel up. Keep your head back. That’s it. Good. Don’t say a word.”
“S-Smile,” Phillip whispered.
“I said don’t speak.”
“Your arm—”
“My arm is fine. I’m going to throw you a line. Codette.”
“Yes?”
“I need you to anchor the other end. Sit down. Dig your heels in. Wrap it around your waist twice. Whatever happens, don’t let go.”
“But your arm—”
“It’s fine.” He gave her a quick, fierce look, and something in it was so steady, so certain, that she found herself doing exactly as she was told. She sat. She dug in her heels. She wound the rope twice around her waist and braced her back against the slope.
Smile took the other end in his teeth.
She almost cried out. She thought, wildly, he’s going to jump. But he didn’t. Instead he crouched at the edge of the bowl, drew in a long breath, and ran — a sprint across the surface of the spiraling sand, light and quick as a leaf on a pond, each step landing just where the grains were thickest, bounding from one crest to the next with a grace so perfect it was almost a dance. The sand sank under him with every step. He didn’t pause. He flung himself sideways, rolled, kicked off a rising ridge, and landed in a crouch on the far side of the hole, dust rising around him in a golden cloud.
He hurled the rope.
It sailed across the gap in a perfect, whistling arc and landed with a slap across Tom’s outstretched arms.
“Grab it!”
Tom grabbed it. The rope went taut, and Codette felt the pull in every muscle of her body, a savage, terrifying drag that nearly yanked her off her feet. She dug in. She clenched her teeth. She felt the cord burn across her palms and hip.
“Pull!” shouted Smile, on the far side. He had run around the rim and gotten both paws on the rope. “Everyone pull! One, two, three—”
It came up with a sucking, spattering pop, and a spray of damp sand, and Tom was out, rolling and gasping on the dune like a landed fish.
“Phillip!” Codette screamed. “Phillip!”
The hole had almost closed. There was nothing left but a pale smudge on the sand, a tiny round patch no bigger than a dinner plate, and in the middle of it, a single paw reaching up, fingers splayed.
Smile threw himself flat.
He skidded across the surface on his belly, arms stretched before him, and caught the paw in both of his.
For a long, horrible moment nothing happened.
“I’ve got you,” Smile said, through his teeth. His whole body was trembling with the strain. The wound on his foreleg had split open again, and blood was running down the white fur in a slow, steady stream. “I’ve got you, Phillip, I’ve got you, don’t let go—”
“Pull!” cried Codette.
She and Tom threw their weight on the rope, and with a long, wet, grinding groan, the sand let go.
Phillip came out whole. He hit the dune in a heap, gasping, spluttering, still clutching his satchel in a death grip, and rolled over and was violently, tremblingly sick, and then sat up, wiped his mouth, and looked around at the three of them with the dazed expression of a cat who has just been born.
“I saved my notes,” he said, in a thin, high, wondering voice.
Tom burst into tears.
“I’m fine!” he sobbed, wiping his face with both paws. “It’s fine! I’m fine! It’s just — I thought — you’re all so small! I thought I’d — you were gone!”
“I’m not gone,” said Phillip, politely.
“I know that now!”
Behind them, a heavy thump. Codette turned.
The bowl was gone. In the place where it had been there was a smooth, round, perfectly innocent patch of sand. And at its edge, collapsed on his side, white fur matted and stained and gritty, lay Smile, his paw still tangled in the rope.
“Smile!”
“I’m perfectly all right,” he said, from the ground. “I’m resting. Don’t look. This is my ‘resting’ posture.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“I contain multitudes,” said Smile, and passed out.
They found shelter by sundown.
There was no sundown, of course; the desert’s sun stood in the same cloudless noon. But somehow the storm had blown itself out, and the wind had dropped, and the heat, though ferocious, was less murderous than it had been. A mile beyond the quicksand, Tom’s sharp eyes picked out a low, flat shelf of dark stone rising out of the dunes: a ledge, wide and level, with a thin sliver of shade beneath an overhang. It was the first solid thing they’d seen in hours. They staggered up onto it and collapsed.
Codette laid Smile down in the shade on a folded cloth. She tore a strip from the hem of her hoodie, which was already ruined, and wound it tightly around his arm, not very well. He murmured something and she didn’t catch it. His breathing was quick and shallow. His forehead was hot.
“He needs real bandages,” said Phillip anxiously, hovering at her shoulder. “A poultice. Something for the infection. I’ve got — I think I’ve got some yarrow—”
“Yarrow’s good,” said Codette.
“I’ll look.” He scurried off. Tom was sitting on the far side of the ledge with his arms wrapped around his knees, staring out at the desert with a blank, hollow look.
She sat back on her heels and looked at the small, sleeping figure at her feet.
He’d said, back there in the wind, I’m choosing to. Of all the things he’d said since she met him, it was the one that kept circling back. A cat who had spent his whole life putting himself first. A cat who had abandoned her once, honestly, at a windmill door. Who had stood between her and a dune.
Who didn’t even know her name until a week ago.
Why? she thought. Why would he—
“Mm,” said Smile.
His eyes were open. Half-lidded, hazy, but open. He was looking at her with an expression so soft, so unguarded, so entirely un-Smile, that for a moment she forgot to breathe.
“You’re still wearing my scarf,” he said.
She touched it. She’d forgotten. It had slipped down around her neck at some point, but it was still there, a rough, faded strip of red.
“I’ll give it back.”
“No.” He closed his eyes. “Keep it. It’s yours. I meant — you look good in it.”
“You’re delirious.”
“Probably,” he agreed. “That’s — hm. I’m very tired. Is anyone dead?”
“No one’s dead.”
“Good. That’s a — that’s a good result. I’d like to put that on my list of things I did well.”
“You did a lot of things well,” said Codette quietly.
“I did one.” He smiled, a small, crooked, sleepy smile. “I’m very proud of the one.”
And he slept.
She sat for a long time, watching him breathe, listening to the faint creak and shift of the desert under the noon sun. A hot gust of wind rolled across the ledge. It rustled the grass at her feet. It stirred the loose threads of her scarf. It lifted a stray curl at her temple, and she reached up automatically to tuck it back —
— and the wind caught her hood.
It was a very small gust. It was nothing. It was one last, lazy, dying breath of the storm, a leftover curl of air, drifting across a ledge. But it hit the felt ears at the top of her hood at exactly the wrong angle, and the hood, which had been soaked with sweat and sand and half torn from the strain of the day, simply slipped.
It slid off her head and down her back.
She grabbed for it. Too late. A great, golden, tumbled cascade of curls fell loose over her shoulders, and the hot, bright, merciless light of the Dust Desert poured down over her uncovered head, and every inch of her — hair, forehead, cheeks, and the two small, round, rosy-pink, entirely human ears on either side of her face — stood naked in the glare.
For a moment, nobody moved.
She was aware of the sound of her own heartbeat. She was aware of a tiny, strangled “mrp” from behind her. She was aware of the weight of a gaze, a very large, very amber gaze, fixed on the side of her head.
“Codette,” said Tom, in an odd, flat voice. “Your — um.”
“Don’t look,” said Codette. She said it before she could think. Her hands had flown up to cover her ears. It was ridiculous, absurd, as though she could hide a thing that was already bare. “Don’t — please don’t—”
“Your ears.”
“Tom—”
A flurry of motion in the corner of her eye.
Smile had moved.
He had come up off the cloth in one blind, lurching, desperate scramble, still gray with pain, still swaying on his feet, and thrown himself between her and the others. His arms spread wide. His back was to her. His tail was bristling. His wounded paw hung limp at his side, and there was a fresh smear of red where the makeshift bandage had torn loose, but his chin was high and his voice, when it came, was bright and brittle and almost cheerful.
“Nothing to see,” he said. “Nothing to see! Everyone stay calm! It’s nothing. It’s a — rash. She has a rash. Southern thing. Very delicate. Very private.”
“Smile,” said Phillip.
“A rash.”
“Smile.” Phillip’s voice was shaking. He was standing at the far end of the ledge with a handful of yarrow in his paw, staring past Smile’s shoulder at Codette. His face had gone the color of old paper. “Those aren’t — that’s not a — those are not cat ears.”
“They’re a variant.”
“Smile.”
“It’s a regional adaptation!”
“Smile.” It was Tom, and his voice had dropped almost to a whisper. He was on his feet now. His back was arched, his tail was fluffed, and he had taken one slow, deliberate step backward toward the edge of the ledge. “She doesn’t have a tail.”
Nobody said anything.
“I never saw it,” said Tom. “I just realized. I never saw it. Four days. She never once had her tail out. Not once. And she — she sweats. And she’s got a — she’s got hands. Not paws. Hands. And she can carry things, and she — she doesn’t smell—”
“Tom,” said Codette. “Please.”
“—she doesn’t smell like a cat, Phillip, she smells like grass, she smells like grass and salt, she—”
“Tom,” said Smile, very quietly.
“She’s a human.”
The word hung in the hot, still air like a stone dropped into a well.
Codette closed her eyes. She’d rehearsed this moment, over and over, in the dark of the windmill, on the long road, on the nights when she lay awake listening to Tom snore. She’d had speeches. She’d had arguments. She’d had a whole careful, well-worded defense of herself, in which she was reasonable and kind and clear.
None of it came.
She stood up slowly. Her hands fell from her ears. Her hair hung loose and shining around her face in the glaring light, so bright it almost hurt to look at.
“Yes,” she said. “I am.”
It was Phillip who broke the silence, in the end.
He took a small, uncertain step forward. The yarrow slipped from his fingers. He didn’t seem to notice. He was looking at her with a strange, stricken expression: wide-eyed, intent, not quite afraid and not quite not.
“I’ve read about you,” he said, in a faint voice. “I’ve — I’ve read every book on the subject. There are forty-seven accounts. They say—” He swallowed. “They say your kind are the most dangerous creatures in the world.”
“I’m not—”
“They say you hunt us.”
“I’ve never hunted anything!” Her voice cracked. “I’ve never — I don’t even like fishing, I — I just wanted to go home. I fell through a — I followed a cat into the woods and I fell through a door. That’s all it was. That’s all. I didn’t want to — I never meant to lie to you—”
“But you did,” said Tom.
He wasn’t angry. That was the worst of it. She’d been braced for anger. She could have taken anger. But his voice was low and raw, scraped hollow, and when she opened her eyes, she saw that his big amber eyes were wet.
“You pulled me out of that stile,” Tom said. “You sat with me by the fire. You told me I did all right, in the Yarnwood. I believed you. I thought — I thought I’d found a—” He made a short, broken noise. “I thought you were my friend.”
“I am your friend.”
“You lied.”
“I had to!”
“Why?”
“Because I was afraid!” she cried. “Because you’d have run! Because you’d have — you’d have looked at me the way you’re looking at me right now! I wanted to—” Her voice broke completely. “I just wanted to belong, for a little while. I didn’t — I didn’t know how to say it.”
The wind sighed across the ledge. Somewhere in the distance, a dune slid, with a long, soft whisper.
“They all know,” said Smile.
Everyone turned.
He was still standing in front of her. He hadn’t moved. He hadn’t looked away from the others for a single second. But his voice, when it came, was not bright anymore, or brittle, or glib. It was low, and steady, and utterly sober, and Codette had never heard it before.
“I knew,” he said. “From the first night. I’ve known all along. I’m the one who told her to lie. It was my idea. The Goldens, the grain country, the rash — all of it. I made it up. I’m the one who set the trap.” He took a breath. “So if you’re angry, be angry at me.”
“Smile,” said Codette, horrified.
“She didn’t want to lie to you. She wanted to tell you the first day. I told her not to. I said you’d run. I said you’d leave her out in the wild, alone, to die.”
“Smile—”
“I was right, wasn’t I?” His voice shook, just once. He steadied it. “Look at you. You’re already backing away.”
Tom looked at his own feet. He was, in fact, a full yard farther from the center of the ledge than he’d been a minute ago. Phillip, too, had edged back, one slow step at a time, until his hind paws touched the edge.
“I just—” said Phillip helplessly. “I need to think. I need — I need a moment. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s all — it’s all very — a human.” He took off his glasses with a trembling paw and cleaned them on his sleeve, a pointless, automatic gesture, and put them back on. “I need to think.”
“Take as long as you need,” said Smile quietly.
“We’re not — we aren’t going to hurt her,” said Tom. “I just — I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“That’s fair.”
“It’s not fair,” said Tom. His voice cracked. “It’s not fair at all!”
“No,” Smile agreed, very gently. “It isn’t.”
Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. Beneath the hard white sun, the desert went on shifting in its long, slow, endless breath.
Smile turned.
He looked at Codette for the first time. His face was tired, and drawn, and streaked with dust. There was a smear of blood on his cheek. His whiskers drooped. His eyes were huge and bright and sorry, the eyes of a creature who had spent his whole life learning exactly how much one animal could carry before it broke, and who had decided, quite deliberately, to carry this one too.
“Hey,” he said, very softly.
“Hey,” said Codette. Her voice was thick. She was crying, she realized, silent tears sliding down her dusty cheeks. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s my fault. I should have—”
“No.”
“I should’ve told them.”
“No.” He took a step closer. He lifted his good paw, hesitated, and then very carefully set it against her hand. The pad was rough and warm. “Listen to me. Whatever they decide — whatever happens next — you hear me? I’m staying.”
She stared at him.
“Even if they walk away,” said Smile. “Even if everyone in the Kingdom turns their back. Even if the whole world decides you’re not worth the trouble.” His voice was very quiet, and very sure. “I’m not going anywhere. I’m not leaving you out here. I won’t.”
Her throat closed.
“You can’t promise that,” she whispered.
“I just did.”
“You don’t even—”
“Codette.” He said her name the way he’d said it in the Yarnwood, like someone holding on to a rope in the dark. “I know exactly what I’m doing. I’ve never been surer of anything in my life.”
The wind rose again, a long, warm, whispering breath across the stone. Behind them, Tom and Phillip stood very still, looking at the two of them, and at the little white paw resting on the girl’s hand, and at the gold-haired girl’s wet, wide, silent face. Neither said a word.
Below the ledge, far out in the desert, a new dune had begun to rise.