I silently trail behind him, trying not to laugh as water sloshes out of his wet boots with every step.
Maybe someday in the very distant future we can laugh about this.
I bury my face in Daisy’s coarse fur. “We are in big trouble, girl.”
Canteen in hand, I sink down on the hard ground in the shade a few trees over from the resting h’axom, giving the brethren and the soggy Tilak some space.
I am mortified that I pushed Tai in the Wahadi. Although, he did get cooled off. Maybe. Possibly at the expense of the brethren’s religious ceremony. Hopefully they will get over it. Someday. From the sound of their mournful cries, it’s going to be a while.
Sopping wet, Tai sits down next to me. “The wailing is getting old,”he says.
I’m too embarrassed to make eye contact with Tai. I keep my gaze fixed on my fingers, drawing swirls in the sand. He nudges me with his damp arm. The gesture eases some of the tension from me.
“I’ve heard happier funeral dirges,” I say. I’m a terrible person for making a joke at their expense.
He looks around. “If there is a holy site on this awful continent, this would be it.”
Tai pulls his shirt off over his head and presses the cloth to my forehead, then the back of my neck, and wrists. My temperature drops immediately.
“And you desecrated it,” I say to see if we have already gotten to a place where we can laugh about this. I sneak a glance at him from the corner of my eye.
“I would throw your ass right in if I didn’t think Boss would return me to the gods, as he likes to say.” Tai laughs and looks at me. “Be careful. The Wahadi has made me into a demigod. All shall fear me,” he says in a joking voice.
“I could never fear you,” I say. It appears I was wrong. It didn’t take very long to get to a place where we could laugh about it.
“My life would be so much easier if you did.”
TWENTY-THREE
Tai
Bri chews on the inside of her lip, punishing herself for the accident. The normally confrontational attitude has been replaced with avoidance. She will hardly even look at me, and I find myself wanting to cheer her up even though I was the one shoved into the oasis.
I don’t need to lecture her. She’s clearly scolding herself enough for the both of us. When I dragged myself out of the water, I was prepared for her to be unapologetic and blame me. I was wrong. And the way she is gulping down water makes me think she might genuinely have heatstroke.
“You look like a drowned rat,” she says, finally looking me up and down. I can tell she’s masking her vulnerability with jokes.
“I’ve heard rats are very intelligent and incredibly attractive.”
She smiles at me out of the corner of her eye. It feels good when I make her smile. That thought sets off a deadly chain reaction. If it feels this good to make her smile, there are a few other emotions I’dlike to wring out of her. Every once in a while, I let myself rememberthatnight.
I replay the scene in my mind, every perfect detail. I reached for her when I woke up, but she was gone. Bri never mentioned it again. So, I did what I’m best at and buried the memory as deep as possible.
A dried piece of grass from Daisy’s lunch sticks to Bri’s shoulder. Without thinking, I brush it off. The feel of her skin sends a vibration up my bionic arm.
She leans into my touch, and the back of my hand skims her neck. The entire world melts away, and it’s only me and Bri. Everything fades away except her eyes locked with mine, until they flicker away to focus on something over my shoulder.
“Don’t look now, but Boss is watching,” she says and lays a hand on my chest.
I don’t need to look back to know his beady eyes are on us.
The rational part of my brain says to pull away, to not aggravate the situation. The other part of me wants to kiss her, to send the message that she is mine, not his. She draws me in closer. I’m powerless to the way she looks at me. Like I’m hers as well.
I’m so focused on her and the sound of my heart hammering in my chest that I don’t hear the commotion around the h’axom at first. Yelling and pounding hooves break the spell and jerk me back to reality. Three h’axom stampede straight for us, their leather reins hanging loosely. I pull Bri up and spin us around, putting a palm tree between us and the charging animals.
We stand there slack-jawed and watch the h’axom throw themselves into the holy water of the Wahadi.
“Oh…that’s bad,” Bri says.
