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SUMMER
Iwoke to a bang. Sitting up fast, I peered around the room, finding an arrow with our last assignment impaling the tub. Water leaked around the hole where the tip had sliced through the outer membrane.
Rising, I crossed the room and slid the scrap of fabric off the arrow, leaving the shaft imbedded in the tub. I didn’t want to flood the place.
Adone sat up on his elbows. “What does it say?”
Since I couldn’t read it myself, I brought it to him.
“Travel across the desert to the most northern part of the dome and find Weller Island, where you must build a sand house.”
“An island in the desert?” I asked. “Although, we’re on an island now.”
“I don’t expect it to be there, the river either, once we leave this room.”
“The computers will remove it.”
He nodded.
“How are we going to build a house out of sand?” I asked. “Is there a way to harden it or mold it into panels? I don’t imagine it needs to be a fancy house, just some sort of dwelling.”
Adone climbed out of our leaf bed. “I believe you’re right.” He crossed to the table that still held food and beverages. “We should eat well. I don’t know how long it’ll take us to cross the desert, and like the time between our first and second tasks, there will be obstacles and danger to slow us down.”
“If this challenge is like the others, it’ll take us beyond tomorrow to cross the desert.”
He tugged me into his arms and held me. “Then we need to get started soon and run.”
* * *
After stuffing ourselves and filling a flask with water—a treat Burmoot must’ve snuck into the game—we returned to the surface. I lowered Tumbles to the ground. He peered up at me as if waiting to see what would come next.
“More walking, I’m afraid,” I told him. “Rolling, in your case.”
He wiggled his round body with excitement. Perhaps, for him, rolling across the desert was fun. Not so much for us.
As Adone predicted, the river, obstacle course, and island had disappeared. We stood in the middle of the desert.
I turned in a slow circle. “Where do you think the most northern side of the dome is? On Earth, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. If that were the case,” I pointed, “that would be north.”
“It is the same here.”
Convenient.
I looped the water flask strap over my head and across my body, leaving it to rest on my hip. Without bags for food, we loaded a big leaf and bound it with a strip of fabric to make up a pouch that I strapped to my back. Adone needed his arms free to protect us and his wings free to fly.
This was all I could carry. Walking in the sun and sand would drain our reserves in no time.
The monitors floated into view, but we hadn’t seen Burmoot yet.
With Tumbles rolling ahead of us, we hurried out across the sand, determined not to spend much time analyzing this assignment. Once we found the island, we’d figure out how to create a house made out of sand.
Low hills covered this part of the desert. The ground felt firmer, which made walking easier. I assumed Adone could jog for hours on a surface like this, but he held his pace back for me.
“An island suggests water,” I said, short of breath after only an hour of walking. I ached to drink something, but we’d agreed to save what we had for the end of the day. Sleeping would be easier if we were hydrated and had something in our bellies.
“It does.”
“I suppose a cluster of vegetation in the desert could be called an island, as could a rocky structure. How will we know we’ve reached the correct spot?”
