Alder shoulders through the crowd, staggers up to me. Her brown hair, streaked with white, hangs in strings. She pauses before me, peering at my face. “Are you gods touched? You look familiar.”
“No. There are no more gods touched among us. I am Delta the Verity, but you know me as Delta of Dead River.”
A glimmer flashes in her eyes—recognition. “Delta,” she says softly, and cups my cheeks. “Where have you been, child?”
“Everywhere on the wastes, it feels like. And all to get back here.”
Alder kisses my forehead softly and walks to the wagon. Retrieves a fresh ladle of water. Drinks swiftly.
The crowd watches.
“Is it good?” someone asks.
Alder takes another sip. “It is plain, but yes. Delta the Verity drinks it, so it must be. She wields the truth.”
The group rushes to join her.
* * *
That evening, ribbons of light paint the northern horizon, a silent storm building. By tomorrow the mag-rifles will no longer work. The Prime sends the Reaper to salvage whatever black powder remains from our wind wagons. Most of the Loyalists have stepped down willingly, ready to serve the Prime, and those who haven’t are already locked up and detained. Still, she wants powder on hand, and she has confiscated all the modified rifles for the Reaper’s troops. Saph is sent on horseback to Powder Town with a message to deliver several wagons of powder to Bedrock as soon as possible.
I’m exhausted from the day, which feels like it’s been years long, but there is something I have to do before I rest. I head to the nursery.
The same caretaker who thought me a threat earlier now shows me to a sunken area of the room, where a baby lies on her back, playing with a wooden rattle.
There is no way this child is Bay. She’s huge. The backs of her hands have dimples and her legs are chunky and plump. There is not one crease in her arm when she bends her elbow, but several. She is fat and healthy and so much bigger than the newborn I left behind. I hadn’t realized she would change this much, so quickly. I wonder, briefly, if it’s even her, but then she turns her face toward me and I’m looking into Indie’s eyes. A lump forms in my throat.
“Hi, Bay,” I say, crouching beside her.
Her face changes, uncertain, and she begins to cry. The caretaker lifts her, and she turns into the woman’s chest, wailing.
She doesn’t recognize me. She has no clue who I am. Of course she doesn’t. She’s so young, and the moons I’ve been gone have been a lifetime to her. The woman bounces the baby lightly in her arms until the crying turns to whimpering, then happy cooing.
“You’ve gotten so big,” I tell her. She risks another glance my way, eyes wide. “I’m not leaving you again. We’re joined. I’m the delta and you’re the bay, remember? I lead to you.” I reach out a pinkie, and Bay takes it cautiously, her tiny fingers wrapping around mine. They are still so small, yet so much larger than the last time she took my hand like this.
“Do you want to try again?” the woman asks, glancing at my arms. I nod, and she passes Bay to me. She squirms a little, whimpers lightly. But I bob her in my arms and sing the lullaby I sang when we traveled the wastes together days after her birth. She quiets, transfixed, her wide eyes staring up at me. When I finish singing, she smiles, and I feel something crack open in my heart—a crack that isn’t damaging, but life-giving. Like something is emerging from a shell, being born.
Her little smile fills me with purpose, and I know that if she had smiled like this as a newborn—if she’d been able to—I never would have said half the things I did. I never would have said anything. I would have melted into a puddle in the dirt, turned useless by this small human. I didn’t know it was possible to feel this way: to be willing to give anything for someone else, to love someone so deeply even when they know nothing about love. It’s different from the way I love Asher, the way I loved my mother or my pack. It’s a bit like how I loved Indie, but even that was different.
This is . . .
I suck my lip to keep from crying.
I understand, finally, why mothers put up with it all. Why they give so much of themselves.
I will do anything for Bay.
I will pull the stars from the sky.
I will give her the world.
And here we are, in the green paradise we’ve always dreamed of, her entire life unfurling before her, full of possibility.
Chapter Forty-Five
The days pass.
I sit in countless meetings as part of the Tetrad. We discuss jobs, responsibilities, defense, agriculture, production, water. Relations with the Barrel. Relations with all settlements throughout the wastes. How to utilize the falcons for communication. How to train more falcons. How to extend that communication beyond simple tiles.
The Prime asks me to speak with the Oracle about it.
“Can anyone be taught how to read?” I ask her as I enter the library.
“Good to see you too, Delta of Dead River.”
“It’s Delta the Verity now.”
“So I’ve heard.” She nods at the chair beside her, inviting me in. “And yes. It is simply a matter of learning the Old World symbols, all twenty-six of them, each with their own unique sound. Some of these letters even have multiple sounds, depending on the letter they follow.”
“It sounds confusing.”
She smiles. “At first, perhaps. But once mastered, it is second nature. Here, look.” She drags her twig through the tray of wet earth.
D E L T A
“This is your name,” she says.
“The E was on my brand.” I stare at the strange string of letters that make up my entire existence. I take the stick from her and write E D E N in the dirt. “What does this say?”
“Eden.” She frowns. “What does it mean?”
“Two Es,” I say, ignoring her question. “But they make different sounds.”
“Yes, ee or eh.”
“And that letter that starts my name; it makes a duh sound.”
“D,” the Oracle says, nodding. “This is the start, Delta. With enough practice, you could be reading within a few moons. Writing, too.”
I look at the T in my name, the A. I know their sounds, too, just from knowing how to pronounce my name. Flurries fill my chest.
This can be taught to anyone. To Bay, to all the children in the nursery, to the Prime and the Tetrad and every person in Bedrock. This isn’t for the mythical gods touched. We could all do this. Record our histories. Communicate by written note. I fold the news away to report to the Prime later.
“Can you show me how to write Bay?” I ask the Oracle.
She draws the name in the dirt. It is even more beautiful than mine.
* * *
From the ashes of conflict, Bedrock reshapes itself. The Prime renames it Verdant, and a set of new flags fly from the dam wall—pale fabric marked by a symbol for the settlement: a drop of water positioned inside a teardrop-shaped leaf. Blue. Green. Life.
I visit Reed when I can (he’s healing well), eat meals with Asher when schedules allow it (rarely), and spend the bulk of my time sitting in meetings with the Tetrad. Our talks become overwhelmingly focused on water. How long will the waterfall flow through the settlement? How much of it can we safely share with those beyond our walls? What is causing the supply to dwindle?