—
I jolt awake,shivering, lips cracked, skin raw, eyes burning. The turtle grumbles. Before me is another soaring cliff.
“I can’t climb that,” I rasp, but the turtle is sinking, lowering, so I roll off the edge of its shell, down its leg, and tumble onto the dry clay of the cliff. Turning, I watch the turtle start to sink.
“Wait!” I call. The turtle titters one last time, then disappears into the dunes once again. I turn, surveying the cliff. Impossible.
Reaching forward, I touch the façade. It hums with energy. This is not just a cliff, this feels like life. Swiping my hand across the surface, I find a vine. I tug and it stays.
Just highly improbable, then. My head pounds and my vision swims and my bones ache and my organs pulse with pain. But there is nowhere else to go. Nowhere but up. If I can make it. So, after adjusting my rucksack, I hold the vines as ropes.
Painfully, slowly, carefully, I rise.
It is hard, so very hard. It feels pointless, but to look back is to fall. I am already here, on this cliff. I may as well keep going. And going. And going.
When I cannot climb anymore, I push out my genius to the plants, one last time. They cradle me, dragging me up and over the lip of the cliff. The sun is starting to set, the air cooling off. I collapse, gasping. The empty canteen skitters away from me.
Panting, chest heaving, I try to gather my strength.
It doesn’t come. I have nothing left. Nothing left to give myself or anyone else. The Desert Walk will claim me, as it has done so many others. At least I can hold the knowledge that my family is free as my eyes droop closed. Death or debt, those have always been our choices, and today my body chooses for me.
I drift away.
“Congratulations on your Walk,” a voice says. “You wandered well.”
Death came so swiftly; I almost missed it.
“Thanks,” I rasp, a shadow falling over me, blocking out the fading sun.
A figure before me, one I cannot discern. They crouch by my side, picking up a limp, burned arm, my tattoos barely noticeable under the dirt and filth.
“What are you…”
My sentence disintegrates as they pull out a black feather. A creditor’s quill. I huff a laugh, for even in Death my mind will not let me escape this system. It has twisted my passing into some exchange with a teller.
The nib does not nick the skin, barely even touches it.
My mouth is so dry, my head so fuzzy, my body pulsing with pain. This will be a relief, a rest, even if it means my tattoos will go to my closest relative, no matter who that is. At least that relative and Benji and my friends can now benefit from that account. Then the strangest sensation happens along my arm. Not pain, no. Instead, I feel what a child once explained astickling.
The two tattoos on my right arm tickle, then my left, as they thin and thin and thin.
They swallow themselves up and are no more.
I gaze at the familiar and unfamiliar body of scars and cuts and freckles and wasted muscles and bloodied feet and no debt. With time and care, the cuts could have sealed, the burns faded, the muscles grown anew, but that doesn’t matter. It is perfect, all of it so painfully perfect, for it is mine.
And now it always will be.
“It’s gone,” I croak.
“Yes, Wanderer.”
Dry lips crack into a smile. The celestial plane is so peaceful, and I am ready see my mother and Jeremee again. I can finally,finallyrest.
Until hands slide under my back and knees, and someone haulsme up. The figure, pressing me to a flat chest, carries me away. We are moving, crunching over hard-packed dirt, and the distant sound of life wafts toward us.
“What’s happening?” I gasp, squirming, but the figure holds me tighter. The voice rumbles in the chest, against my cheek.
“You made it, Wanderer. You’re alive.”
