“Yes, but it used to be water. According to our ancestors, there was even a time when this tanker floated on the ocean itself. My pack severed the anchor when we made it our home. The water was long gone, and I didn’t want mischief scaling the chain in the night.” She angles her face to me, and her eyes seem to burn behind the mask. “But there was water here once. Now there is not. Change. Death. Both are a constant in life. So is rebirth. Your sister is gone, but her spirit lives on in her child. Someday you too will die, and a new soul will take your place. The cycle continues. Even in these wastelands, where our gods have abandoned us, life will not cease. I have faith in that, and the stars show it to be true.”

I’m so sick of the stars and blind faith. “What is your point?”

“My point is, you must take the child.”

“I don’t want it. I have no means to feed it.”

“I will give you a goat.”

“I have nothing to pay in exchange,” I point out.

“Consider it a gift, as we do not need the burden of a new child at the moment.”

“Neither does my pack. Indie was foolish, getting herself pregnant. I can’t take the baby back. The journey alone might kill it.”

“It will need a name,” Zuly says. “Pick a good one. And know that she will die if you leave her here. I will turn her out for the vultures.”

“You save her only to let her die?”

“Life is cruel, Delta. It is a cruel, ceaseless cycle, but it is the way of things.” Zuly lifts the mask from her face and pushes it onto her forehead. The formidable healer is gone, replaced with a wrinkled, kind woman. Her eyes no longer seem rimmed with fire, but with pain. She has witnessed things she wishes to forget.

She touches my check softly, and I’m so shocked, I freeze. No one has touched me like this, not even Flint. “Have you not come to me for care before?” she asks, staring intently.

“No. I’ve never left my pack. Not before yesterday.”

“And your blood?”

“No.” I tell her what I told the watchman last night, how before our pack splintered, Asher and his mother had come to the Ark, but never me. Never my blood.

Zuly frowns. “I see in you someone I once knew. Someone who passed through here many years ago. They were stubborn also, defiant. Wanted the world to make sense and for life to be easy.”

“You know nothing about me,” I say, stepping away.