Her hand hangs in the air a moment. “Never mind that,” she says with a sigh. “Your things are in the lifeboat, along with the goat and your sister’s kin. It is up to you if her blood lives on. It shouldn’t be a hard question. Don’t make it one.” She lowers her mask and walks off. After just a few paces, she pauses to look over her shoulder. “How did your friend Asher fare after I treated him?”

“He’s dead,” I say. “Everyone who stayed at Alkali Lake is dead.”

Zuly’s mouth morphs into a frown. “That’s too bad. I thought he’d be the key to our salvation.”

Everyone who met Asher thought he was special. His faith was enormous; optimism radiated from him. But to think he might save us . . .

I wonder briefly if Zuly caught a glimpse of his back when she treated him. If she said something to the wrong person. If she’s the reason why those men attacked Alkali Lake.

“Another soul gone too soon,” she muses sadly.

“Life’s cruel, right? Isn’t that your story?”

“It is, Delta. But that doesn’t mean we can’t grieve our losses. You should grieve yours before they fester. I can see they’ve already taken root.”

Chapter Four

If Asher was still alive, he’d be seventeen, like me. His mother, Silla, would be thirty-nine, like Ma, and our pack would be close to thirty strong, not a meager fourteen.

But they stayed behind.

Silla said it was too dangerous to move. Ma argued it was more dangerous to stay. People picked sides, and that’s how the pack split. Roughly half of us went to Dead River. The rest learned that Ma had been right.

Asher and I were two halves of a whole back then. Always together, until we weren’t.

I wonder sometimes if it would have turned out differently if he’d followed the rules that day when we were nine. We’d been about a click from camp, gathering snow-white alkali from the northeastern rim of the lake. A trader was due soon, and once the alkali was pulverized, the baking soda would look neat and clean, an easy good to peddle. Nothing raised bread quite like the soda from Alkali Lake, and our pack never had to want for much; traders made special trips to us just to restock their jars.

The swampy, stagnant air was thick that day, the sun blistering, and Asher had stripped off his shirt in the heat.

“Put it back on,” I hissed.