Yeri choked and gagged.

Dimic stood next to me. He bit his lower lip so hard I thought it would bleed.

“Is that what you gave Hardesh?” I asked him.

He nodded.

“So it’ll cure Yeri?” We were supposed to play another game of Hands of Thieves. He was going to be all right. He had to be.

When Dimic looked up at me, tears clung to the corners of his eyes. “Hardesh is bigger. It takes the poison longer to kill him. It’s why us smaller boys have to be so careful. There’s not always time.”

My eyes swung to Yeri. His chest barely rose and fell. His lips had gone yellow. The veins in his arm had already turned from yellow to black. “What are you saying?”

Dimic didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

With one rattling inhale, Yeri stopped breathing.

I waited for Cion to do something, to give him more of the liquid, to save him somehow. He simply held Yeri close to his chest, staying in that position for a long time. No one else moved.

Finally, Tania appeared with a blanket. “Let me.” She put her arm on Cion’s shoulder, pulling him away.

Gently, she wrapped Yeri’s small frame in the blanket.

Cion exhaled loudly and tilted his head back to stare at the cave ceiling. “Bring the wood,” he said quietly.

A few boys disappeared and reappeared moments later with stacks of wood. They arranged it in a row in the middle of a ring of rocks.

Cion picked up Yeri’s body and laid it on the wood. All the Desert Boys moved forward in unison, as though they’d practiced the movement, circling the ring of rocks.

Cion picked up a handful of sand. “May the sand you walked on in life cradle you in death.” He scattered the handful across the top of the blanket.

The lanky boy next to him picked up another handful. “May the warmth of the sand never depart your soul.” Sand skittered across Yeri’s body.

Boy after boy around the circle sent Yeri off with one handful of sand and one last wish for happiness. They stopped midway around the circle. It took me a moment to figure out why. They were all looking at me.

I was standing back from the circle. Cion gestured to Yeri, inviting me to say something.

I started to shake my head. I wasn’t part of this. I didn’t want to intrude on their grief. But I stopped myself. Maybe if I hadn’t started the riot at the well . . . If I’d never run away . . . I owed Yeri something.

I moved forward. The boys closest to me scooted aside to make room for me in the circle. I scooped up a palmful of sand and weighed it in my hand.

“May your spirit be freer than the sands of the desert.” I sprinkled the sand over Yeri’s still form. It wasn’t as personal a message as some of the other boys’, but it reminded me of my mother and her sand dancing, about how the sand could go anywhere it pleased. It was as much as I could offer him now. But it didn’t stop me from wondering what I could’ve done to prevent this from happening.