The late afternoon sun fell towards the western horizon where low cloud shattered the light into beams that shot across the sky before shifting and fading as the sun set in a yellow orange blush.

Like scattered embers the Clan’s hearth fires spread across the plain like constellations. The groupings of warriors, herders, and crafters flung around the skyship as if in frozen orbits.

‘All these fires will draw the blackbirders,’ said Peter.

‘They have to eat. And around a fire they reforge the ties of family.’

The Clan who had become the crew of the skyship gave the two a wide birth, but Peter did not want to be alone with her. He did not know how to be with someone who could enthrall a crowd with her singing, changing the course of their rivalries. And yet she had stepped away from that to be with him now.

‘You’re not angry with me any more? For bringing you here?’

‘I don’t know why we came to this land, but I see that you did not want to come either. When I first arrived, alone and afraid, still wet from the sea, I found myself in the middle of a temple. I blamed you. I always did. Sending me here had been your fault. If only you had kept me with you instead of pushing me to swim to Tango.’

‘I didn’t. I called for you to come back.’

Sarah stared at him. The orange light made her hair a brighter orange than ever, her skin turned golden, and the fire in her eyes kindled brighter.

‘I don’t know any more. But I forgot so much of that life. Perhaps all I remember now is the blame. And then when you turned up, all over again. With more people. I don’t know. It all came back. The blame, the anger.’

Peter felt his face grow hot.

Perhaps it is my fault. Twice cannot be an accident.

‘But to blame is to fail to accept. And I have taken this life, even though I lost so much. It is hard to know how the balance swings. Good or bad. But there is no choice right, so it is all to the good.’

Sarah’s been here too long - if Ajiro’s right. And nuvra have only one month. She’s stuck here. But We can still leave.

‘Don’t you think?’

Peter had to think for a moment before he got her train of thought.

‘So many fires. It’s amazing. I can almost smell the cooking.’

‘We need to eat,’ said Sarah. ‘Come on.’

She grabbed him by the arm and pulled him along but let him go once they reached the steps leading below.

‘Someone found the kitchen, the galley, where we can light a fire at least.’

But so far from the sea, on a dry and windswept plain, the idea of a fire terrified him. But then so did this woman’s attention. His guts turned over.

Peter nodded. ‘Yeah. I really think I need to eat. Or something.’

The next morning the Snow River Clan began the task of unloading the stores that had been so hastily loaded onto the skyship when the Rivers fled their broken village.

Thorn and Vale worked bringing the pack animals and wagons up to the skyship in orderly fashion. Turq and Dusty and the older men sorted the food and allocated the supplies to the right beasts for transport.

‘Where’s Lord Grey in all of this?’ said Peter. ‘I thought he liked to be in charge?’

‘But he’s not, is he?’ said Sarah.

‘That doesn’t stop Thorn from helping. Even wrangling the animals himself.’

‘Would we even recognize him?’ said Tiz.

The moving beasts kicked up dust from the dry ground, but with little wind a haze hung around so most of the Clan wore cloth over their nose and mouth. Still coughing echoed from all sides. Sarah slipped away leaving Peter with the boys Walt and Tiz. Jan had discovered a group of girls in charge of a small herd of grazing animals and had joined as they tried to ride one of them. They did not get very far.

‘They should let the clans move off,’ said Tiz. ‘Loading will take all day. They could be further along if they started now.’

‘That’s the thing,’ said Peter. ‘The Clan would be spread across the plain. Impossible to defend.’

‘I can’t believe they’re leaving the skyship behind,’ said Walt.

‘Politics,’ said Tiz.

‘That. But mostly the skyship will fail without the catalyst,’ said Peter. ‘If the blackbirders are after it then best that they don’t chase us and the skyship too far. If they’re going to get it, best they get it when we’re all close to the mountains.’

Except we won’t get to the portal in time.

He thought on that for a time.

Except that would mean effectively stealing the skyship from the Clan.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

‘We’d just borrow it. They’d understand.’ Peter muttered this under his breath.

‘What did you say?’

‘The plan is not to leave until tomorrow. At first light. That will give time to share the supplies out and then get a good day’s march in the light.’

‘But once the moon rises its bright enough to see like day.’

‘Haven’t you noticed?’ said Jan. ‘Look.’

She pointed to the moon visible in the sky above the haze. The dust colored it yellow and he could almost make out markings on the bright surface.

‘Except that’s not the moon. Not our Moon,’ said Peter. ‘The days are longer, but the months are shorter. The moon is bigger in the sky.’

‘Because it’s closer.’

‘Yeah.’

Peter stared at the hazy moon and the shaded mottles on its face. ‘Almost the same but not quite.’ He shook his head. He’d puzzled over the coincidences between Eoth and Earth. And the research in the lab at the University suggested a sort of parallel shift between worlds. Not a vast distance traveled across the Universe to an almost Earth.

‘That would not make sense.’ He laughed.

‘What?’

‘Just thinking of a joke a friend once told me,’ Peter said. Then he realized that Tiz and Walt expected to hear it.

‘Well. In the lab we worked on Dark Matter. We theorized that if this is a parallel universe its gravity might be leaking through to Earth. So that might be a solution for it. For Dark Matter.’

‘And?’ said Tiz.

‘But I’ve come to realize. That if we don’t get home, we would have discovered another substance.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Doesn’t matter.’

The boys didn’t talk to him for at least an hour after that.

So he took Girl for a ride. And a feed. They had killed some grazing beasts for the mounts but had to do it some ways distant from both the herds and the temporary camp.

That’s where he found Dusty walking beside his old mount as they grumbled to each other.

‘At least we’re away from all that dust,’ said the old man.

‘I thought you at least might like it.’

The old man replied to that with a glare until Peter got down.

‘You’re not from around here, so I’ll let that slide,’ said Dusty.

Peter walked beside the old man while Girl and Dusty’s mount, Favor, knocked heads and purred to each other. Obviously old friends.

‘Well. You going to tell me?’

‘That I reckon Grey is up to something? That this is a damn stupid idea Clanning up and putting all eggs into one clutch. That Vale and Turq are too much in love to disagree with one another. What else do you want me to tell you?’

‘How’d you get your name? Dusty?’

‘Ah then,’ he fell silent and just kept walking.

Just when Peter thought Dusty had forgotten, he started to talk.

‘It was a long while ago now. I was hunting with some older fellows. They thought they were pretty good hunters. But they were all flash and chase. You need stealth and cunning to hunt. We were just after some ground hens, can’t fly. But they run pretty good. We all had our mounts. But they were small like us.’

‘You hatch the mounts from eggs and raise them.’

‘Yes. The only way to get them to bond with you. Except for Grit here. Though you call her Girl, and I suppose that’s alright. She’s a different mount bonded to you. That’s the strangest thing, and why they call you shaman. But I can’t see it’s magic. It’s love I reckon.’

Peter looked at Girl who bobbled her head and looked at him upside down as if trying to work out why he stared at her.

‘Like I said. It’s love.’

Dusty sighed and Peter reckoned he had another story there.

‘Anyway. Those flash riders, they spooked the ground hens and they took off. We ran our mounts after them, had our little stickers out to lance them ready for the fire almost. When suddenly the ground hens ran off, sideways. They don’t do that. They just run straight from what’s scaring them. So I guessed something had scared them worse than we had.

‘But those flash boys just kept on after the ground hens. I pulled up and shouted at them to stick with me. There were another hunter out there. Well. They all ran off and I felt like a fool. And then I saw it.’

‘What?’

‘The biggest raptork you’ve ever seen. Must have come down from the desert away to the east. It stood twice taller than a man. And me on my mount shorter than you are tall.’

‘I thought all the big animals came from another land. The otherlands.’

‘They do. But this raptork monster was big enough. And it liked the look of me.’

‘So what do you do.’

‘I ran. Or Favor ran, and I didn’t need to tell her which way to go.’

‘Back home?’

‘No. Away from that raptork. Trouble was that monster had decided Favor here would be its dinner, and I would a snack to start with. And it could run. That’s how they kill. Run down their dinner and eat it when it is hot and sweaty.’

‘So what happened?’ Peter grinned. The old man just wanted an audience who didn’t know the tale.

‘What happened. I got real hot and sweaty. We ran. Kicking up the ground until I spat dirt so much came from her running. Favor can run for a long time, but that raptork just kept on at us. Until we hit the ravine. Favor wheeled away, right to where the raptork had got ready to attack. It knew, I reckon it knew.’

‘How did you get out?’

‘As Favor ran at the raptork, I had my lance out. And before it knew it I’d rammed the beasties in the chest. And before I knew I flew from Favor’s back into the sandy silt on the ground. I killed it.’

The pride in his voice even after so many years made Peter grin.

‘So I slung the raptork over Favor’s back and made my way home. It had been one of those hot and hazy days in the middle of summer, just enough of a wind to keep you from cooking. But after the run, and the scare, and the everything. I was almost happy when the misty rain came on as we got into the grazer’s camp.’

‘Except? Almost?’

‘Except, I got into camp with all the dirt and silt and muck of the day slicked to me and Favor like we’d been in a mud pool. In the center of the camp I dropped that Raptork and almost fell down beside it.’

The old man laughed.

‘You see. That old bird was next to useless. Tough and stringy and tastes like the rankest foulest stuff ever. And the flash boys strutted, they had got a ground hen. And they laughed at me, all mud-covered and stinking.’

Tears came to his eyes then.

‘And I said I’d caught a monster, and they’d just caught dinner. They thought that funnier than ever. Called me mud-monster. I said I’d rather be dusty.’

His eyes took on a faraway look.

‘And the name stuck. The next year, those flash boys got killed, crossing a river when they shouldn’t have. One was my brother, the other my best friend. Best years of life ahead of them. But I’m… I’m still Dusty.’

Peter realized then that under all the names of all the people, the land, and the animals all had stories, creation stories that told the Clan who they were, where they came from, and how they came to be.

‘Nice to know you Dusty.’

‘One day, you will have to tell me how you got your name.’

‘One day I will tell you about Jupiter. And about my best friend.’

‘A good story? A happy one?’

‘Maggie died after a long life.’ He said no more but instead looked down. He remembered holding Maggie's hand as she passed.

Quantity, but not quality.

‘Long lives drink deep, of sorrow, but also joy.’ Dusty nodded.

Peter stared and Dusty returned the look, almost as if tulanvarqa had told him all he needed to know about Maggie’s sorrow and joy.

But the old man’s gaze slipped to the side and his mouth dropped open as his eyes widened in shock.

Peter turned. A cloud of dust rose in the east.

‘A horde comes. This is not good. The clutch is together and not ready for defense.’

Peter called for Girl even as Dusty stepped up Favor’s muzzle.

Then they raced to return to the skyship and and Clans before the new force arrived. But as the dust rose higher it became clear.

A huge force of mounted riders bore down on the clan. They would reach the edges of the camp just as the sun set.

‘They do not carry lances. They hold no flags of identity.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘They’re not Clan. They are enemy.’