Chin held high, Aria left the roof via the door at one end and descended the stairs just beyond. She’d meet with Udo about tonight. Maybe it would prove that her uneasiness was merely due to an overactive imagination, and not a portent of bad things to come.
One hand touched the hilt of her tail spike. Whichever it turned out to be, she’d be ready.
3
Darkness had fallen, but Nikolai’s and Ngubi’s feet never faltered.
Nikolai had spent more time in the open desert than anywhere else. His stride was much longer than his dad’s, but he automatically adjusted his tempo to match. They’d worked as a unit for years, hunting and gathering in Ngubi’s ancestral lands while living in perfect harmony with it.
The rockpile with the tree that looked like a giraffe was about a four-hour run from the village. To get to it, they traveled through the desert’s mix of scrubby trees and sun-bleached grasses. Beneath the light of the moon and stars, Nikolai saw almost as well as in the daylight. He often led the way, as Ngubi’s aging vision wavered.
As they ran, something niggled at him. His physical awareness revolved around sight, sound, and his limited sense of smell. But his other inner sense painted the world in the colors emanated by life essences, in their full spectrum.
And that told him they were being followed.
The fine hairs on his neck prickled erect, and as he ran, he tried to pin it down. Whatever it was, it pulsed powerfully but erratically, almost as though it peeked out from behind those surrounding it.
Hiding. Stalking.
They’d just woven their way through a strand of thorny trees when Nikolai got another glimpse of it. Its essence glowed a brilliant blue, shading to green, in a single pulse so strong he slid to a halt. Then it disappeared, but he turned abruptly and crashed through the branches. The thorns tore at him, but he didn’t care.
Nikolai was only dimly aware of Ngubi, who cursed but followed him.
He’d gone three hundred feet when he caught a glimpse of it—a large, four-legged form, darting with incredible ease through the thorn scrub. Just a flash of white, a flick of a long, thick tail, and it vanished, taking the life essence with it.
Nikolai slowed to a walk, and Ngubi panted his way up to him.
“What did you see?”
Nikolai shook his head. “I’m not sure,” he answered, his eyes dropping to the ground.
He was a good tracker, but not as good as Ngubi. The Khomani worked his way into the dense scrub, and gestured to Nikolai.
There, in the ground at the base of a bush—a single print. Of a hoof. Not cloven like an antelope, but rounded.
“Too big to be a zebra,” Ngubi judged.
“It wasn’t a zebra. It had a full tail and no stripes. White.”
“Must have been a horse,” Ngubi concluded.
“A horse?” Nikolai asked. “What would a horse be doing out here?”
“Might have escaped from a ranch,” Ngubi theorized. But he glanced around him. “A better question would be, how did it navigate through these bushes? They are too dense for even us.” He brushed at his bleeding arms.
Nikolai stared off in the direction the print pointed. He hadn’t much experience with horses, but the ones he’d met didn’t have life essences like this one. But as much as he reached, he couldn’t feel it now—it had vanished, as though it had never existed.
His dad had already lost interest. “I’m hungry and tired,” Ngubi complained. “And not interested in tracking a lost horse through these thorns.”
He headed back the way they’d come, and after a moment, Nikolai followed.
They reached their destination at about midnight and soon sat near a fire, built far enough from the tree that looked like a giraffe so as not to accidentally ignite it. Ngubi wrapped their last stash of tubers in leaves and placed them along the edges to steam for tomorrow’s lunch. For tonight, they’d have to be happy with melons. They hadn’t hunted the previous day, as they’d expected to be eating in the village.
Nikolai nibbled a chunk of melon he’d balanced on his knife point and watched his dad. At barely five feet, Ngubi was average height for his people, with close cropped gray hair now turning white and skin blackened by the sun. The colors of his old, worn cotton shorts and shirt had long since bleached away, which helped to blend him into the sun scorched grasses. And like most of the Khomani who lived by roaming the Kalahari—his every movement fluid and efficient.
The moon and stars shone down with a vibrancy only achieved when miles from civilization. A streak of light arced overhead, and Nikolai watched with interest.
“Been lots of them lately,” Ngubi noted.
