Her father was slipping on his heavy gloves when she turned suddenly at the sound of a deep voice shouting behind her. For a moment, she had forgotten about the ship. A large man stood at the wheel and the men on deck scurried to follow some order. The ship was too far away to make out what he’d said, though he had raised his voice, as if over the roar of wind and waves.
Amba turned back to find her father staring at her. She flushed under his silent, probing gaze. He held her eyes for a long moment—not searching for clues to her thoughts—but looking at them, studying the clouds in the dark brown of her irises. The clouds that the fever had left behind. His brow furrowed in concern before he turned, wordlessly, and stepped into the corral.
Amba hurried to push the cage against the containment poles to make up for her lapse. She stood well back, holding the heavy glass lid ready. Her father moved around the edge of the corral, staying close to the safety of the poles. He pushed his hooked rod into the ground and angled it to tease the sparker from the soil. When the back of the creature broke the surface, he swept the rod deftly under its twisting body.
Once wrenched from the soil they were ugly things—grayish-brown, like giant eyeless slugs, but with nublike tails and a multitude of tiny legs that propelled them through the soil. This one was a monster, as long and as thick around as her thigh, its many legs clawing at the air.
If any of the spines on those legs connected with her father’s clothing, the sparker would cling to him, charring his skin and stopping his heart. Father kept the sparker well away from him, though, and in one smooth motion slipped it between the poles and into the glass container. Amba quickly slid the top into place.
The creature thrashed against the dry glass of its confines, sparking like a mirror image of the heat lightning flashing in the sky. Those sparks lit lamps and powered the great wheels and fans in town, though water and food were what made them most valuable. Bereft of soil to soothe it, the sparker began to secrete water into the container even as Amba and her father carried it back to the shed.
They harvested the remainder of the mature sparkers all the rest of that day. Amba tried to ignore the ship sailing ever closer as she worked, though she stole quick glances at it when Father wasn’t watching.
By evening, the first field was cleared, and she felt exhausted. Father went to the shed and set up the siphons that would keep the sparkers from drowning in their own water while Amba headed for the house to clean up and begin supper.
Do you think there’s still an ocean?” she asked him that evening as they ate. Sparkers tasted like snails and were tough, even when stewed all day, but at least they were plentiful.
His eyes narrowed briefly, no doubt wondering why she asked. She had tried to be subtle—everyone thought about water after all—but the ship was foremost in her thoughts. She chewed a crust of bread and lowered her eyes so that he wouldn’t be reminded of the clouds there.
“Don’t know,” he replied, scooping up a spoonful of stew. “Never seen it, but I suppose it’s still there. They say there’s still water in some of the rivers and such. The ocean must be harder to dry up than those.”
He lapsed into silence again and Amba tried not to think about where the ship might be now. After dinner, she cleaned the dishes, swept the house, and started a new loaf of bread to rise for morning. The sack of grain in the pantry was their last, and the jars of vegetables they had traded for were dwindling. Soon, like many already, they would have to live on nothing but the sparkers.
Amba enjoyed the feel of kneading bread. It reminded her of her childhood, when they had kept a garden and grown grain instead of sparkers. Father hadn’t been so sad then and the house not so lonely. She and Mother always had the cooking and cleaning and sewing done before Father was even aware of the need. He used to ruffle her hair and spend his rare words complimenting her baking or his new shirts. Amba had even caught Mother and Father kissing one day, out by the shed.
She and Father did the work of four people now, and life felt somehow incomplete no matter how hard she tried to fill the holes in her world. Amba pressed her hand to the ache at the hollow below her breastbone, as if she could push her fist inside to sate the emptiness.
The next day, while Father worked in the shed, Amba was sent to gauge the grubs in the second field, to see if they were large enough to herd forward. He couldn’t see that the ship was now halfway up the first field, or that to reach the grubs, she would have to walk right past it.
She could have skirted wide of the ship, and perhaps it would’ve stayed its course up the field and sailed away. She didn’t believe it would, though. If she was the only one who could see it, then it must have come for her. She had been frightened and curious too long; if there was no avoiding this thing, she decided, she may as well meet it head on.
The banister of the deck stood nearly three times her height above the ground, and the ship loomed hugely as she approached it. She strained to hear the splash and roll of waves that gently rocked the hull, or the wind that tousled the men’s hair, but she heard only the silence of the farm and the creak of the windmill.
The figurehead turned out to be a woman, naked to hips that melded into the lower part of the bow. Her right arm was raised high, and in her hand she clutched a metal lightning bolt painted gold. Wooden hair that may once have been red streamed back into the point of the prow, as if blown by a strong wind. On the deck of the ship were half a dozen men. The man at the wheel was tall and broad shouldered, sporting a thick shock of ginger hair, and a reddish beard and mustache trimmed short.
“Lower the sails,” the big man called as she neared. Ropes whined as the sails came down, folding like ladies’ fans onto the crossbeams of the masts. “Drop anchor,” he ordered.
Amba heard the rattle of thick chain and saw a huge anchor tumble from a hole in the hull, though she never heard a splash or saw it hit the ground. The anchor disappeared, leaving only the chain hanging taut above the dirt. The ship rocked to a halt.
Her legs felt as if they had no more bones than a sparker as she closed the last few feet. The big man came to the railing and leaned into it, elbows locked, looking down at her. “What’s your name, child?”
Once he acknowledged her directly it all became too real. Amba’s heart fluttered as fast as a thrummer bird’s wings. She wondered if he was a spirit, or maybe a king or a god, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask. She reminded herself that she wasn’t a child, but nearly a woman grown. With an effort, she kept her voice steady as she answered, “Amba.”
“Not your given name, girl. Your true name. What’s your family name?”
“Storm-bringer.”
Her father’s true name, Stalwart, was one of the newer ones—his mother’s name for six or seven generations back—but the name she and Jass had inherited from their mother was one of the old ones, like Bone-healer or Wheat-singer or Wave-tamer. It had been passed down from a time so distant that no memory of those days remained.
The ginger-haired man nodded, as if this was something he already knew. “Why haven’t you brought the storms then, girl? Your land is in need.”
“It’s just a name,” she said, taken aback. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
He bent his elbows and crossed his forearms on the railing. It seemed to bring him closer to her. “It means everything, girl, especially when the land needs you. Don’t you feel it calling to you, like an emptiness inside you? Like something’s missing?”
There was an emptiness inside her, but it was for her mother, her brother, and the lost days of her childhood.
“It’s time you remember your heritage, Amba. I’ve brought you something that might help.” He reached beneath his shirt and lifted a chain over his head. He dropped a necklace over the railing.
Amba bent to retrieve it but couldn’t find the necklace where she thought it had landed. She began to wonder if it had dropped into the
invisible ocean when, finally, she spotted a few links poking out of the earth. She tugged, and the chain came partially free. With a little digging, the rest of the necklace emerged from deep in the soil. There was an ornament at the bottom of the chain, but it was caked with dirt. She was certain it had been shiny gold as it fell through the air. Her fingers rubbed the dirt away to find a lightning bolt, the gold metal dark with age.
She rubbed the lightning bolt clean with a corner of her dress, leaving smudges of dirt and black tarnish on the fabric, and slipped the chain over her head. The bolt was the same design as the one on the wooden figurehead. The storm symbol reminded her of snippets from her fever dreams that she had thought of only occasionally in the six years since her illness—vague memories of great winds and wild storms raging; lightning striking ferociously and thunder that shook the bones of the earth. There had been a storm outside as she lay delirious with fever, the first big storm in years. It was what had caused the nightmares, her father told her.
“Amba.” Her father’s voice pulled her from her reflections. He was walking toward her across the field. She wondered if he had seen her talking to empty air and digging in the dirt for the necklace. Shame flooded her. She was not at her duties, and she had probably given him yet another reason to doubt her sanity. Face burning, she ran to the second field without waiting for him to ask why she hadn’t come to let him know if the grubs were ready to move.
That night, for the first time in six years, the storm dreams returned. She was outside, in the fields, barefoot, and wearing only her nightdress. The Wind Moon was full above her.
“Storm-bringer,” the earth called to her in a voice as dusty as the soil. A breeze rustled the fabric about her legs and carried the scent of death and decay to her nostrils. Through her bare feet she felt the thirst in the soil, and the pain of the earth became her own. The hollow beneath her breastbone burned like hot coals. Empty. So empty. Not empty for her mother, she knew now. That pain was in her heart. This place waited for something else to fill it.
In her dream, she knew what she must do, and she knew how to do it. She turned her face to the sky and breathed in the air, as if pulling it all the way inside her mind, down into her lungs and down further still. She rooted her feet to the ground, feeling the soil between her toes, and drew the energy of the earth up through her legs and into her middle. When the sky energy and the earth energy met in that hollow place, she called on her power.
It came.
Amba’s mind soared with the wind and her legs grew deep into the soil. Her hair lifted in a nimbus around her head as she became the conduit that connected earth and sky. The tremendous forces of nature were no longer a mystery to her. She stood, arms upraised, exalted, filled with a terrible power that could command the heavens to her bidding. She pulled moisture from the air into the dark clouds and tugged the impotent heat lightning into a single bolt that she hurled down to the earth. It hit the ground like a great hammer, and the thunder that erupted shook the ground. The wind blew mightily and the rain started. A storm that could drench the whole world.
People came to her then, all her distant neighbors, all the folk of the county, all the people of the land. They begged her to stop but still she brought the rain. Every creek bed, gully and valley flooded; peoples’ homes washed away. Sparkers died by the thousands, drowning beneath her feet or struggling to the surface only to drown in the heavy rain. The lights went out and the fans went off. People were hungry; then they starved; then they died.
Amba woke, screaming.
Liath looked at Amba’s tongue, then felt her cheeks and between her shoulder blades. Father had been unable to console Amba when she woke from her nightmare and had summoned the herb woman when she remained afraid, even in the light of day.
“There’s no fever,” Liath told Amba. She stared at her eyes a long time before adding, “The clouds there are unchanged.” She had tended Amba and her mother when they fell ill, as well as many others that awful season. Some had died and some had lived, but Amba was the only one on whose eyes the fever had bestowed clouds.
“Are you sure you won’t tell me what’s been bothering you?” Liath asked again. Her expression was strong but kindly, the lines in her face as coarse as the black hair shot through with gray. Amba felt tempted to confide in her.
What could she tell Liath? That her name might be more than just a name? That a man on an invisible ship was trying to wake an ancient power inside her? That using that power would bring such storms that it would kill all the sparkers? People that Liath cared for would suffer and die if that happened. Maybe Liath would as well. Amba just shook her head and retreated to the same silence where her father carried all his burdens.
“Get dressed,” Liath said.
Amba pulled her thin work-dress over her shift, leaving the necklace hidden in the folds of her nightdress. She had woken from her nightmare holding the lightning bolt in such a grip that her palm was sticky with blood.
Liath opened the bedroom door. Father waited in the other room. “She’s not ill,” Liath told him, “and I see no sign of fever. Or madness.” The deep worry lines in her father’s face softened slightly. “Perhaps she’s just been working too hard,” she said, patting him on the shoulder maternally, though they were of a similar age. “Perhaps you both have been. Let her rest a few days and see how she does. Send for me if you need me again.”
With that, Liath let herself out the front door to ride the borrowed donkey back to its farm and then walk the rest of the way to town.
Father told Amba, “Go to bed and rest.”
She obediently climbed into bed, and he surprised her by bending suddenly to ruffle her hair before he left for the fields. He had lost most of a day’s work taking care of her, she knew. She lay back, but she feared to sleep, feared to dream. At last, stress claimed its price, though. Her eyes closed. She slept. And the storm dreams came again.
This time she woke before she started screaming.
Amba lay awake, her heart slowing to normal before she got up. The gray light of dawn was just easing into the sky. She tiptoed into the main room of the house, listening, but heard no sound. This was the time of day that she and Father usually arose, but she suspected he had worked late into the night and had not yet woken.
She had to make the ship leave, had to tell the ginger-haired man that she would not do the things he wanted, and she had to do it when her father wouldn’t see her talking to the air. She eased from the house still in her nightdress and still barefoot. The tilled soil was rough and uneven under her feet. One hand clutched near her throat and she realized that she was gripping the necklace, though she didn’t remember putting it on.
Amba knew what she meant to say, but her mind remained half in her dreams and the place beneath her breastbone felt full and heavy and warm. It was confusing. Like being two people at once, the girl of the storms and the girl of the farm.
The ship was bobbing at anchor in the first field, as she had known it would be. She neared the ship, and the ginger-haired man came to the railing. He smiled. “You have awoken your birthright, Storm-bringer. I can feel it.”
“I can’t do it,” she said. “I know what you want, and I can’t do it to Father. I can’t do it to any of them. We need the sparkers more than we need the rain.” Perhaps he was an old spirit, and didn’t understand the world as it was now. If the sparkers died, people would starve.
“You can’t decide the fate of the world until you have knowledge of the world. Use that power of yours. Feel what’s going on around you, and then make up your mind what you will and won’t do.”
“It won’t matter. I can’t bring the rain if it hurts the people.”
Amba turned to walk back to the house when a jolt shocked through her bare feet. Father must have moved the larger grubs to the first field, and one lay beneath her now. Everything about the creature felt wrong in a way that made h
er stomach clench as if she might vomit. Almost without thought, she tapped her power.
It swept through her—just as it had in her dream—out the top of her head to the sky and down through her feet into the earth. Her legs were on fire with energy, and her scalp prickled as her hair lifted. Her entire body became a conduit.
Unlike her dream, this time she truly connected to the earth and sky. And suddenly she understood. Everything.
She felt the energy of the sparkers moving through the soil and that of the heat lightning above. She understood the dry earth and the perpetually angry clouds. She understood that people farming more and more of the sparkers kept lightning from reaching the ground—like rubbing two cloths on amber and trying to bring them together—and that was what held off the rain.
The earth was barren, the crops gone and the animals dying. Her people stood on the brink of destruction. The sparkers weren’t saving people, they were killing them.
Even more importantly, she understood her power now. It wasn’t striving to unleash the storms for the sake of violence. It spoke the language of nature and had heard the land screaming out its need. It ached only to bring balance and healing to her world.
Amba distantly heard the bang of a door. She glanced back toward the house and saw her father standing on the porch. She wondered what he thought, seeing her in her nightdress in the middle of the field, her hair flying about her. She wondered if he could see the glow of power she felt burning her skin.
Her heart broke for him. He would never understand if she did this thing, none of them would, but she could see now that their world was dying a slow, dry death. She knew it as surely as she knew that she held the key to their survival, if only she had the courage to begin. With an effort, Amba turned from her father.
She didn’t bother to step clear of the ship. The ship couldn’t be harmed by the storms. It was a part of them as much as she was. Perhaps those men sailed the clouds in the sky as well as the clouds in her eyes.
Writers of the Future, Volume 30 Page 20
