van had come. Bao-yu watched them go, then turned to follow the track north. She’d come so far and was loath to even take one backwards step. The Laoren followed her, and after a few hand signals, she allowed him to fall in beside her.
***
The storm buffeted the fabric as if it would tear it from her grasp. Screams of the dead and dying were born by the wind. Flashes of light and dark illuminated her dreams. The things that reminded her of flocks of birds had found each other once more, and they struck with thunderous crashes. Pieces fell away as the black flock grew smaller. Again and again the white flock attacked. Again and again pieces of the darkness fell to the earth. Soon all that was left was a single black bird-shaped thing, flying hard, darting left, then right, then swinging around in desperate geometric twists. But soon, it was overcome by the cloud of white, falling dead and lonely from the sky.
Then she saw the tree.
***
The smell of cooking woke her. She was starving. Laoren had a fire going and was cooking cactus pads on the ends of sticks. She held the fabric tightly around her, then hurried into the desert to find a place to use the bathroom. As she squatted, she stared at her fingers. She snapped them once, then twice. She remembered again the tree in her dream. There’d been a sound like the snapping of a hundred fingers. She remembered also that the ground around the tree was covered with bones. For some reason she smiled. And she held the smile all the way back to the fire.
Laoren held one of the cactus pads out to her. “Comer,” he said.
She stared at the cactus and the viscous spines. She knew he wanted her to eat it, but she just couldn’t bring herself to do it.
The Loaren made a drama out of chewing daintily on his own cactus pad. They dripped with watery juices. Occasionally, he’d use his fingers to pull out the spines, which had loosened with the cooking. He tried twice more to offer her a cactus pad on a stick, but each time she declined. Finally, he buried his head to the task and began to eat.
She stood and walked into the desert a few meters. Absently she snapped her fingers as she once again saw the tree. It had a wide trunk and tremendous shade, like a giant, old jacaranda. Things hung from its branches that she couldn’t quite make out. She snapped her fingers again, then picked up a rock.
She returned to the fire and walked straight to the Laoren. He glanced up as she neared and offered her a smile. His lips were chapped. He was missing several teeth. Green pulp from the cactus dribbled down his chin. He seemed incapable of offering any offense, which was why it surprised her when she brought the rock around in a hard swing, catching him on the side of the face. Blood flew into the fire as his head rocked back. He brought his hands up to ward off the next blow, but it never came. Instead, she dropped the rock and ran. And as she ran, she hugged the cloth more tightly around her. It felt like the arms of her mother. And she spoke to it, crying.
***
He’d had the look of her father. Was that why she’d hit him? She couldn’t figure out why it was that she would do such a thing. She’d never hit anyone in her life, not even as a child. She’d wanted to sometimes, but she’d never once converted that thought to action.
She remembered when she’d been her most angry. It had been after her father had died and her mother had spoken to her in a whisper one evening after too much baijiou. The white liquor had loosened her tongue and unlevered something that had been held too tightly and for too long. Bao-yu had learned that she’d had an older sister who’d died. The death had been sad, but since Bao-yu had never known her, it was hard to feel the sadness her mother felt. But when she’d learned what her father had done, her anger had filled her.
Somehow Bao-yo made a circle and was once again approaching the fire. The Laoren sat huddled beside it, cradling his face in his hands. He heard her and turned, bringing up a hand to ward her off. Without even thinking, she ran