Night returned with its customary cruelty, freezing the desert floor until the red sand crackled like broken glass beneath Ren’s boots.
The camp was silent. Tiredness had claimed the refugees early, their bodies drained by the terror of the sinkhole and the bitter labor of hauling the carts over the white chalk-stone ridges. They slept in a tight circle beneath the canvas covers of the barrows. Their breathing slow and was heavy in the freezing air.
Ren sat alone beside the dying embers of the scrub-root fire, huddled inside his worn lambskin apron.
His repair kit lay open on the sand between his knees. The bone awl, the silver wire, the cakes of dark oak-ink, and the bottles of vinegar solvent were laid out in their velvet slots in perfect, neat posture. Ren stared at them, his silver-flecked grey eyes unfocused. His breath rising in was pale, frosty plumes against the starlight.
He was trying to remember his mother’s voice.
It had started three hours ago, while they were pitching the canvas windbreak. An elderly weaver woman had hummed a soft, four-note tune to soothe her sleeping grandson—a simple country lullaby about a river flowing down to meet the salt sea.
