Parched Read Online Free Page A

and stored it underground, away from the greedy sun.
    Sarel and her mother had always walked away from the city, away from trails others might be wandering. And they never went far. They were out and back every day before the sun was even a quarter of the way across the sky. Her father met them at the gate each time, with a fresh cup of water and a kiss for them both.
    They shared the water, drinking it slowly, one sip at a time. In this desert, in this drought, it was good to be careful. No one knew how long the water would last.
    Sometimes they found wild onions for dinner; sometimes they brought home a handful of seeds or a shoot wrapped in a damp towel. Always they waited until the sun dragged its heat below the horizon to tuck their treasures into the garden soil and dribble a teaspoon of dishwater over each one.
    As Sarel walked, her mother’s instructions came back to her, warning her away from burrows and snake holes in the dirt, nudging her toward hollows in the ground where the water might be close enough to the surface to feed the roots of a hardy desert plant.
    Without the hoofed animals carving their steps into the hard ground each day, the wind and tumbling weeds had blurred the familiar paths. Sarel and the dogs returned to the homestead that afternoon with nothing but dusty throats and blistered feet. All she wanted was to dip back belowground, to lie on the cool grotto stones and forget about the aloe. Forget about everything.
    But the dogs were thirsty. So she shook the soot out of their drinking trough and wiped it clean with her palm. She pulled a pair of tin buckets out of the charred rubble where the shed had been and banged them together until most of the ash was gone. Sarel stepped onto the well-worn track between the kennel and the grotto, skirting the rocky hummocks that marked her parents’ graves.
    Tiptoeing down the spiraling stairs, Sarel let the wire bucket handles fall into the crease of her elbow and trailed her fingers along the pebbled walls. Her head dropped belowground, her eyelids fluttering closed as cool air, thick with memory, washed over her skin.
    Breathing deep the smell of wet stones, she stepped to the edge of the shallow pool. She lifted a tin ladle off a hook in the wall and dipped it into the water, then filled her buckets slowly. Light flooding down the stairwell bounced against the water and rippled over the mosaic walls.
    Her father had made the grotto for her mother. He had dug down into the earth, carving stairs that curved around the edge of a dusty cave, and mortaring stones, bits of pottery, and mirrored shards into the walls. Sarel and her mother and father had come down often to hide from the heat of the day, the sound of their low voices and laughter bouncing against the curved walls.
    With the buckets no more than three-quarters full, Sarel scuffed back up the stairs. She glanced around as her head peeked aboveground. But no one was there, just Chakide and Bheka, panting in the heat, ears back and chests heaving.
    Sarel’s shoulders hunched forward under the weight of the water, and her brow pinched in concentration. Her feet carried her in a slow glide so she wouldn’t spill a single drop.
    Sarel emptied the buckets into the trough and stepped away through a thicket of wagging tails as the dogs rushed forward to dip their heads in for a long drink.
    They licked their wet jowls as they pulled up from the trough, coming to rub a jaw against her ribs or to duck an ear under her fingers. Sarel set down her empty buckets, and the ache under her ribs eased just a little.
    She left the dogs under the glaring sun and slipped back down the curving stairs. She lay on the cool grotto stones and pinned her arms against her ears to muffle the sound of Ubali’s licking. Sarel felt the weight of a warm body leaning into the curve of her spine and she turned into it, pressing her face into Nandi’s fur.

11
Musa
    Musa stayed in the baobab tree for two days,