“What do you think you’re doing?” her mother asked. She took the hammer away and placed a steaming mug of stew in Vic’s hands. “Sit. Eat. You’ve been diving for hours.”

Vic studied her mom, saw the creases of age in her face, the features so much like her own, and she saw the woman and not the profession, saw that this would be her in just a few years, exhausted, worn out, doing whatever it took to get by. She started to apologize, she wasn’t sure what for, but couldn’t form the words. And then she found herself fighting the urge to cry, to sob, to hold her mother and smear tears and snot into the crook of her neck, to tell her about Marco, how great a guy he was even if he was caught up with the wrong people, how he was dead along with so many thousands more. But she fought this and won. She allowed herself to be guided to the bar, where she sat and spooned stew between her lips, doing what she was told because she knew she needed the sustenance, because she knew her mother was right.

Palmer drank beer from a jar, probably to save water for someone else. Conner was given his own bowl of stew. Rob joined them, pulled from the crowd by the gravitational tug of so much family all in one place, and Vic tried to remember the last time they’d been together like this. She caught her mom giving her a look like she was having the same thought.

“How bad is it?” her mother asked. And Vic had been wrong. Her mother was thinking on more than just family.

“Pretty much all of Springston,” Vic said. She stirred her stew. “The east wells will have to be re-dug. They’re buried. The pumps with them.”

Conner stiffened. “I need to go see about the pump in Shantytown. And I need to find—”

“The Shantytown pump won’t be enough to water everyone,” Vic told him. “How many people from that side of town came over here to the cisterns?”

“What about Dad’s advice?” Conner asked, turning to their mom. “Maybe we should go west like Father said.”

Vic’s spoon froze halfway to her mouth. Stew dribbled onto the bar. “When did Dad ever say we should go live in the mountains?”

“Not in the mountains,” Rob told her. “Over them.”

Vic turned and studied her little brother, who was perched on a barstool. “You need to stick to water,” she told him, thinking he’d been into the beer.

Rose placed a hand on Vic’s shoulder. Palmer was looking at her funny. “What?” she asked Palmer. “What’s that look about?” It was as though everyone else knew something she didn’t.

“Don’t freak out,” Palmer said. “I just learned a few hours ago.”

“Let her eat,” their mother said. Then, to Vic, “Finish your stew, and then I need you to come upstairs with me.”

“Upstairs?” Vic felt her palms go clammy. Felt that old terror swell up within her. She didn’t think anything would get her up those stairs ever again. She had a sudden compulsion to yank out the few nails she’d driven in, to yank them all out so no one could ever climb those stairs again, not her or her mother or anyone. “Why do you want me to go upstairs?” Vic asked.

“Finish your stew. And then I need you to meet someone.”

Vic couldn’t very well sit there and eat with everyone acting strange, watching her like that. Her appetite was gone, anyway. “Who?” she asked.

It was Rob who blurted out what no one else would say. “Our sister,” he said. And when Vic shot him a look, he showed her his jar. “It’s water, I swear.”

50 • The Backs of Gods

“I don’t have time for games,” Vic told her mom. She stopped at the bottom of those stairs, her hand on the rail, unable to muster the courage to lift her boot. “What I need is to get back to the sarfer and get to Low-Pub. The people who took down the wall are hitting it next.”

There was a hand at her back, urging her up. Just like before. Like when she was sixteen. Vic resisted. Her mother went past her to the bottom step, turned, looked out over the lantern-lit and pathetic crowds, and then lowered her voice.

“I don’t know what the hell is going on,” Rose said, “or what you might be involved in. I don’t know what’s happening out there.” She looked to be on the verge of tears, and Vic forgot her terror for a moment and truly listened. “This is all too much at once. It’s too much.” She shook her head and covered her mouth with her hand. Vic saw that her brothers were watching from the bar.

“Mom, you need to get some rest. What can be done is being done. There’s no one left to save. All of this can wait until morning.”

“Your father is still alive,” her mother blurted out.

Vic gripped the railing. The Honey Hole slid back down into the dunes and spun around her. “What—?” Her mother held her by the waist to keep her from sagging to the ground.

“I don’t know how all of this is happening at once, what games the gods are playing at, but Conner and Rob brought a girl here the day after you came to see me. The morning after I saw you, they came in with a starved and injured girl who made it out of No Man’s Land.”

“What?” Vic whispered again. She didn’t understand. “How long had she been gone? How far did she get?”

“She didn’t wander in from over here,” Rose said. “She crossed all the way. Come upstairs. Please.”

Vic found herself coaxed upward. It felt as though her mind and senses were floating above the ground. “What do you mean, Father is still alive? Why did Rob call her my … ?”

“Your sister. Half-sister. You need to hear what she has to say.” Vic glanced back and saw that Palmer and Conner were following them up the stairs. Rob was climbing down from his barstool.

“And Dad?” She looked to the balcony.

“He’s being held on the other side of No Man’s Land against his will. I’ll explain. But it means you have to put Low-Pub out of your mind. Your brother is right, that going west might be the only way. I think that’s what the gods are trying to tell us.”

Vic felt a flush of rage at the mention of the gods, at the talk of destiny. She’d seen too many dead to think of that bitch, Fate. She found herself standing there on that balcony, high over the scene of so many hurt and wounded, so many sobbing and mourning their loved ones. Listening to their soft wails, smelling the sweat in her dive suit, thinking on all the buried she’d seen that day, all the horrors visited on that already miserable place, the image of Marco shot dead, seeing a man’s face stove in behind Graham’s workbench, all the bombs over the years, the rape, the scars, the buckets of hurt more numerous than the sands.

“No one is watching over us,” she told her mother. She turned to her brothers, who were gathered on the stairs, looking up at the two women. “There isn’t anyone up there looking down on us,” she told them all. “Those constellations you see up there?” She jabbed her finger angrily at the ceiling. “Those are the backs of gods we see. They’ve turned from us. Don’t you understand? Our father is dead. I don’t have a sister. Now I’ve got to get to Low-Pub.”

She pulled away from her mom and forced herself down between her brothers, nearly knocked Rob over. Her mother yelled for her to wait. Vic stopped at the bar and screwed a lid on a jar of beer. She grabbed a heel of bread from Palmer’s plate and hurried toward the door. She started gathering her gear.

Conner rushed to her side. “Vic, don’t go.”

“I’m sleeping on the sarfer so no one steals it. I sail at first light. I’ll come back and check on you all once whatever happens in Low-Pub happens.”

“Low-Pub is nothing,” Conner said. “You’ve got to hear what this girl has to say. There are entire cities out there—”

“Like Danvar?” Vic slung her tank over her shoulder. “Stop dreaming, Con. Start digging. This is the only life we’ve got.”

“Well, if you won’t stay, then I’m coming with you.”

“Suit yourself.” Vic nodded to the other dive tank and the gear.

“Okay. Good. I will. We’re leaving at first light?” Conner rubbed his hands together. He seemed shocked that she would have him along. In truth, she needed him and twenty more like him. “If so, I’m going to see if I can be of use here for a few hours. Let Mom know where we’re headed.”

Vic shrugged. “You know where the sarfer’s parked. You get there after dawn, it won’t be parked there anymore.” She turned and shoved her way out the door. It felt good, fleeing that place again. Here was where she had learned this skill all those years ago, where she had learned how good it felt to run away.

••••

Conner stood by the door and watched his sister go. It was a familiar sight, her leaving. It didn’t seem possible that he would see her later that night. He was used to it being months. A year. He was used to the fear that she would perish on her next dive and he would hear about it from someone at school. That loss would be even greater now that they had soaked the sand with their sweat together, had dived side by side to rescue who they could. His sister, always a bright and distant star in his life, had grown bright as Venus. It left him no space to stay behind while she went off to Low-Pub.

But he couldn’t run out as quickly as she could, didn’t have the years of practice. He turned back to the stairs, where his family was still watching from the balcony. Conner made his way to them through the crowded bar. A woman he passed grabbed his wrist and thanked him with tears in her eyes, and Conner remembered pulling her out of her home. Her little boy squirmed in her lap. Conner fought back tears of his own as he squeezed her shoulder. He wanted to say that she was welcome, but he feared his voice cracking, feared the facade this woman saw on him sloughing off. His brother Rob met him at the bottom of the stairs.

“Where’s Vic going?” Rob asked.

“People out there still need our help,” Conner told his little brother. He stooped down to speak to him. “I’m going to go with her, okay? You’ll stay here with Mom and Palm.”

“I want to go with you.”

“You can’t,” Conner said. He was on the verge of tears, but he had to be firm. “You’re needed here. Take care of Violet. Imagine how scared she must be. How alone she must feel.”

Rob nodded. He scanned the room, perhaps looking for something to do, someone to help. Conner climbed the stairs toward his mom. He dreaded telling her he was leaving, but nothing had ever felt as right as pulling people out of the sand. The moment he carried his mother and Rob and Violet up into the attic and saved them was like that moment a snake sheds its skin or a baby crow pierces its shell. It had been a sort of birth, a discovery of purpose. He no longer felt like a boy. As he reached the top of the stairs, he thought even his mother was looking at him differently. Even Palmer.

“I’m going to help Vic for a few days,” he told them. “You’ll look after Rob and Violet?”

His mother nodded, and Conner saw her throat constrict as she swallowed back some word or sob. She reached out and squeezed his shoulder, and he was about to turn away when she reached into her pocket and brought out a folded piece of paper. “Give this to Vic,” his mother said. “Make sure she reads it. She needs to believe.”

Conner accepted the paper and stuck it into his pocket. “I’ll make sure she gets it,” he promised. “I’m going to let Violet know I’ll be gone for a while. You’ll look after her?”

His mother nodded. Conner thanked her and turned to her room, which no longer had the same repulsive effect it used to. It had been cleansed by the sand that had passed through it; it had been scoured clean. He heard Palmer hurry up behind him and felt his brother grab his arm.

“Hey, Con, we need to talk.”

Conner stopped. Over Palmer’s shoulder, he saw their mother heading back down the stairs to tend to the stricken. “What is it?” Conner asked.

Palmer glanced at their mother’s door like there was still something to fear there, like one of her drunk clients might lumber out at any moment and crash into them and send them over the edge of the balcony with its missing rail. “This way,” Palmer said. He guided Conner past the room where Violet lay, his voice a conspiratorial whisper.

“You okay?” Conner asked. His brother looked better than he had in the sarfer earlier that day, had salve on his blistered lips and food in his belly. But something seemed off.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine. It’s just that … this girl who claims to be our sister—”

“Violet,” Conner reminded him.

“Yeah, Violet. It’s just that … Mom took me in there and told me her story, let me talk to her. She and Rob told me about the other night—the night you went camping—and about where she came from.”

“No Man’s Land.”

“Well, maybe.” Palmer glanced at the door again and pulled Conner even farther down the balcony. “It’s just a little unbelievable, don’t you think? I mean, you really buy her story? Because—”

“I was there,” Conner told his brother. “I’m telling you she speaks the truth. She knew who I was.”

“I know, I know. But here’s the thing. The guy who did this to me …” Palmer pointed to his face. “This guy Brock who hired us to find Danvar, who killed Hap, he’s got this strange accent. Everyone says it comes from the north. And this girl sounds just like him.”

“You think Violet is some cannibal?” Conner didn’t have time for this, but his brother really seemed concerned. Vic had told him that their brother was pretty rattled from his experience, that he’d been through a serious ordeal. It was strange, this, to pity an older brother.