'To eat?'
'No, to cuddle with. Aborigines used their dogs for warmth. A cold evening was a three- or four-dog night.'
'Awooooo,' Tucker called. 'Maybe I can lure one.'
'With that call they'll try to mate,' Ico said. 'That'll warm you up. Of course there's another alternative.' He smiled sweetly at Amaya.
'In your dreams, Washington.'
'I'm just inventorying our resources.'
'Use your gadgets to keep yourself warm.'
They found another sandy riverbed at noon the next day, but even after following it upstream for several miles they found no water. 'Doesn't this country have any wet stuff in its rivers?' Tucker asked rhetorically. 'This is weird.' Lunch was quiet, the flies so persistent that the travelers had mostly given up trying to swat at them, though Ico still wore his head net. They were down to a quart of water each.
'If we don't find more water we might have to hike back,' Daniel said gloomily. 'We can't go on without it.'
Amaya looked thoughtfully at the sand. 'I've got an idea,' she said. 'Let's go back to that bend we passed a mile or so ago.'
'I don't want to go backward,' Ico groused. 'In fact I don't want to do anything right now. I'm exhausted. Let's nap.'
'I told you that you were carrying too much,' Tucker lectured.
'I'm keeping up. I just don't want to go into reverse.'
'What's your idea?' Daniel asked Amaya.
'There's probably water under the sand here. Deserts swallow it after a rain, but it doesn't disappear. We just have to dig in the right place.'
'So what's the right place?'
'I'll show you. Come on, Ico, it's not far.'
'Aw, Mom.'
They trudged back. It was strange to encounter their own footprints; it was the first sign of humans they'd seen in this place. At the bend of the dry river there was a sandy bluff the water had eaten into, and a hollow in the sand beneath it. 'The dynamics of the surface water digs out pools at places like this,' she explained. 'I'm betting there might be another pool beneath us, in the sand.' She dropped her pack, got a stick, and began to dig. 'Come on.'
The men joined her, each taking a turn. It was blisteringly hot. 'If you're wrong, we're going to melt right here,' Tucker warned.
'Yes. This is our first real test.'
Two feet down the sand darkened, then grew moist. 'Widen the hole,' she directed. The sand flew more furiously and then they stopped, exhausted.
Dirty water drained into it. 'It's just mud,' Daniel objected.
Amaya scooped out the muddy water and cast it aside on the sand. 'That's just from our disturbance. Now we wait. The trick in the wild is patience.'
They retreated to the shade of some gum trees and sat, weary. The sun was dipping lower and they allowed themselves sips of their last water. 'I thought it would be easier to drink out here,' Daniel admitted. 'If Outback Adventure drops people in at random like that, I mean. The company didn't emphasize water-finding skills and the desert is pretty green. I assumed we'd find some water each day.'
'Maybe that was our first test,' Ico replied. 'Our assumptions.'
'The good news is, it's a test we're passing,' Tucker said optimistically. 'We found water anyway, right?'
Time crawled on. Daniel lay back to study the branches of the trees, watching the flitting birds. Wanting something to do, he began to try to identify them. Ico had taken out a book on disk. Tucker dozed, and Amaya sat as if meditating. The group was nervous but no one wanted to articulate it. They could die out here, and no one was coming to their rescue.
As the shadows lengthened a bird fluttered down and hopped to the lip and then into the trench. It gave a call and flew out. Amaya came out of her trance and crawled forward, lying on the lip of the hole as if mesmerized. Then she turned to grin. 'Daniel! Bring a cup!'
They camped in the riverbed that night, first drinking their fill from the slowly filling hole and then carefully refilling their water bottles. As Amaya had predicted, cleaner water had flowed into the hole, filtered by the sand. They drank and drank, and then collected more water to wash, a reminder of civility that helped revive their spirits. The success of the well restored their confidence. With patience, they could prevail.
A new moon rose and Daniel decided to go hunting. Taking his spear, he climbed out of the riverbank and into the surrounding bush, moving slowly and taking his bearings frequently so he wouldn't get lost. Twice he saw furtive movement and once he threw at it, hitting nothing. Still, his ability to negotiate the wilderness in the dark encouraged him. It was another step toward being at home here.
They broke camp before dawn to set out east again, having filled every possible container with water. The sun was fixing their schedule: a hard morning's hike, a siesta, another spurt toward likely water and camp. As they moved out some large forms bounded away in front of them.
'Kangaroos,' Daniel breathed.
Even Ico, bent under his heavy pack, brightened. 'Cool!'
'When are you going to hit one of those, Daniel?' Tucker asked.
'When they agree to stand still.'
The sky was as shiny as blue porcelain, the desert as red as Mars. They wound eastward through shrubby trees spaced like slalom poles. Amaya spotted some sap on another mulga tree, collected some bits on a stick, and ate it. 'It's sweet, like candy,' she said. Dubious, the men tried it.
'Well, better than ant balls,' Ico said.
'How do you know?' she teased him. 'I haven't made one of those for you yet.'
They found water again that night, this time in a series of pools on the surface, and Amaya found some wild passion fruit in the creek bed, splitting the orange rind and sucking out the seeds. Their sense of familiarity was growing. They built a fire again, and as its coals burned down Daniel slipped off to hunt once more, his confidence growing at his ability to navigate in the dark. He began to move slowly, walking a short distance and then stopping to stand perfectly still, his eyes searching the monochromatic moonscape for movement. After an hour, his effort was rewarded: a shape in the darkness moved, then hopped toward him. A kangaroo. He sucked in his breath and waited. It hopped closer. He raised his makeshift javelin, and as he did so his own movement alerted the animal and it bolted. By the time Daniel threw, it was a shadow bounding into the dark. He trotted to pick up his spear. Next time he'd have to stalk with his arm already upraised. Still, he felt satisfied he'd found big game. He spent a few minutes simply throwing: rocks, sticks, his spear. He was training unfamiliar muscles in a skill that dated back a million years.
As he slowly worked his way down the riverbed back to camp he heard some gentle splashing and stopped again, alert. Something was in a pool of the riverbed.
Slowly he crept ahead, his spear upraised, his head down. He pushed his head through some bushes and then stopped, sucking in his breath. It was Amaya, bathing. She was naked, standing in water to her thighs, her slim body luminous under the glow of the night sky. She was scooping up water and letting it pour onto her face, and then run down her small breasts and smooth belly. The drops glittered as they bounced off her, falling into a mirror of stars. She washed with the same unconscious grace of a wild animal, and Daniel was jarred by the natural beauty of it, entranced by her form's pearl luminescence under the night sky.
He didn't know whether it was best to try to retreat, possibly startling and embarrassing her with his noise, or to step into view as warning, intruding on her respite. Finally he decided to do and say nothing. She dipped to her shoulders in the cold water with a gasp and then sprang upward, the water spraying as she shook herself, her arms flung out. It was erotic to watch the water stream down her but also innocent, primeval. There was an abstraction to the scene. Her features were indistinct and so there was only the sculpture of her limbs and torso, bent this way
