We started walking again and Robin began to sing as loudly as she could.
“Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early light. . .”
Teal reluctantly joined in and soon our voices carried over the desert. None of us could reach the high notes and our sad attempts brought some laughter.
“Let's play ball,” Robin shouted when we finished.
We walked on and soon lost sight of the coyotes.
“See, it worked,” I told Teal.
“They weren't afraid of us. They just couldn't stand our singing,” she said.
We laughed again, and then, when we reached the top of a knoll, I decided we should rest and eat another nutritional bar.
“It's time for dinner,” I declared, and folded my legs. They did the same.
“Wait, wait,” Teal cried, holding her hand out. “No one eats without thanking everyone else and saying I'm sorry.”
“Exactly,” Robin said, and did it. I did the same and then Teal did and we laughed again.
“Do you think Mindy and Gia are sick with worry over us by now?” Teal asked.
“No. I think they're sick about having to do all the dishes and clean the table and whatever else we did together,” Robin told her.
“I didn't mind the work so much. I just mind someone telling me I have to do it or I don't get to eat,” Teal said.
“Come on,” I said. “You minded the work. When did you ever really work? You told us about your maids and your servants.”
“Well.. . okay, I hated the work.”
“I can't understand you,” Robin said. “You had so much. Why did you get yourself into so much trouble all the time?”
“I had a big house and my family has lots of money, but I just didn't feel like I belonged. It's hard to describe.”
“No, it's not,” I said. “Blood doesn't make family.”
“What does?” Teal asked me.
I shook my head. “I don't know.”
“Love,” Robin said. “As corny as it sounds, real love, someone who cares about you as much as, if not more than, he or she cares about himself. That's what a mother's supposed to be,” she said bitterly.
“But,” she added after chewing some of her bar, “I guess she was brought up without love so she didn't know how to give it to me. Anyway, I'm tired of hating her. Hate is exhausting.”
We were all quiet. Her words seemed to settle the same way in us all.
“I don't think there was anything I wanted more than my mother and father and my brother to love me,” Teal said.
“Why is it that the one thing we all need more than anything, we all have a hard time giving to each other?” Robin asked.
I had no answer.
I finished my bar and lay back with my head on my hands and looked up at the sky blazing with stars.
“If you lie back like this,” I said, “and concentrate on the stars, you can feel like you're falling into them and not looking up. Try it.”
They did and agreed.
I told them about Natani and the shell. I had told Teal but she had mocked it back on the ranch. Now she listened as attentively as Robin did.
“I guess you have to be out here to understand what he meant,” Teal admitted.
“It gives you some power, some control over yourself, something they can't take from you,” I told them.
“I'd like to learn more about that,” Robin said.
“Maybe we are, right now,” Teal commented, and again we were all silent.
It was funny, I thought, but out here, with our lives really still in some great danger, we had suddenly grown closer to each other than we had back at the ranch where we suffered so many of the same fears and punishments. Here, at least for a little while, we were unable to be too selfish. What happened to one of us happened to all of us.
“We're going to make it out of here,” I suddenly declared.
“Yes,” Robin agreed. “We will.”
“We will,” Teal repeated.
“Everyone ready?”
“Aye, aye, Captain,” Robin said, saluting. Teal started to struggle with her surely painful ankle, and Robin reached out to help her.
“Thanks,” she said.
We stood up, fixed our packs, and started to walk again.
“We need a new song,” Robin declared. "I've got one. It's one of my mother's, one she wrote herself. She'd never believe I remember it and would sing it, because I used to make so much fun of it, but here I go.
My heart is a prison and you 've got the key, But darlin' there's no prisoner I'd rather be. So build up those walls and chain me to yourheart, For darlin', oh darlin', we can never be apart.
“That's corny,” Teal screamed. “But I like it. Keep singing. It'll keep the vultures away.”
I laughed.
Robin continued to sing. She had a good voice and she put real feeling into the words, too, I thought, and then suddenly I was jealous.
She was reaching back, thinking of her mother, connecting with her, even this far away.
That was something at least.
I wished I had a song in my heart. I wished for it more than I even wished to get out of this desert trap.
For I knew, if 1 had a song like that, there wasn't a desert hot enough or long enough to defeat me.
We walked on.
The stars following us.
The night circling with all the creatures that had fled the heat emerging and I'm sure wondering who we were.
It was a question on our own lips.
Who are we?
Would we ever really know?
Perhaps if we do get out of here, I thought, perhaps then, we would.
With every step I took, with the heat fleeing and the cold descending, I longed for the comfort of Natani's drum, for I knew in my heart dangers were lurking in the patches of new darkness around and in front of us.
However, I really wasn't a stranger to all this.
I had known poisonous creatures all my life. Just like here, they lurked in the shadows, waiting to strike.
The shadows that hid them on the street were cut from the
