This is what Silvano taught me first, he said, not to Dzeni, but to Besh, who was listening with the attention of a tracker hearing a new track described. "Don't look for water. Look for what water leaves behind. A plant that is green when everything around it is brown. Soil that is dark when everything around it is pale. Ants, building where the ground is damp below. The land remembers, even when the surface has forgotten."
Dzeni snorted. "Words," he said. "Any man can say words over stones."
Ethan did not answer. He had reached a place where a large, flat slab of stone lay tilted against a low rise, half-buried, the kind of stone a man might sit on or a child might climb. He knelt beside it, set his shoulder to it, and with Besh's help levered it up and to one side. Underneath, the soil was dark. Not wet โ not the gleam of standing water โ but dark, and cool to the touch, and when Ethan pressed his palm to it, the earth gave slightly, the way damp earth gives, and a faint, clean smell rose from it, the smell of ground that has held water recently and has not yet given it all up.
Here, Ethan said quietly. "Dig โ gently, and not deep."
Besh dug with his hands, and then Kani, who had joined them, and then Ethan, and within a short time a shallow hollow had formed, and at the bottom of it water began to seep โ slowly, a trickle, no more, gathering in the hollow like a shy animal coming out of hiding. It was not much. It would not save the band. But it was water, real water, where the day before there had been only dust, and Besh stared at it as if he had never seen water before in his life.
They carried it back in cups and gourds, and the children drank first. Nakai drank, and then Yana, and then the smaller ones, and Tahnee, holding her gourd, looked at Ethan with an expression he could not name โ gratitude, and disbelief, and something like fear that it would stop. It did not stop, not that day. The seep kept giving, slowly, enough for the children for a day, and that was all, and that was everything, because a day was a day longer than they had had that morning.
The council gathered at midday, in the shade of a shelter, and the debate was long and hard. The chief sat at its head, Ishtah beside him, Besh and Kani and the other elders around. Dzeni spoke first, and he spoke with force.
He found a damp patch, Dzeni said. "A child could find a damp patch. That does not make him a guide. I say we bind him, and keep him, and make him earn his food by digging, and if he lies again, we send him away on foot, with nothing. Or I say we send him away now, before he learns our strength and our weakness both."
Others spoke for him, and others against him. Some said the seep was proof enough to listen further. Some said one seep did not make a spring, and a stranger who knew a trick was still a stranger. Some said the band could not afford to chase a story west when the children were already weak. The argument went around the circle twice, and the heat rose outside, and inside the shade the voices stayed low, because this was a decision about life, and life deserved a low voice.
At last the chief raised his hand, and the circle fell silent.
Ethan Cole has shown us a small truth, Nan-tan-lupan said. "A small truth is still a truth. I will not stake the band on it. But I will not throw it away, either. Here is my decision. At first light tomorrow, Ethan will lead a small reading party west โ to Dead Canyon, and to its side wash, where the scouts have already been. Besh will go with him. Kani will go with him. Dzeni will go with him, and watch. If he lies, if he leads them in circles, if the ground says nothing, he leaves on foot, and we will not follow him. If the ground speaks, the party returns, and the council will decide whether the whole band moves."
Dzeni's jaw tightened, but he nodded. It was a fair judgment, and he knew it, even if he did not like it.
And if we move, the chief went on, "we move together. No one is left behind. No child, no old person, no injured man. That is the rule, and it does not change for water or for anything else."
After the council broke, preparations began, though the decision to march had not yet been made. Water was rationed again, tighter than before, because the march, if it came, would need every drop, and because the seep, for all its kindness, gave only slowly, drop by drop, and could not be hurried without muddying it. Men checked the horses' feet and the cattle's legs, and mended what harness could be mended, and set aside the stores that would have to be left behind if the band moved, weighing each bundle in their hands as if