Excerpt: Washed Away

By the time they got to the next town, which was the jumping off point for the group to split and return to their own homes, Amelada felt sick in the back of the cart, but was unable to move for fear that her head would split open or that she would pass out from the pain. She needed to rest and stretch and most of all sleep; she had not been able to sleep without dreams of her parents since the flood. She knew somewhere in the logical part of her mind that she was not to blame, but her heart screamed that she should have been able to save her family, and she had run over so many possibilities - what if she had taken Timothy with her to get water? He always did like those early morning walks. What if she had woken her mother to talk instead of going out right away? Would they have heard the flood coming in time? What if her father had been on guard with the sheep as usual instead of sleeping? Could he have saved them? Would he have saved himself? She knew that her father would not have hesitated, the way she did when she saw the water. He would have gone straight to his family. She had waited and that wait had cost her dearly. She thought that maybe, if she had hurried back a little faster, or had gotten there a little earlier, she could have saved her family. But thoughts like that made her head pound worse right now; she could do nothing but whimper as Jasson stopped the mule and came to the back to see how she was doing. Nattia was there too, which Ame hadn't noticed before. She saw that the short girl's face was pale and drawn as though she hadn't gotten much sleep lately either, and wondered why in a sleepy haze before Jasson picked her carefully up from the bed of the wagon, and carried her into a warm, dry room with a soft bed of straw in the corner. She allowed him to lay her down upon it, and despite her headache she soon fell asleep in the new warmth and light of the small room.
She awoke that night needing to urinate and feeling much better after a dreamless sleep. The sound of the unceasing rain was muffled greatly by the thatch roof that covered the little hut, and the fire was warm and had been recently fed with well-aged logs. Amelada noticed all of this before she stepped to the door, where a blanket hung to keep the cold drafts of the rain and wind out. She pulled it open cautiously, to reveal a dark, cloudy night and the interminable rain still falling from the angry sky. Beyond the door, a little mud path led down the hill to a cluster of stone and mud buildings inscribing a little circle in the larger circle of the horizon of the great rolling plains. The river glistened in some pale light that had miraculously filtered through the clouds, tracing a ribbon of roiling obsidian over the dead plains. The world was dark and wet and silent except for the plink of rain falling on mud and puddles and stones. She took a breath and hurried out into the rain to release her bladder and then scrambled for the door again, pulling the blanket into place behind her with a quick sigh and going to sit on her little straw pallet. She looked around the room now that she felt slightly less dead. Her corner held a little basket which held a few of her things, including the worn and lumpy pouch she had worn around her neck, some clean clothes and a few strips of leather, probably from the sandals she had been working on. Her beads seemed to have been lost, but her garnet bracelet, she realized, was still on her wrist. She had been playing with its mud-encrusted form unconsciously.