Call Spirits in Your Past **Book Two**

Chapter 4 (Tuesday)

Dryda's stomach dropped and she put a hand to her shirt. No, "dropped" wasn't right. Dizzy made more sense. She mouthed the syllables, diz-zy, cheeks twitching.

"Dryda?" Ella asked from behind her. "You okay?"

"Oh! Yes, I'm fine," Dryda resumed walking, following the trail of people in front of her.

"You sure?" Ella asked.

Dryda peered down at her shoe-shod feet, tracing her shadow where it pulled away from the moon. "Just thinking," she fleetingly touched her bare neck where goosebumps formed in the cold. Why did the nights have to be so cold?

Well, she actually knew the answer to that. Land didn't hold heat as well as water did, and since they were in a desert, there was very little water. What would the opposite be like? What if there was so much water that the temperature hardly changed?

She shivered. And her stomach growled. She frowned. Hadn't she...

"Dryda?" Ella asked, walking up beside her. "You keep stopping. Are you sure you're alright?"

Dryda glanced at her. Her furrowed brow, her hand hesitating above Dryda's shoulder. Ella glowed every night in the cave so everyone could see, to prepare meals or try to mend shoes.

So Dryda smiled carefully. "I am doing alright," she shrugged, then added, "I am a bit cold."

Ella smiled too. "I'm also cold. I know this beats trying to travel during the day, but I wish we could be something other than burning hot or really cold."

Trudging over rocky ground, Dryda puzzled over her lion stomach. Why did stomachs growl like that? When she was younger, she used to think an angry cat lived inside her, who ate all her food. But of course that was ridiculous. Nobody had cats inside them. Except maybe Kwayo. Where did his human go, though, when he became a cat? Did the human go inside? Did he have a human stomach?

Dryda shook her head. Her stomach. It growled again, her non-human stomach. She didn't know what happened to her inner organs when her skin turned woody. She'd never seen inside herself to know. But something changed. Otherwise how could she float in water better? Or make energy out of leaves?

A fluttering of wings descended from the sky. Kwayo shifted, probably meaning he'd found shelter. He motioned grandly to Mrs. Aterak--or, Sorano, since Mrs. Aterak wanted them to start calling her that, since they weren't in a classroom, but it sounded...odd. That would be like calling Ana...Ana's last name. Dryda scratched her head. She didn't know any of her friends' last names, did she?

Of course, she wouldn't ever tell anyone her own. She didn't think about that name.

Kwayo turned into a large-winged bird and flew off again, and Dryda scrunched her eyebrows together. Had he found shelter?

"Hurry, everyone!" Mrs. Aterak called. "Rainfall!"

The line in front of her and Ella broke into a jog, and Dryda startled into motion, running over the uneven rocks and bushes of sagebrush. Dryda counted under her breath, adding up the running figures ahead of her, reaching eighteen. She automatically added Ella and herself. Twenty. They'd all stuck together. That was good.

Dryda leapt over a very tiny cactus, just peeping out of the ground, and wished it well. Hopefully a mean old hog wouldn't come along and eat it. Or...did any wild hogs live around here?

A spatter of rain against the rocks halted Dryda in her tracks. All nineteen of her companions quit running too, barely at the fringe of the rainstorm graying out a tiny circle of the sky. Ryn formed a large funnel of a forcefield, catching a wide area of raindrops and guiding them into the water jug. Everyone else tried catching raindrops in their mouths, some of them holding up little bowls of carapace.

Despite the cold droplets, Dryda turned her face upward, turning her skin woody and sprouting as many leaves as she could. She caught a glimpse of her hair, and it wasn't green. It was kind of...speckled. With yellow spots. Her eyebrows knit together. Maybe that was just a side effect from chopping it off for cooking fire kindling? Maybe Ana also had a point, and she should try to eat more.

But, everyone else needed it too. More than she did. They couldn't sprout leaves to lick up the sunlight.

Dryda cupped her hands in front of her, tilting her head up to drink in as much water as she could, catching it on her leaves and guiding it to her skin. She couldn't make roots. But she could guide the water along her bark and to her hands or mouth, cold droplets trickling chills down her lips and forearms.

She glanced down at her cupped hands, briefly. They didn't drip any water, but she pushed more bark between the little spaces between her fingers, just in case.

She tilted her face upwards again, guiding water to her mouth. The clouds were already dispersing. The rain petered out. Dryda sighed in disappointment. She was still thirsty...

Chamrik approached her with a bowl, a small puddle sloshing at the bottom of it. She tipped her hands into it, making sure not to spill a drop. Chamrik glanced up at her hair, but walked off without a word.

Dryda bit her lip. Had he noticed the speckles too? She shifted the leaves and bark back into hair and skin, approaching the circle of her classmates. Crouched, Ryn was tapping the side of the water jug, and everyone listened quietly, stacking empty bowls inside the pot.

"It sounds like it might be half full?" Niko said.

"It was half full this morning--or, when we woke up," Tara folded her arms. "That means we haven't even gotten back what we used."

Ana muttered, "that's what happens when it rains for barely a minute and you only have bowls barely bigger than your hand to catch it."

"Come on everyone," Mrs. Aterak said. "Discussing our water supply isn't going to help us reach safety."

Dryda peered at Sorano's face. She sounded really tired, and her face was still blotched with ugly greens from when Cassandra had her captured. Tara and some others grumbled, but resumed marching. Bella picked up the water jug, placing it in the re-packed pot full of bowls. Growing a few feet taller, she hugged the pot around the middle and trudged after Tara. Sorano sighed quietly, shoulders bowed, and Dryda resolved not to complain so much. Mrs. Aterak was in charge of a whole lot more than she was.

Ana murmured something under her breath, but trod after Bella. Dryda fell in step after her, glancing back at Mrs. Aterak. One, she counted, then turned forward. Two, three. She stopped at four, on account of being unable to see past Bella.