Chapter 2
She had never had a name or if she had she had never been told it. She had tried a few on over the years: rock, insect, blue. But all of these names had a thing of their own and she was none of them so none of them had stuck to her. If there had been anyone around to talk to she might have been able to choose something even if it was nothing more than 'Woman Who Is Not You' but there wasn't so eventually she gave up trying.
Almost no one came this far into the Badlands. The land was hostile pure and simple. Parched landscapes giving way to scrublands and, occasionally, an oasis surrounded by stunted, wind blasted trees before fading back into arid desert. But if the land was harsh and dangerous those that made their home there were even more so. You did not live in the Badlands so much as repeatedly fail to die.
It must have been eighteen months since she had last seen another person, she thought. Or possibly eighteen years. It was hard to tell this far out. It didn't really matter anyway. They hadn't blundered into any of her pit traps or snares. Nor had they found her little dwelling place, disguised as it was by bushes and boulders. Out here she had always been as safe from life as she had been from death but that was then and this was now.
Since nothing really happened in her part of the Badlands from one year to the next she had become alert to every little change in its temperament. Today the sky was angry for as far as the eye could see. The clouds were pushing and shoving, talking in raised voices, and drawing sparks from one another. The air hummed and her sun-baked hair began to float around her head like a dandelion clock. Interesting, she thought, gently touching the spiky tips. This is the most interesting thing that has happened to me since the day I found Yip. Or perhaps the time when I found the stone with the hole in it.
Yip was calling into the sky, challenging the clouds to a fight. They took him at his word and sent down a spark to punish him. It missed but then the rain came and this made him even madder. He gambolled about throwing up muddy splashes and getting sodden through, snatching at mouthfuls of raindrops with his lips curled back.
'Stupid old dog', she muttered. Then she realised that she too was still out in the rain and mud and her skin and rags were soaking up water a damn sight better than the parched earth. 'Stupid old woman'.
The torrential rain lasted an hour or so and then, as soon as it had come, it had gone. Then the wave came and when it was gone there were bodies in her valley.
