Parched by Melanie Crowder

I may not be able to hear the water like you, but Umama taught me to use the sticks too. Did you know that, Musa?”
    But Musa still didn’t answer. Dingane rummaged in his pack and pulled out a handful of limp tubers. He draped them over the warm rocks to bake.
    â€œI know that when the sticks swing together, I’m standing right at the edge of it. And I know that if I turn and walk away from that spot and count the number of steps it takes before the sticks swing back, I can figure out how far down the water is.
    â€œBut that”—his arm stretched long, pointing toward the desert to the south—“that water is deep. While I waited for you today, I kept dowsing right up to the edge, turning and walking away again, and the sticks never swung back.
    â€œIf we worked together, I bet we could find a place where it wasn’t so deep. We could help each other. Musa, I think Umama would have wanted us to help each other.”
    Musa didn’t move, didn’t show any sign that he was listening. But he was. All day, all he had wanted was to stop moving, to lie down. And now his mind wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t let him rest.
    Dingane said that when the sticks swing backwards, that’s how you know how far down the water is. And Sarel had said that if there was water anywhere around here, it would be right there, in plain view, beneath the long taproots of the sweet thorn trees.
    When Musa had been practicing with his new dowsing sticks, they had swung backwards at the base of the little hill. Not more than one step away from the steep hillsides.
    Musa sat up.
    That was where the water came up near the surface. Under that little hill. It didn’t make any sense, digging for water on top of a hill. But nothing made sense anymore. His mother was gone. His brother had betrayed him. The Tandie were back, and if they caught him they’d never let him go again.
    Sarel and Nandi limped back to the kennel. The girl’s cheeks were damp, her eyes red and bloodshot.
    â€œTime to go,” she said, struggling to lift her satchel onto her shoulder. Sarel swayed, her head bobbing on her neck and her eyelids sagging.
    Musa shook his head and helped her down to her own sleeping mat. “Rest, just for a minute. I have to check something.”
    If he was going to try this, it had to be now. And if he didn’t try, they were going to die out there, all of them. Musa left the kennel, Nandi close at his heels. Dingane stood and began to follow him, but Musa shook his head and walked away from his brother.
    The other dogs didn’t move from the kennel floor, but their eyes followed Musa as he hefted the shovel and began picking his way across the homestead.
    Musa and Nandi clambered down into the dry riverbed, following its cut banks straight to the base of the hill. Every step burned in his legs. Every breath scraped through his lungs.
    When Musa reached the top of the little hill, he slid between the trees, looking for a spot to begin. The ground was pocked with divots, places where rainwater had pooled and sunk through the porous rock below, the tunnels widening bit by bit, year after year. Maybe there was one that was big enough for the blade of the shovel to fit through, large enough to lower a bucket down and back up, brimming with water.
    Musa plunged the shovel into the sunken earth. The dull blade bit into the ground with a
thunk
and the dirt hissed down the hillside as he tossed it out of the way.
    Nandi lay beyond the reach of the thorns, her ears pricked forward, eyes focused below on her sleeping pack.
    Musa dug until his palms were red and throbbing, until he could barely lift the shovel. Every few breaths, the back of his throat would close in on itself, and he would gasp and sputter until his lungs opened to the air again. His muscles cramped and knotted. He was tired of shoveling, tired from weeks of hard travel, tired from months of abuse and neglect.
    The sound of