Violet thought on what else she needed to say. There was a lot. So much that her thoughts were getting jammed like the trough sometimes did when too much metals came.

“Did he tell us how to get to him?” Conner asked. “What did he say we should do?”

There was no snapping for quiet. Her second mom wiped her cheeks and waited for an answer.

“He wrote a note—” Violet said.

“A note from Father?” Rob asked.

“Where is it?” Conner wanted to know.

“It was in my suit, against my skin. I think I lost it with my pack. Father told me not to read it…” She hesitated.

“It’s okay,” Rose said. Her second mom reminded Violet a lot of her first one.

“I read part of it while he was writing it. He made me promise not to read any more. The part I read said not to come for him, to look west over the mountains, and then a confusing part about the sand in the wind and how it comes from the mining they do, that the wind also comes from something bad… something with the lands. I’m sorry. I’m trying to remember…”

“You’re doing a great job,” Rose said. She smiled, but there was still water in her eyes.

“Father used to tell me that it doesn’t rain where he comes from. He said the dirt the mining men throw up in the air for the magnets makes the clouds release their water into the cavern, and that’s where the river comes from, and that all the rain meant for his people is taken out of the air by the sand.” She licked her lips. Again, the sting of a wolf’s bite. “He used to get really mad and talk about this and watch through the fence as the sun went down. There was always the loud booms out that way that made my ears hurt and blocked the sky up so everything was a haze, but he spent all his time on that side. The sunset people were the only ones who liked it over there. Father wanted me to stay close, but I’d rather pray for candy and not rocks by the other fence.”

“How did you get out?” Conner asked. And Rob nodded. Rose said nothing to quiet the boys, so Violet figured it was okay to answer.

“Father gathered stuff. For as long as I can remember, maybe before I was born. Years and years. He said he was going to get us out, just the three of us, and then Mother died when I was six, and he said it would be me and him. He kept stuff in the sand, said it was silly none of the guards looked there, that people would know better where he was from. Bits of wire, a rubber raincoat, batteries, a drill someone left behind because the motor wouldn’t work—but Father knew how to fix it. He spent the better part of a year getting a tool for melting wire. It was all so slow. I wanted him to hurry. And then I could place two fingers down between his ribs while he slept and his breathing sounded like he needed to cough all the time, but he said he was going to get us out.

“And then he showed me what he was making, made me swear not to tell any of the sunset people, and I had to wear it under my clothes so it wouldn’t be found. He would have me take it off at night so he could work on it, adjust the wires so they didn’t scratch me, and then he showed me how—”

“He made a dive suit,” Conner said.

Violet nodded. Rose held the jar to Violet’s lips, and she took two swallows. She felt selfish after this and dabbed her lips with her bandaged hand.

“There’s a big crack in the ground,” she said. “This is where the muddy river is, where the sand is thrown into the sky and the metals are got out. Bigger than a hundred leaps across and it got bigger and bigger every year. Father said I would have to go under this, that I would have to hold my breath a long time, that it was the only way out. He made me hold my breath while I worked the trough, made me do it over and over, could tell when I was using my nose. I practiced until I could do it for long enough.

“I learned to move the sand, and one day I wanted to show him how good I was getting, so I went under the fence and came up the other side toward the city, but he got madder than I’ve ever seen him and told me never to go that way, that I’d only end up back here and then they’d know what we could do and everything would be worse. I had to go west, he told me, and I had to tell his people to keep going west. That’s what he said. There had been a family in the camp when I was too little to remember who shared a story about a sea even past where the sun went at night, where the water wasn’t muddy. It never rained there, but there was water as far as you could see.”

Conner grunted at this. Violet remembered how the sunset people in the mining camp hadn’t believed this story, either. But her father had. And Violet, too.

“He said we shouldn’t come for him,” Rose said, almost to herself.

Violet nodded. “There were fights in camp. Some of the people from the city said there were too many of us, more and more coming all the time, that we were making their life bad. But our life felt bad. Father said I had to get out, that I was young and strong and that I could make it. He made me dive at night when everyone was asleep. And for months and months, he drank half rations and filled bladders with the other halves. He caught rats and made jerky. Said it kept him going, all these things. Said it was good to stay busy. Said he never should’ve come there, never left his people, but that I would make it okay because I would come back and tell about the world that doesn’t care for us.”

“And you’re a sand diver,” Rob said, his voice full of awe, as Violet paused to catch her breath. All the nights of hiking and thinking and being alone made her want to say everything all at once.

“The diving was easy,” she said. “The walking was the hard part. It was twelve days of walking. It took Father nine, but he said it would take me twelve, that I would have to count and time it right. It was very important, the day I left. Which day. He drew a picture of the mountains and showed me which was the Pike and that I would keep this just left of my nose and the star to the north directly over my right shoulder, and on the twelfth day I would see smoke and on the twelfth night I would see fire, right past a crack in the ground that he said I could leap over at the narrowest—”

“He knew we’d be camping,” Conner said.

Violet nodded. “He said if I missed the fire I would come to a big wall and a small town, but that if I found the smoke and the fire that I would be home right then. And I was doing good, walking at night and sleeping all day and being careful with my water. Until a wolf came—”

“A wolf?” Rob asked.

“You… you call them cayotes, I think. In camp, they had different names for things, talked a whole other language. I grew up with both, so I forget which goes where. Dad used to say my accent was like theirs. The cayote came for the last of my jerky while I slept on the ninth night. I should’ve just let him have it, but I was scared and so I fought back, and he ripped me good, tore open my pack, and I ran. My last bladder was torn and all the water spilled out, and I ran all day thinking the… cayote would come for me, but it didn’t. I was real tired and thirsty after that, and I had two days more to find the crack in the ground, and my knees were messed up and my stomach hurt real bad, so I went and went all day and night and then on the twelfth day, I was falling asleep while walking and I would wake up on the sand, and the sun would be hot, and I had bad dreams, and my hands and knees were burning, but then I saw the smoke like Father said, and the night came and I saw the fire, and then I had a dream that you were there.”

She looked at Conner. Took deep breaths. Realized she was winded, that she’d been talking and talking. But there was another sip from the jar for her efforts, and when her second mom Rose wiped the hair off her head and tucked it behind her ears, it was with a different look on her face. Her hand stayed on Violet’s shoulder. Everyone else in the room was looking at her with wrinkles of worry, but Violet just rested against the pillows and enjoyed the feel of the sheets and the grumble of her belly around the water. She wasn’t worried. She had made it. Just like Father said she would.