I’m the last to step forward. Warm mud squelches beneath my worn boots, swallowing damp laces and flaking leather. The wall of churning cloud before me envelops the washed-out landscape in white and gray. I’ve done it. Ventured closer to the storm’s curving front than I ever imagined. Wind licks away my tears as I will myself forward.

The others are ten yards ahead and still one-upping each other to creep forward. Their outlines are whisper-thin shades of gray. Most are older than me, barely. A few are so young they haven’t forgotten how to skip for no reason yet. The wind sighs in earnest agreement.

One of them twists around, revealing a glimpse of orange goggles. Vivi, in her dull poncho of patched tarp. She beckons. “Come on! You wanna range? Be fearless!”

That’s a lie. Rangers guide our krewe through the forty miles of beat-down terrain surrounded by the cloud wall. Good rangers do more than call out forage and poison, or mark close topo for easy paths like any basic thrower. They read the sky for shiftings and the ground for sinkholes. The best rangers steer us from funnel clouds and warn us by horn song if the wall demands we change direction. Fearless ain’t the half, no matter what Vivi says. Sure…rangers gotta be tougher than tough. But a little touched, too. Off. I know this. My dad, after all, is their leader.

“We got another fifty yards deeper, easy!” Vivi calls.

Ain’t we proved enough? But she the only thrower, so they all listen. The rest is wranglers, they mind the fishing and crabbing. All except me. I ain’t built for this ruthless wind and rain. Not no thrower or wrangler, but I’m not that other thing, either, the letdown in the elders’ eyes. The jealousy from these same wrangling dampheads in front of me now.

Bobo sneers at me over his shoulder, twenty long paces ahead. “Wet as I’ve ever seen you, Lonzo. You missing your flambeaux tent, ain’t you?”

“Don’t get lost,” Marcel taunts. “You wispy as a haint back there.”

My brown hands squeeze into fists. Every gulp of air is like breathing through a wet towel. “I’m coming.” The wind snatches my voice in its pocket, smirking.

“Oh, he speaks!”

“Too-Slow-Lonzo—lost til hail cuts off his clothes!”

My tongue and teeth push and squeeze to clap back, stumbling over each other. Talking is hard for me, but I ain’t no coward. My sister said they’ll respect me if I face them, and Dayo doesn’t lie. So I take a step and another.

Gravel and mud skulks beneath the thickening fog on all sides. Sediment outlines vaguely patchwork shapes, oddly straight and hinting at old foundations in the distance. The tops of ruined trees poke through haphazard dams of rubble. There’s always freshly uncovered debris this close to the wall, bits of the world before, broken and rebroken until nothing is left but sand and plastic and us. That’s what elder Demetrius says, at least, but Dad always cusses him behind his back.

Macy ran back to our krewe an hour ago, sobbing. Prolly snitching. So why stay? Part of me wants to see if Dayo’s whispering about the wall is right. Or if our dad is right about her.

A channel ten paces to my left cuts a rusty stain through a swath of sandy clay. The run-off snakes deeper into the wall, curling away from Vivi’s lead. The channel’s source lures my feet, rubble and boulders strewn around an embankment, water streaming from a suspiciously square depression, an old door turned cave.

Old animal tracks are everywhere. Could it be dry inside? Turtles are most likely, or snakes. If it’s something warm blooded, that’s more proof of Dayo’s dumb idea to fling in Dad’s face. I don’t want that.

Before-world trash, sand, and snaggles of shredded wood make for easy sifting. Screws and branches and old nails; bits of plastic I squirrel away to examine later. One piece grabs my eye, nothing like the wrappers and old bags the wall churns up. It’s beat to near tatters, but something’s inside, hidden by someone. Something whole.

“Lonzo!”

My head shoots up. Fog surrounds me, thick as murky curds. Urgent voices bounce through it—they could be a pace or a mile away.

“Vivi! Where are you?”

“You’re too far out! Say something!”

“I think the wall’s shifting!”

My heart snags between beats. A shifting wall would mean drowning in unremembered pools, pelted to death, or worse. The fog is suddenly ravenous, tugging at my ears and nipping at my nose.

I run blindly toward wraith-faint shouts. A new gale threatens to grind me into a muddy grave then dances away, howling. My ears pop. The water flow I’m following changes direction. A sudden crush of rain churns the ground white. I might as well have a blindfold on, screams come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. I stumble into Bobo and we cling to each other.

“I see them up there!” He points in what I’m sure is the wrong way.

Looming silhouettes appear as the wind carves holes in the fog, revealing massive shapes I only know from elder stories. A hulking freight ship from the world before, a dark triangle of rusting metal half-submerged in sludge. Old world buildings protrude from distant silt dunes like snapped-off crab legs, brackish waterfalls spluttering from their heights.

We reunite with Vivi and the rest just as another gust of wind rips apart a rotten tree and knocks half of them to their feet. Bobo screams and Vivi curses. “Get up!”

The ruined tree’s boughs shudder. A shape bursts from within it like an ember snatched out of boiling water. Bobo isn’t the only one to scream again.

“What are you little fuckchucks doing out here?”

Water runs from Dayo’s parka in rivulets. Wide goggles cover half of my sister’s face, and a drenched headscarf holds her locs back. Dad’s trumpet is slung around her chest—she’ll be in deep shit if someone snitches—and fresh mud stains her green waders to the waist, although the machete scabbard strapped to her leg is wiped clean. Ten fat catfish dangle from her belt at the other side, and a fishing pole peeks from behind her shoulder.

We stare at her reverently, returning from deep beyond our courage. She’s older than all of us, almost twice as old as me. How long has she been out here, days? Pushing deeper into the wall of cloud, chasing her impossible dream?

I try to hunch behind Bobo but she spots me. “Lonzo,” she hisses. “The hell? You is flambeaux, boy! You got no business outside that tent!”

“We brave, Dayo,” Vivi grumbles. “You ain’t the only one.”

“More to ranging than brave.” Dayo stomps past. We all follow. “Thought there was more to you than dumb.”

Wind stalks around us, pushing my soles up with every step. Dayo gawks at the sky. “Run. It’s quick shifting!”

Dayo calls out routes and warnings as we tear off after her. Marcel stumbles on a small ledge, pitching toward a murky pond. His body never hits the water. The storm simply takes him, cartwheeling into the fog.

We scramble after my sister, fleeing the storm and Marcel’s screams. No use finding a hidey-hole, the winds of a quick shift can rip concrete out the ground. A flash tears across the landscape behind us, turning the wall’s fog into a roiling blue bruise. Thunder shakes the ground. Bobo slows beside me, eyeballing the sky. I don’t blame him. Better to be drowned than burned.

“No!” Dayo cries. “Cover your eyes!”

I already turned after Bobo, and that’s why I saw the second strike. A ribbon of blue sinks into the old freighter’s hull, not just a serpent’s glancing touch, but a long passionate kiss.

My world explodes in brightness, then darkness.

I awaken on a pallet in our krewe pavilion, where I watch over flambeaux. Trumpets and other instruments line one of the tent’s thick canvas walls, maps from the world before are spread on the carpets beneath them. I’m blessedly dry, and warm. A slick nuzzling won’t let me return to sleep. Buster, a sly pup with rust-colored splotches in mostly black fur licks my knuckles like his slobber singlehandedly brought me back to life. Or maybe he’s marinating me for his next meal.

Standing beside the maps, my dad is encircled by elders. A bone-thin man, anything joyful leached away by rain, his fingers work an oiled rag over his trumpet, cleaning carefully as he listens. “Vivi isn’t the only one blinded, too early to say if it’ll be permanent. How’s your son?”

“Passed out…scared.” Disgust is a familiar marinade in my father’s voice. “Not nearly so bad as the others.”

Elder Demetrius’s mouth twists as if to spit. “Young and useless. Can’t throw, with the wranglers doing twice the—”

“Not useless,” my dad says softly. “We’ll need us more little ones soon enough.”

The others scoff and continue on as if they didn’t hear him. They grumble over the thievin’ creeping through our krewe’s camp, new blight nibbling at the rice shoots in our hydroponic gardens. Satisfied his horn is clean, my dad’s face hardens. The others still.

“Send in Dayo.”

My sister ducks inside, sullen and defiant. Her eyes sweep over me, relieved. She’s the one giving me a small nod of encouragement before the elders light into her.

“What were you thinking?” Elder Freda hisses. She gestures at my dad’s old horn, clean and rust-free though he never plays it in camp. “Krewe ways is tried and true, but you know better? Waterborn you may be, but that ain’t no excuse…”

Well before I was born, the wall shackled the krewes floats over the deep. Dayo knew the ocean for home, caught jellyfish the way I grew up catching frogs. She a rare breed, babies born on the water never live to see land. All waterborn are restless when krewes return to mud and mire, but some elders mutter it’s worse for Dayo—where my dad can’t hear, they do. She was born over the simmering sea, the expanse where the wall stretches highest and thick as jelly. Dolphins wouldn’t even break the waves to check on us lest they never touch ocean again.

Even as she’s dressed down by the gray heads, jaw clenched tight enough to bust a tooth, I envy my sister. I was born in between, in water and sand and my mama’s blood. Surf washing over me like it couldn’t decide whether to free me or drown me. Dayo’s of the water. Dad is of the land, but he’s proud of her in his own way; respects her. I don’t belong anywhere. Our dad calls mama’s name in his dreams sometimes, while me and Dayo gaze at each other from our sleep sacks. I wouldn’t know my mama’s name if not for those nights. I wouldn’t know her songs without my sister, humming me asleep.

The tongue-lashing ceases. The tears burn from Dayo’s eyes instead of falling. The elders dismiss her with kissed teeth and flipped hands, turning to other matters.

“Tarvarius…” Elder Julian takes a deep breath. “We need more than one ranger’s hunch on this. Is you certain?”

“Easterly meander, but we headed back to the gulf. That drift we passed three weeks back was Shreveport.”

Dayo shuffles over to me, face unreadable as we pretend not to soak in every word. They talking like they know the land under our feet. I’m not sure what that means, but it gotta be big the way they all puffed up about it.

“We’ll know more when Zulu’s rangers come in,” my dad continues. “They’ll be closest.”

“Home,” Elder Freda breathes. “Been a minute.”

“It has.”

“Might be worth an occasion. Bringing together the krewes.”

“We can finally bury them bones we been holding.”

“Show some respect!”

“No…Nothing somber. A festival more like.”

My dad clears his throat. “Happy to draw a new mud map if y’all need convincing. But right now, I need tend to my children.”

After they file out, he rounds on us. “So help me…was y’all’s little jaunt worth it?”

“I did my job, and then some!” Dayo shakes a string of bright, yellow-painted coins in her fist. “Two weeks of clear trails, and ponds full of crawdads all along the way! Go see if I’m lyin’!”

“You throw, you mark the way, you come back! We lose enough fools to foolishness without you joining forces! Never alone—them the rules! You never. Out there. Alone!”

“You range, why can’t I?”

“I got enough sense not to end up facedown dead in a ditch, for starters.”

“It ain’t just quickshifts killed that child, Daddy. The wall’s different.”

I scratch Buster’s ears as they square off. She don’t believe the krewes is all trapped in a pinhole, surrounded by the cloud wall on every side. If she right? We survive some weeks of brutal storm and come out free on the other side, where the world supposedly turned inside out. Blue sky everywhere, and clouds are just little gray patches, instead of the other way around. Makes my head numb, imagining the before times like she do. And I ain’t the only one. My sis and dad, they oil and water. Their love burns so hot it would sizzle on a skillet.

Out of habit I check our old coals banked in sand, and whether the latest drowned wood our wranglers harvested is dry enough for the smoke tent or new punks for fire starters. The routine draws me inside myself, gives me comfort as if my family isn’t screaming themselves hoarse.

“The wall was ragged today, Daddy. Weak. I’d have broke through in another mile if those damn babies weren’t—”

“Enough,” he erupts. “You blame them? They out there because of you. Tryna measure up, tryna prove—you know what? I’m tired. You off throwin. You wrangling til I say different!”

“What?” Dayo screeches. “If I ain’t out there—”

“See if I won’t make it worse. And don’t think about worming out of it—not one other krewe will take you in, not after today, Dayo. Test me and see!”

Dayo stomps out, scrubbing furiously at her face, wounded deeper than a roomful of furious elders could ever dream.

Silence settles into its everyday stance between us.

“Was it true?” he finally asks. “Those other kids pushed out on their own?”

I nod emphatically.

“And you. Followed. Them. Care to crack your teeth as to why? No?” A sigh escapes my father, like he’ll go flat if he don’t find the will to stop it. “When you gonna start speaking up, son?” He shakes his head. “Take a turtle shell on over to the Jordan’s tent.”

“Okay,” I manage and hurry out.

The tightness building in my chest dissipates with every step away from the pavilion. I tramp through the dozens of bright tents that make up LaRue krewe. Reds and striped gold and violet and yellow, every tent except the pavilion can be struck by one person in five minutes. Pavilion takes two. There’s no shortage of work for folks who ain’t throwers or wranglers. Everyone else tends hydroponics or schooling or chores. Everyone except me; I keep the flambeaux dry.

I stop by the smoking tent for a turtle shell, already filled with salted crawdads from our stores, and take it where my dad instructed, ducking under clotheslines along the way. Mama Jordan accepts the offering wordlessly, thanks in her red-rimmed eyes. I’m grateful too, I don’t have the right words for Marcel. The condolences. A bit of extra food is small salve for a lost son, but it’s what can be spared. I slip her a candle, too. Lighting one for the dead is wasteful, but I know she’ll bring the wax back.

The sun is bright overhead and I take some comfort in that as I duck into our family tent where Dayo is waiting for me.

“You’ve got to stick up for yourself. I’m not always gonna do it for you.”

She’s right. I always take my time with my words. Am I just thoughtful, like some elders insist? Half the time I swear the wind is tangling my words in my throat. But truly? I feel like my head and my mouth are arguing about what to say, so I keep it simple and listen hard as I can. “You stole Dad’s trumpet.”

“I needed it. I…you remember the notes I taught you? I thought I’d play them today.” She hesitates, picking apart my reaction. “I saw a break in the wall.”

This again. There are no breaks in the wall. That’s why it’s called a wall.

“Lonzo. Not you judging me, too.” Her shoulders hitch as she laughs mirthlessly. “Y’all landborn babies. You just don’t know.”

“I’m not…”

“You never seen an ocean wave so high it blots out the sun. You have people your age, still living! You don’t know. We would have eaten that dog of yours, back on the water.”

I’m not landborn, is what I mean to say, but that don’t matter. I need to think. My hands shake as I strip off my rain gear. Nothing ever really dries all the way, even with the sun out. Humidity constantly chokes the air, reminding us that drowning waits for everyone. “Dayo…”

“Land is different,” she presses. “We can build things. Escape. Explore without…”

The plastic bag falls out of my poncho’s inner pocket.

“Lonzo, what is that?”

I completely forgot about my find. Dayo grabs it before I do.

“Is that dry?”

We extract the object carefully, suddenly excited. I burrow into my stash of small curiosities—junk, my dad calls them—gadgets from the world before. Sometimes elders tell stories of how much unimaginable knowledge we’ve lost, whole galaxies lost to the storms, swallowed beneath our feet.

I trade collectables whenever we connect with other krewes—except for one thing called a battery. That’s rare, and most important according to Elder Freda. I speak carefully, not too hopeful. “I think I can make this work.”

We swap out different cords I’ve accumulated from other finds and trading. One fits. A blue light blinks on my new find, small enough to fit in my hand.

“Now what?” Dayo asks.

Another device called a speaker is the answer. Elders showed me how the old things fit together when I could barely walk. Dayo kept them in my swaddling so I wouldn’t cry and had something to fiddle with. But those were all too broken or too wet. Nothing like this. I don’t have matching cords, and my face crinkles.

“Let me do it.” Dayo thumbs through controls, tongue peeking through her lips.

A small voice blooms from the speaker.

“Pairing.”

We gasp and trade startled gazes. She hands it back.

I cycle through the device and press play.

 

As around the sun the earth knows she’s revolving, and the rosebuds know to bloom in early May

 

We gawk as joyous voices and instruments leap into our ears. It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard, more than when LaRue Krewe riffs with the Mystics across the distance on rest days.

Our tent’s door flap peels away. Wide-eyed elders pour in. Our dad follows close behind. Even Buster slides inside, wagging his tail so hard his hips wiggle.

“How you gon’ keep that to yourself, child?” Freda scolds and laughs at the same time. She wrests the speaker from Dayo’s hands. Tears join the raindrops on her cheeks.

“What is it?” I venture. “It’s…wonderful.”

Laughter bursts out among the elders.

“He ain’t wrong about that now, is he?” Elder Julian declares.

“How much battery is left?” someone else demands. They bluster out almost as quickly as they came, the music trailing after them.

 

I’ll be loving you always
Until the ocean covers every mountain high
Always

 

“Is there time to pull in the wranglers?”

“Someone get Mama Jordan.”

“This is just what we needed.”

My dad smiles after them, and for once it doesn’t fade when he turns back to me. When was the last time I seen that? “You did good, Lonzo. Real good.”

He frowns down at Buster—who edges back, wary of his foot—before disappearing, too. Dayo glares at me, crestfallen. “You couldn’t say anything when he was giving it to me back there? This would have changed everything!”

She storms out. I didn’t do it on purpose! I forgot I had it. Buster curls around my ankles. Music from the world before drifts over our camp as I scratch his ears.

 

Until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky
Until the ocean severs every mountain high
Always

The next week is a dream. My chores are the same, drying scavenged wood in the central tent by degrees until it’s fit for cooking or curing or flambeaux. My eyes burn and my clothes stink of smoke, but I’m dry, and for once, not resented for it by the wranglers my age. No stink eyes or mutterings or heels set out to trip my unwary ankles. All thanks to my find.

I share this on a rare day when my dad actually listens more than he lectures, and my lips don’t wrestle my cheeks over every other word. He’s quiet for a long time afterward. “I wish we’d spoke on this sooner.” He shakes his head angrily, but not at me. “A caste system. Phaw! Pushing it on y’all, and don’t even see it. No wonder they bucking back. Past time we shake things up, make sure folks appreciate each other more.” He glances at me consideringly. “I want you to range with me. I need someone different…without a head full of fog. What do you say?”

Yes, of course.

We’ve gone months speaking less than we did just now. His talks usually remind me of the weather. Here and gone like hail, trying to split open my ears, or pattering drizzle, so light and misty the memory of it evaporates in the sun. This was something in the middle, easy to drink in deeply so I’m refreshed and thirsty for more at the same time. I didn’t know how bad I needed it. Even the angry times are better than his perpetual silence, thick and brooding as the wall that surrounds our ring of open sky. Sometimes I think it’s because of Mama, how one wave in the surf I was born, and the same wave roll back and she was gone. His voice has always been different for me, strained in a way that ain’t the same as when he speaks to Dayo, or even other krewe youngsters. I’ve fixed the words to ask in my mind a hundred times, so I don’t fumble them. But asking means hearing the answer.

Dayo, of course, is furious over my ranging. Her eyes brim with venom every time we trudge past her, elbow-deep in eel water or fending off our meager colony of crabs trying to escape domestication. We’re gone for days at a time, scouting the perimeter nearest LaRue Krewe’s holding of the wall. Every krewe within the cloud does the same, ready to warn the others of a shifting. My dad shows me weather signs, when the sky might cook through our brown skin, what sorts of wall patterns mean funnel clouds, where to look for forage worth sending wranglers after. Most of all? Never take my eyes off the wall.

On that we agree.

I know most of this already, thanks to Dayo. But I don’t say that part out loud. Instead, I dream about us all being out here together. Or just together at all.

The third night of our latest range, he sighs over our mini tent as we pound in the stakes. “She’s wrong, you know. Your sister. There’s nothing left of the world before.”

Maybe I can make up for failing Dayo before. “But the music…”

“Tells me we’re right where we should be. I been ranging since before you was born. Ain’t nothing new. Only what’s new to us, what the mud coughed up for scavenge. Like that old tech you found. A gift when we was low. When we needed it.

“All the world is fog, Lonzo, and the sooner we accept we the ones chosen to push on, the better off we’ll be. Your sister don’t wanna learn that lesson. She’s waterborn, though. She may never learn.”

He indulges me with hunting for old artifacts while we range. We don’t find much but laughter, at least until a sudden hailstorm sends us scrambling beneath massive old concrete spires for cover. I stare, numb as chunks of ice the size of fists sink into the ground.

“See?” His breath mists faintly before his face. “Nothing left to survive that, if it ain’t already live underwater. Our lil patch of sky ain’t so bad, is it?”

I fervently agree. After the hail passes, my eyes are on the ground instead of the wall—nothing like a good ranger—consumed with not falling and embarrassing myself. A bright spot of color catches my eye. My dad walked right past it, eyes fixed ahead.

“Dad?” My discovery is so alien from everything I’ve known that I hesitate to pick it up. Red, blues, and greens make up the feathers of a brilliant bird, frozen solid. The colors are beautiful, so bright it hurts my eyes, dipped in every horn song I’ve ever heard. Eying it stirs something in me I don’t understand, hope and loss tangled in an endless knot.

He stares, even quieter than I am. “We can stew it,” he finally says. “But please. Don’t tell your sister.”

I won’t. The meat is so stringy and different from our eels that I worry someone will ask where it came from. Buster won’t, though. He smacks his jaws like he’s ready to range for more. But I do keep a brilliant blue feather for myself.

Between rangings, I return to the pavilion and mind my flambeaux, daydreaming over what else we might find. Elders visit every day begging for a taste of the music, but my dad chases them off with words like special occasion and selfish old buzzard. Their faces wilt when we don’t bring anything new back, only to bloom again when I say I’ll keep trying. What else could I say? How much more of the world before can we dig up, before the wall drowns our memories of it for good?

 

As today I know I’m living, but tomorrow could make me the past

 

Dayo helps me sort through my growing collection when she can, fresh eel bites or pincer cuts adorning her hands. She scoffs at what I share of our conversations, so I stop. I’ve traded his silence for hers. Can anything I do pull them together? I’d give up the flambeaux tent and ranging both if I could just get that part right.

“Bet I could haul back twice as much stuff,” Dayo offers one day, absently swatting Buster’s licks away from her scabbed knuckles. The dog’s all the way on my side at least, so long as I keep sneaking him dried meat. He’s smart and learns commands fast.

“I like going out,” I lie. I hate it but treasure my dad’s time. “Maybe…you can come with us?”

She throws up her hands. “I’m stuck wrangling, Lonzo. Unless you give up your spot. Don’t you see what he’s doing? Setting us against each other! We ain’t never not had each other’s backs. Right?”

The wall herds our krewe south for weeks. Weakening, if my sister is to be believed. Brooding, if elder experience and my dad’s ranging got the truth of it. I don’t know who is right, but every day it’s solid is another day Dayo won’t leave us. She watches the wall, day and night, shifting her feet like she can feel dry sand between her toes.

The krewe heads for Mystic and Zulu convene unexpectedly, a huge deliberation that drags on and slows work for three days. They talk about our losses, the path south, sickness. But good things too; my music and battery. I’m the talk of the elders. No one likes where we’ve stopped. A drowned town assuredly lurks under the lake waters to the west, between us and the far flanking Mystics. Elders mumble about the signs, and how thieving is flaring up again. For sacrifices, they say.

Our wranglers bicker with the Mystics’ over the lake. Fishing those waters invites ill omens. Their foraging’s been lean though, and good juju won’t hold long against empty bellies. They debate and sing and play songs long after I’m asleep, cradling my feather until night swallows the glimmering blue.

The next day’s announcement stops our entire camp. Me and Dayo clutch hands as the decision is proclaimed.

Elder Freda speaks for the leaders, she’s slight but strong, smaller than me with a voice that booms like thunder. “The rangers all agree: the wall’s gaining speed. In a month’s time, all krewes will traverse back to the deep for the first time in over a decade. For how long, it’s hard to say. Prepare yourselves.”

Dad follows that with instructions: new ration schedules, float details, and the fastest rangers out to the neighboring krewes so we can exchange knowledge-keepers. Some folk stride off briskly, others break down weeping or praying or fearful; or all in turns. A traversal. The word worms through camp like black mold on the canvas. I’ve never seen the floats built. They used to be for tradition, celebrations; bright colors and songs and gaudy signs. Now they keep the deep from killing us. Somehow I’m not afraid—Dayo knows the way.

“They’re wrong,” she whispers. Something dangerous lingers in her voice, the certainty of it sets my teeth on edge.

“We have to do what they say,” I mumble. My heart is clapping desperately against my ribs. Every time we talk, the strings holding us together fray apart.

“Why?”

“They keeping us alive.”

“Found your words, but you sound like him. Those little friends of yours, Vivi and them dampheads? That’s a good week’s body count, back out on the water.”

Anger seizes my tongue. “We ain’t in the deep. You the one who wrong.”

Dayo gives me a long look. Then she pulls out my feather.

Purpose and murmurs of forgiveness trump bad omens. Wranglers work long and hard, netting fish and crab for eating and breeding. Half of our stock won’t survive ocean water. Every morning Dayo’s up before dawn, trudging out with her stilts along with the rest of the wranglers, trawling the shallower depths to push schools toward our nets. It’s desperate, miserable work and piles my guilt nice and thick.

The whole camp frets over missing foodstuffs. A fire starter even grows legs in the flambeaux tent. Marcel’s mama wordlessly presses a lump of spent wax in my hand one morning, as if to say she wants no part of it. Dad frets that people mean to abandon us for a krewe further from the wall, and remembering the look in her eyes, I think he might be right. Even with food stores better than Zulus and Mystics put together, we won’t last long without hands to do the work. Even the easy work like mine.

“Stay close to the camp,” he tells me quietly. “Keep your eyes peeled and we’ll deal with whatever you see.”

“Okay.”

“Lonzo. You’ll tell me if it’s Dayo?”

Doubt wavers in his eyes when I reluctantly bob my head. I didn’t trust myself to say the words. This new task sits wrong in my stomach, like a pebble hidden in the gumbo. But his newfound trust tugs me forward like sunlight on the horizon. I can’t lose it.

I decide it’s time to ask Dayo for my feather back. She’s right after all, I need to stand up for myself. A week after the elders called for traversal, I catch up to her coming in from a trawling, looming over me in her stilts. “What’s up Lonzo?” She frowns when I can’t speak, the wind whistling suddenly and tugging at her locs. I point and she twists around.

The cloud front on our eastern flank splits apart like an old sheet ripped in half by a downburst. Ten miles high, the gray wall firmness that greets us every morning ripples. Cries sound throughout camp. Everyone stops to stare.

My dad comes sprinting from the pavilion just as a single, faint note carries toward us. He stops short like he’s hail struck. More trumpets join the first, rolling toward us from the broken wall.

“Mystic Krewe,” he says hoarsely, grabbing at both of us as if to make sure we’re real.

Dayo bites her lip. “It’s finally happening. They can get out! I’ve never heard that song before…what does it mean?”

My dad closes his eyes. “It means goodbye.”

Me and Dayo share a horrified look as he raises his horn to his lips. Others in our krewe join the melody, in camp and distant. I didn’t know that brass could weep. Anyone without a trumpet is moaning or singing softly as the wall rebounds. Funnel clouds peel over the distant land like silvery searching teeth. The Mystic horns go silent.

“The wall.” Dayo scrubs at her eyes. “We can push through it if we—”

“Please don’t do this,” my dad whispers. “Not now.”

He strides away just as Elder Freda blocks Dayo’s way, gently grasping her arm. “That wasn’t what you were hoping for, love, was it?” she murmurs. “You see the funnels pushing northwest along the cloud drift?”

“Yes…” Dayo says, squinting uncertainly at the squiggles standing out against the larger gray of the wall.

“What’s different about them?”

For once, I answer first. “They should be going against the grain?”

“Correct, Lonzo. Backspinning, and they’re not.” She waits, but neither one of us knows what to say. “That wasn’t the break you been wishing for, child.”

Dayo’s voice is a sad, broken thing. “What else could it be?”

“No telling what happens out there, in the fog. Our storm swallowed another one, most likely. Now hurry, quickly. We don’t know if it’s done, or if there’s more. Camp needs to move closer to the Zulus.”

Elder Freda’s right. The wall is…advancing. Sheer terror turns my knees to mush. This wall is nothing like the playful clouds that stole Marcel into the sky. It is indifferent, unpredictable, violent. A sudden gust pelts us with rain from the clear sky, shocking me into motion.

I race for the pavilion, checking for tinder and punks and all of the things we keep dry once tents are struck. My flambeaux duties finished, I scurry back to our tent, dodging collisions, accepting apologies when others crash into me. Everyone is watching the wall. Is it tightening all around us?

I pull aside the flap to our tent. Dayo stands slowly in the gloom. My feather. Her machete and goggles. Dad’s trumpet. Buster whines at me, wagging his tail.

She takes a deep breath, slowly sliding things into her satchel. “I’m taking two weeks’ worth of food—but I caught more to make up for it. Tell him, I ain’t no thief.” She hands my feather back to me. “I know they think it’s me.”

I could end this with one shout. One raised cry. Letting her go will ruin me, but stopping Dayo will destroy her.

“I know.” I kneel beside my pallet and produce what I’ve hidden away. Candles no one checks for. An extra striker and dry tinder. Foodstuffs elders gave me in gratitude for a moment of music. More stuff than she can carry, but enough to give her a chance.

Dayo’s face wilts for an instant. “It was you,” she breathes. “You did all this for me?”

“I’ll tell him…” My words could choke me where I stand, but I get them out. “We’ll listen for you together.”

Dayo’s squeeze feels like the only thing holding me together. “No one gets me but you,” she whispers. “Thank you, Lonzo.”

I’m alone in the tent. Alone in our krewe. Some of the stolen things are left behind, spread on the rug. Buster nudges inside and licks my palm. I don’t know how long I stand there, how much time passes before my dad enters. His smile broadens at the collection of debris at my feet. “Lonzo! You found who…”

“Me. She needed my help.” Betrayal bleeds though his gaze, disbelief. His face breaks apart as he spins for the entry, pulling his gear back into place. Strong wind is driving the rain, now. Somewhere in the distance, thunder calls.

“Which way,” he snarls. “Which way did she go? Tell me!”

My jaw works and he slams a fist into his hand in frustration. “Gotdamnit! We never seen the wall do this. I’ll find her.”

“Dad.” He stops halfway in and out. “No.”

The flap drops. “What did you say?”

“She’s going to be all right.”

He shakes his head, stalking forward to grab me by the shoulders. His voice is a low, ruined hiss. “She can’t be out there alone. I won’t leave her to die.”

I cling to his sleeve, pulling him away from the tent flap.

He drops to his knees, and something inside him breaks. “No. She can’t be gone. Not like this. She can’t be alone, that’s not how any of this works, we look out for each other, we keep each other safe…” His voice trails off, part pleading with Dayo, part asking forgiveness from my mama. He wrenches out of my grasp and stands again.

“She won’t be alone.” I click my teeth. Buster rises attentively. “Go to Dayo.”

He barks once and charges through the flap, into the driving rain. My dad bursts out in tears.

The krewe covers ground like never before for the next three weeks, fishing and assembling seaworthy floats on our way to the battered coast. Mud flats and sand washes give way to dead lagoons and blasted marsh, plants doomed to shades of gray. We speak more, of Dayo, and of my mama. As much as I miss her, he misses her more. I drink in my dad’s stories, and we maybe understand each other for the first time. He doesn’t hate where I was born; how I was born. He doesn’t hate me. He hates himself, caught ranging when my mama needed him most. Dayo left a hole in me when she left, but the hole inside of him was bigger than me and Dayo put together.

The morning of the transversal, the expanse of gray water looms to the south, the waves still and lapping, deceptively inviting. Somewhere beneath the silt and soil is home, the elders play songs and pray our ancestors hear us. Warning shouts break off the melody—the wall is misbehaving again, goading us into the deep. Sunlight dances on the disturbance, and a rainbow shears the rippling gray from top to bottom. Our floats are lined up for last-minute checks before casting off. No one hears it. The faint note from dad’s trumpet, the song of wonder that will change everything and call us home. So I lift my voice and show them.

 

(Editors’ Note: DaVaun Sanders is interviewed by Caroline M. Yoachim in this issue.)

© 2025 DaVaun Sanders