Page 71 of The Garnet Daughter
I unbuckle myself and peer out the window, the outside world barely visible still.
The vessel shifts, settling into the sand. I wait, pausing for it to acclimate, but it doesn’t stop.
It’s not settling.
It’s sinking and fast.
August said there was a button to press so he could find me once I landed. They all glow with the same calm blue light except one.
I press my thumb hard into the only yellow button that I can see. Immediately, the air in the pod is sucked upward and my hair pulls as the force from the door ripping off the hinges threatens to take me with it.
I breathe in the dusty grit of the birthlands, peeking my head out into the scorching heat. I’ve landed in a pool of sand, smoother than the surrounding area, large boulders and harsh-looking trees dot the outside ring of the silky pit.
Half the pod has sunk into the ground as if it were viscous water, the windows now darker where the base frames have already succumbed to the sand level.
I press so many buttons in a panic to send my location to August, I lose track of which ones I started with.
The sand starts to trickle into the ledge of the opening, falling to the bottom of my chamber with delicate grains at first, and then in an almost sentient waterfall, filling the base.
I can’t leave without collecting the spell book from the layers already encasing it. I climb to the bottom where it fell and dig, pushing the silky grains, but more replaces them, racing in from above.
The windows are almost completely dark now, the pod turning into a metal tomb.
I excavate with both hands, scooping armfuls of sand, but a groan coming from the side wall startles me. The metal crumples just enough to let more in from the seam. The entire thing is going to crush into itself any moment.
The level is higher than I can dig down in time, the spell book too far to reach.
The walls rumble again as I close my eyes and picture the larger boulders I noticed around the edge of the pit.
With squinted lids and a shallow, gritty inhale, I fold.
My backside plummets onto an uneven, rocky surface, the darkness around me a little blurry as my vision adjusts.
My escape pod buckles, crushing anything inside from the weight of the sand forcing its way in. The lights shine outward into the birthlands, flickering as the sides howl, a prey animal succumbing to its consuming end.
Just as Maestra said it would, sand that eats.
I don’t move from my large orange rock, too afraid the ground around me is just as ravenous. I skim my surroundings, looking for another place to fold farther away but still hesitating.
I pressed every button. Surely one of them sent my landing location to August. I simply have to wait here for him to come find me.
“How did you do that?” An inquisitive woman’s voice from farther up the rocks spooks me.
She squats, perched like a bird, her hair braided but messy. She is only a few years older than I am, but her skin is damaged from the elements, and her dark clothes are bleached at the high points like the men living in the town over.
She hops down from her boulder, pointing a trailing finger from the escape pod then to me. “I watched you in that metal thing, in the sinksand, and then you were . . . there.”
“Sinksand,” I mutter and watch the last of my vessel as it’s swallowed up. Sinking doesn’t cover it. It’s more of a devouring, the grains having a mind of their own.
“Smooth, like a pool, no stone on the surface.” She points to the edge with fingers wrapped in frayed, dirty cloth. “Sinksand. Do not walk.”
The natural line around its perimeter where pebbles and dry flora grows is obvious to her, but in the dim conjunction light, I have to strain to make sure I am well away from it.
“I see it.” I nod my head in an acknowledgment of her warning.
“You are a priestess. That’s how . . .” She juts her chin from the small bump remaining in the sinksand of my escape pod and then to me.
“Do I look like a priestess?”
