back with his free hand, but Zed ignored the blows.
“Answers.”
“This is Atta. We’re from Atta.” Amad gave up struggling. “What more do you need to know?”
“Do you know him, Junior?” Lex’s pale face was turning red; his punches were growing weaker.
“I know Amad,” Junior said.
“He lives at the upper end of the village. He used hang out at Chen’s until Junior chased him off. I know Lex, too. But they’re kids.”
“You’re that Junior?” Amad turned to stare at him.
“You’ve been gone five years.”
Azim called out now. “Zed, let him breathe.”
Zed looked down: Lex’s chest had begun to convulse, straining for air. Zed let go of his throat and pinned his other arm. Lex began coughing, fighting to breathe once more.
“Zed?” Amad “The Zed who went to sea? The Zed who died?”
Zed shook his head. Five years? What did this mean?
“Let us go. Untie us.”
“Lex has the button.”
Lex was breathing more easily now. He choked out, “Let go of my arm.”
Zed released his right arm, and Lex reached into a pouch that hung from his shoulder. Zed heard a soft click, and suddenly the balls binding his ankles sprung apart, the cable going slack.
He stood and unwound the cable from his legs, his mind reeling from all that he had just heard.
When they were all free, Azim was the first to speak.
“I recognize you both. But two days ago you were kids. What happened to you?”
Amad had gone to help Lex, offering him a bottle of water.
“Nothing. We got older. You two have been gone five years.”
“Two days,” Zed felt a touch of his rage returning.
Why was no one making any sense? “We set out two. Days. Ago.”
“You set out five years ago. Trust me.”
Lex had risen to his feet, and was now leaning on Amad.
“Was there this kind of growth on Atta when you left? Did you not see that thing down there on the point?”
Neither Zed nor his companions said anything. Zed had finally recognized Lex, subtracting five years from the tall young man before him and seeing the teenaged boy, not fully grown but still tall for his age, who had helped uncouple the cables from his house’s lightning rod. He had made a show of standing balanced on the top of the rod, showing off, showing off for Nera.
Zed turned and began to throw himself down the slope toward the beach.
“Where are you going?”
Lex hurried until he was even with Zed.
“You don’t need to break your neck, you know. You can just take the path to the village.”
Zed kept stumbling down the hill. Behind him he heard Amad ask, “Where have you people been? Were you hiding?”
But Junior and Azim didn’t answer either, and soon all five of them were on the beach, jogging toward the point where the shore bent westward toward the village.
Lex tried again. “There’s a lot of growth ahead. The path is much better.”
Zed kept jogging. For a while no one spoke, but then Azim asked, “What was that weird animal?”
Amad’s voice answered him. “That thing you were chasing? We call it two-humps. They started appearing three years ago. At first there were two, and then three more since then. We had heard there was a new one and came out to catch it this morning. They’re great for moving heavy things—Hey! You can’t get through there.”
Zed had come up short in front of a pile of rocks, now overgrown with shrubs—that blocked the beach. Lex jogged up beside him.
“I tried to tell you.” He pointed up the hill.
“The path is the only good way to the village now. If you want to go home, you’ll have to go up.”
Without a word, and without waiting for the others, Zed began to clamber up the hill once more. His body was moving almost without him willing it now: he was caught up in his fears and the strangeness of it all—to have come back into a landscape so familiar, and yet so alien, to see these two youths (he had placed Amad now, too, and could see him in his mind’s eye, a chubby boy who had always been full of questions) grown into men overnight.
What had happened? What had he done to his friends? And Nera? He had reached the path now, and the thought of her spurred him to walk faster.
Lex came up beside him again.
“Your father thinks you’re dead. You understand that, don’t you?”
Zed had no words to form an answer. He wanted to see the village, to see Hood and Marta in the flesh, to take Nera’s hands again, before the entire scene shimmered and evaporated like a dream.
“You don’t think you should slow down? People will think you’re a ghost.”
“Be quiet!”
Zed had not meant to shout, but the words came out in an angry bark. Who was this boy to tell him how he should return? With a shake of his head, Lex fell behind. Five more minutes of jogging along this path brought the men to a rise overlooking the village: here Zed finally stopped, taking in all that he could see.
Back Home, A New Atta, A New Beginning
This was the village of Atta, right enough: the same neat lines, the same central square, the same houses of scrap metal. But familiarity warred with strangeness in Zed’s eyes. The wires he and Azim and Junior had toiled to connect to every house had gone but along the streets stood lamps, so Zed assumed the houses must still have power. The streets themselves had been paved with a mix of stones: they ran among the same houses as ever, but these houses seemed newly rebuilt, some larger, some taller, all with fresh looking gardens, and each with its own date tree.
“It’s changed.”
Lex stood by him again; he seemed to be studying Zed’s face.
“After Chen took away the lightning rods, everyone began to look for ways to improve the place. Your father’s been behind a lot of it, and so has Nera.”
Suddenly Zed felt exhausted. Seeing the town and hearing Nera and his father spoken of as if they still lived sapped the energy he had received from his fear and confusion.
He sat on a boulder bordering the path and let his head hang down. Azim and Junior sat beside him, staring out over the village. Lex stood in front of Zed.
“So where have you been?”
Azim groaned. “Why do we have to answer to you?”
“You’ll have to answer that question eventually. To your families, at least. We all searched for days after you disappeared. After the death-prayers for you, people mourned for days.”
Zed took a deep breath. “Then everyone should be glad to see us back.”
“Maybe.”
Zed shook his head and took another breath. He got to his feet. “Well, let’s go see.”
Lex held up his hand. “I think I should go let your father know you’re here.”
Anger rose in Zed once more, but this time he managed to restrain himself.
“That