Free Chasing The Wind (Novella) by D.K. Holmberg

Chasing the Wind
    T he sudden scream died off quickly, seared away like everything else in the dry land. Even the acrid wind felt stunted. Lifeless. Zephra thought it strange that the scream carried.
    All around her ugly and spindly scrub trees struggled to grow, sharp needles pulling at clothing if she came to close. Some could even shoot their needles if she walked too heavily. Innocent looking brown grasses sprung up in clumps that she was careful to avoid. In Incendin, even those could be poisonous. The ever-present scorching sun burned her exposed skin so that Zephra had quickly learned to cover herself completely. Everything about the land was designed to kill.
    She hated and feared the land almost as much as she feared those who lived here.
    Zephra paused to take a slow drink from her waterskin as she considered the source of the scream. She had heard others since entering Incendin, each muted in the lifeless air smothering the land, but this was different. Closer. And more urgent.
    Anything in Incendin could be a trap – especially screams that sounded so human, so familiar. Still, the scream pulled on something within her, leaving her trembling and drawn toward it.
    How many days had she already spent in the waste?
    The heat made her mind blur and she lost track.
    Eight? Ten? Maybe a dozen. Too long since a cool breeze touched her cheeks.
    All Zephra wanted was to continue onward. If her map was right, she was nearly there. A day, maybe two, before she reached the outer edges of the gentle plains as they rolled toward the sea. This close to Doma she could almost smell the hint of salt on the air. Soon she would breathe easier, no longer inhaling the burning dusty stink of Incendin.
    It was the promise of wind that compelled her forward, away from the stifling air of the waste. The promise that she would finally catch her wind.
    It would have been simpler to sail around to Doma. Easier. But Tellander wouldn’t let her. Not if she was to find her wind, master it as Tellander demanded. She heard his voice in her head like a taunt: Nothing worthwhile is ever easy . After what she had been through already, this had better be worthwhile.
    A tall rocky prominence stretched into the sky not far from her, the only thing that grew in lands that the Mother clearly forgot. With the heat, the scream could be little more than her imagination. And would not be the first hallucination. Much better to keep her focus and reach Doma.
    Then the scream came again, muted but closer.
    The sound rang through her head, demanding her attention.
    A mournful tone hung with it, searing her in a way the sun overhead could not. She shivered. When it ended abruptly, she shivered again.
    She knew she should turn away. In these lands and without her shaping, she could do little more than a child.
    That scream would not let her.
    Not far in the distance, she spied a clump of ragged trees near the rock tower. A few wide brown needles, nearly the size of small leaves, coated thorny branches. At the university, Zephra had read that the Incendin flowers, blooming after the rare rain, had healing powers. In the week she had spent crawling across this blasted land, she had yet to see even a drop of moisture. And nothing suggestive of flowers. They were probably just as ugly as the rest of the tree.
    The tower of rock stretched impossibly high the closer she came. Like a wide platform, it rose toward the sun, sides seemingly sheered from the ground. Smaller boulders looked flung from it, strewn to either side. Trees and the thick Incendin shrub kept an almost respectable distance from the base of rock. The sun seemed hotter as well, as if challenged by the tower.
    Zephra ducked behind the trees, careful to stay away from their sharp nettles, as she moved toward the tower and listened. As a wind shaper, even this still dry air could not resist her sensing.
    The soft sound of whimpering carried to her ears, drifting slowly around and through the rock. From