Unbidden, Haad La’s face popped into her mind. He and Beha had said that the only way they could legally adopt her was for her to perform the rite of adulthood all Bettiran children faced — the Rispa, a year-long trek from the south of Bettiran to the grasslands in the north. Meant to temper adolescents and encourage harmony with the desert, the Rispa was a test, for both child and family. If the family had done its duty, the child would know everything needed to survive. If the child was ready for adulthood, he would embrace those lessons and use them to take his place in the desert’s law. So far, Ottílde had remembered and implemented everything her family and tribe had taught her in the four years since she’d come to Bettiran. But she had agreed to go on the Rispa for one reason only. Haad La and Beha could find another daughter, one that could love them in return.

Her coldness disturbed even her. An impatient shrug lifted Ottílde’s shoulders and she buried herself beneath cloak and blanket. Nothing for it, was her last thought before she fell asleep.

Overhead, the moon moved toward her own bed in the east.

After only an hour of rest, Ottílde opened her eyes. Something had broken into her sleep and pulled her awake. She kept still and looked around as much as possible while still lying on her side. Silence.

Ottílde edged away from the rock and looked up at the sky. The moon had set now, leaving only the stars, a blanket of sparkling white, to light the sands. She calculated that dawn was about two hours away. A shiver ran up and down her spine and she pulled the cloak closer to shut out the chilly air.

Just as she dismissed whatever she had heard as a dream, a quiet step on the overhang above, made her breath catch. Without a whisper of sound, Ottílde pushed to a kneeling position and drew her knife. The shelter was too small for her spear to be of use, but it was on the sand beside her, ready. Her bow also lay handy, but retrieving it and knocking an arrow were much too noisy.

Her heart pounded in her ears as she waited for more indications of another presence, but silence had returned to the night. Ottílde’s legs began to cramp as she knelt on the sandy floor of the oasis. Then, a soft swoosh above her heralded the leap of a wedowyn from the overhang. Icy sweat drenched her face, neck, and hands as understanding came to her on clawed feet. Nothing and no one with a scrap of sanity would be anywhere near where a wedowyn roamed.

They had no predators. So fierce were they that not even humans presented them with any serious threat. In all her grim imaginings of her death, Ottílde had never dreamed she would die with a sand cat’s teeth in her throat.

She had never seen one before, but stories, myths, and cautionary anecdotes circulated through the Bettiran tribes. One account said that a female wedowyn, in retribution for the accidental death of her cub, had slaughtered a family of twelve before she was finally killed. And an ancient story held that a pair of wedowyns had wiped out an entire tribe, the Gannu, leaving only a few tattered tents as evidence of the massacre. “May you go the way of the Gannu” was a well known and feared curse among the Bettiran. There were dozens of other incidents about stolen children, ravaged livestock, and caves full of human skeletons that, together, painted a gruesome picture of the wedowyns.