The Standing Man

Marta Sewell reads humidity the way other people read scripture. In the walled well-town of Yarrow, she keeps the barometer, the fog watch, and the chained thing in the pit that stirs only when rain is coming. It has just stirred. A whole season of wet is stacking on the escarpment, and every colonized body standing dry in the orchards will wake and start calling in the voices of the dead. Marta has nine days of desert, a boy who has never seen rain, and no good choices left.