Jo-abeel went to Kali, the owner of the town scale, to weigh herself.
"You don't look good, Jo-abeel," said Kali. Jo-abeel started to answer, but Kali spoke over her. "You need that fat, you know," he said, pushing at the loose skin at Jo-abeel's back. "And your legs look totally dry."
"When I cross the o'Le Bar, I'm going to lose more."
"The o'Le Bar," Kali said, laughing. "Only a grown muuk can make it across the o'Le Bar—grown and full-male. Even in perfect health, most do not make it. Look at you. Do you look like a muuk ready for the desert?"
Jo-abeel stepped onto the scale. "Most don't make it because they move too slowly. What good is this storage," she said, pointing to her thighs, "if it means I can't move fast enough to cross before they are depleted?"
Kali shook his head as he moved the counterweights on and off the balance. "Three hundred fifty-six pounds. You've lost forty-five pounds in the last week, and you were a runt to begin with."
"I've also run over two hundred fifty miles since I stopped eating and drinking," Jo-abeel replied.
Kali's eyebrows rose.
Jo-abeel continued, "I'm not completely depleted yet. The Falls of Aqwu-la are just over two hundred sixty miles; I'll pass that mark to morrow."
"Impressive, but running here on the slopes isn't the same as down in the desert. O'Le Bar is hot. It will wear on you." Kali was uniquely qualified to talk about the o'Le Bar as the last to cross it some twenty-four years earlier. Upon returning, he had said the Falls of Aqwula were cool waters that tasted good. No one could contradict that outrageous claim: none of the hundreds who had attempted the Journey since had succeeded, and eleven had died trying.
"Then tomorrow I will start training in the flats. I think I have three days still in me, and I will put that to the test in the very desert that I will cross." Jo-abeel looked to the healers hut and said, "If someone doesn't cross this year..."
Kali put away his counterweights. "We shall see." He looked Jo-abeel in the eyes and said, "For all the lives it can save, Jesper weed is important, but so is your life. Any bull worth his weight would cross the o'Le Bar for you." He shrugged and nodded as he added, "Or for your niece... which would still be for you. You don't have to do this."
A hint of red streaked down her arms at the compliment. "Whether they say they will or not, I'm still going. No one has crossed since... well, you."
"Yes, and I prayed to Tepps every day, and she answered me every day. It was a trip blessed by the gods."
"Maybe Tepps will answer me, too."
"I hope so. Train extra. The desert is an odd place. You will be all alone, and measuring time and distance is difficult. I'm sure I went further than what the histories have told, but how can a desert grow?" Pulling a necklace from round his neck, Kali said, "This is a luck charm said to be blessed by Tepps herself. I wore it on my crossing. You should wear it on yours."
Looking at the medallion on the necklace before taking it, Jo-abeel fought back tears. "Thank you," she said as she bowed before Kali.
Kali returned the bow. "May Tepps be with you, and may Ackree be merciful"—a customary valediction before any undertaking in the desert, acknowledging Ackree the sun god and Tepps the god of luck.
Jo-abeel nodded and started to walk away. She heard, but did not respond, as Kali shouted, "The crossing is in four weeks! You haven't long to put the weight back on!"
Dare, a rut of washes and flash floods, was a place Jo-abeel had named during an earlier practice run. Now on her second run out to it, fifty-six miles into the flats, Jo-abeel was worried. The stories of flash floods were fabled, and rarely seen. This was the furthest she had run into the o'Le Bar, because she couldn't imagine what would create any type of rut, much less one more than ten feet deep and twenty feet wide. She dared not cross it until she had to.
Water from the slopes bubbled out of the rocks, hot and smelling like eggs, burning anyone who it touched. Then it disappeared back into the earth or evaporated in just minutes. Only a team of muuks placing cool marble slates near the spring could hold the water long enough to be collected for filtering and distilling. But the slates heated up and had to be replaced with cool ones frequently—a rough job where muscles were sore and the hands took a beating. For the inattentive muuk working the spring, broken fingers and water burns prevailed. All this work was done just to obtain a few thousand gallons of water per day.
Looking at the rut, Jo-abeel wondered how so much water could just appear. The Journeyers said water simply fell from the sky. She tried to picture a huge funnel of water coming down from the heavens, but it didn't make sense to her... and how anyone could survive such a scalding was beyond her imagination.
Three muuks were working with spades to build an earthen ramp down one side of the rut and up the other. Jo-abeel had seen the Journeyers start off with spades every year, but had only thought of their use in digging up the Jesper plants. Now she wondered if there would be another rut, one like this, in the middle of the flats. Surely, she thought, there could not be more ruts than this here; there couldn't be that much water in the world.
She stepped past the first two workers, down into the bottom of the rut, to let the fear wash over her. If she were going to do this alone in a week, she would have to face the fear sometime.
This year, five were attempting the crossing: Herm the Giant, the largest, at 882 pounds; Joam, Kasup, and Holt, each about 750 pounds; and Jo-abeel, now heavier than she had ever been, at 432 pounds. The humps on all five were so pronounced that each had to lean forward for balance, and when they walked, their thighs rubbed and jiggled.
Only Jo-abeel had brought a skin of milk. Sallock milk soured in a day—half a day in the desert. While the others would only travel eleven miles in the first day, and wouldn't use much of their fat or fluid, Jo-abeel was going to try for thirty-two miles by midday—a run that would burn both fat and fluids, so the extra milk would make a difference.
It was tradition for the elders to talk with each of the Journeyers, and they started with Herm. Jo-abeel looked to the sun and judged how long it would take before the elders got to her. Not wanting to lose the cool of the morning due to formalities, she grabbed her skin of sallock milk, said a prayer to Tepps, and started to run.
Muuks about to molt lined the first part of the path—an inspiration to the runners. Muuks molted twice in their lives: at adolescence in their early twenties, and then again into adulthood in their mid-to late thirties. The first molt was harder on females, and the second harder on males. A few of the adolescents were already starting to lose tufts of their tan fur.
The sight of Sallii-abeel in the molt line jarred memories deep within Jo-abeel: her sister dying from infection; her first molt and the burning, itching feeling all over her body; and the soothing feeling of each application of the Jesper medicine. The molt itself was not lethal, but the incessant itching and scratching led to infections that killed one or two muuks a year. Her family was especially susceptible. Her niece was already starting her first molt, and her nephew would start his second molt this year or next.
It was three miles down the slopes and then another eight to the top of the faux flat where the o'Le Bar truly started. Most would spend their first night at the top of the faux flat, looking back at the slopes. Knowing this was the last time she would see the slopes until her return, she never looked back or broke stride. The far side of Dare was where she wanted to spend the night. Had she bothered to look behind, she would have seen that Kasup had already turned back, and none of the others had even reached the bottom of the slopes.
The o'Le Bar was vaster and emptier than Jo-abeel had imagined. After the third day, her mind wandered back to those memories awakened on the slopes. Su-abeel, Jo-abeel's older sister, had cried and scratched miserably during the last week of her life, not only clawing away the old molting skin, but the new fur and new skin as well. There had been no Jesper to treat the itching. When the infection set, her temperature jumped. For the last tw
o days, they had laid her on marble stones in the shade, but that hadn't stopped her from convulsing just before the end. Three died that year.
Though Jo-abeel was three years younger, she had molted the very next year. The only relief for the insanely painful, burning itch was scratching—and just temporary relief, at that. She had cried, too: not just because of the pain, but because she knew she was going to die, and couldn't stop herself from scratching. When Kali had returned with Jesper, Jo-abeel had been the first to receive the relief from it. She knew it had saved her life—saved her from her sister's fate.
The o'Le Bar appeared never to end. The childhood memories spurred Jo-abeel on. With a glance to the heavens, she mouthed, "Be merciful," and continued her run.
The sun was going down, and Jo-abeel was beginning to worry. She thought she had run sixty or more miles each day, except for the short thirty-mile third day when she had worked her way through three ruts, all deeper than she was tall. Five days had passed, yet all she saw was the o'Le Bar. Her legs had just depleted, and her hump was less than half size now. If she didn't find water, a sallock, and the Jesper weed in the morning, she would not have the reserves to return home.
Slowing to a conservative walk, like the walk of those who had traveled before her, she wandered late into the night. Several times she found her hand clasping the medallion Kali had given her. Bugs buzzed about her ears, but there were none to swat. Wind whistled, as it did through the trees of the slopes, but there was no wind, nor were there trees. She stumbled on until she could no longer tell dream from reality. Another rut? she thought as she saw the ground disappear before her in the darkness. It seemed that if she were to take another step she would fall over the edge of the world... and so she collapsed to the ground, without hope.
As she woke, the world around Jo-abeel was different from any she had ever seen before. She lay on a ledge above a wonderland of col-or and movement. The plants were colored in yellows, oranges, and light greens; at home every tree and bush was dark green, brown, or grey. Here the plants' broad leaves moved in the breeze; at home the trees resisted any outside influences, with stout trunks and pointed cone-shaped leaves. Here flew insects of every kind; at home there were mostly beetles. Though she had heard stories about the land beyond the o'Le Bar, this was more vibrant than she had imagined.
"Praise Tepps!"
The Jesper weed had a broad leaf with five points, light green and thin—everything that her world wasn't, so she was sure she would recognize it. However, as soon as she found a leaf that met that description, she found a different one right beside it of the same description. After just an hour of looking around, she had found several different bushes that met the description, and she didn't know which the Jesper was—or if any of them were. For all she knew, the five plants she was looking at could all be the wrong ones.
With the desert sand still burning in her throat and her thighs depleted, Jo-abeel headed out to find the Falls of Aqwu-la, hoping that Kali was right.
Praying to find something at Aqwu-la of which no one had spoken, some hidden secret that might aid a Journeyer in returning, Jo-abeel was devastated to find nothing. Water from the fabled falls would replenish her thighs, but a skinful of sallock milk had augmented the stores in her hump on the first half of the Journey, and now her hump was almost two-thirds depleted. With no sallocks to milk, she realized the futility of this trip. Even with a half-full hump, the return would still be impossible. She might carry the weeds she had found to one of the other Journeyers still in the desert, but she would die in the o'Le Bar without learning if she had actually found any Jesper.
With prayers to Ackree and Tepps, she grabbed her pack with thirty-five pounds of various weeds, and stepped into the desert.
The sun had just gone down, and Jo-abeel was ready for a short nap. She had been running three times each day: evening, night, and morning. She slept in the heat of the day—something she should have done since the beginning—and took short naps between the runs. She wished she would be able to tell future Journeyers to do the same.
As she lay down, the ground rumbled a little. A minute later light flashed above, followed by more rumbling. She looked up: half the sky showed stars, and the other half seemed to have been eaten away by the gods themselves. Bands of white fire waved through the sky with deafening sound. Fear of dying alone in the desert was bad enough, but it didn't compare to the fear of being boiled alive by water from the sky.
Jo-abeel broke into a full run, nearly forgetting the all-important plants that started her on this cursed Journey. As fast as her legs would carry her, she still could not outrun the storm. Soon she could hear and smell the rain behind her, a smell not fresh like the Falls of Aqwu-la, but not eggish like the spring water on the slopes.
Just before the rain caught her, she tucked into a ball and rolled, her hand covering her face. She flinched when the first drops hit her, but they didn't burn. Huge drops pelted down on her, warm like the night air, but not scalding like she had imagined.
After a moment of recovery, shaking as the fear passed, she stood and let the rain fall on her face. She opened her cracked lips and let the water pour into her mouth. It hit so hard that she coughed and gagged, but it was bliss. But after just a few swallows, the storm passed.
The ground was wet, and she was too excited to nap anyway, so she continued her run, with hopes of catching the storm again.
Four times Jo-abeel picked herself up after falling, and she knew she wouldn't have the strength to do it again. Dirt covered every inch of her body, including her mouth, nose, and eyes. She made each step with effort solely motivated by the face of her niece. She hoped to see the slopes again, to be close enough that someone might see her, might send help at least to collect her Jesper leaves, but she hadn't even returned as far as Dare yet.
Ackree had not been kind since the storm. The desert baked with a heat she would not be able to describe if she returned. The world spun; the ground came up and hit her in the face, and it burned. After several minutes of motionlessness, she grabbed her medallion and prayed to Tepps to give her luck on the next journey, the journey to the world beyond. She closed her eyes, and the darkness took her.
Her spirit floated from this world to the next and back. At times she was carried on the shoulders of others into the cheering crowds on the slopes, carrying Jesper weed to the healer. At times she drifted along the eternal shores where her lost family and friends greeted her. And at other times she was back at Aqwu-la, in its colors and movement, and sticking her head under the cool water of the falls.
Jo-abeel choked on the water, coughed, and it hurt the weakened muscles in her neck and chest. The falls choked her again, tasting more like milk than water. She gagged this time, turning her head and opening her eyes. There was no water, just dirt; no colors, just o'Le Bar sand; no movement in the shadows. There was a rut in the terrain just in front of her, unmistakable: Dare. The voices of the other four Journeyers registered in her mind before she turned to see their faces, along with the hulking form of a sallock. The wailing cry of the sallock pierced the silence as milk squirted into her mouth. Jo-abeel coughed again, and then returned back to the land of dreams.
It was dark and cool, and a pair of blankets covered her. She lay on her side on a cot facing a wall she recognized: the healer's hut. A pitcher and cup sat on the floor, a candle somewhere behind her casting lights on the ceiling.
Her head throbbed, and her tongue felt twice its usual size. She took up the cup and drank, and it hurt to swallow. She closed her eyes and was about to go back to sleep when she heard a bell. Two others also lay on cots in the hut: Kenni from the spring, and Joam, who had Journeyed with her. It was Joam who had rung the bell.
The healer's husband came out and looked at Joam, who motioned to Jo-abeel. He left and returned a moment later with his wife, Suuppa. Kali followed right behind.
Su-uppa sat on the side of the bed. "Praise Tepps, you're awake!" The healer felt Joabeel's foreh
ead and neck. "Open," she instructed, looking at Jo-abeel's mouth. "Good, good. How do you feel?"
Jo-abeel closed her eyes momentarily and let out a deep breath. "My head throbs, and it hurts to swallow."
The healer smiled. "Good. It means you are alive... and recovering well, from the looks of it."
"It doesn't feel good to be alive," she responded. "How did I do? Did I bring back the Jesper plant?"
Su-uppa changed the subject. "You almost died out there. If Kasup hadn't come back to lead a sallock into the desert for you... Herm and Joam found you and carried you back to Kasup as quickly as they could; they even broke a sweat." The healer got up and walked over to a table. "No female has ever made the Journey before, and you almost died to do it."
"So, did I get it?"
The healer was quiet.
"Su-uppa," Kali said.
"Yes, and no," the healer finally said. "You brought back fourteen plants, and all of them were the wrong ones." Jo-abeel's heart broke at the news. "However, you somehow managed to get a twig of a branch of Jesper mixed in with one of the plants. It had three leaves—enough for two doses of medicine." The healer paused again.
Kali broke into the conversation. "They should have trained you better on what to look for. Well, I should have, too. None of us thought you would do it... except Kasup." Holding up the Jesper branch, he continued, "It's a crawling plant, low to the ground. Maraki, my mentor, called it snakeweed because of how it spreads. Sometimes it has yellow flowers with purple veining, but not always. When there are flowers, they die before a Journeyer can carry the plant back across the desert. That's why you've never seen them." He handed the twig to Jo-abeel, who was now shaking her head. "Herm and Kasup have already started taking skins of water out into the o'Le Bar." He motioned to Joam and continued, "Joam, as soon as he recovers from a sallock bite, will head out also."
"What about Sallii-abeel? Will she—"
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