by Sharon Shinn
She was not dead, and so she must make herself live.
From her seated position, she tried to take stock of her situation. They had not bothered to bind her hands and feet, and they had left her clothed, both conditions that would give her some slight advantage in the hours to come. They had also, inexplicably, left behind the blanket that had been thrown over her head. An oversight, she was sure, but another advantage to her. Her shoes were still on her feet. She would be able to walk.
If she could push herself upright, make herself stand. She was not sure that was possible.
It had to be possible.
She would walk at night, so that she did not freeze to death, and sleep by day, when the sun would lend her a faint additional warmth. Which direction to travel? That was the question. How far to the edge of the desert, how far to the nearest waterhole, how far to the nearest cluster of marrowroot bushes that could offer a slim, welcome sustenance?
She squinted up at the stars, trying to gauge her location by their positions, but she was not good at night craft. She recognized some of the major constellations but did not know if they were supposed to rise in the east or shift toward the north as the hours passed. The moon, she knew, made a smaller and smaller sweep over the western horizon as the winter gave way to spring, so that would be her guide of sorts; she would walk toward the moon.
When she could push herself to her feet.
She sat there a moment longer, trying to gather her strength, trying not to let herself be overcome by the sheer enormity of what had befallen her. Her stepfather, her uncle, her cousin, her brother—stoning her at the edge of the desert, leaving her to die—she could not think about it. She could not let her mind go there.
Her brother with his arm upraised, flinging an object at her—
Don’t think about it.
Yet her mind could not release that picture, of Jordan with his arm lifted, a granite-blue stone in his hand. He had flung it at her and it had hit her on the shoulder, not hurting nearly as much as she had expected it to, as much as all the other stones had. Because she was so hurt already, so numbed, by the very fact of his condemnation—
Or because he had not actually thrown a rock.
She sat up a little straighter, looking about her at the great scattering of stones. So much ammunition for one wayward girl! They must have brought the stones with them; there weren’t that many to be found in any square mile of the desert. Stones of all sizes, but most of them fist-sized, rough-edged, heavy, designed for maximum impact—
On the ground not six feet away from her she finally spotted the blue object that had come from Jordan’s hand. The color was barely discernible here in the pale light, but she was sure it was the item that Jordan had thrown. She forced herself to her hands and knees and scrabbled through the sand to retrieve it. The instant her hand closed over it, she knew that Jordan had not tried to stone her. He had tried to save her.
The item consisted of cloth wrapped around something molded, smooth, and heavy. Fingers shaking, Rebekah untied the series of small knots holding the fabric in place and slowly unwrapped the contents. It was a small metal container with a cork stopper such as the Luminauzi used to carry water when they traveled.
Water.
Holding the container to her ear, Rebekah shook it slightly, enough to hear the liquid slosh inside. Her eyes closed, briefly shutting out the brittle starlight. Water. Jordan had bought her a day, maybe two. Bought her, possibly, her life.
She wanted to weep with joy and thankfulness and despair, all mixed together, but she could not waste the energy, could not spare the moisture from her body. Grunting as she did so, she pushed herself up to her knees and then to her feet, wavering a moment before she could catch her balance. Jovah’s bones, there was not a vein in her body that had not exploded into a bruise, not a muscle that did not shriek with pain. On the side of her head where a rock had hit, an ache began a slow, insistent throbbing. She was not sure how long she could stand, let alone how much energy she would be able to summon for forward motion.
The blanket was clutched in her right hand, so she slowly wound it around her shoulders like a shawl. The water container was in her left. She rewrapped it in the blue cloth, then tied that around her waist so her hands were free. In case there was something she needed to pick up on her travels, in case she needed to use her hands to break her fall.
She turned her face toward the full moon, low on the horizon and polished as a silver coin. West. Moving as slowly as winter itself, she put out first her right foot and then her left, and began the long trek across the desert.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Elizabeth actually thought she was sorrier to leave the Edori camp than Rufus was. He had been relaxed and happy for their entire stay with the Chievens, helping the men gather food, lifting his voice in prayerful songs around the fire at night. During Feast Day, when all the Edori gathered around the central fire and took turns chanting out the stories of what had befallen them in the past year, Rufus took his turn singing before the assembled people. He told them his own story, simply and starkly, setting unrhymed words into a familiar children’s melody. His voice had not faltered, and his face had been serene, but it was a recital that had left him much more drained and exhausted than he had wanted anyone to know. That night, he had wept in Elizabeth’s arms as she had never expected any man to weep. She had kissed him and comforted him as she had never thought she would be able to comfort anyone, and she had held him until he had fallen asleep.
She had thought then, as she had thought every day of their stay at the Gathering, He will not want to leave his people. But he had woken the next day appearing cheerful and whole, filled with a restless energy that could not be contained by a tent or a campsite.
“Shall we wait until tomorrow to leave?” he asked, for that had been their plan all along. “Or would you like to start out for Cedar Hills this morning?”
Elizabeth was so surprised that she didn’t know how to answer. “Today? But what do Paul and the others want to do?”
“I don’t know. I’ll ask them. Paul at least has work to get back to. He won’t mind an early start.”
But I will, she thought. She was already sad at the idea of leaving behind Naomi and the other Chievens, to know that she wouldn’t see them again for another year—if ever. For who knew what the next year would bring? Would she still be with Rufus, would he care to go to the Gathering again, would sickness or some other calamity keep them from traveling, even if they planned to make the journey together? The world was filled with uncertainty; that Elizabeth knew for certain. She was depressed at the thought of leaving this much friendship and pleasure behind.
“Check with the others, then,” she said. “We can leave if all of you want to go.”
But Paul and Silas wanted to stay the additional day, and Jed, it turned out, did not want to leave at all. “I’m going to ride with the Barcerras for a while,” he told them in an offhand voice as he stopped by the Chieven campfire that morning. “A month or two, at any rate. Maybe longer.”
“And they’ll be happy to have you,” Naomi commented as she bustled by. “Another set of hands to do the work of the camp! Who wouldn’t be happy?” She grinned at Elizabeth and Rufus. “You’re welcome to travel with us, you know, as far and as long as you like.”
“And do all the chores that you and your Luke are too lazy to do?” Rufus scoffed. “I’d rather be in Cedar Hills and earn my pay, thank you very much.”
And that, as far as Elizabeth could tell, was that. “If you did want to stay with the Chievens for a while,” she said to Rufus that night as they packed their belongings and made sure everything was ready for an early start, “I could travel back with the others.”
He paused to kiss her. “Ah, it’s true, then. I thought I saw you eyeing Silas, thinking he was a fine-looking man. You’re hoping for a chance to be alone with him on the road.”
She set her hands on her hips. “That is not true! I’ve
had my fill of wastrel Edori men. Once I leave you behind, I’ll settle for nothing less than a merchant or a shopkeeper. Someone who knows the value of hard work and a little extra money from time to time.”
“Stingy, though, those commercial men. Saving every copper to invest in the next round of merchandise. You’re better off with an honest laborer like me.”
She didn’t know how the conversation had devolved so quickly from serious to silly. “But if you wanted to stay with the Chievens—” she tried again.
He fastened the pocket of his traveling bag. “But I don’t.”
“But I don’t know why,” she said softly.
He looked over at her, his face no longer laughing. It was early evening and dark already, but they had brought in candle stubs so they had light by which to do their packing. “The things I want are no longer here with the people,” he said.
She felt a brush of fear. “If it is me that keeps you in Cedar Hills—I don’t want to be the cause of such a decision. Because if the decision is wrong, and I’m the reason you made it—”
He shook his head. “You’re a part of it, maybe. No. The decision to turn allali is maybe one of the reasons I do love you. I’m not a true Edori anymore. This is not the life for me. There are too many people and too many privations. It is too close and too hard, do you understand?” He glanced around the tent once, but he was not seeing the interior of the canvas wall; he was looking around the entire campsite, the assembled mass of Edori. “I will want to come back every year for the Gathering,” he went on. “Now that I have been reunited with my people, I will have to have them in my life again. They are the place where my heart comes from, and my heart will have to visit from time to time. But my heart has wandered too far away to stay with these people now.”
She waited a moment to be positive he was done speaking. “If you’re sure, then,” she said.
He kissed her again. “I’m sure.”
They left in the morning after many tearful hugs and promises to reunite. “We will come to Cedar Hills. This summer, maybe,” Naomi said. Elizabeth replied, “We will come to the Gathering again. Every year.” Both promises, though they might not be carried out, were entirely sincere.
For the first few hours of the return journey, Elizabeth sat in the back of the wagon with Silas and allowed herself to feel downcast. It was not often she cared for people enough to feel some sense of loss when they were gone from her. Clearly, she was the only one in the wagon who was sorry to go. Rufus and Paul sat on the front bench, talking with great animation about some building project under way in Cedar Hills, while in the back of the wagon, Silas slept. Only Elizabeth turned her gaze to the path behind them and felt morose.
She perked up a little as they stopped by a little stream for lunch, realizing she was hungry. She hadn’t been much interested in food that morning, but now the bread and cheese revived her. Paul and Silas hunched together over a somewhat tattered map, arguing over the course they should follow for the rest of the day.
“Joseph said the road was nearly impassable yesterday. We must have just gotten through on our way north.”
“But we’ll lose time going through the desert,” Silas said consideringly. “The sand creates a drag on the wheels.”
“And we’ll have to bring all our water and fuel with us for three days,” Paul interjected.
Rufus shrugged. “Evils both ways,” he said. “But we came in by the mountain road.”
Even Elizabeth could read the Edori reasoning in that. We came in by the mountain road, therefore, let us go home by some totally unfamiliar route. Who knows what treasures we might discover along the way?
“The waterholes are marked on Joseph’s map,” Silas said.
Paul grunted. “And when could anyone ever navigate the desert by a map? Everything shifts every day.”
“Not the waterholes.”
“There’s plenty of timber here,” Rufus said, looking around. “And room in the wagon.”
Paul shrugged. “Then let’s start gathering wood.”
So they spent another hour picking up and bundling branches and filling every spare container with water. The back of the wagon, never exactly luxurious, became even more cramped with the addition of the wood, so Elizabeth squeezed herself onto the driver’s seat between Rufus and Paul. She had never traveled through sand before, and she was fascinated when they crossed into the vast, rippled, golden expanse of desert. It reminded her, in a way, of the southern grasslands by James’s farm, baked blond by summer heat, extending for miles in all directions with an unvarying sameness that made the world seem very big and the girl in the center of it very small.
“How do we keep from getting lost?” she wondered.
Paul laughed. “We follow our course straight southwest.”
“But how can you tell where that is?”
Rufus glanced down at her, amused. “Edori never lose their sense of direction. Always know which way they’re going, which way they’ve been. Tie a blindfold around an Edori’s eyes and spin him around, or throw him in the back of a slave caravan and travel for four days. He can tell you exactly where he is and how much ground he’s covered.”
Paul nodded. “Truth,” he said.
Not, maybe, such a comforting skill to have in a time like that, Elizabeth thought, but it would come in handy as they crossed the desert now. “And how far to water?” she asked.
Paul laughed again. “Well, that depends on the reliability of the map. But don’t worry. We’ve got enough to see us through.”
Their pace was slower as they crossed the ridged dunes and shifting surface of the sand, but Elizabeth was comfortable wedged up against Rufus, and she was enjoying discovering what beauties the landscape offered. From time to time she spotted a thin, tan-colored animal streaking in front of them and disappearing into an invisible hole, and often enough to stop seeming like a miracle she saw bunched marrowroot bushes still clutching their wilted leaves. Rufus hopped out of the wagon once to pluck a few for her, offering them as a delicacy. She found the taste too strong and odd to say she liked it, but once she’d swallowed the chewed pulp, she liked the way her mouth felt, minty and clean.
“Next best thing to water when you’re traveling,” Rufus said.
“I’d rather have water,” Paul said.
The day had been pleasantly sunny, though the air had been cool, while they traveled in daylight. The minute darkness fell, however, the temperature dropped rapidly. They made a quick camp, building a small fire and huddling around it, still not able to get completely warm. They ate well, since they had brought much more food with them than they could possibly eat, but they drank their water sparingly.
“Not a bad day’s travel, though,” Paul remarked. “Covered a lot of ground. We’ll be out of the desert in a couple more days.”
“And home in three,” Silas said. “I’m ready.”
They all slept together in the wagon for warmth, Elizabeth between Rufus and Paul, her head so close to a bundle of kindling that she could feel curious twigs reaching out spidery fingers to test her hair. She had seen enough this day to know that the desert was not the sere, empty landscape it appeared at first glance, so she was a little alarmed at the faint scuffles and skitters she could hear in the dark around the wagon. Night creatures, out to prowl. How big and how dangerous? The men slept around her, either oblivious or unafraid. She listened awhile longer to the sounds of tiny scuttling feet and decided they belonged to scavengers, not hunters, and allowed herself to relax. Morning came before she even realized she had surrendered to the night.
“Brr! No reason to linger here,” Silas observed. “Let’s eat and be on our way.”
They were in motion again not an hour after they’d all woken up. Elizabeth found herself not quite so entranced with the beauties of the desert on their second day. The variations in landscape were so slight that she could not convince herself they had made any forward progress at all; they might be covering the same few mile
s in an endless loop, passing this stand of bushes, that small dip and rise, over and over as the hours crawled by. Surely not; surely they would come across their own wheel ruts with every circular pass and realize their error. She gazed behind them just to assure herself that their tracks were indeed visible for some distance, and was not comforted to see the slow drift of sand healing over all marks of their passage even while she watched.
Rufus glanced over at her and smiled. The two of them were sitting in the back of the wagon this day, traveling for the most part in a companionable silence. “Don’t worry,” he said, apparently reading her thoughts. “Once you’ve been in the desert for an hour, you feel like you’ve spent your whole life there. A three-day trip across the sand feels like a three-month trip across the whole world. But we’re making good time. Better than on the road, maybe. Fewer distractions and no reason to stop.”
She managed a dismal smile. “I do believe if I had to spend much time in this climate it would drive me mad.”
He made a small gesture with his hands. “Explains the personality of the Jansai, perhaps.”
She nodded, and turned her attention back to the passing scene.
If she had not been watching the view so intently, hoping to find some proof of change and distance, she would not have seen the shape huddled on the desert floor maybe thirty feet from the route the wagon was taking. At first she thought it was the abandoned detritus of a Jansai camp—a hunk of discarded rags—and then she wondered if it might be the carcass of some desert creature that she had not spotted so far, oddly covered in smooth white feathers. It’s about the size of a child, she thought, turning her head to watch it as the wagon pulled by. I wonder if it’s prey or predator.
