I stopped worrying if I’d fall off Pumpkin every other minute, I ambitiously took out my needlework to work on a pattern for Lady Sarnai’s first dress. A futile endeavor. It was impossible to keep a steady hand while on horseback.
Frustrated, I gave up on sewing and watched the land around me change.
As we traveled deeper inland, the sun burned my back, gnats bit my fingers so many times they itched like mad, and the cool breeze from the river disappeared. I should have been miserable, but the landscape left me breathless. Rocks as red as the setting sun, lizards that dashed through the soft peaked dunes, their eyes bulging whenever they stopped to stare at me, and trees that grew shorter and shorter, until their roots lay supine over the coarse earth.
We stopped to make camp before sunset, and I was so exhausted I fell asleep soon after pitching my tent.
When I woke, night was fading, the first glimmers of the sun peeking over the horizon and shining through the folds of my tent. I rolled to my side and reached into my satchel for my brush and a piece of parchment.
Dear Baba and Maia,
I think more and more of Finlei and Sendo these days now that I am traveling the Road. Last night, I slept under the stars for the first time since they went after the war. I woke once or twice in the middle of the night, sure Finlei had wrapped a blanket over my shoulders and Sendo was there at my side to comfort me with a story—the way he used to when I had a bad dream. But there was just sand, and the ghostly silence of this empty land.
I lifted my brush, not wanting to continue the letter on such a melancholy note. On the bottom of the page, I drew a picture of my horse and the sand dunes and lizards. Best not to mention Edan, who’d vanished into his tent just after dinner and still hadn’t awoken.
We won’t have water for days in the desert. Imagine! Me in the desert, after growing up by Port Kamalan’s sea. I miss you so much, Baba. And Maia—thirty-eight steps.
I folded my letter in half. Blowing sand settled into the crease as I tucked the letter into my satchel. I’d been in the desert long enough to know it was useless trying to sweep it clean.
I crawled out of my tent then and laid my head back against the sand, watching the stars fade. Remembering that Finlei and Sendo were dead made me homesick for Port Kamalan, and here, wandering in the vast world, I somehow felt closer to Baba and Keton than I ever had in the palace. Strangely, even though I was bound to return to finish Lady Sarnai’s dresses, I’d never felt so free.
Two months of this lay ahead. I started counting the days, unsure of what was to come.
* * *
• • •
The Samarand Passage rested on the fringe of the Halakmarat Desert, marked by two jutting rocks. It appeared to be nothing but a large expanse of sand, naked trees, and dying grass—but within was a small trading town. There we exchanged our horses for camels. I wasn’t sad to see Pumpkin go—four days in his company had left my thighs and knees blue with bruises. Now it really hurt to walk.
Seeing the Halakmarat Desert on the horizon—how large the sun was here—made my stomach flutter with excitement. This was the farthest west in A’landi I had ever been! Already I’d seen more of the world than I’d ever dreamed I would.
“Come,” Edan said, “we have a few stops to make.”
Edan pulled up his hood, and I did the same. The winds here were strong, carrying sand from the desert, and the arid air chafed my skin.
The marketplace was on one long block with an inn at the end. I peered into a stall that sold sticky rice wrapped in palm leaves, and jugs of date milk for travelers preparing to go into the desert. The price of water made my eyebrows jump. Edan didn’t stop to buy any, and I wondered what we would do for water. Then again, I’d never seen the Lord Enchanter stop to fill his canteen, and yet somehow it was always full.
“Where are we going?”
“To get supplies.”
I frowned and looked back. “But the marketplace is that way.”