Ah! I grabbed the child’s book off the shelf, flipping the pages. So many, many pictures! The picture book had hundreds, so many, and where was the—
I found myself staring at a bright picture of the covered wagon. Next to it on the page was a picture of a little man, smiling out at me, waving his hand happily.
Have you seen me? Do you know what I am? I might have come to your town sometime. I’m a peddler! I travel around, collecting wonderful things from everywhere to sell to towns like yours. Your mother or father might have bought something from me sometime. So when you see me, come say hi and I’ll show you all the nice things in my wagon!
Leaving the book on a table, I ran from the library down to the parlor room, hoping the peddler man hadn’t left. When I reached the parlor window again, he was still there, to my delight. He had left his cart and was moving about in the orchard,
my
orchard, staring at the winter-ripe fruit hanging from the trees. He reached out to touch one of the moonfruits, then, to my horror, he pulled it from the stem and took a big bite.
That was mine! He stole something of mine!
As I watched him chewing the fruit with obvious delight, not sure what to do, a plan formed in my mind. He had a cart, a means of transportation.
Biting my lip, I turned away from the window. If I could hope to discover anything about Temet and Nessy’s secrets, I couldn’t do it here. I’d already explored the house from top to bottom. I knew the only choice left to me and I knew what I had to do.
Once more I ran up the stairs, this time to the room where I slept. Grabbing a leather satchel that I’d found in a closet somewhere, I looked around for supplies. Food. Anything. I grabbed the remainder of moonfruit bread I’d baked and wrapped it in a cloth, then threw it in the bag. Pack. I had to pack. Fast.
I tossed a pad of paper into the satchel. If the peddler wouldn’t take me with him, then at least I could write a message for him to take to Temet.
How did he get here? I thought our house was unreachable! He must have discovered a path!
I looked down at myself. Though my clothes, ones I had gotten from Nessy’s wardrobe, were in reasonably good shape, I decided to bring a second set anyway. But… which ones? Of all of the clothes in the house, I found myself most drawn to the deep red robes Nessy used to wear. Hurriedly, I stuffed one of these in the satchel, then paused to peer out a window.
The peddler had begun to load his covered wagon full of basket after basket of fresh fruit.
My
fresh fruit.
Hah,
I thought.
He’ll pay the price for his stealing… and I won’t have to worry about running out of food on my journey.
The peddler was still picking my fruit when I snuck into his wagon and hid among the baskets piled high with rose-smelling fruit. There, I waited. And fell asleep.
#
Clip, clip.
I awoke to the sound of trotting horses. The air around me smelled like dampness and rosy fruit. I wasn’t in bed. Something was moving.
Oh, right. I was in the peddler’s cart, traveling ever farther from home. Wondering how far I’d gone, I lifted my head and peered over the piles of fruit—the peddler had probably stripped every tree—out the back of the cart towards home.
I had never seen home from so far away before. I saw it there, on the top of that cliff, harsh and jagged-edged itself. In the pale light of morning, the cliff and the house blended darkly together, looking like someone had torn the sky. Yet that was my home, and always would be. I would return there. With Temet.
I turned my face away from it, feeling tears springing to my eyes, and looked forward into the fog, into the world that lay beyond.
Chapter 10
Cemagna
“What are you doing here?
Who are you?”
I opened my eyes to find a man standing over me—the peddler.
I had been discovered.
“I said, ‘Who are you?’” His eyes narrowed.
“Listen, I’m not giving you a ride for free.
Now tell me who you are!”
I stood up, pursing my lips, grateful that my habit of singing to myself for the past ten years had kept my ability to speak in working order. “You have stolen my fruit, so pay the price.
You must carry me where I wish to go.
Otherwise, before you can stop me, I will destroy all of this fruit.
It’s mine, not yours.
If you want it, you must give me a ride.”
“I thought that house was abandoned!”
“Well, it wasn’t. You’ve taken much of my food for this winter, so pay the price.” Determined, I slammed a fist downward into the nearest basket of fruit, feeling the sticky ooze covering my hand as I broke the moonfruit’s skins.
“Stop!” cried the peddler.
“Don’t destroy it!
It’s worth money.”
I shot him a look.
“Very well,” he said. “You won’t take up much room anyway.
I’m going to the seaport, to sell these in the city.
I’ll give you a ride as far as there. It’s not far, I guess, and those fruits will fetch large prices.” He held out a hand.
“I’m Meck von Gelm.”
I wiped my fruit-covered hand on a cloth in the cart, then extended my hand. “I am Cemagna.”
He nodded, shook my hand, and climbed back into the driver’s seat of the cart.
“How did you get to my house?” I asked as the cart started to move again.
I had always thought my home was on a peninsula, but so choked with rocks on the land side that it was entirely inaccessible by land.
Meck von Gelm proved me wrong. He had evidently located a clever path through the rocks and jagged cliffs, one that confused me with its twists and turns. As we traveled the path, sometimes I looked back only to see sheer cliff drops behind us that the path had narrowly avoided. I shivered.
#
After days of this we came to a wide grassy plain, which we traveled for more days until I could see the outline of a strange collection of buildings on the horizon. Meck von Gelm called this a city. It grew steadily larger in our view as the day wore on. I had hoped to reach it before night, but night fell first. To my surprise, the city ahead of us stayed illuminated, lit by many lights from within. I stared at it from the wagon, mystified, deep into the night until sleep took me.
#
The first thing I remember upon waking was the noise—a deafening babble of voices, all speaking together, one on top of another. It was a harsh and alien sound to me, who had grown up in near-silence. How could anyone hear each other when they were all speaking over each other like that?
Meck von Gelm and my moonfruit were gone.
Grabbing my satchel, I stepped out of the wagon, the babble of voices around me instantly growing louder. Colors—so many colors, on so many people all at once. All around me. I was in the middle of the city.
Well-dressed women leisurely strode past, paying no attention to anyone but themselves. Children scampered about, yelling and laughing. Men talked together, some staring openly at every passing woman. A weather-beaten old man sat in the shade of a house, gazing benevolently over the whole scene. People yelled down from windows to people in the street. Vendors with booths lined the street on both sides, the colorful canopies above them sheltering them as they called out to passers-by.
I forced my feet to walk, feeling as though I was forcing myself against a thick current with every step.
The strange sensation of straw under my feet brought a nervous tickle to the back of my throat. As ladies in lace-covered skirts swept by me, the sounds of street musicians sitting under canopies and the eaves of shops filled my ears.
In front of me was a group of tightly-packed people standing around a crowded booth where a man was showing how to make hair grow on someone’s head. My back flat against the wall of a shop building, I tried to edge around the group. One of their number backed up abruptly as the man did something that caused the crowd to gasp. I felt an elbow hit me hard in the stomach. Stars swam in my eyes as someone mumbled an apology in my ear.
Fighting my way past the rest of the throng, I found myself in a more open area where more canopies and tents were set up, in even brighter colors. Equally colorfully-clad people tended cookpots and meat roasting on spits.
The sun bounced off the cobblestones, hurting my eyes. I quickened my pace as a woman nearby with a gold ring in her ear looked up from a roast pig she was tending, an unfriendly expression on her face. I pulled my shawl closer around me.
Smoke from the cooking fires billowed around me, and I fought the urge to cough at the sudden dryness of it. Snatches of conversations from the constant babble of voices reached my ears.
“And then I told him I didn’t understand it, either—”
“You want bird? You can buy bird, only five coin.
Only five! Four?”
“Come back here, boy!”
“Try a roast pepper, miss?”
I shook my head at the old woman and her plate of peppers, fighting to keep my feet moving. I could feel the mud and damp hay—and I didn’t know what else—caked to the soles of my bare feet. I was grateful that my dress, an old one from when I was younger, barely reached past my knees. Its hem would have been ruined after touching this filthy ground.
The writing on the shop windows and signs seemed to scream at me with its constant barrage of words.
A man yelled something to me about winning money.
I walked a little faster.
Turning a corner, I was relieved to find myself in a dim side street.
My stomach, which had been feeling increasingly worse as I’d walked through the crowded street, finally admitted defeat. Leaning over, I threw up.
#
I stood still for awhile, my back against the cool stone of a building, out of sight, my eyes closed. The sudden quiet of the deserted street made me feel as though I’d leapt under the surface of a pool of water.
After a time, I wasn’t sure how long, I tipped my head back and spoke in a whisper. “Is… is this how humans are?” I opened my eyes and stared at the clear cleanness of the twilight sky above me. “It makes me glad I grew up alone.”
When I at last emerged from the safety of the side street from the opposite side, I realized I had wandered into a different of the city. It was quieter, with houses instead of shops, and I could see the masts of ships in the distance above the rooftops. Delighted, I went towards them, but the task was more difficult than it seemed. I walked down countless streets and retraced my footsteps multiple times before I found the harbor, and even then it was only with the aid of three different people I asked on the street for directions.
It was after dark when I saw the ships, but the sight of them washed all my weariness away. Dozens of ships bobbed in the dark water. Several were painted with the moon-eye insignia. I chose one of those, then ducked into the shadows behind a building and stripped down to my underwear, stuffing my dress in my satchel. I slung my satchel on my back, tied it there securely, and slipped into the water like a pale fish.
Getting on board was an easy matter. I was a good swimmer, a good climber, and could be silent when I needed to be. I had read much on the anatomy of ships. Within a matter of minutes I had climbed to the deck and slipped below into the hull without being seen.
The hold was crammed with the cargo: food of all types. I found a place between several crates of potatoes and stacks of cheese wheels. Then I spread out my still-soggy dress, tried to press more water out of it, and waited.
I had no concept of how long I was in the hull of the ship. I ate, I slept, and I amused myself in the darkness by counting potatoes or knocking away the little white roots they formed on their skins. I was happy,
so
happy, to be at last going in search of Temet. I lay in the dark, trying to plan something suitably witty to say to him when at last we were reunited.
But what if he was nothing like I remembered or didn’t even remember me? I decided it was best not to think about that.
I heard the noises of rats in the hull sometimes, little stowaways like me, and I sang quietly to them, the way Nessy used to sing to me at night.
At last I heard scraping one day and awoke to beams of light issuing in as the hull was opened. Men came and began to unload the cargo, and I squeezed into one of the potato crates in hopes that no one would see me.
It didn’t work. As soon as the men unloading reached my crate, I heard a shout and raised voices.
“There’s something in here!”
“Well, haul it up and let us take a look!”
I felt the crate being hauled to the deck. I spilled out onto the planks along with potatoes as someone emptied the crate onto the deck.
The day was too bright! I squinted.
“A stowaway!” yelled someone.
“A girl, too!” shouted someone else.