The Farwalker's Quest (25 page)

“It's just glass.”

She jumped. Her cheeks growing hot, she stuffed the glass back into its pocket and shoved the coat from her lap.

“I'm sorry.” Resentment muddied her regret. “I was looking for food Zeke might have missed. I shouldn't have.”

Slowly and painfully, Scarl curled himself up to a seated position. Crushed canterberry leaves fluttered down his back. Ariel watched the strain on her stitching. If it broke loose, she decided, she wouldn't tell him.

“Like to try it?” he asked. He reached for his damp shirt.

At first she didn't know what he meant. “Your Finder's glass? I don't know how.”

“I'll give you a lesson. Bring it here.”

She did so with reluctance, more ashamed to be caught snooping than if he'd been angry. He placed the glass back into her cupped hands.

“It's nothing more than a place to focus your attention,” he said. “Although the more you use one, the more it reflects who you are.” He slid his left arm into his shirtsleeve. “Look into it and concentrate on the thing you want to find. In the front of your mind, if you can understand that.” He reached for his second sleeve and stopped, cursing under his breath.

Ariel's empathy swelled. “Here, I'll help you with that.”

“Not yet.” He brushed aside her hand. “Go ahead.”

“Well, what should I try to find?”

“Anything that might be here that you can't see. Choose something easy.”

“Something to eat.” Her eyes dropped to the glass.

“That might not be so easy. Good luck.”

Ariel gazed at the glass, exploring its thickness, its slight color, the pattern of bubbles inside it. Then she remembered to think about food, not glass. Mashed potatoes would be nice. She imagined a huge mound, sodden with butter and cream. Warm and dripping.

“Never mind.” Unusually sharp, Scarl's voice cut through the roar of her hunger. “Help me with this.” He struggled to slip his right arm into its sleeve.

Startled, she lifted the armhole so he could reach it. The instant his hand slipped through the cuff, he grabbed Ariel's wrist, making her jump.

“Where is it? Your food.”

Her gaze bounced to a big rock on the far side of the pool, with no information in her mind to explain why.

Following her sight line, Scarl nodded. “Good. Look at the glass.”

Red sparkles passed through it like fire drifting through water.

“It darkens for me,” he said. “The trick is to think about it for so long, then stop thinking completely. Stay here.” He rose and moved stiffly but silently to the spot Ariel's glance had picked out. He hovered there, his crow eyes scanning. With a quick flex of his knees, he dropped. His left hand darted into the shadow at the base of the rock.

When he raised his hand again, a wriggling lizard hung there by one hind leg.

“Very good, I'd say.”

“Ugh. That's not food.”

He slapped the lizard on the rock. It went limp. “You can't find a meat pie where one doesn't exist. How hungry are you?”

“Pretty hungry,” she thought, but she grimaced.

“Tell you what,” he said, carrying it back to her. “We'll take it with us in case we don't come across anything better soon.”

She held out his glass. “You do it.”

“I'm much more concerned about getting us out of the Drymere, and the glass will reflect that.” He slipped it with the dead lizard into his coat. “But being hungry served you well for a first try, my little apprentice.”

“I'm not a Finder,” she protested, appalled. She didn't want to be like him.

“I think you'll need to learn a bit of everything, if you can.”

“To be a Farwalker, you mean?”

“Just to survive. If you can do that, the farwalking skills will rise by themselves.”

Although the thought of such skills reassured her, the word that echoed longest in Ariel's mind was that “if.”

When Zeke returned from the top of the chasm, he brought a groundmelon with him. His bright orange lips made it clear that Ariel was not the only one hungry enough to be selfish.

“Where'd you get that?” Scarl asked as Zeke offered his fruit. Ariel took it.

“When I woke up, I climbed down to the sand over there.” Zeke gestured vaguely.

Scarl's face clouded. “Don't go so far. You said yourself that Gust's band is still out there. And despite what either of you may think, I'm not eager to see you dead.”

Ignoring his pointed glance, Ariel cracked open the melon. It wasn't ripe, but she suspected it still tasted better than lizard.

“We'll walk tonight under the moon,” Scarl told them. “We'll get farther without water that way, and perhaps farther from our enemies, too. Drink up while you can.”

All three filled their stomachs to sloshing. Scarl turned his coat inside out, knotted the end of a sleeve, and filled it with water. He watched the sleeve seep.

“This may not last long,” he said, “but it's worth a try.”

He entrusted his filled tin cup to Zeke, who held a melon rind overtop against spills.

They climbed to the top of the chasm. There Scarl paused, used his glass briefly, and then peered into the dunes behind them. When he was satisfied with the blankness of a certain swath of horizon, he turned.

“Ariel, you did so well at finding, I want you to try something else. I'm just guessing at this, but …” He shrugged and gestured forward. “Take us out of the Drymere.”

“Me?”

Even Zeke gave Scarl a doubtful glance.

“You. I won't let you lead us too far astray.”

She looked at Scarl's dripping bundle of oilcloth and the small cup in Zeke's hands. “But we don't have much water,” she argued. “Or food.”

“You'd best hurry, then,” Scarl replied softly. He shifted his gaze to the eastern horizon.

Dubious, she waited. At last she said, “I'll need your glass, won't I?”

“You shouldn't. This isn't finding. You're a Farwalker. Walk. Follow where your feet take you. I think your path will appear.”

“Ah. Go where the stones want you to go,” Zeke said. “I get it.”

Ariel listened with growing dismay. Scarl's request seemed unfair. Guiding them was his job, and the least he could do, if you asked her.

“Try it.” Zeke said, nudging her.

“I'll give you two bits of advice,” Scarl added. “They're true for finding, so I suspect they'll be true for you, too. Don't think too much and don't question yourself. Go.”

She crossed her arms stubbornly, planting her feet. Scarl tried to hide a smile by casting it down to his boots. Zeke simply gazed at Ariel until she wanted to slap him.

“Fine.” She spun and angled across the stone slope. If Scarl wanted her to get them lost so they all died of thirst, she would do it. Fuming, she marched toward the horizon.

Zeke caught up to walk alongside her. Scarl trailed behind like a shadow. After a while, soothed by the rhythm of her legs, Ariel forgot her annoyance and even some of her hunger. She and Zeke took turns sipping water as twilight sank into night. The staring moon watched their progress until it, too, fell behind them.

First the cup and then Scarl's oozing sleeve were long empty before Ariel's legs started to weary. They were growing stronger. But as dawn failed to come and the night only stretched onward, shivers began racking her shoulders. The desert chill seemed to mock the hot, sticky thirst in her mouth.

“I can hear your teeth chattering, Zeke,” Scarl said. “Want my coat?”

“I'm okay,” Zeke lied.

“Well, it's too big for Ariel alone; it'll hang down and trip her. Why don't you each take a sleeve? You'll warm one another that way.” Scarl pulled the oilcloth from his shoulder, where he'd slung it once they'd licked off the last of the water. He passed it to Zeke.

“What about you?” Zeke worried.

“I'm feeling fever. Might as well use it.”

Neither Scarl nor his coat was so big that the two friends
didn't bang shoulders and kick ankles at first. They soon fell into locked step, though, considerably warmer. And their nearness made it easy to whisper together.

“He hasn't changed your direction or stopped you,” Zeke noted.

“He wants us to shrivel up somewhere like dried-out worms, that's all.”

“No, he doesn't. He's just pushing you.”

“Why are you sticking up for him?” Ariel's voice jumped above a whisper. “Have you forgotten your maple? If he'd told your father or Storian the truth about Elbert, the trees might not have burned. And we wouldn't be here.”

Zeke stared at his feet. “I won't ever forget. But I don't think it's that simple. Besides, I like him, even if he would save you first. And the stones like him, too. They—”

“Enough about the dumb rocks, all right?”

That silenced him. Ariel regretted her words immediately. Zeke would not meet her eyes, and with him pacing so close alongside her, his hurt feelings spilled back onto her.

She tugged her arm free from the coat. “I'm sorry,” she murmured, dropping her sleeve and pulling away. “I didn't mean that.”

“Get too warm?” Scarl asked doubtfully from behind.

Ariel shrugged, in no mood to say more than she must to the Finder.

“Would you like a drink?” he added.

She spun, her frustration blazing. “You've had more water this whole time?”

“No.” Scarl pointed. “You've been walking past a creek's tail for five minutes.”

With effort, her eyes found the dark trickle in a swath of
wet sand. She ran to get there. It was maddening trying to fill her cupped hands without scooping up sand. The water tasted like rocks, but it still brought juicy joy to her tongue.

Zeke dropped beside her. Scarl arrived more slowly, surveying their empty surroundings.

“No hurry,” he said. “We can rest here without fear of ambush.” He sank to his knees. “By the way, Ariel, the head of this creek lies in Hartwater, so we can just follow it now. I've been here before—and I couldn't have found the route better myself.”

Surprise lit Ariel's face. She looked back over their tracks, uncertain whether to feel foolish or proud. Then she realized that both her companions were smirking.

“Hmph. I told you I could do it,” she said.

Thirteen, Ariel thought to herself, was a number of power. The moon circled the earth thirteen times during a circuit of the sun, and young people took Naming tests in their thirteenth year. They'd once had a thirteenth trade to choose, too, but that was extinct—other than her.

She peeked at the Finder striding alongside her. The sun would soon heave itself over distant hills to glare in their eyes. Regretting some of her recent hostility, Ariel mustered the nerve to break the hush that accompanied their footsteps.

“Scarl?”

“Yes?” He did not look over.

“Was the thirteenth trade unlucky? Is that why there aren't any other Farwalkers left?”

He snorted. “You could say so, I guess. But the fault doesn't lie in the number. Blame the Forgetting instead.”

When he didn't go on, she said, “I was hoping you'd finish the story you were telling before we ran into Gust.”

He gave her a long, sideways appraisal.

She swallowed her pride to add, “Please?”

“Did the Farwalkers fight the Forgetting and lose?” Zeke asked.

“Just the reverse,” Scarl said. “They helped, only to be forgotten themselves.”

While people were blind, he explained, Farwalkers spread hope, and eventually, the glad news that children had once more started to see. By the time most everyone's eyes worked again, though, Farwalkers weren't nearly so needed. Villages had grown and could get along on their own. For a while, those in favor of Forgetting relied on Farwalkers to help collect and destroy the relics they found on their travels.

“Dumb,” Zeke declared. “Why'd they help with that?”

“Don't be too hard on them,” Scarl said. “A few saved what they found, or gave relics in secret to Storians, which is why we have any at all. But they had to eat, too, and perhaps they didn't realize where such a path led. After most of the old mysteries had been destroyed, the people who did it began discouraging Farwalker visits. Storians could be kept busy teaching children to count, but Farwalkers had become dangerous relics themselves. They'd seen too much in their travels, and their trade stood for sharing and remembering, not Forgetting. Attitudes shifted, and welcomes became chilly. Some Farwalkers ended hungry and alone. Others took up fishing or reaping, changing their names. Young people stopped asking for a Farwalker test on Namingfest days.”

“So I'm some kind of outcast?” Ariel's heart flopped.

“If you were only an outcast,” Scarl replied, “nobody would be trying to kill you. That's what Zeke's stone meant when it said Gust's band ‘forgot with their hands and their feet'—wiping away the past and anyone, anything, that might bring it back. It seems Mason is so afraid of repeating mistakes that he
shuns the old ways completely. He can't see, or doesn't care, how important a Farwalker could be for our future.”

“But if the stuff left after the war is all gone or wrecked, how could one Farwalker make any difference?” Zeke asked.

“It's not just the relics he fears, Zeke. It's knowledge itself. That's the problem. People still stumble on better ways to do things, but we've lost the ability to share good ideas, so they fade again when the person who uses them dies. Villages are too far apart. Strangers are regarded with the utmost suspicion, particularly if they can't win friends by finding.” He eyed Ariel. “Believe me, I know. A Farwalker could change that, although it could take a long time, because many places may be hostile from habit.”