Child Thief (continued)
The young woman sat alone, away from the caravan, in the silence of the desert night. A starless sky loomed over her. She stared into the face of the child cradled in her arms. The infant was in a deep sleep. Softly, she brushed her fingers over the child’s left palm, her mind reeling. The child’s fingers tightened around hers. They were soft as wool. She turned her gaze to the camp behind her, where all was silent.
She had headed west out of the gates of Kali at the tail of a caravan of merchants. When they were far enough from Kali, she had dropped behind them, slipped away in the caravan’s cloud of dust, and headed north, riding hard until she noticed the sun halfway in its descent. Then she had headed east.
Even with luck on her side, it would take the greater part of a day and a night, for the child’s mother to catch up with the caravan headed west, only to discover she had abandoned the caravan and was probably headed North or East. The infant’s mother would have to make a gamble. Most likely she would choose to go East. The mother and her search party would have to ride eastwards through the desert like demons possessed to catch up with her before she reached Bara, where Hassim waited. But even with that, it would be impossible to catch up with her. It would also be impossible for the infant’s mother to catch up with her and Hassim before they left Bara and headed further east, with the child out of her mother’s reach forever.
The child’s mother would be somewhere in the desert now, probably sitting in another camp, her world in turmoil, awaiting the rising of the sun, so she could be hard on her heels to save her child, or she could be riding through the desert now, desperate, as any mother in her place would be.
This didn’t set the young woman’s heart racing. She would soon be on her way, slipping away into the night, abandoning this caravan too, riding alone through the desert to Bara and Hassim in the safe house where he waited. She felt little fear for her life and none for the child, considering what happened hours ago under the light of the dying sun just before she caught up with this caravan.
Her mind struggled to grasp what had happened. First, she had thought it to be merely a trick of her tired eyes. She had passed the last night at Kali sitting awake, lost in thought, going over the plan she had formulated again and again, thinking about how she couldn’t fail, wondering why she had been chosen by sisters, thinking of her flight from the child’s mother and those who would be hot on her heels as she fled, in the hunt for a child thief.
It was incredible. On her way east to join this caravan, the young woman had slowed her camel to give it some respite. In a wave of tiredness, her mind had drifted to thinking about the torturous death she would endure if she was caught. Swaying in her saddle, adjusting her thighs after the hard ride from Kali, she had slipped a blade from underneath her clothes and cut away portions of the root she knew would keep her mind alert and her eyes open for a day or two longer. She had unwrapped the wrapper covering the child to give her upper body some fresh air.
As she swayed on the camel, cutting dry bits of bark away, the blade accidentally glanced off the root. Simultaneously the child had twisted and twitched her hand in her sleep, and the pointed end of the blade had stabbed hard against the child’s open palm.
The young woman’s eyes had fled shut with fear. She had tensed, waiting for the eruption of blood and the scream of the child to pierce the desert night, but instead, there had been…nothing. She had opened her eyes ever so slowly and sat staring at the child incredulously for several moments. The child’s skin was unbroken and unharmed. Stirring suddenly in her sleep again, the child’s open palm swatted the razor-sharp blade away without so much as a crease to her skin.
The young woman’s mouth had gaped open in surprise, and she lost her balance and swayed precariously in her saddle, nearly falling off it as she tried to regain her composure. She had brushed her fingertips over the child’s soft hand and didn’t find so much as a scratch on it. The child had swatted the blade away like it was made from wool. The young woman had touched the blade to the child’s palm again, first tentatively, gently, then pressed it harder and harder against her skin and her eyes had widened with surprise at each press.
Afterward, she sat shifting her stare between the child and the night sky, her mind traveling to the day she opened her eyes and found herself within the walls of the house of the sisters. She remembered fingers, much larger than hers on that day, thick and tough as leather, wrapped tight around her wrist. She remembered her clothes, stained by dust and sweat, her body smelly from the long and rough journey, her hair crawling with lice, the leather thongs of her sandals in shreds around her feet. She remembered staring into a forest of legs, looking up into eyes, cold, and hard into faces, old, with angry wrinkles cut into gnarled skin. On that day, voices, sights, and sounds once known to her were never to be felt or seen again. In the darkness that night, she stared for a long while at the girl child whose life she had sealed with the same dark fate.
At length, she had slid the child into the sling around her neck and abandoned the caravan, traveling nonstop through the night, making sure she reached the oasis well before any other caravans heading east arrived.
At the oasis, she let her camel quench its thirst completely. She was restless to be on her way to Bara before the oasis became busy with life. She saw the interest and suspicion in the eyes of the few travelers awake when she told them her story of her sick child at Bara, waiting for her, and her need to hurry through the desert to reach her in time. They were only traders, more concerned with their goods than a harmless woman. She thanked the gods for the oil that kept the child deep in sleep and hidden from sight but she knew the travelers would be more than eager to help any others who came asking about a woman of her description. What kind woman able to afford a camel would be desperate enough to travel the desert alone at night?
Her mind went to the child tucked under her robes. Surely the sisters know the child is gifted. Why didn’t they send someone else to Kali? The young woman cast her mind back to the days before she left the house with Hassim. Most of the sisters were away on missions up north but that didn’t mean the sisters couldn’t wait until someone worthy returned. What kind of desperation led to choosing her? Did others seek the child?
If the child was this important, she could consider herself dead if she didn’t deliver her to Hassim in Bara. No one would let her live through such a failure. She pulled out the blade again, peeled away the cloth shielding the child from the desert cold, and carefully pressed the point of the dagger against the child’s skin. She let out a small gasp. Soft as it was, the point of the blade did not so much as scratch the child’s skin.
“Why do the gods make children like you?” she said to the sleeping infant. “Is it not enough that ordinary people like us with no gifts have no peace and suffer most of our lives? Why do the gods give their cursed gifts to ones as innocent as you?”
She allowed herself some sleep before the child’s hunger would wake her. When the child woke, she fed her sweet porridge laced with the oil that would put her back into a deep sleep, then drove the camel eastward through the desert toward Bara. It was a long time before the early rays of the sun poured over the vast landscape of hard, barren earth as she made her way. It would be especially hot today. A small cloud of dust on the horizon behind her caught her eye. Panic gripped her. Could it be the mother of the child, her pursuers? If the gods had favored the child’s mother, she could be as close as half a day away. If the child’s mother had hired men of skill they could have split up and used both horse and camel. At least one of them would surely find the other caravans and end up headed in her direction. She ground her teeth, fed the child new drops of the oil to keep her asleep, and put a whip to her camel’s rump to send it galloping towards Bara.