The Blue Desert

Chapter Eight

It hadn't been difficult to convince the guards to allow them to leave. Kevresh had tied Anan's scarf around his head to hide his hair and had told the guards that he and his brother, motioning to a fully cloaked Anan, had come to town on family business. He had insisted that they had to leave that night or else they wouldn't be able to reach their family before they packed up camp and moved.

After a long argument, the soldiers finally let them through, too frustrated with what they deemed a stupid desert boy. Neither Anan nor Kevresh spoke until the city gates had shrunk behind them. Finally, Kevresh pulled the scarf off his head and threw it at his sister. "This is where we mount."

Anan nervously tucked the scarf back into her bag, careful to wrap it around the tiara her mother had given her to protect it. She hadn't shown it to Kevresh yet because she felt a strange sort of attachment to it; their mother had given it to her, after all.

Her brother walked over to her and shoved her toward her horse. "Touch him," he commanded.

"What?"

He grabbed her hand and led it to the horse's neck. His grip was too strong for her to resist and soon she was feeling the warm, brown hair that covered the animal. As she did so, the horse let out a "whoosh" sound and shook its head back and forth.

Anan let out a scream and jumped backwards, smacking her back into her brother's chest at the same time that her voice caused the horse to shy away.

Kevresh grunted and pushed her to the side so that he could get closer to the horse. "I'm not getting on that thing," Anan said, taking a step away from them both. "It hates me."

"He does not hate you, and you are going to ride him," Kevresh said, giving her a reprimanding look. "He was simply scaring off the flies. Come back here and do it again, just don't scream again."

Kevresh forced her to touch the horse, his hand on top of hers guiding it firmly across the bay's body. First along the neck and back over the chest and the horse's cheek and finally his nose until Anan grudgingly had to agree that the horse probably didn't hate her.

"Now we don't have much time. These first few days are the most important; we have to get as far away as we can from the city." He removed his hand from hers but made sure that was still petting the horse's face.

"Kevresh?" Anan said, it suddenly occurring to her that neither of them had been to Tria before and they hadn't found a guide. "How are we going to get to Tria without anyone to tell us where it is?"

"Oh, we do know where it is," Kevresh said. "We have a map." He patted the piece of parchment that stuck out of his bag. "It can't be so very hard to get there."

Anan didn't look at him; she still refused to remove her eyes from the horse for fear it would kill her. "But the map can't tell us which way to go. It can't tell us which is the best route or how to avoid places where people are. Mother told me to find a guide."

"Yes, but the only place she told you to do that was the place we got the horses, and there was no guide there. Besides, a guide found you," he said, grinning at her. "Now come on, it's time to get on the horse."

As much as Anan protested, it didn't do her any good. Her brother forced her to raise her foot and put it in one of the stirrups, and before she knew it he had pushed her up the rest of the way onto the horse and made sure her foot was in the other stirrup as well.

"There you go," Kevresh said, patting her leg. "Let's go." He turned to mount the gray horse.

"Kevresh," Anan said, the shrill note of panic in her voice.