Harmindon's Finest

Chapter 19 - The Journey, Part 2

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Qufar had spoken the truth about the great rivers.

We stayed several nights in Kazabhâd, an experience I would love to repeat sometime in the future. The relief we'd felt upon our arrival to Harondor's capital had almost been tangible - the remainder of our food supply was stale and tasteless, the water supply warm and horrid and rapidly decreasing, and all the games and stories we'd ever known in our lives used and overused so that we were all bored and exhausted.

But then the city had finally been sighted. It was a gathering of new houses built around a large, fresh oasis, Kazabhâd's main supply of water. It was a boundary city of sorts, separating the harsh desert from great open grasslands, dotted here and there with strange trees and bushes. We had a joyful reunion with Thekla and her husband, who were astonished - though very pleased - to see me there too. I had spent the three days it took us to recover from the trip and gather new supplies  wandering about, looking at all there was to see and noting the differences between Kazabhâd and Harmindon. For one thing the houses were all much taller and sturdier, as they were built from a strange dark rock, twice as hard as the crumbling sandstone used in Harmindon. There was a wide, open square at the north side of the oasis, where folk would gather for an informal weekly market - and on the opposite side where tall trees grew lived their herd of Mûmakil. Not nearly as impressive as the herd at home, with only one bull and a young one at that - but the fact that they kept Mûmakil at all was a sign of hope for the new city, a sign that one day it would become as powerful as any tribe of Harad.

I was disappointed to leave, but soon after Thekla and Pesah saw us off and the second leg of our great journey began, I began to feel excited again. For one thing, we had caught sight of the first river Qufar had told us about - the river Poros, and it was such a huge expanse of water that I spent some time merely staring. 

We crossed the Poros on one of the new bridges, built long ago and properly renovated only two or three years ago. It was strange to see the mixture of huge stone slabs, mossy at the corners and slightly worn away from the power of the river over the decades it had stood - and the new stone, so different from the old, weathered slabs that it looked almost white in comparison; also, there were great wooden stakes reinforcing the stone at regular intervals. As we were making our way carefully across this great construction I felt a tiny nudge. 

"Jeddah, do you think we'll fall into the river?" It was little Aro, looking up at me fearfully. I whispered back.

"Don't be silly. Why this bridge must be ten times stronger than the great aqueducts back home, and the great Na'Man ab Jubayr has flowed through those for generations. I'd say our little cart weighs less than an honest-to-goodness river, don't you think?"

Aro seemed satisfied, though when he went to sit next to his father in the driver's seat up front I heard him muttering that our little cart had never been on the aqueducts of Harmindon.

Some time later Amira sat beside me. 

"What are your plans for your future in Minas Tirith?" She asked, pummeling the bundle she was leaning against to make it more comfortable. It was a strange kind of day - the sky was strangely not clear and blue, but rather an unattractive dirty white - clouds without rain, a phenomenon I'd almost never seen before in my life. It was colder, too, than what we were used to - Amira and I had both wrapped our shawls around our shoulders, but this did not stop us from admiring the alien landscape before us, almost all green with grass and trees. We were now officially in Ithilien, Qufar had announced about an hour ago.

"I hope to remain a seamstress. I will make Haradrim clothes - but I also hope to learn the fashions of the Westerling women, that my shop will appeal to them too."