For the wind no one expected
For the tracks that disappear
the moment we leave them
-Naomi Shihab Nye
It's hot. And dry. And dusty. And Christ, but Sarissa is tired as hell of it. Pulling off her pith helmet, she swings it aimlessly as she wanders into the stone acropolis her mother is currently attempting to excavate. Of course, Rhoslyn is so far down in the tombs that she probably wouldn't notice if Sair set off a grenade up here.
All right, maybe she'd notice a little. But that's only because mothers notice everything.
Suddenly, she hears a shriek and a loud, evil-sounding laugh, and without even turning around she steps sideways out of the way, letting the twins, her younger brother and sister, shoot past at top speed. She doesn't even bother yelling at them; they'll be in trouble soon enough. Mum will tan their hides again if they mess up anything else in her dig site.
They're only a few miles outside of Cairo, but if you walk a little ways out into the desert, it seems like you're on another planet, far from the loud autos and trains, far from the street hawkers and the soldiers with their guns. Hitler and his allies are giving the troops hell miles to the south, far down the Nile, but here, it seems to Sarissa like the desert doesn't care about the war.
She's tired of war, and it's only been a year. She's tired of her father being dragged to strange places by the War Department. At least now he's with them, instead of being off in some strange place while they're stuck here in the desert.
Her pith helmet slips out of sweaty fingers, and she bends down to retrieve it, and is promptly bowled over by two six-year-old juggernauts, landing hard on the stone floor. "Vera, Orion!" she snaps, shoving them out of the way and scrambling to her feet. With all the dignity of her twelve years, she folds her arms, staring down at them. "You're such children!" she sniffs, turning on her heel and stomping out of the entrance hall, back out into the sun.
I hate them. I hate this place. I wish we were back in England. She remembers the snows, the ice skating and the sledding, the wonderful winters they'd had before this war, before they'd left England for Egypt. Before this place filled with never-ending sand in uncomfortable places. She wishes she could have gone to boarding school back in England, like Oria, who's sixteen and already engaged to be married, or even Vorian. Her older brother is fourteen, and he'd taught her how to shoot and to fence. Her father hadn't, said girls don't need to learn that, which had made her mother promptly smack him.
But Blake and Rhoslyn Grey seem very happy here, in this hot place. Her father hates winter, loathes the cold, and her mother is never happier unless she's digging in the dirt, unearthing pottery shards and the occasional mummy. It bores Sair to bits, frankly.
As though drawn from the temple by her thoughts, Rhoslyn appears in the sun, squinting around and taking a swig from her canteen as she stretches. "It's a bit cramped down there," she says with a slight yawn, moving over to lean against the stone next to her daughter. "It'll be nice out here in the evening, though, once the sun goes down. Much cooler."
Sair groans. "Mum, please, can't we go home tonight? I hate camping out here. And I want a bath."
Rhoslyn grins down at her daughter the only one of her five children that resembles her in the least. She and her husband share their blonde hair, although Sarissa's is the only one whose hair is a darker blonde like her mother's, not their father's bright shade. She and Rhoslyn share their dark eyes as well, while the rest of the lot have eyes ranging from Vorian's robin-egg blue to his father's indigo. Rhoslyn would swear she'd been nothing but a baking oven for the lot of them if it weren't for Sarissa.
"Sorry," she says, not sounding sorry at all. "Your cleanliness can wait a night. We've guards enough, it's perfectly safe. Besides, your father won't return from Alexandria until tomorrow evening, and that bed is far too big to sleep in alone."
Sair sighs. "I'm not scared," she mutters, even if she really might be, maybe, just a little. Rhoslyn just smiles at her, leaning over to kiss her forehead, and turns, striding back into the temple. Sair watches her go, looking a bit wistful. She wishes she could be like her mother, brave and stubborn; she'd once held off bandits from attacking their caravan, fought right next to her father and the men, with a machine gun and everything, when they'd taken a trip down to Aswan.
Sair doesn't think she'll ever be that brave. Her mother isn't afraid of anything. Not nasps, or men with guns, or even Sarissa's grandmother, who terrfies everyone. But Sair is scared of everything, even dogs that growl at her, or the soldiers with their hard expressions and their guns.
No, she'll never be brave like her Mum. She'll just stick to being plain old Sair. What else can she do?
xxxxxxx
That night, Sair tosses and turns a little, staring up at the ceiling of the tent. The sand is so hard beneath her… she's going to have sand in her hair for the next three months at least, if it's not permanently fused to her already after living here for what feels like forever.
It's cold tonight, too, out in the desert, and there's no fireplace out here, obviously. Shivering, she sits up in her sleeping bag, slipping on her jacket, which is far too light for how cold she feels, and then her boots, so she doesn't get sand on her pajamas (it's a lost cause, but she figures she has to at least try).
It's very windy, when she finally steps out of the tent (almost tripping over the twins' bodies on the way, although her mother barely twitches). Too windy—she's lived here for a few years now, but this is much colder than usual. She yawns, heading for the small clump of rocks near the tent. And then she blinks, squinting. She could swear she'd spotted… was that a flash of blond hair, over by the temple?
It looks like… like a child. But hadn't she just seen Orion and Vera in the tent? She hurries over, going around the corner… but there's no one there. No one at all, not even a footprint in the sand. And then, out of the corner of her eye, she spots another blonde flash in the moonlight, by a collapsed pillar. She frowns. "Hey!" she calls. She could swear it looked… like a child.
She runs over, almost out of breath by the time she gets there, hurrying to the other side of the tumbled stones. Again, no one. But this time, there's a childlike giggle right behind her; she starts to spin around, shocked, but before she can turn around the whole way, someone shoves her in the back, and she falls forward, her head hitting the ground with a CRACK, and everything goes dark.
xxxxxxx
a/n: I own everybody in this chapter, but I don't own Narnia. R&R!