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3. Teetering on the Edge of the Future

Téana found her at the edge of the fire's glow, where the shadows from the desert tugged and tussled with the light. She had a strange look in her eyes. Her stance reminded Téana of wild animals you sometimes saw in predawn hours, eyes glittering in the darkness beyond the camp. Having used the nearness of humans as refuge during the night, they always broke and left with the sunrise.

She cleared her throat to signal her presence, but the girl didn't turn around. When Téana spoke, her voice sounded scratchy and young. "You're leaving," she said. It wasn't a question.

The girl finally turned. She smiled that small, sad smile of hers and tipped her head to one side. If her hair had been sandy brown, like Jono's, she really would have looked like a stray desert jackal. Her eyes even glittered the same way, and when she asked "You are sad?" she sounded like her mouth wasn't meant to make words like a human.

"I …" Téana faltered. She wasn't sad, but she was uneasy. She hadn't slept well these past few nights and spent daylight pursued by feelings of disquiet. Her dreams had been filled with a formless, roiling dread, as though something was trying to tell her a terrible thing was about to happen, but not what. The feeling had only grown stronger upon meeting the strange girl with the pale hair. "I'm worried."

"For me?" The pale girl seemed genuinely surprised. "Your elders would scold you."

Téana dipped her eyes. The tribal elders would reproach her for being concerned about an outsider. In a life as tough and brutal as it was short, kindness was in short supply. Outsiders didn't even come at the bottom of the heap.

She still didn't know what had possessed her to feed and water the willowy girl who had blown in on the evening breeze. She was both a stranger and strange, her colouring unlike anything Téana had ever seen before. Her people were swarthy; their skin leathery from days exposed to the elements and nights huddled around fires for warmth. Their lives were difficult and so were they, though they marked the spirits and carried their histories with them as they travelled, caring for the old stories like babies.

This outsider was also rootless, but she was alone and had no tribe. She had mentioned something called the 'Faraway Big Water' when Téana brought a canteen. That wasn't its proper name, but the word 'ocean' had no meaning to her. When the outsider tried to describe a stretch of water as big as the desert, Téana wrote her off as sunsick. Not even the Nile was that big.

The pale girl came towards her. Despite herself, Téana took a step back. She stopped when the other girl held out a hand. It took a moment to realise she was meant to put her own into it. Still she hesitated. She had proved she was weaker than the rest of her tribe, more sentimental and stupid, but trust was still a precious commodity.

"You are frightened." The outsider sounded disappointed, but not shocked. "You are frightened of me."

Téana glanced back, over the fire. The swarm of tents were quiet, but a guard might happen by at any moment. Jono, especially, was overzealous about proving his warrior skills. Seren, his frail sister, had been especially ill lately. Téana could only hope tending to her meant he had swapped tonight's guard duty with someone less eager.

"If anyone sees me …" Téana trailed off. They had driven the stranger away once, kicking sand and throwing curses and goat dung.

"Do not worry. I only wish to give you something." The pale girl waited for her hand. One quick slice from Téana and her own could fall to the sand. She was trusting Téana's own sense of honour by leaving it outstretched.

Téana was suddenly very aware of the dagger at her belt. Many women carried them, sometimes even more than one tucked into their clothes. Men, by comparison, carried their spears and scimitars in full view. For nomads, half of every battle was knowing how to use weapons not to fight.

Eventually Téana gave her hand. However, rather than put an object into her palm, the stranger instead drew her finger down Téana's wrist, along the thin network of veins, then traced a circle that touched the very edges of her palm.

"The ocean," she said softly. She corrected herself at Téana's expression. "The Faraway Big Water sometimes seemed so endless to me. It has no sides, no finish; its beginning changed from beach to beach, cliff to cliff, horizon to horizon. I could stand on the shore and look until my eyes hurt, but I could never hope to see all of it. I tried, as a child. It was like an obsession. It drew me no matter how I tried to fight it. I should not have wandered to the shore so much, but I could not resist, and that was my downfall. The Big Water was not endless. Likewise, this circle may seem to have no end and no beginning, but everything has an ending and a beginning. Some are just easier to see than others." She pressed her hand flat against Téana's own. "You were kind to me. I call on the spirits of the ocean and of my homeland to guide your path straight and true, from your beginning to your someday end."

Téana realised she had been holding her breath. She let it out in one great gust. Energy hung in the air like right after a sandstorm – great power given form; spirits called into the physical world. "Th-thank you," she stuttered. It seemed to be the right thing to say.

"You are welcome." The stranger smiled, but again it was forlorn. "You have eyes like mine."

Téana blushed. Her eyes were an abnormality amongst her people. While her skin and hair matched everyone else's, instead of rich brown her eyes were a deep blue. Combined with her dreams, which sometimes showed her fragmented images of the future, she had been elevated from the daughter of a common goatherd to an apprentice seer. "I –"

The stranger was already huddling under her cloak and turning away. "You were kind to me when nobody else was willing, but I must leave." She tipped her head back briefly. "This land is so hot and dry. Someday I think I may never see my home again. I have been searching so long for the ocean, since I was a child, but every time I get near it, some misfortune drags me away again. At times I think the spirits of this land wish to keep me here forever. Maybe I have done something to offend them and they are punishing me. Or maybe they just find my struggles amusing."

She sounded so sad, so desperate, that Téana blurted without thinking, "The Nile!"

"What?"

"Follow the Nile. I … I asked Otog the Seer about the Faraway Big Water. He said it was like the trunk of a tree, and the Nile is like one of its twigs if you follow it far enough." The idea of the mighty Nile being just a twig was too staggering to think about, but Otog Strange-Eyes was a good mentor. Moreover, he was Téana's friend. He had never steered her wrong before.

Her words brought a smile to the pale girl's face. "I know. As I say, I have tried so hard to reach the ocean before. My route has been clear for many years, only … difficult to make reality." She turned and walked into the lightening desert. Her slender figure seemed soft and terribly vulnerable against the vastness.

Téana wanted to call out; to make her come back. Ridiculously, some part of her wanted to beg the elders to let the girl join their tribe. The camp had so few youngsters, and even fewer females – only herself and Seren, and soon perhaps only herself. Seren was barren and nearly blind. Travelling life was harsh for those who could not keep up or, worse, were useless to the survival of the tribe. Jono thought he could prevent the worst by guarding her as zealously as he did the tents when they made camp, but he was one boy against generations of tradition and ruthless survivalism. Seren didn't even have dreams like Téana. The day she finally lost her sight there would be nothing Jono could do.

This thought made Téana's shoulders slump. If the tribe would cast out a girl-child of their own, whom they had raised since birth, they would never accept someone like the pale stranger. She was too odd, too other. Her eyes saw things even Téana couldn't – perhaps even things Otog would be blind to. The pale stranger just seemed distant all the time, as though waiting for something or someone even she wasn't sure would ever come. She was unnerving, which might be why the tribe sent her away. No man would ever marry her and no woman would accept her as an equal. The only way the elders would consider her useful was if they sold her to one of the bands of slavers whose paths the tribe sometimes crossed.

The line and circle seemed to burn like hot ash on Téana's skin. She clenched her fist. Suddenly she realised she'd never asked the other girl's name. It hadn't seemed important.

The girl was too far away now, especially if Téana intended not to wake the entire camp. Being apprentice to Otog gave her some liberties, but she was still just a girl-child of humble birth. The pale stranger's long legs ate the ground at a tremendous rate, like she was used to running away.

Téana turned away. When she couldn't resist one last glance it was too late: the stranger had already passed out of sight. Téana looked at the tents and wondered why she felt like she wanted to go with her.

Jono stood at the edge of camp. His arms were folded and his shoulders so stiff his neck had almost completely disappeared. The only things that moved were his hair and the hem of his clothes. His body was totally still.

Maibe approached cautiously. "Jono?" she said, voice softer than a single grain of sand falling onto a dune. Nobody else was awake, but they were far enough from the tents not to be overheard, even if they spoke normally. Still, the situation felt like it demanded whispers. "Jono, talk to me. What's wrong?"

"I went to see Otog."

Otog Strange-Eyes. Of the whole tribe, only he could see the future, so he had been elevated to a lofty position despite being only slightly older than Maibe herself. He also had an apprentice – the equally strange-eyed girl Téana, who had already told Jono what Maibe suspected Otog had now confirmed. Jono sounded so flat and emotionless. That was as unusual for him as his stillness.

"What did he say?"

Jono didn't reply. Maibe followed his gaze out across the desert, to where the dawn had smudged the horizon, turning it the colour of fresh blood and Nile mud.

They sometimes travelled along the banks of the great river, when it wasn't flooded and there were no Egyptians to drive them off. When she was only a few winters old Maibe had seen Jono's father ripped apart by hippos after getting too close to the edge. The shallows had churned like storm clouds, swirling brown silt and reddening water together. She thought about this as she watched the horizon and waited for Jono's reply.

"He said Seren's eyesight will be completely gone by the next full moon." The fist around Jono's spear tightened. "And her left leg will begin to fail soon after. If they let her live that long."

Maibe searched for words that wouldn't sound hollow and ridiculous. She couldn't find any.

Seren was Jono's little sister, though he was more protective of her than any parent. Their mother had died of sunsickness several years ago, so Seren was all the family Jono had left, but she was barren and had never been very strong. The tribe tolerated her because Jono took responsibility for her care and life had been fruitful over the past few years, ever since her health started to fail dramatically. Even so, she was nearing the age when girls would traditionally be married off to provide warriors for a new generation. Since she could make no sons, she was worthless as a mother, and also as a wife. Losing her sight would be the final straw. Jono was needed to protect the tribe and would soon take the Warrior Test. He wouldn't have time to look after her when that happened. Otog had also warned everyone that the time of plenty they'd enjoyed was coming to an end. The tribe could tolerate no burdens if it was to survive any period of scarcity. Seren would be banished to die in the desert as soon as word got out – or killed swiftly and given a simple burial if she was lucky.

"Otog said he tried his hardest to find something in her, but she doesn't have gifts that could save her. She doesn't have any worth," Jono said bitterly. He didn't need to add the 'except to me'. Maibe heard it clearly enough. "I … I begged him not to tell the elders." Jono's voice cracked a little. Begging came as easily to him as altruism did to cats.

Maibe touched his arm. He flinched away. The corners of her mouth hardened. Her hands clenched into fists, but she said nothing more. There was nothing to say. Otog was bound by the laws of the tribe too. Even he had to defer to the elders.

"It isn't fair." Maibe was a little surprised to find she had spoken.

Jono snorted. "Téana said the same thing when I came out of Otog's tent. She was outside. I think she was sneaking back into camp. She told me she wished there was something she could do to change fate." He snorted again, and spat in the sand at his feet.

Téana hadn't been the same since the pale, white-haired stranger wandered into their camp several weeks earlier. The elders had sent the girl away, but Maibe knew Téana had tried to convince them to let her stay. They had, of course, refused. They had already received Otog's warning by then and had no sympathy to spare for hungry strangers, especially a foreigner, however pathetic. Since then Téana had been distant and thoughtful in ways she hadn't before. Sometimes she watched her tribesman with a pensive, revolted expression Maibe couldn't even begin to understand. Téana also spent a lot of time at the fringes of camp, or tending Seren, even though there was no need. Téana had her own duties, but Seren's plight had caught her – or maybe her soft heart, made sore when she was unable to help the stranger, had latched onto Seren after a vision of her cruel future.

A sudden strange urgency gripped Maibe. She seized Jono's wrist. He turned at last and stared at her, not just because women weren't supposed to touch men who weren't their husbands, but because of the tightness of her grasp. Neither he nor Maibe were married. Maibe was getting a little long in the tooth compared to other girls, but she was of childbearing age, and Jono promised to be a fine figure of a man once he had finished growing into himself. If he could pass the Warrior Test, any children would be fine additions to the tribe. Maibe shook off those thoughts.

"Let's leave," she hissed.

"What?" Jono blinked at her, nonplussed. "Right now?"

"If we have to. Let's take Seren and leave before the elders decide all our fates for us."

"Leave the tribe?" Jono was flabbergasted. "But –"

"Do you want your sister to die?"

His face darkened. "Of course not."

"Then let's take her and get away from here."

He tried to pull away. "We can't leave the tribe."

"Why not?"

"Because … because we can't! We wouldn't survive half a day alone in the desert. You know that."

"Téana would go with us."

"You don't know that."

"She would. She's as frustrated with life here as we are. She could lead us through the desert safely with her inner eye."

Jono became quiet. "Are you that unhappy, Maibe? I thought you were happy. You always seem happy."

"Appearances can be deceiving."

She had no desire to tell Jono how she longed for something other than motherhood and wifely duties. No woman ever wanted more than those things – what higher accolade could there be, after all, than to care for a man and spawn smaller versions of him?

But Maibe did. She wanted more, though even she could put no name to what she wanted instead. All she knew in that pre-dawn instant was that she wouldn't find it here.

"I'm leaving," she said. "Will you go with me, and bring Seren?"

Jono hesitated only a moment longer. Love for his sister won out over common sense. "Yes. But we can't go now. We'll be seen. Seren can't get ready that quickly. We'll need supplies, and I think Téana snuck off again, and –"

"Shush." Maibe released him. "Then we'll go tomorrow morning, before the rest of the camp wakes up. Bring enough food for a few days' travel. You're set to guard the stores, right? Just take what we'd eat over that time anyway; no more or less."

"And Téana?"

"Leave her to me." Maibe thought of the apprentice seer's faraway gaze, and the way she always seemed to be looking away from the camp instead of inwards at her own people. Wanderlust was only a hairsbreadth from that kind of expression. "I'll take care of Téana."

Jono looked at Maibe strangely. "Why?"

"What?"

"Why do this?"

"Why not do it?"

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you'll get from me. Sometimes you just do things because they're the right thing to do."

"Thank you," he said at last.

"Don't thank me," Maibe replied. "We might all die yet."

"Better to die protecting what you love than watching others crush it." Jono looked towards Seren's tent, leaving Maibe to study his profile in the encroaching light.

Despite the iron knowledge that she didn't want any of the regular roles reserved for women, something inside her still clenched at the clean line of his nose and the determined set of his jaw. The horrible stillness of before had been replaced by fresh resolve. It suited him much better.

"Yes," she murmured. "Much better."

A/N: Maibe is a genuine Egyptian name for a girl. It means 'grave'. Jono, on the other hand, is based on the character from the YGO video games. It's a play on the name Jounouchi (sometimes spelled Jonouchi). Seren is based on Shizuka's dub name Serenity, the same way Téana is based on Anzu's dub name Téa.

Reviews very much appreciated, everyone!

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