She woke with a start and a boot in her ribs, and stared at the men above her.
“Name!” said one, and the other one spat on the stones. They wore matching coats with dull metal buttons, and a crest embroidered on the left shoulder. She stared blankly and moved her lips without sound.
“Name!” insisted the first man, with annoyed disinterest.
“Come from that alehouse, eh, I reckon,” commented the second, eyeing her stained shift and bare feet. “Too much a’ Nancy’s best. Send e’ home and let’s get us back for dinner.”
“Can’t send e’ home without a name to send e’ wit!” snapped the first. “What’s yeh name, woman? Yeh man’ll no doubt be missen ‘is dinner, like we’s missen ours! Everyone’s got a name, now give it us and we’ll send yeh on home, though I doubt he’d be pleased to see yeh in the state yeh got yehself in!”
She sat and blinked, and searched for the words he wanted. Her mouth opened and her lips fluttered, but she couldn’t find a name to give.
“I – I can’t – I don’t know…” she trailed away and stared at the ground, anxious now for her lost name more than for the guards standing above her.
The first one hissed through his teeth, a sound more impatient than malevolent. “If yeh got no name, yeh can’t be in th’ city. We can’t have strangers wandering about after nightfall, and if yeh lived here yeh’d know that. Where’s yeh tag, then?” Abruptly, he reached down and hauled her to her feet – taken by surprise, she gave no resistance. He peered close at her face, then at her neck.
“No name, no tag. Yeh can’t stay here. Just lucky for you the sun’s not gone yet – were it after dusk yeh’d be spendin the night in the lock-box. But yeh can’t stay in the city walls, that’s the law. Yeh can’t stay here if yeh don’t belong, and yeh got no tag to tell us if yeh belong. No tag, no name, no one to send yeh to. It’s outside the gates for yeh, woman, and outside yeh’ll stay until someone’ll vouch for yeh to get yehself a new tag.” He shook her by the arm. “Yeh understand? We be sendin yeh out. Out the gates. Don’t know how yeh lost yeh tag, but yeh’ll be regretting that now, no doubts for me on that.”
She looked from face to face and tried to make sense of the speech.
“Outside? Outside – where?” Her confusion twisted her mouth and squinted her eyes.
“Hah! Far too much a’ Nancy’s” laughed the second guard, harshly. He pressed his face close to hers and sneered. “Outside the city walls, little chicken, with the wolves and the bears and them damn gypsies. Ain’t none stay in the city overnight ‘less they been registered and or lives here, and if they been registered or lives here then they’s got a tag. You aint – so you go.” He stood back, satisfied, and spat again. “Let’s get ‘e off, then, Dav, ‘cause I don’t want to be last at the table again. Last night there was barely scraps left by the time we got back.”
“Give it off,” responded Dav as they pushed her ahead of them through the streets, “I seen how much you call scraps. My grandmother could feed three for a half-week on your ‘scraps’, and have some to spare for visiting with.” The voices faded to unimportance at the edge of her hearing as she stumbled along, one of them holding either side of her. Her name. Everyone’s got one, he’d told her, but her own escaped her. Following the thread of thought, she scrabbled to find something to identify herself with. No name. No tag. No… no family, no street, no city – there was nothing, nothing, nothing beyond the words she’d heard spoken in the last few minutes. She lifted her eyes from the stones and frantically stared, open-mouthed, at everything they passed – people, carefully uninterested in the woman being escorted by the men in the coats with the dull metal buttons and shoulder embroidery. Street names carved into wood and secured to walls. Stalls and buildings and gutters and animals – and none of it familiar. Where was she? When they reached the gate and spoke to the gate-man she heard barely a word. When they asked again for her name to put on their list, when the gate-man – kinder than the guards, for she reminded him of a daughter – asked whom he could tell that she had been evicted, she only stared and gaped. There was nothing she could offer to their questions. And when they finally stopped asking and locked the heavy gate behind her, she stood unmoving until the chill wind bit through her daze. The sun was sliding down, hidden now behind the tall trees that curtained the horizon, and very soon there would be no light to see by. What had he said? Wolves, and bears, and gypsies.
Taking her focus from the lost sun, she looked properly about. Yes. There were camps scattered about on the plains that separated the city walls from the distant forest. the ground sloped down a little away from the walls, giving her a good view of the sprawl about the city. Tents and wagons and picketed horses. She could see holding yards for sheep and cattle, and a few lines of goats roped together. The paved road leading out of the city stretched away through the litter of temporary habitations, into the high forest beyond. With the wind biting now, she decided she could not wait to find out if the wolves and bears were real or not – gypsies, at least, had campfires.
She wandered quietly between the canvas walls, staying to the shadows, while she thought about whom to approach. Children, shrieking and hiding in shadows, paid no attention to the unknown woman, and she found herself lingering, half-hidden behind a tent corner on the outskirts of the camp before any adult spotted her.
“Aei! A guest, we have, we have a guest! Come you from the city, then, wandering too late and finding yourself locked out? Come you to the camps, do you, hoping to find more comfort than our own ones find behind those grey walls?” The old woman cackled and pointed. “Trade, then, trade with us? We’ll offer a night – no, two nights of comfort under mine own roof for your tag, just the loan of your tag, so mine daughter may reclaim her husband from the lock-box, and we may move on and be gone from this frigid place!” She howled with laughter at the thought, and a younger woman stepped out from the tent sheltering the stranger.
“Quiet, then, grandmother, or you’ll have the dogs howling all night. What is it?” Following her grandmother’s pointed finger, she drew the stranger out of the shadows to stand in the flickering light of the fire and peered at her. “She’s not from the city, she has no tag. And barely any clothes, besides – look, this isn’t how those city women dress, not even the poor. Who are you?”
Again without a name to give, she could only shrug helplessly and offer, in a small voice – “I don’t know.”
The gypsy woman frowned, and looked closer at the stranger. “Come then, you must have a name. Mine is Carla, my grandmother goes by Danae – most call her that, anyway. Where are you from?”
She held her hands out as Carla’s face blurred behind tears. “I don’t know. I don’t remember, nothing. I don’t know.”
Carla put her hands on her hips. The unnamed woman in front of her was a pitiful sight, wearing only a dirty shift, her hair hanging lank and unwashed, with bare feet scuffed and bruised from the quick march out of the city. She gave in.
“Sit down here, then, where it’s warm, and perhaps you’ll remember after a little tea. You can’t be drifting about after dark, not wearing only that, there’ll be trouble for you before long. Grandmother, make her a little welcome. Might be we’re in difficult times, but that won’t excuse us for not showing a little hospitality to a lost innocent.”
Wiping tears from her cheeks as they fell, the weeping woman huddled gratefully on the spread blanket. Danae pressed a battered tin mug into her hands, and then turned her attention to the pot Carla was hanging over the fire.
“What’s in this, then? Traded away more of our things, have you? Ah, well, we must eat, and we can’t eat rugs or crockery, now can we?” She cackled and muttered to herself, poking the contents of the pot with a wooden spoon while Carla vanished inside the tent. She returned with a rough, heavy tunic and a thick skirt, dropping the clothes in a heap beside her guest.
“Here. The tunic is my husband’s, but he is not a big man, and it will at least give you a little warmth. The skirt was given me by a neighbour, who thought I could make some use of it after her own daughter died in labour, but it is too small. I was going to take it apart and remake it to fit, but if it fits you, you may as well have it. Now. Sit tight there, and there will be hot food in a short enough time. Not a lot, mind you, but enough to keep the three of us going ‘til tomorrow. By daylight, maybe, we can think of what to do with you. Maybe someone will come looking, you never know. There’s no room in the tent for you, mind, but we can spare a blanket to keep the cold off overnight.”
Numb with confusion and not knowing what else she could do, the stranger accepted the offer of hospitality with silent gratitude. She passed the evening staring into the flames, and when Carla and Danae retired to the tent to sleep, she continued to sit by the coals. Wrapped in the borrowed blanket and donated clothes, she watched the coals glow until the moon was fully risen and the stars shone bright above her. Even when it seemed the whole camp was finally still, and the last echoes of voices gave way to only the sounds of night-time birds and restless animals, she sat, studying the coals as if the answers to her lost life could be found in the hot, bright shadows.
She woke early, to the first cool rays of sunlight in the grey pre-dawn. For long minutes she lay still, trying to make sense of what she remembered. The previous evening seemed a jumble of confused emotions rather than a sequence of events, and it was with a sick sense of weight in her stomach that she realised – there was nothing before last night.
Carla pushed the tent flap aside and broke her trance.
“Sleep well, then? It was cold, I know, but at least it was clear. That’s something to be glad for. Feel any better this morning?”
“Thankyou,” replied the woman, sitting up. “I… thankyou. For the clothes. And food.” She pulled the blanket tight around her shoulders. “I don’t think I slept much.”
Carla put her head to one side and observed the seated woman huddling under the blanket. “Still no name, then? Shame. I was hoping you’d turn out to be someone important. Well, we’d best be getting on with the day. Are you hungry?”
Looking up at Carla, the woman ran a hand over hair, and then paused. “Actually… do you think there’s somewhere I could wash my hair?”
Carla laughed. “Of course. Everyone feels better with clean hair. Come with me, and I’ll show you where we get water. You can haul a bucket, can’t you? Good. We’d best get some water heating so there’ll be tea ready by the time my grandmother gets up.”
They hauled a bucket of water each from the closest shared well, Carla explaining as they went that the city had built the wells in the clearing for fear of sickness spreading from the campsites into the city.
“Of course,” she added, “They’re fed from inside the city walls, so they can shut off the water if need be. And to their minds, ‘need be’ is when they feel there are too many camped around the city. Can’t run the risk of a mob battering down their gates, can they. But most of us only stay for a short time, anyway. Passing through to trade, usually. No-one gets inside those gates without a tag, though, and to get a tag you have to register. And to register, you have to have something to trade inside the city, or be visiting family, or have some other worthy purpose. They don’t let you in without a worthy purpose.” Carla laughed at the obvious question in her companion’s face. “Beside the gates, there’s a big wooden sign, so if you can read, you can find out whether your purpose is worthy or not. They’ve got a list. They’re very organised like that. You walk up to the little booth beside the gate, and tell them which worthy purpose you’re there to perform. They give you a tag, and then you go through the gates. On the way out, you have to you’re your tag again, and if you don’t have a residents tag, they take it away from you before you leave. Later in the day, you can go up if you want. See the great long line of people waiting to register and get in. You’d think it was a great place to be, if so many people want to get in.” Her face went still, then, and she watched the ground carefully so as to avoid the gaze of her unnamed guest. “Of course, for some, it can be just as hard to get out.”
They heated water in a collection of pans. The guest washed her hair and dabbed at her face and hands while Carla made dough from flour and water, and pressed it flat onto a metal plate to bake. Danae emerged, coughing, and they drank tea while waiting for the heavy bread to cook.
“So,” cackled Danae over the steaming mug of tea, “you still got no name, then? That can’t do. Girl like you, wandering about with no name, it’ll lead to no good. What do you think it might be?”
The guest thought, brooding over her own tea. She had given careful consideration to the subject of her identity, and come up empty. Nothing on her clothes gave any hint of where she might be from. Her bare feet were soft, as if more used to wearing shoes than padding about on rough ground unprotected. Her arms ached from hauling the water bucket, so it seemed she was not used to a life of heavy labour. Her hair, when washed clean, was a simple light brown that shone in the sunlight with gold undertones, falling almost to her shoulders. Her waist was not the slender, flat stomach of a girl, and while she was younger than Carla, she suspected herself old enough to have had children, so perhaps she was married. She wore no jewellery, had no piercings or body markings, and her skin was neither dark nor very pale.
“Well, then,” said Danae firmly, “We’d need to be finding something to call you by. I named four children; surely I can name another – even if she is old enough to have children of her own.” She drank her tea to the bottom and stared into the dregs. “Let’s see, let’s see… she knows nothing of herself, she has no family, no name… ah! Uriana. We shall call you Uriana.” She grinned proudly. “Well? Does it suit?”
The newly-named Uriana shrugged. “It does not seem like mine, but is as good as any other, I suppose. Why did you think of it?”
Danae shook her head and cackled as she prodded the baking bread. “Suits you, that’s all, and it is an old name I heard long ago. Uriana. Always liked it, I did. Well. You can stay with us, now, seeing as we have named you. But you’d best pull your weight, or we’ll all starve together.”
“Oh, grandmother,” chided Carla, “Don’t carry on. We’re hardly at the starving stage yet. And we’ve waited this long, it’ll only be another month or so before they let him out and we’ll be on our way. You’ll see.”
“Hah,” grumbled Danae. “You’ve been saying that for the last year, and I’m still waiting. I’m getting old. You and your foolish husband will have me dying here, months away from my family’s bones. Just promise you’ll bury me right when I go. Or better yet, find yourself another husband and take me home now. Who’s the bigger idiot, the fool that gets himself locked up over insults, or the fool that dies waiting for him to get out?”
Carla’s mouth tightened. “Come with me,” she said curtly to Uriana. “We’d best be about finding something useful for the two of us to be doing if I’m going to keep my grandmother fed and warmed to her high standards, and the day waits for no-one. I’ve no intention of having my husband walk out of that city gate to find only two starved corpses waiting for him.” With that she strode off, leaving Danae to grumble and spit in the fire and not waiting to see Uriana scramble to catch up.
Uriana followed Carla, hurrying to no be left behind. Carla took a route that lead them away from the loose cluster of tents, and did not slow down until they reached the forest edge. The forest began cleanly, a strange step from plains to tall trees, and as they entered the patterned shadow of the high canopy Uriana noticed a splash of white paint on the trunk of a tree right on the forest edge. Carla brushed her fingers absently against the paint as she passed it.
“They clear it,” Carla said, and her voice was distant. “A pair of men on foot walk the clearing edge, back and forth, and cut down or pull up anything that grows past the trees with the white paint. Once a season, they refresh the paint so the mark never fades. All the way along to where the forest edge meets the high cliffs on one side, and to where it trickles down to scrub on the other. You see them come past, every ten days or so. They keep the forest back, and they make sure no-one builds anything outside the city walls. I don’t know how far they walk. I don’t know how many men it takes. I think that one pair watches one section, and another pair another section, and so on. They keep the city behind their walls, and they stop anyone building anything permanent without authority. You have to have permission – not written, stamped onto a little metal tag, like the ones you get at the gates, with a special seal imprinted in the metal. There are farms, outside the walls, but this section here – in front of the main gates, where the registration booth is – this section they keep clear. The other gates, you have to show a tag to get in, but you can only get a tag at the main gate. So we, the travellers who come to trade, we camp here, and if there are too many of us, they stop the water until most of us move on. Most move on within a day or two, anyway – the city is not welcoming to guests, so we do our business and move on. Those of us who can’t go, who have to stay – well, there are streams in the forest, if you know where to go to them, but they are heavy walking. I think they covered them, or diverted the little streams, long ago, so there are few places near the city that people might be tempted to camp. It is more likely to be thirst than starvation that makes an end to us, regardless of what my grandmother says. She is old, older than can easily haul water from a stream to a camp. If I were to fall ill, at a time when the water were off, well, we would not last too long once the other travellers left. The city does not care for Travelling People – as long as we bring goods to trade, and do not foul up their clearing with our waste or our bodies they do not drive us away. And that is all that can be said for the hospitality of Stonewall.” She sat down on a fallen trunk. Uriana, not knowing what else to do, sat beside her. Without Carla’s voice, Uriana could hear scuffling in the leaves underfoot. Lizards, she thought, and wondered how she knew that lizards scuffled in leaves on the forest floor when she did not know her own name. How did she know what lizards were, but not know how she came to wake, barely dressed, in an alley between buildings?
Lizards scuffled. A bird perched for a brief moment on the tree trunk, and then flitted erratically off after an insect.
“Why do you come?” Uriana asked aloud. “Why do you come, if you are not welcome?”
Carla kicked the leaves at her feet. “For the same reason we go anywhere. For trade. Stonewall can build great thick walls for itself, and employ men to garden a forest edge, and fill in streams and divert rivers because it is wealthy. They are a port city, one of the greatest, and their wealth comes from the sea itself. On boats it arrives, gold and pearls and spices and powdered dyes, and the secret of where they find it is one of the greatest sources of campfire tales this side of the moon. Ask fifty people, and they’ll tell you fifty different stories. Mermaids, hidden islands, the undersea gods themselves. Perhaps one of them is the truth, but it would take a lifetime to find out which one.” She sighed. “Mind you, had I that secret, I’d keep it to myself too. My grandmother knows a glassmaker in the mountains who makes the most glorious beads you’ve ever seen, spun in all colours, some with flowers worked inside the glass, others with streaks and spots and stars… his master, and his masters’ masters before him have refined their techniques over generations, and my grandmother is one of the few who even know where to find him. She won’t take anyone but me and my husband to see him – when we reach the town he lives nearest to; we leave the group behind to trade with him. And it’s here that his beads get the best prices, and it’s here that my husband tried to negotiate a contract with a merchant, and it’s here he got into a fight with that same merchant and it’s here he got locked up and it’s here we stayed while our company moved on. If I could get in, I could petition the merchant to request for the sentence to be cut, perhaps in return for a more favourable contract. But I have no tag, and begging for mercy is not a worthy purpose, so here we wait for his sentence to be served. What we’ll do then, I don’t know. Our company moved on. After the first year, when they returned through and I was unable to join them, I sent our children with them. Our horse I sold, all our trade goods I sold, we have little remaining but enough clothes to wear and – if the fates allow – the strength to find or earn enough food to live on. Perhaps the next time our company comes back through this way, we can rejoin them – though we have no horse and no wagon for our no-horse to pull, and our people have little inclination to extend credit or loan. Our tradition is to sell or to gift, but never to loan. Who knows when you might see your debt returned? We cannot buy, and no-one would gift a horse and wagon. We cannot travel without them. A company will only take members who can support themselves – at least enough to travel. I am just glad that I had only two children, and a couple who had none were willing to take them in, or no future would wait for my family but to waste away here, hoping for my husband to be released. I thought it would be only a few weeks, then a few months, and soon I had sold as much as I dared to keep myself and my grandmother alive while I waited, thinking all the time that it would be just a short while longer. Fool I am, indeed. Now, I don’t suppose you remember anything about identifying edible plants? No? I thought not. Come with me. Oh, and see these three little leaves, with the red veins underneath? Keep a lookout for them, they’re hard to find but they’re good for headaches and nausea, and I can usually trade as much as I can find for flour and other things.” Carla stood and began bustling about through the sparse undergrowth between the tall trees, keeping a running commentary on the identification and usage of whatever plants she spotted and sending Uriana out wide to search for easily found edibles.
How long, thought the woman whose newfound friends called Uriana. How long have they been waiting? How long will I wait for someone to come looking for me?
By the time the sun began to fade, they had accumulated a reasonable haul. The forest, with its towering trees and sparse lower growth, yielded food only grudgingly. Carla claimed it was not the best season for foraging, and grumbled that perhaps the city sent rangers to pull up fruiting plants much as they trimmed the edges of the forest. They had found a few herbs to trade, and performed some small tasks for other camped travellers. Between their efforts, the two women had accumulated a small heap of vegetables and flowers and leafy plants, and replenished a small pile of wood for their fire. Uriana did not ask how Danae had spent her day. Neither woman mentioned the morning’s disagreement. Danae sifted through the gathered food, clicking her tongue at the misshapen root vegetables and crowing with glee at some purple flowers Carla had carried back tucked carefully into her hair, cautious that they not be crushed. Uriana hauled a bucket of water for Carla and Danae to cook with and boil for tea, then later another for the three of them to wash their hands and faces and rinse out the few bits they had cooked with. The layout of the canvas tents seemed to have changed from the morning, and Uriana noted that the new neighbours had raised their tents in groups. A respectful distance separated each group of temporary dwellings, but Carla and Danae’s tent was the only one standing alone. Clusters of adults grouped around the campfires, cooking and talking and keeping an eye on small children. None acknowledged Uriana, and she took care not to walk through the middle of each tent group, preferring to skirt between the little clusters. At the well, people lined tiredly and in a more or less orderly fashion to draw water. People greeted friends and waved to acquaintances, but Uriana stood in the line alone, unrecognised. No-one spoke to her. The Travelling People, Uriana decided, were not so open to receiving strangers. She was glad that Carla and Danae had taken her in so easily. Perhaps it was their own experience of isolation, she decided, that made them more receptive to admitting people they did not know. Or perhaps it was her strange clothing – a man’s oversize tunic over a woman’s colourful skirt, and her feet still bare – that made them unwilling to open conversation with her. She must look like a madwoman. At least her hair was clean, if a little dishevelled from a day spent mostly foraging. Most of the women wore their hair tied back in a plait, too – Carla and Danae wore theirs that way, Uriana realised suddenly. Her own was still loose, hanging to just above her shoulders. The other women around her had long plaits, some of them with narrow ribbons woven in; others pinned up on the back of their heads. But all of them were long.
When she got back to their campsite, Uriana sat by the fire and stared into the flames while she considered her observations. Red-and-orange phantoms danced in the cooling air, and leaped and threw sparks from their confinement inside the ring of stones.
“Do you ever cut your hair?”
The question seemed to take Carla by surprise.
“The tradition among us is to cut our hair only after a death,” she answered, “and we remain in mourning until it is long enough to be bound back again. Why?”
Uriana fingered the ends of a lock of hair. “Then I am not one of the Travelling People,” she said, “or I am, but I am in mourning.” She looked up, from the older woman’s face to the younger. “That is something, truly, isn’t it – just a little, but something.”
When Carla and Danae retreated to the tent to sleep, Uriana lay awake for a short while and gazed at the stars. She wondered whether the stars above her should seem familiar, or foreign. Whether, someday, she might recognise the patterns in the stars laced out above her. A gentle hope, a faint satisfaction dawned under her heart. Her lost name was still out of reach, and yet perhaps time would bring her more pieces of the puzzle.
The next morning followed a similar pattern to the last. Uriana fetched water on her own while Carla set the campfire, and water was boiled and bread baked well in time for Danae to join them.
The flat bread lay heavily in Uriana’s hand as she picked at the dough, considering a thought that had come to her in the damp, grey pre-dawn.
“How long?” She asked, suddenly.
Carla looked up, confused. “How long? Well… as long as it needs. You have seen me make it twice, you should know.”
Baffled, Uriana tried to make sense of the answer. “No, I mean – not the bread. Your husband. How long was he locked away for? When will he be released?”
Danae snorted. “Well, that answers that. You can’t be from Stonewall. I had thought the citizens of that lawbound place knew the laws from birth. If you go to the graveyard and ask that same question, even the bones will tell you the answer. He’ll be released when he’s released. Stonewall values its own citizens far more highly than any Travelling People, and they don’t forgive an assault against their own too quickly. No, surely you can’t be from Stonewall. No Stonewall citizen forgets their rights, even if they can’t remember their own name. It doesn’t matter how the fight started, girl, it only matters that he was guilty of landing the first blow. Well witnessed by half-a-dozen others, and testified to before the appropriate assortment of guards, lawyers, and judges. The merchant had the right to set the terms of release, and set them he did – release, free and clear, in return for an apology. And this grand-daughter of mine, well, she chose carefully when she married. Oh, she surely did. She carefully chose the most stiff-necked man she could find, though I warned her otherwise. It comes from her mother’s side, I think, that foolishness. The only wise choice her mother ever made was marrying my son. So. An apology will set him free, unless the merchant he assaulted decides, suddenly, to forgive the indignity and petition a judge to have him released. As stiff-necked as my grandson-in-law is, Stonewall merchants are worse. Proud and righteous, the worst combination.” She spat on the ground. “Did you see the two signs by the gate on your way out? No? Well, one lists the purposes considered suitable grounds to request entry to the city. The other is the city motto – In The Light Of Law. If a law grants them a right, they’ll uphold it like it was granted by the godscourt itself.”
“If I could get in,” Carla interrupted firmly, “I could negotiate with the merchant, or petition him for leniency. Or, perhaps, get in to the gaol and beg my husband to just apologise, and he could come out. If I could get in.” She stopped, and stared into her mug of tea. Silence fell around the little morning cookfire.
“What if you had something to sell,” said Uriana, cautiously. “Then you could get in, could you not? They would give you a tag?”
“Yes,” sighed Carla. “But I – and, if honesty tells it – my grandmother too, am more proud than wise. Or I was, back then. If I had been wise, I would have gone straight to the merchant – or to my husband – when I still had enough trade goods to get myself admitted to the city. But I thought it would, surely, be only a few weeks. No-one could be so cruel as to lock a man up for years for the sake of bruised dignity. And by the time I realised I was wrong, and my own pride was worn away enough to beg for mercy on behalf of my husband, I had sold everything I could. It was too late.”
“But there are three of us, now.” Uriana pointed out meekly. “Those herbs you showed me yesterday… you must know of others that could be traded. Surely, between three of us, over time we could find enough to get into the city, with them as trade goods?”
Carla shook her head. “There’s just those little three-leaves, and they grow so few and far between. It would take a lifetime to collect enough for the registrar to believe we intended to sell them.”
“Showed you herbs, did she?” Danae sounded amused. “All she knows of herbs she learned from her mother, and her mother knew little enough. Could never bring herself to learn from me, could she. Foolish woman. I could show you a dozen things that grow in that forest, easy, that we could trade away like that. But I’m too old for hiking through forests, now. Were things as they should be, I’d be resting my bones on a creaking wagon on the trail towards the ground my family’s bones rest under. Besides that, I don’t know what Carla’s told you about the customs of the Travelling People, but I know well enough that the only people you can trust are your own company. Someone isn’t sitting by this tent every minute, someone else will have robbed even the blankets off the ground.”
Carla threw the rest of her tea into the fire and stood. “Well,” she said briskly, “enough talking about what can’t be done. We’d best be off if we want to eat tonight.”
“No,” said Uriana, “Listen. What if one of us worked for food, and the other collected everything we could lay our hands on and brought it back here? Danae could tell us what was useful, or rare, or valuable, and we could build up a cache to take in and trade. Surely, if you’ve been living well enough from the labour of one, the labour of two can produce a little excess to store up.”
“Hah!” cackled Danae, “This is an ambitious one you’ve found here, Carla! Made for business, isn’t she? Are you sure you’re not one of the Travelling People, dear heart?”
Uriana looked to Carla, anxiously. “It could work, couldn’t it?” The lack of response in Carla’s face made her fear that there was something important she didn’t know, something else she should know but had lost with her name. “Carla?”
Carla made a thoughtful face. “Yes, it could work. It would take time, of course, but we’ve waited so long already, and with no better options in front of us, that we’ve got plenty of time to put into the venture.”
Relief washed through Uriana. It was a good plan. She may not remember anything of herself, but she could make good plans nonetheless.
“But,” continued Carla, “What about you? We need an extra person to make it work – to feed ourselves and save something on top of what we need. It’s only been a couple of nights since you woke in the city. What if someone comes looking for you? No-one simply appears in the midst of a city – someone must know you, and someone must be looking for you.”
Silence fell. Uriana could hear the daily murmurings of the rest of the camped travellers, so separate from their little camp that there could have been an ocean between them. A baby cried, distantly, and Uriana wondered if somewhere a baby cried for her.
“It may be,” she said, cautiously, “It may be that someone comes. How long should I wait? Even if someone came, would I know whether I truly belonged with them or not? Would I remember my own sister if she passed through the camp? Would I remember that I even had a sister? I can’t just wait, and sit, and wait, for fear that someone might come looking for me and I not be found. What if they came yesterday, while we were in the forest together? What if they passed by this tent while I was drawing water? At least if I am working on something, I will be making good use of my time. If I just sit by the city gates, I might be dead of hunger before anyone sets foot outside them looking for me. Or what if I am not from the city? What if I am one of the Travelling People, with my hair cut short for the death of my husband – or my mother – or my whole family, anyone who knows me? I could wait here an eternity, and die alone. Isn’t it better to achieve something – or try to achieve something – than to simply sit and wait and hope?”
A new silence fell after this impassioned speech.
“Do you know,” said Danae shortly, “I think that is more words than I’ve heard from you over the whole time you’ve been with us. It’s a good idea, girl, and Carla would be even more foolish than she currently is not to accept the offer. Now get on away with the both of you, and do something productive. I don’t plan on starving in front of Stonewall if I can help it.”