Free Forbidden by Kimberley Griffiths Little

hovering so close to the stranger, as though she had been the one to find him.
    At the shrinking campsite, baskets lay in piles waiting to be tied to the pack camels. Leila had finished rolling the panels of the goat-hair tent, but it would take all three of us to lift the huge rolls onto the camels.
    The herd was beginning to snort and spit, impatient to begin the journey to our summer lands.
    I hurriedly sorted through the kitchen baskets and found the supplies I needed. And my missing knife. Then I ran back to the palm trees, cut strips of clean cloth, and dipped one into the turmeric to clean the wound.
    Lifting the stranger’s shirt, I hesitated to touch him. I waslooking at a boy’s bare chest for the first time in my life. His skin was pale where the sun had never directly shone. A line of dark hair ran straight down from his navel, disappearing into his underclothes. I glanced away, light-headed.
    Next to me, Leila fingered his finely stitched robe lying next to him. “Fit for a king,” she said. “Oh, look at this!” She held up a dagger hidden inside the folds of the stranger’s cloak.
    “He had a second weapon all along,” I whispered. “He could have swung around and killed me at any time.”
    Leila’s eyes met mine. “But he didn’t.”
    I didn’t have time to think about the ramifications of that fact or the stranger’s motives for anything. “He’ll soon be ill if this isn’t taken care of.” I surveyed the flaming-red wound that oozed infection, completely inadequate in the skills needed to tend it properly.
    A tear spilled down my cheek, and I wiped it away. Our mother would have tended to him. She always knew what to do, and managed to have gentle hands and kind words of assurance. I’d never been afraid when she was here. Since her death, I felt constantly frightened, trying not to panic every other minute.
    Gritting my teeth, I finally plunged into the task, cleaning up the blood and pus while my stomach lurched.
    Leila stepped back, squeamish. “Who do you think did that to him?”
    “Looks like a fight,” I said simply. This worried me the most, as we didn’t know who was out there, or if he’d been followed. Once again I wished we were on our way and this day was finally over.
    I finished up, and even though the stranger’s wound was still red and swollen, it was cleaner now. I wrapped strips of cloth around his torso, enlisting Leila’s help to roll him from side to side to pull it underneath. When I finished knotting the ends, the young man’s eyes flew open.
    “Oh!” I fell back on my knees, startled. “You’re still with us, then.”
    His voice was weak, but his eyes came into focus. “Am I seeing a vision, or am I dead?”
    I smiled. “Neither,” I told him, my heart pounding at the way he was looking at me. “Lie still. Tonight my father will stitch the wound so that it will stop bleeding.”
    I was relieved when Leila pointed toward the bluffs. “Look, there’s Father!”
    “No signs of animals or men,” he said as he pulled into camp and slid off Bith. “The tracks on the ridge are at least several days old. The only fresh prints belong to this stranger. If I didn’t know better, I would think the desert had conjured him from the rocks.”
    I noticed that the boy’s eyes were closed again. Had he really fallen asleep or was he listening to our conversation?
    “When he wakes, we’ll learn more,” my father said. “For now, we must go.”
    “And what do we do with him?” I asked.
    “He comes with us. Even if he didn’t intend to travel north toward Damascus and then east to Tadmur, he has no choice now.”

6
    W e made our final preparations and the young man stirred again as I tied the last basket of grain to our camel.
    I plunged a waterskin into the well to fill it, and the stranger reached out and touched the hem of my dress. “Oh!” I jumped back, alarmed.
    He held up his hands. “I’m sorry to startle you. Where’s your family going, and