Free Forbidden by Kimberley Griffiths Little Page A

why am I lying here?”
    “You fainted,” I said simply. “You miraculously survived a knife attack but you’re in no shape to travel alone without a camel. You’d collapse before you managed a single day’s journey. We’re going north to the big oasis Tadmur, the city of palms. And you’re coming with us.”
    He shook his head. “No, that cannot be. I must get back to my uncle in the South at—the South.”
    “When you say the South, where do you mean exactly? The kingdom of Akabah by the Red Sea? Or the lands of the Midianites and Moabites?”
    He shook his head. “Much farther than that. Weeks and weeks beyond the Red Sea.”
    I gazed at him in disbelief. “Nobody lives beyond the far eastern borders of the Red Sea. There is nothing but the death trap of the Empty Sands. Not even a camel can cross that.”
    He just stared at me without answering, and I couldn’t imagine what location or geography he was referring to. “Once you pass the Moabite nation,” I continued, wondering why he wouldn’t just tell me, “there are no paths or roads, only mountains and then straight east to borders guarded by vicious nomads.”
    He lifted an eyebrow and gave me that half smile again. “The people of the farthest southern lands are not all vicious.”
    I stared at him, not speaking for a moment, and then I said, “You’re teasing me. Are these the people you escaped from? The ones who knifed you?”
    “I do not flee my own people and my own land, but I need to return as quickly as I can.”
    His mild manners and teasing tongue didn’t coincide with the stories I’d heard my entire life—tales of lands that bordered on mythical. “You have no camel, no food, and no water. How do you intend to get there alive?”
    “If it is the will of God, I can do it.” He tried to sit up, then grimaced with pain and fell back to his bed of dirt.
    I didn’t respond; instead I busied my hands with thewaterskins, clumsy and embarrassed. The subject of God was a topic for the men around the campfire.
    The stranger looked at me. “As a daughter of Abraham, do you find it difficult to live in a land of Babylonian religion, its rites and sacrifices?” he asked softly. “The gods of the sun and moon and stars?”
    I quickly retied the last of our water, hoping the old camel skins didn’t drip all the way to Tadmur. “We stay away from the temples so we don’t accidentally get chosen for the sacrificial table. Or dropped into a bottomless well,” I said simply.
    When he glanced up, surprised, I gave him a sideways smile to let him know that I was exaggerating. “It’s not as bad as that,” I conceded. “But there are stories of children being taken. It’s the reason we don’t live in the cities, only entering on market days when we need supplies.”
    A moment passed, and our eyes met. “Well, I’m blessed to have found a tribe that won’t drop me into a bottomless well.”
    I let out a choked laugh. To cover up my unease, I got to my knees, wrapping up the basket of herbs and medicine.
    The stranger lifted his hand to keep my attention. “Do you know where the closest well is?”
    “You’re sitting right next to it,” I replied.
    He squinted around the campsite. “I guess I meant, how far is the next one?”
    “There’s no water again until we reach the canyon lands, which is five more days’ journey to the north.”
    “There are cities along the way you could stop at.”
    I shook my head no. “We avoid the cities until we reachTadmur. There are too many outlying tribes, so we pack enough water from this well to make the five-day journey to the red canyons. But as the weather is growing hotter, it’s easy to run out. The last day or two becomes very difficult. With your ill health, I fear it’s going to be a terrible few days for you.”
    He gazed into the distance, as if he could see his homeland from here. “I’d like to take water and go south alone if I can. I need to go south.”
    I looked at him