“My mother would never tell me,” I said. “I am not sure she knew.”
“My father wouldn’t tell me either,” said Tariq, “but there has got to be someone in the castle who knows. The Little Rose must, because it’s her curse.”
“So Yashaa will climb into the dark tower and try to find a way to get us in,” Saoud said. “And if you can’t, you must find out on your own.”
I nodded and then thought of something else.
“After the castle, we should go back to the mountains,” I said. “I know it’s not entirely safe there, but at least we will have our minds, and we will be able to spin.”
“I agree,” said Saoud. “There will be a cave or something, and we can stay there until we have decided what to do next.”
“In the meantime, we bury the spindles here,” I said. Tariq and Arwa both looked at me in shock. “I don’t like it either, but remember: spinning is illegal in Kharuf. If we are caught tomorrow, and they go through Saoud’s pack and find them, he will be in desperate trouble.”
We didn’t speak any further but finished our dinner in silence, and then we went to our bedrolls.
In the morning, Tariq took the small shovel we used to dig the fire pit, while Arwa looked for a tree that she would be sure to recognize again. There weren’t as many trees on the heathered slopes, but she found one to her liking soon enough, and Tariq carefully peeled back the green layer of plants before setting it aside to dig the hole below. When he had gone down far enough, we placed all four spindles, with their whorls beside them, into a shirt Tariq had mostly outgrown and wrapped them tightly. Saoud had to place them in the hole, as none of us could bring ourselves to do it. Then he packed the earth down on top of them carefully before replacing the greenery on top.
We rolled up the tents and stowed our gear in our packs. Saoud didn’t conceal the fire pit as he had done when we were in the mountains. There was less need to hide our tracks here, and a good chance that we would be returning to camp here again tomorrow, if all went as we hoped it would go. Still, there was a weight in my steps I couldn’t explain, and a reluctance in every step I took away from the last piece of my mother I owned.
“Are you sure you will find it again?” I asked Arwa. For once, I sounded like I was the younger.
“Yes,” she said. “We will find our old camp easily enough, because of the fire pit. No one else would look any further, but I will know to find this tree.”
I looked back at the tree, only just visible from this distance, and frowned. It didn’t seem particularly special to me, but Arwa was good at this.
“It will only be a day, Yashaa,” she said. She did not remind me that I hated my spindle most of the time, and I was glad of it, for otherwise I might have wept to leave it behind in the dirt.
WE REACHED THE CASTLE well before noon and settled in to wait. We had no way of knowing which of the towers was the one the candlemaker’s wife had told us about, except that it was one of the towers that guarded the castle’s corners, where the view from the wall was obscured. Saoud’s father had told us that the palace in Qamih was protected by a double wall that bent back on itself at the corners, so that there would be no blind spots. There was plenty of stone in Qamih, after all, and they could quarry it readily enough. In Kharuf, they had to be more economical when they built the castle, so it was a simple square, with the main keep in the middle, and the outbuildings all around it. It was, I suspected, far less grand than the palace in Qamih. And yet when I saw it, my heart lurched: this had been my home.
I had played in that courtyard, chasing balls or chickens; or Tariq, when it was my task to mind him. I had gone to the kitchens to look for extra bread between mealtimes, and the cooks had pretended I was stealthy enough to take it without their notice, slipping me sweets and more besides. One of those rooms had been the spinning room, where I had learned my craft at my mother’s knee, and one of those rooms had been mine—where I’d slept, and where I had stayed when I was sick with the sheep pox.
“I don’t remember it,” said Tariq beside me, great sadness in his voice. “I thought I would see it, and remember. But I don’t. I know I lived there, and spent three years in the nursery with the Little Rose, but I don’t remember anything.”
“It’s all right, Tariq,” I told him. “I don’t remember very much, either. It’s more that I know this was my home, our home, and that we were happier here than we have been anywhere else. Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” said Tariq. “That’s how I feel too.”
“I feel like it’s a story,” said Arwa. “A story I’ve heard so many times that I think it’s real after all. A good story. An important one. A story that I love.”
“Me too,” said Saoud.
We sat, and we watched the castle, and we waited for it to get dark.