Moon & Earth

Chapter 2-3

Javes took one look at his menagerie—camel and goats—and knew that they had come this far with him and there was no way he’d leave them behind. “Well, then I’m not going either.”

And he grabbed the camel’s rope and yanked it away.

He strode across the square, his legs trembling. He sensed Tali and the goats behind him, but didn’t stop. He was furious. He could have . . . should have gone to Watya and caught a train from there. But he couldn’t have known if trains were still running over the bridge across the Aramys River. He should have . . . he should have sold that piece a lot sooner while they were still in country where ancient artefacts had value.

“What is the matter, what did he say?” A small brown hand patted his shoulder.

Javes looked into Tali’s eyes. He let out a deep sigh, tucked the metal back in his packet. He took her hand and held it briefly. After having promised her a ride on the train, he felt terrible. “He said we can’t go on the train with the camel and goats.”

“Well, then we don’t go on the train.”

Javes heaved a deep sigh. He needed to get to Tiverius and fast. “It’s still a very long way to Tiverius.”

“Further than we have already come?”

“Probably as far.” In distance, at least. They were probably more than halfway time-wise.

“I don’t mind.”

“But I do. I want to give this map to the doga as quickly as possible.”

“Then let’s get going—hey, there’s another camel.”

He turned around to see where she was looking, and sure enough, it was a smaller beast, female, with a fluffy light-coloured pelt. It wore a harness for a cart. The cart stood next to it, and two men were unpacking the contents into a railway freight trolley.

An old bent grey-haired woman sat on the driver’s seat of the cart, clutching a walking stick.

One of the two men—middle-aged and quite round in the waist—saw Javes’ camel and met Javes’ eyes.

He jerked his head. “Oy!”

Javes gave the rope to Tali and joined the man. The two camels had noticed each other, and his camel started doing that lip thing that male camels do when they smell the ladies.

“What are you doing with your animals when you go on the train?” the man asked.

“Nothing,” Javes said. “I’m not leaving them, so we’re not going on the train.”

“I thought there would be a stable somewhere, but there doesn’t seem to be anywhere to house them.”

“Sorry, I can’t help you there. I’m not from here either.”

The man nodded, pressing his lips together. He looked at Javes’ camel. “That’s a very strong beast you have there.”

“We’ve come from Ysherra. He’s a windwalker camel.”

The camel was holding up its head in the haughty way only camels can. At that moment, Javes was incredibly proud of his camel.

“Oh. Plenty of camels there.” The man glanced at his male companion, who now had to unload the cart alone. The group also included a couple of middle-aged and younger women, as well as a couple of children. “Well, my mother can’t walk, and we can’t ride that far because she needs medical attention.”

“I’m really sorry, but I can’t help,” Javes said.

The man went back to the cart. Javes turned around to go back to Tali when the camel’s owner called behind him. “Hey!”

He held out the rope of the female camel. “Take her. I’m going to have to set her loose otherwise, or give her to someone who knows nothing about camels.”

Javes’ mouth fell open. “How much do I owe you?” He rummaged for his belt pouch.

“Nothing. If we happen to meet in Tiverius, you can hand her back to me. She’s a fine breeding animal and her wool is of high quality.”

Javes didn’t know how to begin to thank the man.

The camel came with a saddle with attachments for a cart, a blanket and headgear, including an ornamental headdress that consisted of strings of little metal disks attached to each other with loops of wire that fitted over the animal’s head. Javes had no idea what it was for, and Tali said that it must be terribly annoying for the poor camel to have these strings of glittering metal disks dangling from its head.

There were no saddlebags, so Javes bought some and they took the animals to a vacant block on the outskirts of the town where they could graze and drink and get used to each other. His camel chased the new camel for a bit but, having been divested of his male tackle, soon conceded defeat.

The black clouds of the approaching storm still hung on the northern horizon. Javes had hopes that they would be able to outrun it.

While the two camels grazed, Javes and Tali spent some time rearranging the packs.

Then Javes tied the new camel’s nose rope to the back of his camel’s saddle. He helped Tali into the saddle and patted the beast on the shoulder so that it rose, first on its back legs and then the front. Tali held on tightly to the top of the saddle.

“I’ll let you ride on your own once you’ve become used to it,” he said. “First we need to make sure the new camel isn’t nervous and doesn’t do anything strange.”

The camel turned out to be well behaved, much better than his camel. They made their way out of town, against the stream of the crowd and people still joining the queue to get onto the train.

“How far is it to Tiverius?” Tali asked.

“A long way. It will take us more than a week to get there.” In a way, he didn’t mind not being able to get on the train, even if it annoyed him because he wanted to deliver the map as soon as possible. On the other hand, he preferred being independent and not having to rely on the vagaries of whether the trains ran and who was waiting on the platform. He’d read the stories of chaos that followed the explosion in the City of Glass and the following refugee crisis. Many of those had arrived by train. Older people told the stories about these trains of death. The people had been wounded, and many of them exposed to so much sonorics that even people from the City of Glass died.

The city guards of Tiverius had put everyone in big camps, and had locked up important people in those camps, including people who should have been presenting their case to the doga. If there were any parallels with his situation, he did not want to become stuck in a camp where he could not deliver Karlen’s message.

“We need to name the camels,” Tali said, breaking his silence.

Javes turned around in the saddle to look at her.

She shrugged. “Camel One and Camel Two doesn’t do much for me.”

That was true. “The goats don’t have names.”

“Yes, they do!” And she went on to name all the animals that followed them, including the white one, which had not belonged to Pashtan, and the two kids that had been born since leaving Ysherra.

“I’m not even sure I can tell the difference between all the goats.”

“Oh, you’re such a boy. Useless at telling the difference between anything. Don’t tell me you can’t tell the difference between the two camels either.”

“Of course I can.”

“There you go. They need names. They’re a part of our travelling family.”

That was also true. “So, what would you name them, then?”

Naming a camel turned out to be more complicated than he had imagined. You couldn’t, for example, give camels people names, and some of the camel names were really hokey, or so Tali informed him. You also couldn’t name a camel after its physical features.

“Because how would you like to be called ‘Whitey’? A name like that is an insult to such a proud animal.”

And so on and so forth. Javes was happy that Tali had returned to her former self, and the subject of naming camels kept them busy for most of the day, while the dark clouds remained on the horizon and every step of those camels brought them closer to Tiverius.