Song of Ashes

9: Donkey-Meat

With a pitiful donkey and a couple of water canteens secured, Sarka had only to pack her things.

There wasn't much: no change of clothes, no trinkets. She looked around her small house for a while, wondering what to take with her other than the clothes on her back.

Sarka's looking glass lay on her table, and as she looked around her room, her gaze fell upon the reflection of her own ruined face. Sarka considered taking the glass with her. She was a woman, after all, and it seemed like a womanly thing to do. She looked at herself for a moment.

Then, she swept the glass onto the floor, where it splintered into half a dozen pieces.

The only thing of value Sarka had was the treasure Lerna had stored away in her sewing chest. Sarka took the precious sewing shears, the dwindled bolts of cloth, spools of shimmering floss and thread, a folder of needles, thimbles-all the odds and ends that filled the toolbox of any seamstress of merit-and she packed everything in a canvas bag. This, she put inside her leather traveling pack.

She went to the kitchen next. Apart from the food she had already packed, she took a wooden bowl for the donkey to drink from. The knife she'd used to kill the wildcat would be useful, too; she slid it into her boot. Then, she buttoned her long traveling jacket over her faded dress and draped her scarf over her rampant black curls, winding the end around her nose and mouth.

It was two hours until dawn, and Sarka was ready to go. So she did.

As she walked through Gold Eagle's Roost toward Aneir's home, Sarka was surrounded by eerie silence. Hearth fires burned low, lighting the windows with only a half-hearted glow. Above, the moon was a sliver, hard to see through the eternal veil of dust.

Sarka passed the cemetery. She paused. She could not see the tilted headstone sticking out of the earth that had covered her mother's body.

Farewell, Mother, she thought. I am off to seek better fortunes.

Sarka had taken the donkey sight unseen, afraid to know the state of the creature on which she'd be staking her life and livelihood. As she rounded Aneir's cottage and saw the thing for the first time, she was filled with regret. It was skinnier even than she was; its ribs showed through a mottled pelt of gray. Its long face was no more than a skull covered in threadbare hide and suspended precariously on the fragile column of its neck. But when Sarka took the saddle from where it lay over the fence and placed it on the donkey's narrow back, it took the weight without complaint.

At least it seemed agreeable.

She'd planned to ride, but one look at the scrawny beast suggested that even Sarka's slight weight would break it.

In a place where everything starved, it was hard to summon compassion. Deciding not to ride was practicality, nothing more. Instead, Sarka used the saddle only as a means to tie up her water canteen and her pack. She took the donkey by the bridle and led it out of the gate.

On the threshold of the next chapter of her life, Sarka stopped. She looked out across the ash desert: silent, featureless, an endless wash of gray.

"There is nothing for us here, Donkey-Meat," she said. "Shall we?"