Loretta of the Lamp

The Road North

They left Rama later that day. Akil did not let Loretta out of his sight when they left the inn and made their way through the city to the northern gates. He had confirmed his decision that it was best they take the King's road to Misbah, the city of the Djin king, near the very centre of the lamp. Misbah lay in the shadow of a place Akil referred to as the Mountain of Smoke. The very heart of the lamp. Loretta agreed to go because she was determined to get out of the lamp as fast as she could, and given that Akil didn't know what to do with her, and he wouldn't let her ask anyone else for advice, the clear answer was that she did indeed have to pay a visit to the 'Djin king'.

"Can we not get a ride on one of those camels or something?" Loretta asked as they followed the long caravan out of Rama when the gates opened. The horses which had trotted by smartly with their earnest riders as Loretta ducked and dodged them were already long gone ahead, but the camels were still near enough that Akil could haggle for a ride.

"No." Was the flat answer.

"But why not?"

"It is better if we keep to the road less travelled," he said.

Loretta looked out at the rolling desert dunes to either side of the road, "I am not going out there without being able to see the road I am supposed to be following." She told him.

"I'm speaking figuratively," Akil sighed. "I mean the less we mingle with people the less chance someone will realise that you are not from here and less chance I will be found out,"

"What do you mean, found out?"

"It doesn't matter," Akil adjusted the pack on his shoulder. "We are going this way, on foot." He said it with a clear tone of finality, as he nodded his head north. The road was barely scratched into the sand and only obvious by the hoof prints and the dust clouds in the distance. Even the camels were pulling away from them now.

Loretta growled at him, purely because there was nothing else she could do.

Akil's pace meant that by the end of the first day the others who were making the journey on foot, a few men with heavy packs, several hauling laden donkeys behind them and a family of six, four children piled up on a cart with their mother and father on foot, were left far behind. Sometimes Loretta could keep up with him, and sometimes she could not. When the light went out Akil finally found a place in the curve of a dune, sheltered from the wind, for them to stop and camp for the night.

Loretta set down her pack and began to roll out her miserably small blanket a good distance away from the genie, until he told her that there would be jackals hunting in the night.

Begrudgingly, she set down a few yards away from him and went straight to sleep, making sure she slept on her side facing away from him.