Zia Sunroot's Arc

Chapter 15 of 17

At dawn the coyote rises and trots west. Zia and Teo follow. The land narrows between two rock walls until they reach a stone archway, half-buried in sand. The passage is narrow. Only one can pass at a time. The coyote slips through. Zia steps up and stops. Teo waits behind her. She does not move yet. Something in his pack is catching the sun. She turns. A wooden stick juts from his bedroll. It has notches down its length, colored strings tied at certain marks, and a glass ball at the top with a lodestone inside. She has not seen it before. "Show me," she says. Teo's jaw tightens. He pulls it out. The red strings, she sees now, match the yellow stars on the bandanna. He has been reading the road the whole time. "How long have you known," she says. Teo does not answer. She steps closer. "Teo." He reaches into his shirt and pulls out a pocket watch on a worn cord. The glass is cracked. On the back, one word is cut into the metal. Jarek. Zia's breath stops. "He gave it to me," Teo says. "Two winters ago. In Riella. He told me a keeper was south. He told me someone else was west." "Someone else," Zia repeats. The coyote watches them from the far side of the arch. "You knew there was a third person. Before the bandanna. Before the coyote." Teo nods once. "I didn't know if he was alive. I didn't want to promise you a ghost." His voice is low. "I wasn't hiding him from you. I was hiding him from being wrong." Zia looks at the watch in his palm. At the stick with its careful marks. He has carried Jarek's last words and a tool to follow them, and he has walked beside her without saying. She could be angry. She is, a little. But he is here. He came across the desert to find her, and he is still here, and his hands are open now. "No more held back," she says. "Not one more thing." Teo nods. "Not one more thing." She steps through the arch. He follows. On the other side, the coyote is already moving. Zia walks with the meter stick in view now, the strings bright against the wood, the lodestone steady. The guide is a man Jarek trusted. A man waiting at the crater. She does not know his name yet. But she knows he is real, and she knows Teo is hers, and the road ahead has only two secrets left instead of three.