Shannon Hale - Book of a Thousand Days

But eventually I did put my hands through the hole and feel level earth, I did crawl up onto hard ground and fight my way out of some nasty shrubs, and I did stand on real dirt and look up.

I was outside. I was under the stars.

I breathed in as if it were the first time I'd breathed in years. My body felt stripped naked, washed hard in cold water, dried, and dressed again.

I was under the stars, like a fish is under water. Tomorrow we'll leave the tower. If the guards are out there, ready to shoot an arrow at the mucker maid escaping, or the knocking men wait to do terrible things, then know, Ancestors, that I did my best. I tried to do my duty.

And save my lady, who once said that her mucker maid was her best friend.

[Image: Picture of a Woman Standing Outside At Night]

PART 2

The Adventure thereafter

[Image: Two People Walking Towards a Village.]

Day 1

I decided to start numbering the days at one again to mark the time when we began anew.

I was up all last night. Who can sleep when there's real air to breathe? Who can sleep when there's a sky? Still, I thought it wise to let my lady rest as long as she could, so for hours I kept company with the stars. When I couldn't stand to wait another moment, I clambered back inside, wrote in this book, and then woke her with the news.

She seemed happy. She seemed relieved. But at the hole in the cellar, she waffled. She said she couldn't climb up it, she said her ankle hurt, she said the hole was too small, she said anything to stay inside. After some time of this, I guess I got a bit tetchy and, Ancestors forgive me, I ordered her like I would a sulky sheep, pushing her from behind.

I thought all she needed was to feel that glorious night air, but when I scrambled out behind her, I found her clinging to the side of the tower and shaking like a cornered rabbit.

I put my arms around her to make her feel tight and safe. I said, "Breathe the air, my lady! Look at the stars!"

But she just shook.

Thinking it was the darkness of night that haunted her, I waited for the sun to come up. It was nearly dawn. The sky brightened in the east, turning white, yellow, then blue. It was perfect. I hadn't realized that by firelight, nothing in the tower had shown true colors. All we saw for years was black, gray, and orange.

My lady kept her eyes squeezed shut.

"Look, my lady. Open your eyes and see the colors."

It was the wrong moment, for just as she peeked, the first edge of sun rose over the horizon to peek back at her.

My lady screamed and fell to the earth. "The sun burst! We're going to burn up!"

"It's just so bright, I think, because we're used to darkness. We'll grow accustomed to it in time."

But she insisted that she was burning and rolled around, screaming and thrashing at nothing.

I dragged her inside.

We'll try again tomorrow.

Day 3

We've spent the past two days taking little steps out of the tower, shielding our eyes and looking around, 12 then crawling back in. My lady tries to be brave, and she bites her lip and cries silently, sure she's on fire, but I tell her it's just the normal sun, that Evela, goddess of sunlight, will protect us. I've sung the song for good courage and the song for clear thought so many times, I feel hoarse and drained, as though the words plucked out my own courage and thoughts and tossed the rest of me aside like grain husks.

There are no guards with strung bows aimed at the escaping maid--at least I think there aren't since I'm still alive, but I can't yet see past my outstretched hand, not with the sun shooting bright arrows into my eyes.

Last night we sat under the moon for a long while, and my lady finally breathed in and sighed and seemed happy to be in the air again. She never once let go of my arm.

I spent this afternoon in the tower washing, making bundles of our blankets to carry spare clothing, and baking barley bread stuck with peas from the barrel scrapings. We'll leave tomorrow. I've packed brushes and ink enough, so I can keep writing of how we fare. I hope there will be much to tell.

Day 5

Oh, I feel so low, I want to curl up in the dirt and just moan, moan, moan. Everyone's gone. Everything's burned.

We knew from afar that something wasn't right. There should've been people passing us on the road to her father's city. The sun was so piercing I couldn't see much, but all the world felt wrong, as if the road appeared flat but was actually as steep as a mountain, as if we'd died in the tower and were just ghosts wandering a shadow world.

My lady wouldn't look up. I draped a blanket over her head and she stumbled along, her eyes on her feet.

"Would you like to go back to your father?" I asked.

"He won't have me. And even if he would, I won't have him." She gripped my arm as if without me she'd drown dead in the sunlight.

"We can't live out in the open like this," I said, "not for long, not without a gher. We need to --"

"It doesn't matter where we go. Lord Khasar will find me and wed me and then kill me."

"It won't come to that, my lady. If you won't go home, I'll take you to Song for Evela and reunite you with your khan."

"No! I won't see him."

"But he's your love," I said. "He'll take right care of you."

My lady had stopped walking and stood in the center of the road, hunched and shivering.

"He won't." Her voice went raspy soft and strange as she said, "He wants to kill me with arrows and knives."

Well, those words nearly knocked my feet out from under me. "Khan Tegus wants to kill you? Why would you think that?"

"I heard the whispers."

I nearly laughed as I asked, "Voices whispered to you that Khan Tegus wants to murder you with arrows and knives?"

She looked at me then, her eyes clearing a bit, and said, "No, I didn't hear anything. I just don't want to see Khan Tegus anymore. That's all."

My guess is that she's tower-addled something fierce, her brain awry in her head and her understanding tilted steep. But it's not proper for me to make decisions for her. So what's a mucker maid to do?

We slept the night under a tree, my lady's back pressed to the trunk. I lay awake for hours, playing a game, trying to keep my gaze on the black parts of the sky, but my focus couldn't help but slide back to those bright stars.

My eyes wanted the light. I breathed in as though I'd drink the sky cold. It was a good night.

Then this morning we approached her honored father's city. I saw a gray smudge that must've been the wall, but there was a dark spot that didn't seem right. As soon as we were close enough to make out details, I gasped right out loud. My lady looked up then and saw it, too.

"There's a hole in the wall," she said. "Someone broke the wall."

We kept approaching but stayed in the shadows of the trees that line the road, though they didn't feel any safer.

The city gate was gone. Torn out? Burned?

"I don't understand," she said in her little-girl tone. "If something happened to the gate, shouldn't there be workers to fix it? And there used to be gate guards. Didn't there?"

She started to cry, and we had to stop. I held her head to my shoulder, rocking her, rubbing her back. Poor thing, I don't think she knows where to put the whole world.

We lay down under a tree and I sang a soothing song, one for deep sleep that goes, "Trout in the water, deep underwater, swimming so silver." She succumbed to sleep, and I left her in the shade and crept toward the city. Not only was there a hole in the wall, but the entire length was marred with black marks. Arrow shafts stuck between stones.

As I climbed atop the heaping rubble, a striped snake startled beneath my foot. It didn't attack, just swam deeper into the stones. The snake was surely a sign of something, though I'm not sure what. All creatures belong to Titor, god of animals, but the snake is the favorite beast of Under, god of tricks.