True to Hyraj’s word, we only stayed that one night. It was a comfortable night. The family who owned the shed cooked for us, maybe exchanged a better word, giving them some of our forage. A warm meal of stewed vegetables and stale bread. Not stale as in, like, growing mould or anything, maybe even just baked in the morning. I knew modern sliced bread had preservatives and stuff to keep it fresh for a week.

Anyway, we ate alone in the shed, table moved over to the bed for another seat, and we used the outhouse, and borrowed a candle. Altogether, being there was… weird. Not quite like being back in civilisation.

In the morning, we set off. She thanked them and everything and we started walking. She told me where we were heading, but it was just a name that meant nothing to me: Hichdrej. Of course, she then gave me the meaning.

“I would say the ‘Hich’ part comes from the farming communities around here, perhaps a significant exporter of hichjalt and hichkle, while the ‘drej’ means that it is large enough for a jitern. Ah, that is a small group of people who manage the village.”

So like a village council.

Her lesson continued as we followed the not-quite-straight path down the slope, fields on either side, air thick and sun hot.

It was something I hadn’t thought about at all yesterday, but the people of the village I’d seen all wore hats. Mostly like a square of cloth, tied on somehow, trailing down to cover the neck. That made sense if they spent a lot of time outside.

As for us, well, the goddess didn’t give me a hat, so I had none. Hyraj had spent most of the time under trees; only for meals back at the camp was where she’d spent time under the sun. Not for long at lunchtime, though, breakfast and dinner when she had to wash up.

Now, she had a hat. Hard to see it well while walking next to her and her being taller, but, from some glances, it looked kind of like a flattened bowler hat. A dark colour, small brim, probably quite firm, keeping a round shape. Oh, but there was a maroon ribbon around it, tied into a bow on the side, near the front. Pretty, but formal.

My attention slipping, I faced ahead and focused on her lesson which was about the kinds of shops you would find in larger places—or maybe professions was more correct? Stuff like carpenters and blacksmiths. Well, not blacksmiths, apparently a ton of different kinds of people who worked with metal….

It took a while to pass the first field, nothing to see growing in it. The next field was more interesting with a fence around it, wild grass and weeds growing up it; on the other side, some shoots popped through, but nothing I recognised. That was kind of obvious, not like farmers would grow wild vegetables.

Once my curiosity died down, it was hard to ignore how tired I felt. Or not tired, but breathless, but not out of breath? My head felt cloudy, body weird. We hadn’t been walking long, though, so asking to stop….

I pushed myself to keep going. It wasn’t like I couldn’t walk or anything, just that I felt not quite right. One foot after another, step by step, eyes on the floor to make sure I didn’t trip over anything. If I fell down, I wasn’t sure I could get back up.

One minute, two, three—

“Louise!”

The sound coming from behind me, I slowed to a stop, then looked beside me, but Hyraj wasn’t there. A panic struggled through the fluff filling my head, the chill that ran through me awfully pleasant, so hot, sweating.

“Louise!”

Her voice and her hand, touching mine. It pulled me and I followed, feet listening to her, walking over to the shade beneath a rare tree out here. It wasn’t that there were none, but there were a lot less than in the forest, scattered along the edge of the path and the path often weaving around them. A different kind of tree. It wasn’t like an oak with wide leaves or a pine with needles, but more like a palm? A long trunk with no branches, then a bushy top, hard to see the shape of the leaves with the sun behind them.

Before I could get a good look, she covered my eyes with her hand and pulled me closer to the trunk. Getting sort of rough, she pushed me down and held me there as if expecting me to try and escape.

I didn’t.

She hesitantly let go of me and moved back a pace and, after staring at me for a few seconds, slipped off her backpack. With a cup out, she made a ring with her hand, water flowing down, filling it.

“Drink,” she said.

I didn’t feel thirsty, but she told me to and that moment I’d turned and she wasn’t there was still fresh in my mind, willing to do anything she asked. So I took the cup and reluctantly brought it to my lips, expecting to find the water warm.

But it wasn’t.

So cold I almost flinched, I sipped it, a horrible reminder that my teeth were sensitive to the cold, months of not using special toothpaste making it painful, but I drank through the pain. It felt like there was no end to the water in the cup, gulping in air when I finished, wincing, next breath coming out in shudders.

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Then she rustled, pulling over my attention. She was going into her backpack again. The pain had cleared my head a bit, but I still wasn’t thinking, just reacting. Watching her with curiosity as she took out a coarser cloth, kind of like a muslin hand towel, and some things which were halfway between pins and knitting needles.

“You truly are helpless,” she muttered so softly I thought I wasn’t supposed to hear it. Maybe I hadn’t, making up the sounds as I stared at her lips, thinking they looked dry. How I wished I had a lip balm for her to use, how nice they would look with lip gloss. Never used any myself, but I understood now, lips something people looked at when they talked, so it was nice to decorate them.

While my strange thoughts meandered, she shuffled behind me and played with my hair. I thought nothing of it, something I had let the little ones do often, practice for doing their own hair.

It certainly felt like she didn’t know what she was doing. Thinking about it, I had only seen her wear her hair in a ponytail with that clip. I guessed from the feeling she was trying to make a bun—and failing.

“Let me,” I said, the words slipping out in English.

Still, she understood when my hands came up and she let go. With practised ease, I brushed my hair into a loose ponytail and then started twisting it, twisting the hair and twisting it around, coiling it into a bun. Memories of the little ones practising ballet in the lounge, some big performance on the TV.

No hair ties or anything, I just held the bun for her to do whatever she was trying to do. After a few seconds, her hand touched mine, took over holding. The towel covered the back of my head, ticklish on my neck as it fluttered around with her movements. Eventually, her hands moved away from my head, everything staying in place.

My thoughts coming easier now, I reached up and felt the hair pins. Three. One probably would have done fine, I thought, but I didn’t know how to use them. Sort of Chinese-style ones, not like bobby pins.

Maybe she could tell I was feeling better because she finally spoke to me. “Tell me if the heat is too much,” she said, not quite so unhurried and level, a hint of chiding to it.

“Sorry,” I said, my hand coming down to rest on my lap as I bowed my head. Suitably chided.

She stayed standing behind me for a moment, then walked around to sit beneath the tree a step away from me, yet the narrow trunk meant that was almost the other side of it. “I apologise I cannot offer you a better hat,” she said—taking a moment to point at her own hat and teach me the word.

Always time for a lesson.

“Sorry I don’t have my own hat,” I said back, awkwardly smiling.

Before we set off, she had me drink another few cups of water—warmer this time, now in the frame of mind to explain it to her. Drank so much we barely walked half an hour before I needed to squat behind a bush. But I was grateful, pretty annoyed with myself for getting heatstroke. Every summer, that was always on my mind, making the kids drink their own weight in water, but here I was, so used to the trees’ shade, forgetting the stormy season was still summery.

Even with her now-frequent stops to drink, her brisk pace kept us moving, one field becoming the next. This one also had a fence and shoots, but they were definitely different plants: the last ones stuck up with a white tip while these ones were purplish and lay on the soil.

In the sky, the sun rose and rose until it was right above us, shadows small. I wondered if we were going to stop for lunch, but we didn’t have any fruit to eat today. My question was soon answered when we rounded a curve in the path and a village came into sight.

Something I hadn’t thought about before, a field could only really be so far from a village, right? Farmers didn’t have cars or tractors here, at least from what I’d seen. If the field was half a day’s walk, then they’d have to walk back as soon as they got there. We hadn’t set out right at dawn and half the fields should have “belonged” to the other village, so about a quarter’s day walk to get to the end of the field?

My mind full of useless maths, we walked ever closer. A bigger village, but not really by much, a little more sprawled, some cottages looking newish. The same sort of “greeting” played out too. There were some older kids—young teens, I thought—at the edge of the village, lounging under a damaged not-palm tree that had fallen over, then grown back up, making a natural bench. They were the ones who called the adults, a gathering there by the time we arrived. It was a trio of older women this time to greet us and eventually arrange a place to stay for Hyraj and me.

While that went on, I paid more attention to everyone’s hats and hair. I was right in thinking everyone wore something. What the women wore weren’t quite like what I remembered, though, actually sort of bonnets without the big brim? Loose cloth hats that tied under their chins, but also with long backs to cover the neck. As for the boys—there were no men around—they had something more like Hyraj’s hat, hard to see when they weren’t standing in front of us. Maybe a starched cap? Their shirts had high collars, maybe to cover their necks, maybe just the fashion. Well, I was only focused on necks because I knew it was easy to forget to put sunscreen on the back of them.

Belatedly, I noticed they also looked like me. The last village wasn’t just an extended family from somewhere distant. All of them, some a bit darker, some a bit lighter, but a similar shade.

It felt strange. Not good, not bad, just strange.

I tried not to focus on it, instead tried to take in as much as I could. After all, the more I knew, the better I could eventually fit in. So I tried to see if the women wore any particular make-up, if they plucked their eyebrows.

One thing I did notice was that a girl’s bonnet came loose and so she took it off for a moment to fix it. Underneath, it looked like her hair was braided and then folded up, a hair pin like Hyraj had used keeping it in place.

Our housing was a little different this time, a spare room in an old lady’s cottage. From what I picked up, her only daughter had married out a long time ago, but the old lady kept the room ready in case her daughter came to visit. From our guide’s tone, I guessed that hadn’t ever happened.

Regardless, the old lady happily greeted us, the young women next door happily cooked for us as well, and our room was nicer than the shed. Far from fancy, but nicer.

Once the door closed, I let out a breath I hadn’t realised I was holding, tension leaving with it. A busy day, it felt like.

Oh, except it wasn’t the end of the day, was it?

“Are we going travel more?” I asked.

Hyraj answered my question by how she put down her backpack and slipped her hat into it. “No. Let us rest today, still a few days until any storms should roll in.”

I felt embarrassed again, thinking she was being mindful of me, but it was one thing to think it, another to have her say as much, so I kept my words to myself and settled down on the bed.

“We shall leave early tomorrow that we reach the next village before midday and rest through the heat, so sleep well tonight.”

“Okay,” I whispered, idly clapping my hand.