I held the piece of wood in my hand and nothing else. They didn’t offer to let me bring luggage. There was a girl already outside, her face covered by her hooded cloak, holding onto a satchel with her pale knuckles. I thought I was the first, but it seemed there was another family in the village who was willing to give up a child without a fight.

We stood next to each other. The girl didn’t look at me or say anything. She only looked forward. I wondered who she was. I didn’t know all the young women in the village, but I knew most. I imagined most would be weeping under our circumstances, but she only walked forward without a word.

Then again, it seemed improper to break the silence of the soldiers’ march. There was a carriage on the outskirts of the village. It was large, drawn by six horses instead of four. We were ushered inside. It was nice to get out of the cold of the night. There were four more people in the carriage already, some asleep against the wooden benches, others stifling their weeping.

The girl took a seat by the window, and pulled back her hood. It was Sage Rayan. I hadn’t seen her for years. Her family belonged to Kavisse, but only barely.

Sage and I had gone to school together, in the ramshackle building where all the children of Kavisse learned to read, write, and do simple arithmetic. After we were deemed educated enough and before we could learn too much, we were graduated. Sage didn’t come into the village after graduation. She was a bright student, and I thought she would have at least visited the school to borrow the schoolteacher’s books, or perhaps even to work under the old man to take over for him in a few years. I knew he’d offered her the opportunity.

Sage dug into her satchel and withdrew a green apple and a knife. She cut the fruit into six pieces and offered a slice each to the rest of the people in the carriage. I gingerly took her offering. She looked out the window as the carriage started rolling.

Her hair was darker than I remembered, and wilder. She wasn’t wearing her hair in braids like the women in the village usually did. Her hair fell around her head in unruly waves, and she made no attempt to push them down. The result was a bit maddening, but she didn’t seem to mind or care.

“It’s nice to see you, Theodor,” she said, as if she’d noticed me observing her.

“It would’ve been nicer if it was under different circumstances,” I answered.

I’d always liked her. She was quietly kind, the type of character Kavisse didn’t have much of. A girl who minded her own business and got on with her life without noise or complaint. She’d seemed so grown up, even as a child.

“I can’t believe they went all the way to your house,” I added. Hidden behind a few lines of trees, the Rayan house was easy to miss for most people, even those who lived in Kavisse. It was on the fringes of the village, and most days all we could see of their home was the trail of smoke that rose into the sky. It was sheer bad luck that the soldiers had found her house despite its isolation.

“They didn’t,” Sage answered.

“So how did they get you?”

Sage smiled. “I waited for them at the entrance to the village with my luggage.”