The aroma of noodles and herbs and bits of dried meat soon filled the ger, along with the crisp scent of pine from the wood on the fire. Regbi’s stomach howled in response. How long had it been since she had eaten? A day at least. Her nerves had made it impossible for her to choke down anything more than a watery cup of tea that morning.

“You can come and sit by the fire if you like. Eat too if you’re hungry.” The shaman ladled a large helping of the soup into an earthenware bowl and set it beside him. Regbi was too hungry to be proud. Far too practical as well. She could hardly escape on an empty stomach. If he was stupid enough to give her the energy to run, then all the better for her. Gingerly, Regbi pushed herself to her feet and hobbled over to the fire. The shaman’s eyes touched on her twisted leg.

“Did you hurt yourself in all the excitement?” he asked with a raise of his brows.

“That’s just how I walk,” she said, plunking herself down onto the rug. She paused for a moment before adding, “I’ve been crippled since childhood. It makes me next to useless, you see. I can barely walk on it, let alone work on it.”

“You could steal on it just fine.” Regbi slurped her soup in response. “If it’s hurting you though, I could take a look at it.”

“No.” She tucked it under her thigh, putting an end to the conversation.

“My name is Khadan, in case you were wondering,” the shaman said after attending to his soup. “What do they call you?”

Regbi knew better than to tell him. There was a power in names and she had been taught to be hesitant in yielding it to shamans she didn’t know. He might use it to levy a curse against her after what she had done. “Just because you tell me yours doesn’t mean I have to tell you mine.”

“Even thieving magpies have names,” he said with a smile.

“This one doesn’t.”

“Then it will have to be Magpie until you tell me differently.” He plucked the bowl from her hands and ladled another helping into it. “Now, tell me then, Magpie: what is a little scrap of a shaman like you doing all the way out here? Don’t you have a master to answer to?”

“Not anymore,” she muttered.

“That makes things simple then,” Khadan said with an approving nod. “No one can object to my keeping you if you don’t have a master.”

She balked, spilling soup down the front of her dress. “I can object to it—what gives you the right? We’re living in the modern era! You can’t just keep a person against their will even if they did try to steal from you. That’s not how it works.”

“How does it work then? Am I supposed to take you to the nearest village and hand you over instead? It seems to me that you’d be better off eating warm soup in my ger than shivering in a cold prison. Besides, shamans are a law unto themselves. I’m perfectly within my rights to keep you for as long as I like. You shouldn’t have come to challenge a shaman with more spirits in his belt than you if you weren’t prepared to face the consequences.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“It seems to me that there’s a lot you don’t know about our vocation, Sister. If you did you would have known better than to have walked into a strange shaman’s ger to begin with. Or didn’t your friends warn you?”

“They’re not my friends.”

“That much we can agree on,” Khadan laughed. “Maybe they didn’t know themselves, but a shaman’s ger has its own sort of magic. It’s not just a matter of letting yourself in. Or out, as in your case.”

“Then why did it invite me in to begin with? It seems to me you might be better off getting a dog than relying on a magic door that opens to thieves.”

“You pose a good question, Magpie: why indeed? Until I’m sure of it myself I think I’ll have to keep you with me. A little shaman with a gentle spirit like yours should be tucked under someone’s wing until she knows her craft better anyway. Not cavorting with thieves and criminals.”

“Other thieves and criminals, I think you mean to say.” She drained the last of the soup from her bowl and rested it on the floor. “And I don’t need anyone to look out for me. Let alone tuck me under their wing,” she added with disgust.

“I think maybe if someone had to begin with you wouldn’t be sitting where you are now.”

She snorted. “If someone had left things alone then that might be true. I have no interest in being anyone’s student. If that’s what you’re getting at then I’d rather that you just smite me here and now.”

“Far be it from me to force anyone to do anything they don’t like,” Khadan said with a shrug. “But the fact remains that I’m not letting you leave.”

“So what? You’re just going to keep me prisoner here then?” Regbi cast an anxious glance towards the door. Was it still barred against her?

“Nothing that extreme: you can be my guest. I can go for months without company, but I’m always pleased when I have it.”

“Well I’m not. I didn’t come here to drink tea and listen to you tell stories,” Regbi snapped, rising to her feet. She felt a panic rising in her belly. Even if the door opened, how would she find her way back to the city? She could hardly fathom the distance by foot. And then there was the matter of the desert shaman; how would she get past him?

“That’s too bad. I have lots of good ones. But I can sing something instead if you prefer it.” Khadan spoke with the calm ease of a person who wasn’t used to being challenged. Or maybe it only appeared that way because she posed so little of one to him. He reached past her to pour himself a cup of tea, humming the beginnings of a song as she scowled her discontent.

“You can’t just keep me here—do you hear me? Maybe that’s how you do things in whatever part of the desert you come from, but we’re not in your desert. This…this is civilization! You can’t just keep someone captive in your ger because it pleases you!”

But Khadan simply smiled, as if the matter had already been settled in his mind and required no further comment. He closed his eyes and sipped his tea, letting forth a contented sigh. Before the rest of her knew what she was doing, Regbi’s hand darted forward and snatched the heavy wooden ladle from the stew pot. With as much force as she could muster, she smashed it into the shaman’s temple and darted for the door. She flew into it like a bird against a window and was left stunned on the floor. Not even the full force of her body could persuade it to budge. It was as firmly shut as it had been before. With a groan, she looked back to the fire where Khadan lay. If it weren’t for the bruise blossoming above his left eye, or the puddle of tea pooled by his face, he might have been doing nothing more than napping. At least for the moment. But when he woke…

“Why won’t you open?” Regbi demanded, giving the door a firm kick to repay it for the welt it had left on her forehead. She skipped back a step, prepared for an attack. But it was as quietly confident about her captivity as its master had been and had no other response for her but silence. “Maybe I’ll burn you down—what do you think of that?”

She knew of course that it wasn’t the best idea she had had. What was the point in setting fire to the place if she couldn’t get out? And for all she was a thief, she wasn’t a murderer. At least she didn’t think so. Just to be sure, she returned to the fire and prodded the lifeless shaman with the toe of her boot. He muttered unintelligibly under his breath.

“I have no sympathy for you,” Regbi told him, reading an accusation in his tone. “It would serve you right if I bashed your head in with the soup pot, desert scoundrel.”

With that said, she rolled him away from the fire and found a pillow to prop under his head.