The wind, the sand, and the grit blasted across them, tore at them, choked them.

The princess leaned into the wind and strode up beside the girl, the child that dragged the staff through the blinding and freezing sandstorm.

“She is the Wayfinder!” she yelled at the child and gestured back behind them. “You must give her the staff! It will protect us! Provide us shelter! We have met.” She pointed to the slender, pretty woman with the long hair that twisted like streamers from under her hood into the wind. “We met just last night. And again, on my father’s airship. That is Ma’am Camps the Wayfinder.”

“I don’t know who I am,” the other woman called.

“You remember none of this?”

“No. And how can this be? You said Camps was a child.”

“Everyone knows this. It is in the history. ‘Ma’am Camps are always changing, a child, then an old woman, then a young woman.’ It is stated out plainly, not hidden. The staff is not passed amongst different Wayfarers. It is you, Ma’am Camps, that is always changing.”

“I don’t understand how that can be possible. It sounds magical.”

They trudged on behind the girl who dragged the staff through the sand. The girl was resilient, unending. She had never stopped, nor had she spoken a word to them.

“Last night. You were small but so intelligent. And afterwards, I told my badger that I felt you were being deceptive. Something was being hidden. The fact that you were not always appearing as what you actually are was the deception. The staff deceives.”

“I think the desert has addled your brain. You said you were not of the desert. You are not accustomed to this as we are. You are of the city. The fighting and gambling pits. You are of learning in halls, mentored to fight. You study the tactics of your father’s army. What do you know about the Wayfinders?”

“I went to your camp last night because you are my enemy. I went there to learn. We talked. You asked me if there was not someone that cleaned my wounds, someone that I told my secrets to. Someone who cared for me. You used those same words. You were right. There is. It is my teacher, Badger. I realized that afterwards. Your words moved me. It made me thoughtful, thankful to him. I told Badger as much just last night.”

“It could be what is commonly said. A common phrase. Why don’t I remember any of this?”

“No. It was you last night. Younger. I don’t know why you don’t remember. You have changed. When we were in the pod together. You changed, somehow. The staff changed you. When you go through this change possibly it destroys your memories. That was what your book was for. It allows you to remember. The card you carry etched with those words. Someone has done that for you, or you yourself have done it, to remind you. To trigger your memories.”

She walked, head down, recalling what it had been like holding the bracelet and what it had done to her. Holding the coin and the card, and how the memories had rushed through her.

“Maybe you are right.”

“I am sure of it. It was your track I followed in the sand, directly from the pod, to where you were. There were no other tracks. I thought I had missed something, missed a backtrack. An intentional obscuration. You wouldn’t have known to cover your tracks. I followed your every footprint. The pod had many machine warnings after we were trapped in it together and were launched. It did something. Put us to sleep. You told me the staff remembers things. You told me the staff does things of its own will. That you didn’t control it.”

“If you take it now, I think it will protect us.”

“I don’t know what to do with it.”

“From what you said last night, when you were smaller, from what that smaller you was telling me, you don’t have to know. The staff will know that we need protection from this storm.”

The princess, the princess of the entire People’s Army, strode away from her.

Well, she thought, maybe she IS the princess. That would explain the leather armour and metal gauntlets that would cost the work of ten lifetimes.

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Gusts of wind tore her breath away, making it difficult to get enough air to continue walking. The wind was growing too intense. She stopped and turned her back to it, cupping her hands in her hood over her mouth to make it easier to breathe.

A gust nearly lifted her off her feet. She turned back to see where the others were. Sheets of sand flashed between them, obscuring them from her.

The princess was beside the child, close. She was no longer worried about the grenade.

“You listen to me, you speechless little desert worm!” She could hear the words ripped back to her in the wind. “You might as well go ahead and drop that grenade on us and kill us all now because the storm will kill us soon! It is a bad way to die! I have seen… I have seen the corpses after a storm like this. Stop walking! We must stop! I promise you we will not fight. Just let her touch the staff! Thrust it into the sand like a pole, and let her touch it! It will protect us!” The words seemed to work, because the child stopped staggering through the wind that roared around them. “Let us survive this storm. We can continue when the storm is gone.”

It seemed only the weight of the staff was holding the girl from being snatched up and flung away by the gale. Her long robes whipped and tore around her slight frame.

Camps stepped up on the other side of the girl. “I don’t know if we can trust anything she says, but one thing she is right about is that we are all about to die in this storm.” Something dark and heavy flashed by them at a blistering speed. “I don’t know if she is right and if I can even protect us with that, but I am willing to try if you’ll let me.”

And then the child handed her the staff.

The sight was marvellous.

With a translucent gold barrier around them, they watched as the storm boiled beyond it. Brown writhed all around as if they sat inside a bubble on the floor of a cauldron. Occasionally the gold flick of sparks would stand out and fade like the embers of a fire if it was struck by something.

Camps had to admit, it was marvellous looking. The shield seemed to also block out some of the noise of the wind. It was still there, prevalent and loud, but sounded as if heard from inside a brick building.

“It is the same shielding you had around your encampment last night. Do you remember as we sat on opposite sides of it? We talked. I ran my gauntlet down it. Gold flicks of light jumped from where I touched it.”

“I don’t remember this. Memories lost with that book, I can only assume. I wonder if we will run out of air?”

The princess looked away guiltily down at her hands. The heavy gauntlets.

“I act… foolishly sometimes. Too harshly” she said quietly.

“When we spoke across the barrier, were your words dampened in sound as much as this storm is right now?”

“No. Maybe there was a little deadening in the sound, but hardly perceptible.”

“Another automatic unexplainable thing this staff can do. I wonder if some sound can get through, then maybe it also lets ‘some’ air through—and my name is Camps?”

“You are called Ma’am Camps. It is what everyone calls you. You are referred to, or your title, I’d assume you would refer to it as, is the Wayfinder. You have always found the way, provided the way, the protection for the desert tribes called the Wayfarers.”

“And you say we are still a free people?”

“Yes.”

“That ‘yes’ has more meaning in it. You hesitated.”

“Your people are free, for now. Until my father changes that.”

“So then we can join your glorious People’s Army you have been raving on about this entire time?”

“Yes.”

“Sounds like there isn’t a choice in this.”

“There isn’t. You will be forced to join. My father has come to the western end of the valley. He will encircle the last city with his army. He will pull down the last tower.”

“How can any of this be so glorious for the common people if all of this is dictated to them, forced on them?”

“They don’t know what is good for them, so we decide.”

“Oh? And who is ‘we,’ exactly?”

“My father, the ambassador, the counsellor, the field marshall. And, someday, myself, when I am a little older. We bequeath laws. Send out edicts. Organize the settling of the valley. Our army travels to the world’s edge to settle and stabilize.”

“Sounds like a problem to me. You all are missing that one rule again. The golden one.”

At this, the girl looked at them and nodded.

“And you, silent one, striker from the sky. You don’t speak, but you hear just fine.”

She nodded again. Drew a hand like a knife across her throat.

“You can’t speak.”

She shook her head “no.”

“And because she cannot speak, you and your people would persecute her. You say she is not a pure strain human. She is mutated. She could not be of your people.”

“True.”

“There was a fire inside my camp last night?”

“Yes.”

“Then let’s start a fire. I have a feeling it’s going to be a long night, and I think we’ll all be just fine here sharing a fire together, regardless of how much we disagree. Camps, eh? I don’t think I like that name. Camps.”

The girl’s hand flashed in a rapid series of movements like a dancing shadow puppet sped up into a blur.

“Ma’am Camps, the Wayfinder carries the staff. Where Ma’am Camps is, it is a safe place.” The princess looked around them at the shielding and the storm beyond. “And she says this is the proof.”

“So, you can understand her? It would have been nice to know that earlier.”

“I didn’t know. She uses scout signals. Silent military communication. One of the many things I was forced to study as a child.”

“Tell us, little girl, where are you dragging my staff off to?”