Tother Hand, Chapter 8 part 1

Chapter Eight

The next morning she took the camel with her to carry only essential items: some blankets, a piece of the _khana_ for shelter, and food. While she was unloading all the other non-essential items, she uncovered a swarm of baby spiders running amok inside a small ball of silk about 4 centimetres across. She said a silent blessing for her spider friend’s offspring and placed them in a brush near the yurt.

She walked for two days as quickly and rapidly as she could, from very first light until well into dark. She stayed with the old grandmother on the first night, but the second night proved hard to find a friendly yurt or any lights from fires nearby to sleep next to. Fortunately, it was nearing the full moon, so she was able to gather a few pieces of wood and setup the _khana_ and blankets as a small, one-person yurt.

She started the fire by striking her father’s slag false blade against a stone.

Her father said: So the blade does have iron in it.

9001 started and cried out in fear. Then she collapsed on her haunches in front of the fire.

Her father said: I did not mean to startle you.

She asked: Are you not dead yet? Where is your _fravashi_?

He said: I am closer. As you progress in your new mission, I sense the truth approaching. Ahura is guiding you, which means that I am nearing my battle in the afterlife as well.

She asked: Are you afraid?

He said: No. I was not afraid to die. And I am not afraid to leave. I know that you have great talent. I have chosen you as my daughter, which is a blessing that many parents do not have.

She asked: Who was that woman, the Masked One? She seemed familiar.

He did not answer for a long time, so she made up the fire so that it would last a few hours and faced the opening of her mini-yurt toward the warmth.

Finally, as she was drifting off, he said suddenly: I do not know. I was distracted by some visions I do not understand. The Elders know about us, I am sure of it.

She nodded wearily and fell asleep.

The next morning, she packed up and left early. It was easy to rise in the pre-dawn cold because the quarters were so cramped and heat was scarce from the embers. She was nearly delirious from exhaustion and sleep deprivation. That could account for her father’s appearance, she reasoned, but then put it out of her mind.

After an hour of walking along the Panjshir, she spotted the tail end of a caravan, literally. She was able to catch up and merely followed along. A few of the men seemed to notice her but paid no attention. They thought she was a boy who had gotten separated from a caravan or was even part of this caravan. The colours on her father’s _patu_ and _lungee_ were been generic enough that they did not elicit any response. 9001 covered her mouth to prevent her from talking or accidentally forming feminine mouth shapes. She set her jaw instead and held her head erect.

As the caravan proceeded north, the valley the ground grew moderately steeper and the river ran thinner and faster on their right. On the third day, they passed over the ridge of a small mountain pass as they turned their right, away from the Panjshir River. They descended into a different valley with a small lake and stopped for one day to replenish supplies.

They moved on for a few more through a much steeper set of mountains on either side of the valley, finally ending at a higher lake that was even larger. The lake was so large that 9001 had never seen so much water. It was so wide from where the caravan approached that she could not see the opposite shore, if there was one at all.

Here they turned more easterly to follow a separate valley away from the lake to follow a valley range that did not have any rivers running through it. At the camps, 9001 had heard the men refer to the range on their right as the Hindu Kush. They followed the valley along the mountain range, skirting back north for several days.