He was silent for a while. “Maybe not,” he said eventually. “But you might thank yourself. There is value in the knowledge you will gain that is worth more than any thanks.”
We argued for a time, but in the end, as we both knew would happen, I said I would ask my neighbor Marja to look after the cottage, send everyone to Helmi in the next village if they needed healing, and write to my parents and my sister, who had moved to the city, to tell them where I was going.
“I’m only going to look,” I told him. “I’m not promising to stay.”
“There will be more testing anyway,” he told me. “You’ll have to pass those tests to be allowed to stay in any case.”
I thought a good number of hard things about the arrogance of the dragon-sorcerers, and even more hard things about myself and how those warning words did not serve to dissuade me, since any idiot could see what they were up to, like a pretty-ish girl making herself more desirable by advertising all the other suitors she had. But even so I didn’t turn back, because some part of me couldn’t help but think, as easy as everything had been so far, that I would pass whatever the other tests were with equal ease, and pass all the training, and have wealth and health, knowledge and power beyond my wildest dreams. Like, I thought waspishly, a not-so-pretty girl convincing herself that just because she had had no trouble luring the richest boy of the village into her bed, she would have no trouble luring him into love, marriage, and fidelity as well. But I still didn’t say no.
Joki said that my preparations to leave should take no more than a day, and he was depressingly correct. I had always thought I was tightly woven into the fabric of my village, but by mid-afternoon the next day I had already packed up my clothes, written to my family, and informed everyone whom I thought needed informing of what had happened. No one even seemed that surprised, or that sorry to see me go. Not because they disliked me, but because they all had their own concerns, and as long as they didn’t need me, I did not enter into them. I was a convenience, like a hired horse, and like a hired horse, could be easily abandoned when the time came.
We set off the next morning, me, Joki, and Joki’s horse, who was a ewe-necked, swaybacked bay gelding named Tähti and who hardly looked strong enough to pull Joki’s cart, which was as shabby as his clothes.
“What do you feed him?” I demanded when I saw Tähti.
“Whatever the hostlers give him,” said Joki, pulling at his ear and looking uncomfortable. “Or whatever he can graze.”
“He needs good hay,” I said severely. “And oats in small quantities, mixed in with a nice bran mash to keep him from colicking.”
Joki shrugged. “Be my guest,” he told me. “If you can get those things for him, I won’t complain.” He climbed into the cart, his shoulders radiating an unwillingness to speak more on the subject.
“I’ll walk,” I told him. “We’ll probably go faster that way anyway.”
Joki’s shoulders radiated even more unwillingness to get into a discussion as they shrugged in irritated acquiescence. And so we set off from the village with Tähti leading the way at a slow amble, and me, as I had predicted, easily keeping pace on foot behind.
It was a beautiful fall day, with a bright blue sky overhead and a chill wind hinting at winter blowing down from the mountains. The trees were just turning their colors, and the air promised changing seasons and hard times ahead. Which everyone always knew about autumn, and yet somehow loved it anyway.
Joki was supposed to visit three more villages, he told me, but now that he had found me, he was going to escort me directly to the mountains instead.
“I’m unlikely to find anyone there,” he said. “And I don’t want to risk you, do I?”
“Is the journey likely to be that risky?” I asked. “The war is far away, and I haven’t heard reports of bandits in these parts for a long time.”
“All journeys are risky,” he told me, looking off at the sky. “I’ll feel better once we’re safely home.”
I wanted to argue that where we were going was no home to me, but I refrained. We walked in silence for the rest of the morning. Then we ate in silence at midday, and walked on in silence for the rest of the afternoon. Sometimes I broke the silence by asking Joki about himself or about where we were heading, but he would only tell me that there was nothing interesting about his story, and I would find out soon enough about my new home when I got there. So I wrapped up as best I could against the wind that was blowing harder and harder, tearing the turning leaves from the trees and whipping away the warmth from the bright sun, and looked to the left and the right as we moved farther and farther away from the only place I had ever called home.
In midafternoon we turned away from the fields we had been walking through, and began to climb up a gentle wooded incline. So deceptively mild was the entrance into the mountains. The hill and the trees gave us shelter from the wind, and the sun shining on our backs, combined with the climb, warmed us properly for the first time that day.
“We’ll have to camp out for the night,” Joki announced abruptly, as the shadows were growing across the road. “No inns along here. Not till we make it to the pass.”
“How far is the pass?” I asked.
“Two more days to the first one. Then three days to the next. And then
