The young maiden Vantaiga put the last of her belongings into the cart: some clothes, a necklace of wooden beads, and a small, carved wooden toy that had once belonged to her younger brother. All were wrapped in her only blanket.
With a defeated sigh she placed her simple collection among the few remaining possessions of the rest of the family. She looked over the cart with even more discouragement. Absent from the assortment was anything of value. The jewellery, the silverware, the ornaments of past generations—all had been sold over the years of drought and Vantaiga’s childhood.
Bitter memories of the missing antiques came to the adolescent girl: arguments over adored decorations sold to buy new tools that wore out quickly while working the hard, dry earth. Tears shed over cherished jewellery that had been sold to buy water for the crops that failed to flourish. Despair over furniture sold to buy food to keep her family from starving. So many things were given up to buy hope and time for rains to return and make the farm productive again.
She walked around the cart to comfort the thin burro whose job it would be to take them away from the failed farm. The cart and mule remained the only thing of value the family still owned. She patted its mane, sullenly knowing that in a few short days it, too, would be sold.
Vantaiga turned to give one last look over what remained of the farm. The flowing wheat fields had been replaced by sand and tufts of desert grass. The burial mounds of her father and siblings were now buried beneath an encroaching dune. The house was crumbling at the corners, and holes in the roof revealed scars from its lost battles against the winds of Vortess. Even her vegetable garden was now only a barren patch of dry earth.
As her family stowed the last of their worldly possessions, she looked with a bitter smile to the only sign of life that remained on the farm: the few wilting leaves left on the branches of a single tree at the foot of her garden. She had grown and cultivated the tree for shade so her garden would need less water.
She recalled her family teasing her for trying to grow a tree in such a prolonged drought. She remembered the anger she felt that instead of praising her for its blossoming leaves each year, they became suspicious of her gardening skills. She was often tempted to tell them of Hydar’s gift of the spring, but she didn’t want to betray the god’s trust. She hid the spring from her family by only retrieving water at night.
However, her mother had refused to believe the tree was able to grow on its own and accused the girl of stealing water from the cistern. Vantaiga wiped away a tear, remembering how her mother had dragged her to the desert for banishment before she finally revealed the location of the precious spring.
She told them Hydar didn’t want anyone to know of the spring and begged them not to take water from it. But they ignored her pleas and used the spring to water their crops and fill their cistern. Hydar, both angry and disappointed with the young maiden, reduced the flow of water with each jug her family filled. In contempt of Vantaiga’s protest, her family had taken all they could until the spring no longer flowed at all.
She gave a sniffling hug to the burro. Leaving the farm also meant leaving many bad memories behind. She consoled herself with the thought of making better memories in the refuge of the city.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
***
The road to the city was long, hot, and dry. Each of Vantaiga’s family wore cowls over their heads and across their faces to protect them from the burning sun, dust, and sand that constantly buffeted them. Coronus took no sympathy on the small family’s plight, and he glared menacingly at them every step.
In the distance, both in front and behind them, others could be seen on the road making the same journey to the city. The heat from the road made their forms quiver. In the daze of the heat, Vantaiga could almost imagine them as phantoms that would soon vanish into the air. However, they were very much real, and they did not vanish. They were just some of the many farming families forced by drought and desperation into the city.
Vantaiga passed the time on the drudging walk with thoughts of what she could do in the city to make money for her family. She thought of recreating her garden but bigger this time. The heat of the sun and soreness of her feet faded away to images of tending long tills of vegetables and selling them in the market. There was a river by the city. With so much water, she could grow flowers! Her imagination turned to a bountiful stall filled with colourful blooms that people would come to purchase.
Through her daydreaming, the voices of her stepbrother and stepsister occasionally poked through with talk of taking up a trade; her sister often spoke about finding a noble’s son to take her hand in marriage.
Vantaiga didn’t bother to interrupt their wishful thinking with their bleak reality. She didn’t know much about cities, but she knew there would not be much work there for a farm boy. As for her stepsister, no lord would allow his son to marry someone whose only dowry was the clothes on her back. No, Vantaiga mused proudly, her siblings’ success in the city would rely on working for her in her flower shop.
***
After three hard days of travel on the road, Vantaiga and her family crested a small ridge that gave way to the outskirts of the city—a massive shantytown that sprawled before the city walls. The city itself lay at the bottom of a broad, shallow valley that held a wide river. The shore of the river shrank away from the harbour, and the squalid housing spilled onto the exposed riverbed. A new pier had been constructed that reached into deeper water to keep the flow of supplies coming to the city. There was a sense of permanence to the new structures of the city.
With each step down into the valley, Vantaiga’s heart sank. Her thoughts of quietly tending a garden were forced from her head as the filth and noise of the impoverished outskirts grew before her.
Her stepfather guided the cart and family along the outermost edge of the city. This far out from the centre, it could not even be considered a shantytown but rather a massive tent encampment created by the latest refugees of the drought. As Vantaiga walked along the border of tents, she looked over the landscape and began to discern the layers of development.
The sprawling rows of tents gradually gave way to the small shacks of those who had managed to scrounge together the resources to build a structure. Closer to the walls, the shacks turned to mud-brick buildings and small market areas for those capable of setting up shops. Beyond the shops were the granite walls once used as defence against invading armies and now used as defence against hordes of hungry peasants.
From high on the valley’s edge, Vantaiga strained to see beyond the city fortifications. Inside the great wall were plazas and theatres, estates of the rich and titled lords, as well as the government offices and the army barracks. All those that were safely secured within the walls, and those that were outside the wall. An oppressive gloom settled over the girl. The further people were from the city, the less they had—and her small family was the furthest away of them all.
Vantaiga’s father found an area that seemed the best suited for them. To her, it seemed almost indistinguishable from the rest of the tented hillside. It was mostly hardened earth dotted by some dry grasses and brushes. There were other families here though, so perhaps that is what made the difference to him.
Vantaiga blanched at the surroundings of her new settlement. There would be no growing a garden here, even if she could find space for one. Her father instructed the family to set up a tent and secure the cart while he went to talk with their new neighbours. Even though Vantaiga was tired, she quickly complied. The scene made her sick to her stomach, and all she wanted was to disappear inside the tent.