The moon was yellow-brown, like a tea stain. The hills were stark and white, with short, twisted trees. And the ground was so uneven that it always forced you down, walking the floors of the valleys, lost in darkness. Or so it felt. Sometimes I saw firelight flickering on the trunks of the twisted trees. There were cries in the dark: animals, or people pretending to be animals, or animals pretending to be people. Sometimes there were voices. “Come with us!” they whispered. “Come join our dance!” “No,” I said. “I am on an errand. I have a Burden. I must deliver my Burden to Jukov himself, and no one else.” And they laughed. How I wished I was back in Taalvashtan. How I wished I was home. I wished I had never taken this Burden from Saint Threvski. And yet, I was also curious—I do not know if it was the voices on the winds, or the sniggers from the trembling trees, or the light of the yellow moon, but Jukoshtan was a place of hidden things, of constant mystery, and I secretly wished to see more.
