Ignoring the pain from his left ankle, Julien ran back to the gate where he had entered, filled with worries. His ears rang with the unknown. How could he possibly find this flower? But then, how could he possibly not find the flower? It was the only way to get Baba out of jail.
When he reached the wicket door, he pounded on it. The guard shushed him, hurrying to throw back the locks.
“What of your haste, young pup? Did you find your father?”
“Yes, but I must go!” Julien rushed past the baffled guard, down the street toward the city walls.
As dawn was soon to break, a crowd had begun to gather: a group of laborers headed toward their fields, a merchant on horseback, a woman on a donkey. Someone else pulled a cart. Each wanted to be headed toward their work by the time the sun rose.
Two guards in uniform stood at this gate. The larger one clinked through a huge ring of keys. A faint rumble of voices came from the other side of the wall as country folk waited to enter the city to set up their wares for market. He heard a jumble of words hinting at the goods they were each selling: turnips, baskets, fish, spun wool. He even thought he heard the old woman who sold soup from her cart singing out something about luck and time. If she was selling luck, Julien would have been her first customer if he’d had any money.
Julien pushed toward the front of the crowd, and as soon as the gray light of dawn touched the city, the guard tucked the key into the lock, twisted it, and opened the gate. Julien was the first through. He shut his ears to angry cries and ran so fast that the noise blurred behind him.
He hurried through the flat fields toward the rising wilderness where a meadow of wildflowers grew. He passed that, ascending until he reached the grove of old sycamore trees where he and Baba had taken shelter the night Baba grew ill. How he wished he could go back to that day to change the outcome!
He couldn’t go back, though. He could only go forward, heading into unknown territory. Julien had never been to the bog, and he was searching for a flower he didn’t know in a place with dangers that he wasn’t familiar with. All this in an impossible time frame to free his father from an unjust imprisonment. His odds were not good.
These were the thoughts racing through his mind as Julien ran toward the bog at the far side of the mountain. He was so caught up in these memories and fears, that he forgot a very important thing—to listen. He missed the warning of a bell. That missed warning cost him, for the bell was on the horse of a marauder. Julien crested the top of a hill and ran into a camp of bandits, right into the waiting arms of their guard.
