Julien was heartsick. Why hadn’t he grabbed the pack before he ran? Then they would at least have some food. But now they had nothing. “Do you want to go back?” he asked Una. “We don’t have any food now. I mean, nothing that you’re used to. I can find us something edible, but it won’t be cucumbers or dried fruit.”
Una stood with her hands on her hips. “Well, I don’t want to go back when you’ve convinced me there still might be some hope.”
“All right. Is there anything here worth saving?” Julien looked at their scattered belongings.
“Not much.” Una began gathering her gardening tools and anything else that looked remotely salvageable. One vial from her scent collection lay unbroken. It was the hartshorn.
Julien brushed off the sack that Ovid had packed the food in. It was empty, but for the flask of loganberry juice, along with the flint and steel and the small pot for boiling water.
They both stood with their regret for a moment before Julien directed them toward the creek.
“Good thing we’re going to the creek first,” he said. “If we drink a lot of water, it will fill our stomachs. I sometimes do that when we haven’t got much.”
Una turned to look at him, stricken to think that he didn’t always have enough to eat. She followed him back to the creek, quiet with these thoughts.
In minutes they had reached their destination. Julien scanned the area, listening for the sound of sweet flag while Una kneeled down, scooping water into her mouth in big gulps. Not hearing any sweet flag, Julien joined Una at the brook and drank his fill.
Her thirst satisfied, Una sat back. Drops of water trickled down her front. “Should we walk along the creek to look?”
Julien nodded, then took a big step up onto one of the rocks at the edge of the brook. “I remember the first time Baba brought me here, this part of the journey seemed so endless to me. I was much smaller then. I climbed until I couldn’t move my legs anymore. Then Baba lifted me high onto his shoulders, and we continued that way. I had a grand view. It seems strange to be up here without Baba.”
“You miss him, don’t you?”
Julien looked at her strangely. “Of course I miss him. He’s my world.”
“You know you’re his world, too.”
“I suppose.”
“No, really. You are,” Una said. “That’s why I came after you originally—when I got you out of the tent.”
“What do you mean?”
“The scent of your father’s love for you was so strong, it made me miss my mother so much, and it pulled me to the jail. I couldn’t stand by when someone else was feeling the same misery, especially if there was something that I could do to reunite you.”
“I wish I could have sensed that.”
“You couldn’t? The air was thick with it.”
Julien shrugged. “I can’t smell.”
“You can’t smell?”
“No. Or at least, I don’t think I can. To be honest, I’m not sure what smell is.”
“You can’t smell anything?”
Julien shook his head. “Not a thing.”
Una wasn’t sure she believed him. “You can hear leaves unfurl, but you can’t smell?”
“I’ve never been able to smell. I didn’t know what Baba was talking about when he would ask me to smell something. I could sort things for him because I knew what they sounded like. I knew what they looked like. But I don’t know smell.”
“Is there anything else I should know about you?”
Julien laughed. “No. That’s it, really.”
“You know what I really want to know?”
“What you’re going to find for us to eat tonight!” Una laughed, then linked her arm in his and they set off along the creek.