Shad put his hand on my shoulder and squeezed tight. I looked up. We all stood still on the road, listening to the sound of approaching hoofbeats from the west. There came a slender girl dressed in black, a cloud of dust behind her, carrying a flag with horizontal and vertical bars shaped into a gold crown. She rode a magnificent blood bay, a stallion wild and rearing up, whinnying and sucking air, its black mane a good two feet long and blowing in the wind. Its skin was scraped and scarred and wet, as though it had run long and hard through a thick forest.

“The King’s messenger,” Shad said. “None other can ride the wild stallions.”

“Greetings, travelers,” she called, her voice as light as her frame. She reached into a large pouch hanging from one side of her saddle. “Here, take these sacks. You’ll need them on the journey.”

She threw down a large pile of brown burlap sacks. I picked one up. It was coarse, plain, and dirty. Unimpressed, I dropped it to the ground.

Victoria kicked at a sack and whispered to me, “If she were the King’s messenger, wouldn’t she carry something more royal looking than this?”

“The great city is before you,” said the girl in black. “The King awaits you. Hear now his words. On your journey you will sometimes travel at night. When you do, you may walk over dried-up riverbeds. They will have many stones in them. Pick up the stones, put them in your bags, and carry them with you. When the morning comes, you will be both glad and sad.”

“What do you mean?” Victoria asked.

“Farewell,” the messenger said. “I’ll see you at the city.”

We watched her ride down the road, eastward, listening to the departing hoofbeats until she became a sunlit flower against the sky, then vanished.

“How do we know she’s the King’s messenger?” David asked. “Anyone can carry a flag.”

“Her words conform to the GuideBook,” Shad said, holding up his worn, gold-leafed volume.

“But it makes no sense,” David said.

“The purpose might not have been clear, but the meaning was,” Shad said. “Take the sacks, and when we cross the riverbeds at night, pick up rocks.”

“But why?” Quon asked.

“I … don’t know,” Shad replied, shrugging his shoulders. “Still, I trust the King.” He turned to a few parts of his GuideBook and read them. I didn’t completely understand what he read. I wasn’t sure he did either.

“We must take the sacks and continue toward the city,” Shad said.