Many days into their journey, when the women had paused to pluck nettles from Tabitha’s tunic, Anna lifted a hand against the sun’s glare and scanned the horizon. Far in the distance behind them, her eyes fell on a slanted ridgeline of columnar rocks. She recognized it immediately. It was the landmark Solomon had pointed out at the start of her journey into The Narrows. She looked around them and recognized the familiar sand formations at the mouth of the Great Desert to the east. A chill ran down her back. It had been here, in this exact spot, that she and Solomon had parted ways.

You will know what to do when you know what you are facing, she heard him say.

The voice in her head was so loud and real that she spun around, certain she would see the gray-eyed shepherd standing behind her.

“Anna?” Ruth asked.

“It is nothing.”

Ruth’s eyes squinted. She could easily discern that it was more than nothing.

It was dusk when the women, with weary steps, came upon a village. The first thing Anna noticed was the smell of camel dung and the sound of the animals’ burnished complaint. Their comical groans had been missing to her for years. A whirled cloud of birdsong followed. Anna’s heart lifted on the climbing harmonies. In an instant, she recognized the various dialects: sunbirds, bee-eaters, swifts, larks, and flycatchers.

The shifting surface of sand gave way to rocky soil. Soon thereafter they came upon a village of small mud and straw houses. Scrawny guinea hens strutted unceremoniously down the main road. Without warning, a group of young boys dashed past. Two of them chased a third who was waving a shriveled pomegranate. When they saw the three women spit out by the terrain, they stopped cold in their tracks. Their young eyes stared sharply. Anna’s ears began to ring.

“Cover your faces,” Ruth urged as she tightened the linen about her cheeks. Tabitha did the same. Though neither of them had been in the outside world for many years, they knew that women should not be traveling without a male escort.

But Anna hesitated. The once required motion of concealing herself, of lifting fabric to face, had become foreign to her. In her years as a shepherd, and even among the Sisters, she had learned that she could stand tall and face the world head-on.

The boys gawked at the strange dark woman—alone, defiant, handsome, her face exposed before them.

“Anna, cover yourself!” Ruth hissed.

Shaken, Anna reached for her shawl and awkwardly wrapped it about her face. She felt the rough material scratch her skin. For the first time since she was a child, she felt invisible.