Though the butcher had suggested she stay home, spend the day resting while he made his deliveries, Alba could not be swayed. To miss the chance to see the world that had been kept from her for so long? No. She was almost giddy clambering onto his cart. And traveling here in the morning, well rested, well fed, along sunlit roads, wearing the butcher’s wife’s rough-spun tunic, well, that had been remarkable enough. Passing the bright villages and farms, the fields dotted here and there with autumn fruit… passing fellow travelers—the young man urging on a pair of white oxen, the elderly couple bundled into a tiny cart, the jolly fellow trotting along on an unhappy mule… More than once, the butcher had laughed at her gaping mouth, but she could not help it. “Look, look!” she’d cried as they rounded every corner. She’d exclaimed at grapevines and wheat fields and a pig escaped from its pen; she’d marveled even at thistles and briars and the winding tracks of carts and hooves in the dust. And now to be here, with all these chattering people and the smells of roasting meats and warm pies and the dazzling colors—Oh! the colors—flags and tents, multihued, flapping in the wind… Alba could scarcely bear it. It was all so much. All these parts of ordinary life she thought she’d never see again, and here they were.

She wanted to get out of the cart, to look at everything more closely, but the butcher had told her to wait. Probably best to stay put. Do you mind? I won’t be long, just a few customers to see, a hog head and some ducks to deliver, then we’ll continue on.

Still. The butcher had been gone for some time. She had been waiting a while.

It would not hurt to stroll once around.

Hardly able to restrain herself, Alba leapt from the cart and made her way toward the booths.

Oh. Even walking on the well-trodden mud, the paths worn by the crowds, even this made Alba happy. She let her toes sink in the cool earth and lifted the hem of the tunic to keep it from dragging. She walked up one long aisle and down another. She gazed at golden loaves of bread, at pots of saffron spices, at shining yellow onions, bunched and braided. She let her fingers linger on a display of well-dyed cloth; she tried her hand at spinning a well-polished top. She listened to a piper’s lilting song, to a singer’s warbling tune, to the haggle and chatter around her—three coins, how good to see you, and your mother, trade for your hen. She leaned over a table, watching a woman frying pancakes; she smelled the sweet dates and sweet dough grow sweeter in the heat. She thought, as she had not thought in a long time, of her family—how her young brothers, not so young anymore, would have loved the wooden tops and date pancakes. Maurus, too, she thought, would love to see the pancakes fried, love to learn how they were made. And the oracle, ah!—Alba felt a flash of grief—how she’d enjoy them as well. Soft enough for her to eat. Alba was sad and not sad—how much she had missed, how grateful she was to see it now, even alone. Again, she was filled with wonder at ordinary life.