The words were smudged in red ink in a handwriting she hadn't known, with no signature.
"I need to go," she croaked, clutching her thudding chest, which was too raw to take another poke. "Now."
"Are you certain you know what going home means?"
"Yes!"
"Watch your tone!" boomed Magi-Bo.
Salīa kneeled.
"I know I won't be Queen if I don't stay. Yet I can't be Queen if I don't leave and protect my own."
There was a numbing silence. She didn't look up yet knew they were exchanging looks with each other. It was how they made decisions.
"Magi-Mi Chamba will escort you before sunrise," said the crinkled Magi Xin.
"I must go now."
"Must you?"
Salīa wanted to scream at them yet knew it would gift her no victories.
"Please."
"Before sunrise," said Magi Bo. "Any moment from now until then. After dinner, you will ready yourself."
Salīa nodded, ready to leave.
"Princess Salīa," said Magi Maro and he stretched out a balled fist.
She walked up and accepted what he dropped into her hands. It was the pendant she had received on the voyage. One of the few things she hadn't seen since arriving. It was the only gift of the voyage she had brought here.
An orphan boy, foreign to Timbana, had snuck in to give it to her at a festival. Neighboring soldiers of a nearby land appeared, searching for him, claiming he was a thief. He had told her to keep it, for that was not stolen.
Then off he ran, only to be caught and lynched.
Her mother tried to dissuade these soldiers, but the command on his name was made. And so Salīa and the Queen passed the road out of Timbana, hearing the screams of all the others being lynched that day.
It was a memory she wished she hadn't kept and maybe she only kept it because of the pendant. Yet the gem was a deep-blue rock her teacher, Magi Inio identified as lapis lazuli cut with labradorite.
Before his capture, the orphan boy had seemed so delighted in gifting her this, saying it was his mother's, and it was meant to be Salīa's as she had eyes that resembled it.
It was just boyish flattery. He had no mother, and he probably took this off a naïve girl such as herself in the other land. And maybe he had to be rid of it since the soldiers were searching for him.
Yet still she didn't wish to return it. Even now, she felt it was always meant to be hers.
"I hope you find that which you seek," Magi Maro said, and Magi Xin and Magi Bo honored her with a cordial nod.
"Thank you," she greeted and hooked the pendant around her neck. "I will."
She sat quiet in her room, waiting.
Not being that hungry, a magi-mioa left her with a mug of ginger-squash soup, a tall bowl of roast potatoes with an avocado sauce, yellow rice with roasted vegetables and a delicious bean paste, as well as strips of tofu, all which she only touched once cold.
She cleansed the floors of dust, folded her hemp wool blanket, fluffed the pillow, and coiled up the coverlet.
Then wrote one last letter and sent it out with Hawking who stared at her as if he wanted to say something.
In the end, he just flew off.
Just as she had come in, she had left off. A walk into the forest, a cup of mystery juice, a rest with uncertain timing, and a wake in the other forest.
She rose instantly to see the childlike and chubby face of magi-mi Chamba. He held out her bag, holding the few things she brought with.
Salīa wondered if he took the juice too and they disappeared or if the juice was just meant to make her sleep while he carried her into the true location of the Faraway Forests.
She'd wondered that for a while, yet knew he'd never say, even as young and assumedly naïve as a magi-mi.
"So which part of the forest are—oh!"
Salīa ran off, right into the flames and smoke that smothered her land.
X