Just Deserts (12 page)

I chuckled. “Is there anybody who
doesn't
know that story?”

Connor, Kajsa and Andy all nodded their heads knowingly.

“Okay, what story do you four know?” Larson asked.

“Well, some guy in ancient Greece—” I began.

“His name was Pheidippides and he was from the city-state of Athens,” Andy said.

“Isn't Athens in Greece?” I demanded.

“Well, yes, now it is, but technically—”

“Technically,
I
was telling the story,” I said. “So he and the other Greeks won a battle against some enemies—”

“Persians,” Andy interjected. “Sorry.”

“So they beat their
enemies
at a place called Marathon, and Pheidippides was so proud that he ran all the way back to Athens, a distance of twenty-six miles, to tell them that they'd won the battle. And right after he told them, he was so exhausted that he died. The end.”

“Does anybody else have anything to add?” Larson asked.

“Wasn't the Persian army a lot bigger?” Connor asked.

“They had somewhere between six and ten times as many men, plus six hundred ships and cavalry,” Larson said.

“Couldn't he have borrowed a horse and ridden to Athens?” I asked.

“He could have, but it would have been slower,” Larson said. “In a race of that length, men almost always outrun horses.”

“You're joking, right?”

“He's not,” Kajsa said. “They still have races like
that, and sometimes a man wins and sometimes a horse wins.”

“If he'd taken a horse, at least he wouldn't have died,” I countered.

“Point taken,” Larson said. “But let me tell the whole story. As Andy has said, Greece was divided into city-states, with Athens and Sparta being the two most prominent. Both states knew that the plan of the Persian Empire was to take each state, one after the other, so that it would be in the best interests of all to work as one. That Greek guy, Pheidippides, was a military messenger. He ran to deliver a message to Sparta, one hundred and forty miles away, asking them to join in with the Athenians. He then ran back, covering another hundred and forty miles, to say that the Spartans would come and join in, but not for another week. He ran more than a marathon every day for six days.”

“Even more impressive,” Kajsa said.

“Then, upon his return, he joined in with the Athenian army that attacked the Persians. The battle lasted a full day, during which thousands of Persians were killed and the rest were driven back to their ships and sailed away.”

“And
that's
when he ran to tell them about the victory,” I said.

“No, that's when he ran to warn the Athenians that the Persian fleet was coming,” Larson said. “The
Persian forces still vastly outnumbered the Greek forces, and they were going to attack the now largely undefended city of Athens.”

“So he wasn't just running to brag,” Connor said.

“Far from it. He ran to warn, to give hope and to tell them that the entire Greek army was running back, in full armour, to do battle with the Persians as they landed.”

“The entire army?” Andy asked.

“It took Pheidippides three hours. Within six hours, the majority of the Athenian army, in full armour, carrying their weapons, had arrived on the beach and were there waiting when the Persian fleet arrived.”

Andy laughed. “Those Persians must have been surprised!” I could see why Andy would like this story. I could see why Andy would have made a great Greek soldier.

“The Persians were so astonished that they believed the Greeks were almost supernatural. Instead of invading, they simply sailed off.”

“What a military victory,” Andy said.

“It was far more than that. It allowed the Greek cultures to flourish and spread throughout Europe. Because of that victory, we have democracy, freedom, philosophy.”

“Bumper stickers,” I mumbled under my breath.

“And that's the full story of the first marathon and a Greek guy named Pheidippides.”

“A
hero
named Pheidippides,” Andy said.

“That is so inspirational,” Connor said.

I stood up. “It certainly inspired me.”

“That's nice to hear.”

“It inspired me to know that if we ever win a battle out here, I'm sending Andy to tell people about it.”

Andy looked pleased—and confident. He probably could have run a full marathon in armour carrying a weapon.

“And me, I'm going to wait a few hours, maybe rent a camel, take my time and make sure I live to see the end.”

“Or you might just live to see the destruction of your city at the hands of the victorious enemy. Regardless, we might want to head to our tents now,” Larson said. “We have to turn our attention to the weather. There's a storm coming tonight. A big storm.”

I looked around. Everybody looked around.

“How can you tell?” I finally asked.

“I can smell it … I can feel it. The winds are shifting and building.”

I couldn't smell or feel anything.

“We have to put everything inside the tents and make sure they're staked down. It's going to be a bad one.”

I got up and walked away from the group. Out of earshot, I slowly pulled L'Orange out of my pocket.

“Idiots,” I said softly. “Only a bunch of idiots would think a Greek idiot running himself to death was anything more than idiotic. It's sad when the second sanest thing here is an orange.”

L'Orange didn't answer. He didn't need to answer, which of course meant that he agreed completely.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

IT SOUNDED LIKE A FREIGHT TRAIN
passing right by the tent, or more correctly, passing right
through
the tent. It wasn't just the wind, which sounded like a hurricane, but the sand being driven against the tent, and the tent wildly beating like a living animal trying desperately to fly away. It wasn't reassuring to know that the only things stopping it were a few small stakes in the shifting sand and our body weight. Down at my side was my headlamp. I had the light on low so that it gave a glow to the tent. It was comforting to be in a little puddle of light in the middle of this sea of a storm.

The tent was sealed up, the screen zipped shut and the flap tied down, but the winds were so strong that the sand was being driven through the mesh. It had started out as a fine film of grit, almost like baby powder, but it kept on accumulating until it was now piled on the floor and layered on everything inside. I kept brushing it off my sleeping bag, but it was a useless exercise. It was everywhere, including on my
face and arms, and in the light of my headlamp I could see it, floating through the air.

I kept one hand on the side of the tent, trying to steady it, sort of the way you'd place a hand on a horse to calm it down when it was spooked or scared. Of course the tent wasn't alive, and it was me who needed to be calmed down.

The wind was blowing directly toward my side of the tent, and it had started to undermine the ground—the sand—underneath so much that I was tilting into a ditch the length of the tent. I wondered how long it would be before the stakes on that side were completely uncovered and lost their grip on the ground, and the whole tent would fly free. Something else I didn't want to think about.

“Are you still awake?” Connor called over the divide.

“I didn't think anything could be louder than your snoring, but I was wrong.”

“Thanks for offering to share the tent with me again tonight.”

“No problem.”

It wasn't a selfless act. As the storm gathered, I'd quickly realized that the sound of the wind would be louder than his snoring. And by being with him two nights in a row, I could probably be free of him another two nights.

“Do you think it's going to break before the morning?” Connor asked.

“You'd have to go out and ask Larson that one.”

“I can't believe he's sleeping out there. We could have made space for him in here.”

“Where?” I questioned.

“We all could have squeezed in.”

“He said he'd be okay out there, and you pretty well have to believe him.”

“I guess we should just try to get to sleep,” Connor suggested.

“Easier said than done.”

I turned off the light and the tent was thrown into complete and utter darkness. The storm had obliterated any light from the stars or moon above. And in the pitch black, it was as though my other senses were thrown into overdrive. It wasn't just the sounds—the roar of the wind and the flapping of the tent—but that I could feel the grit against my skin and going into my lungs with each breath. I could taste it in my mouth. I had to try to take my mind off the storm.

My head bounced from one thought to another—being kicked off the plane, my father's letter, meeting Larson, the insanity of the walk, the intensity of the heat, my blisters and Larson's missing toenails, and the whole discussion about moderation and passion. And then my head settled into one thought, the question Kajsa had put to me:
But you must be passionate about something, right?

What
was
I passionate about? I liked money, but it wasn't a passion. It was hard to be passionate about something you'd never lived without. It was like saying I was passionate about air or water. Though maybe water wasn't the best example, because over the last few days, I'd
almost
become passionate about it.

I certainly wasn't passionate about school or a career. It was practically a joke to suggest it. I didn't have a passionate commitment to family or friends. Friends … did I even have friends? But was that my fault? It wasn't my idea to ship me around the world and plop me down with strangers. Although I guess it
was
my fault that I had to keep moving.

And it wasn't like I was madly in love with some girl. Or had ever been madly in love. Sure, I'd been out on dates, and I liked girls, but I'd never found anybody who I felt anything special for. The girls I met always seemed so empty, so vacuous—fun to go out drinking with, but maybe a little too much like me. There were a couple of times when I thought something could develop, but then it didn't. It just didn't, because really, what was the point? You get involved, you start to care, and then something happens and it ends.

So I had no answer to the question. It wasn't that I was without passion because I was so moderate. I was no stranger to extreme trouble, and on many
occasions I'd been excessively disrespectful, and I'd made it my specialty to drink massive quantities of alcohol … Was that my passion? Was I passionate about drinking?

None of this was helping me sleep. And to make matters worse, the ground underneath me was developing an even bigger tilt—had the stakes on my side been completely exposed? I started to shift farther away, toward the divide between Connor's side and my side, but that was only buying a little more time. Instead I shifted my weight in the other direction until I settled into the ditch the storm had made. I pressed against the outside wall of the tent and wiggled my body into the hole, and right away I felt the warmth of the sand coming through the fabric. The tent wall became taut and the frantic flapping ceased.

Not bad—it was like lying safely in a cocoon. And maybe tomorrow, I'd even come out of that cocoon a different person—a person with passions? No, that was delusional thinking. If I hadn't known better, I'd have thought I was drunk.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

MY EYES POPPED OPEN
. There was light glowing in through the tent walls and there was silence—and then Connor let out a loud snore. The storm was over, the sun was up and we'd both survived.

I sat up, and sand rolled off my sleeping bag. It was coated with sand—everything was coated with sand. I brushed off my arms and my face, and then coughed as I tried to clear my lungs.

I unzipped the sleeping bag and on all fours crawled out of the tent. It sagged badly because the stakes had come free and the roof and sides were weighed down by the sand that had accumulated all night. The second tent looked the same. And where was Larson? He was nowhere to be seen.

It was still so early that the sun was just starting to appear over the big dune to the east and I was in the shade it cast.

“Quite the storm.”

I spun around in time to see Larson lying on the ground—or at least Larson's face, the only part of
him not buried in the sand! He sat up and the sand spilled off, revealing his sleeping bag. He unzipped it, climbed out and stretched like a big cat. He shook his head and sand rained down from his hair.

“At least this one didn't last long,” he said.

“That wasn't long?”

“I was once in a storm that went on for forty-three days.”

“Forty-three days!”

“Sometimes it was less powerful and sometimes much more powerful than this one, but it was a constant blow.” He shook his head again. “Miserable way to travel, and if the storm hadn't broken, you would have found that out.”

“We would have walked in it?”

“Not much choice. We only have enough water for a day or so. We have to get to the next oasis.”

“I understand the need to get to an oasis,” I said. Thoughts of cool water bubbled in my brain. “But how do you travel if you can't see more than a few feet ahead?”

“You use a rope, and everyone holds on so you stay together.”

“But even if we stayed together, wouldn't that just mean we'd be lost together? How would you know where you were leading us?”

“It's hard without the stars or sun to guide me, but I'd follow the compass and just hope for the best.”

“And if the best didn't happen?”

“We'd be in the desert without water,” he said.

“How far is that oasis from here?” I asked.