Chapter Three: The Struggle
I.
Kinan woke and turned immediately toward Amro's bed.
It was empty.
"Where has this man gone off to now? He must have left early to buy the barley... typical. He could have at least told me before walking out."
He crossed to the courtyard — and stopped. The donkey was still there, tied exactly where it always was.
"He left without the donkey? Sometimes I genuinely wonder about this man's mind."
He didn't dwell on it. He watered the peach tree by the door, filled a bucket for the donkey, and went back inside to eat.
While he ate, his mind began to do what it often did in quiet moments — drift toward home. He would paint their faces in his imagination: his family, the people he hadn't seen since before he could properly remember, the people who had left him with Amro so he could grow up as a merchant. Every time that image surfaced, a rush of warmth came with it — a hunger to go, to just go — followed almost immediately by the echo of Amro's voice:
"We'll go back to your family once you've mastered the trade."
That sentence had lived in his ears for years. Some days it steadied him. Other days it pressed down on him like a stone, because he had no idea how long once you've mastered the trade was meant to last.
He pressed his lips together, set the thought aside, and made a decision then and there: starting today, he would sell on his own, without Amro beside him. He would build his skills at this trade he'd never asked for — if only to bring the day of his return closer.
A few minutes later, a knock at the door.
He opened it to find Amro standing there with two enormous sacks of barley across his back, his face flushed a deep red. Kinan grabbed one of the sacks without a word and said:
"You are genuinely one of the most reckless people I've ever met. Who does this? Who goes out to haul sacks the weight of a sheep without a cart or a donkey to carry them?"
Amro couldn't answer. He was too busy breathing. He stood in the doorway and worked through it slowly, gradually, until the red began to drain from his face. Kinan handed him a cup of water. He finished it in one long pull.
Then Amro went straight to his bed, dropped onto it, and was deeply asleep within moments.
Kinan studied him.
"He doesn't look like someone who woke up two hours ago. He looks like someone who hasn't slept at all. Did he stay up the entire night?"
He didn't pursue the thought. He loaded the sacks onto the donkey, untied it, put on his sandals, and left for the market.
II.
Hours passed.
A few people stopped at his stall — looked over the goods, turned things over in their hands — and left without buying anything. The hours accumulated and the space around him stayed quiet in the way that begins to feel personal after a while.
"Maybe I'm just not cut out for this. Hours gone, and not a single sale. Is it me? Is it the goods? Both?"
An old man came down the lane, leading a donkey by a rope. He caught sight of Kinan standing there, visibly lost in thought, and slowed. He raised his hand in greeting.
"Boy — hello there."
Kinan startled slightly and answered without quite meaning to:
"Oh — hello. Can I help you with something?"
The old man smiled, working two fingers along his beard.
"I noticed you from a distance. A boy your age, standing there with that look on his face — I had to stop. So tell me: what's troubling you?"
Kinan had no answer ready. He wasn't accustomed to conversations like this — not with strangers, not about things like this. The old man read it in his expression and stepped a little closer, and when he spoke again his voice carried the unhurried weight of someone who had stopped needing to perform wisdom a long time ago:
"I know you can't easily say what's sitting on your mind. But remember this — life always gives you another opening. Darkness doesn't last. It lifts with the first ray of morning light, and what it announces is a new day, full of possibility. Keep that with you and keep moving forward. The thoughts that torment you are nothing more than illusions — illusions that feed on your resolve and your will, and leave you stalled in place."
He paused, then gestured toward his donkey.
"Look at this animal. He carries weight most men would collapse under — and he doesn't think about it. He just walks. Because in the end, there is death, and it comes for everyone, and between now and then there is only the walking."
He gave Kinan a single pat on the shoulder, smiled, tightened the rope, and continued on his way.
The words stayed.
They moved around inside Kinan the way unfamiliar things do when they find a place they fit. He had never heard anything quite like it — not said plainly, not said to him — and something in it made the hair on the back of his neck rise.
He looked down at his hand. Curled his fingers slowly into a fist.
His eyes steadied.
"Fine then. I'll keep going — until the day that darkness finally breaks."
⁂
III.
Back at the Peach House, Amro had been busy.
He had brought large jars filled with sand and hidden them inside the donkey's stable — out of Kinan's sight. He had decided the night before to begin training again: to rebuild what years of hiding had let weaken. The Sand Gift wasn't something you could simply set down and pick back up — it needed to be worked, maintained, pushed. And beyond that, there was the pressure. The thing that had been sitting on his chest for longer than he could account for. Movement helped. It always had.
But there was a problem.
"How do I train without Kinan seeing me? He's at work now, but he won't be gone long. If he comes home early and finds me — he'll have questions. So many questions."
The frustration of it arrived before he'd even begun. Then a thought surfaced and settled:
He would ask the boy to work set hours. A fixed schedule — morning until late afternoon — which would give Amro time to clear the courtyard of any traces of sand long before Kinan returned. He could train in peace. He could breathe.
There was also a second reason — one he hadn't told himself clearly until now.
On his way to buy the barley that morning, he had passed the scene again: the masked men. And the man they were pursuing had been using the Sand Gift — badly, desperately, burning through what little control he had in a panicked attempt to escape. He'd failed. The men had taken him.
Amro had watched and felt something tighten in his chest that wasn't quite pity. It was recognition. And it told him one thing plainly:
If they ever come for me, I need to be ready.
IV.
Hours later, Kinan came back from the market and went directly to the room, dropping onto the bed with the boneless exhaustion of someone who had been standing and hoping for most of the day. He stretched his legs, spread his arms wide, and was nearly asleep when Amro walked in carrying a large sack of shirts and set it down by the wall.
Kinan opened one eye.
"What's that?"
A wide smile spread across Amro's face.
"The time has come. Tomorrow will be a hard day for you — so sleep well tonight."
Kinan squinted at him, then turned over to face the other wall.
Before Amro left the room, he stopped.
"Listen — I swear to you: if you manage to sell all of that tomorrow, I'll show you what I promised. Just hold out a little longer."
"You talk like a man sitting on buried treasure," Kinan muttered into the pillow. "That's quite a lot of confidence for someone in your financial situation."
Amro raised an eyebrow and pressed on:
"It's not quite that. But the promise stands. And — there's something else. I want to ask you to work set hours going forward."
Kinan sat up.
He sat up quickly, and the look on his face was not a pleasant one.
Amro looked slightly to the side — carefully avoiding direct eye contact — and continued:
"Just hear me out. You can say no after. All I'm asking is that you stay at the market from early morning until late afternoon. Don't come home early just because business is slow — staying longer gives you a better chance. And I want to lower the price of the shirts by two coins, to bring in more buyers."
Kinan frowned.
"Why haven't you done any of this before? Why is this idea only occurring to you now, at this particular moment?"
"Don't ask too many questions — just do what I said. It'll help, at least for a while, until we've made enough to work with. The point is — do you agree?"
Kinan turned it over. He didn't have another option, and he knew it. Refusing wouldn't serve him.
"I agree," he said. "But I have a condition."
Amro's fingers found each other and began to press.
"Tell me."
Kinan got up from the bed and sat cross-legged on the floor in front of him.
"Send a letter to my family. Tell them how we are. Ask about them."
Amro's heart lurched.
It was sudden and physical — as though something sharp had passed through him. Sweat began to gather at his temples with a speed that alarmed him. Kinan noticed. He studied Amro's face and said:
"What's wrong? Why did your expression change like that?"
Amro didn't answer immediately. He offered a small, fractured smile — the kind that tells you more than it intends to. Kinan felt something strange move through him.
"Answer me. Why did you go quiet?"
Amro exhaled slowly, with difficulty.
"Honestly... I don't write well. I've never been good at putting sentences together. So I don't think it's a sound idea."
Kinan didn't believe him. He recognised the shape of this — it was one of Amro's evasions, familiar by now in the way certain silences are familiar.
He stood, and when he spoke his voice had an edge to it:
"There's no point in making conditions. You wouldn't do it even if you could."
Amro felt the embarrassment visibly — but beneath it, something else had started moving again. The boy is asking for things he never asked for before. Where is this coming from?
It landed on him then, quietly and completely: Kinan was no longer a child. Something had shifted. His mind was sharpening, and the questions it was beginning to form were the kind that could expose things — even without meaning to.
"I'll fulfil your request," Amro said, measuring each word. "Not today, but I'll go to the post house — there'll be someone there who can write it out and send it right away. I just need you to be patient."
It wasn't what Kinan wanted. But he understood enough to accept it, as he usually did, and he turned back to his bed.
V.
Amro sat with the quiet that followed and let himself feel — briefly — something close to relief. Then he turned to the harder problem of what came next. He knew the bucket was close to overflowing. He knew there wasn't much left. And what kept him from coming apart entirely was the small, stubborn fact that he had completed a quarter of what he had come here to do.
A quarter. It wasn't much. But in the kind of darkness he was living in, a quarter was a crack in the wall — a thin thread of light through a small hole. It was enough to move toward, if not enough to see by.
Night came. Amro lay down and tried to sleep.
Outside, an owl called — sharp and unhurried — and beneath it, the crickets kept their steady rhythm, the two sounds moving together in a way that was almost musical. Almost restful.
Then, on the rooftop of the building directly beside the Peach House, a figure stood still.
A dark robe moved around them in the wind.
Their eyes were fixed on the window of the house below.
They stood there for a long time, watching, saying nothing. Then, before turning to go, they spoke quietly to the night:
"It seems I've found what I was looking for. All that remains now is to confirm it."
And the stranger stepped back, and back, and back — until the darkness took them entirely.