The Heartless

“Hey, tell me again why we decided to travel in the summer?” Petra groaned for the thousandth time. “I swear, the summers have gotten hotter. Or am I just getting too old to handle it?”

“Petra, you’re only fourteen, quit being dramatic,” I retorted, rolling my eyes. “Besides, we could have stayed in Verdigris longer, but someone was getting impatient.”

“Oh, are you referring to yourself?” Petra shot back.

“Shut up.”

I raised my hand to shield my eyes from the blazing sun and squinted down the road. In the distance, I could just make out the figures of two royal guards, leaning against the façade of a local inn. Frankly, the odds of either of them being able to recognize me out of context were marginal at best, but it wasn’t a risk worth taking. (I also wasn’t quite sure how effective Bertrand’s love potions had been or how long they lasted, and I really wasn’t eager to find out.) I turned heel and retreated the way we had come, and Petra no longer needed to ask to understand why.

“You’re right, though, the sun is very bright these days,” I mused, wiping the sweat from my brow with my shirtsleeve. “Should I start wearing hats? Maybe it’d be a good disguise.”

“I think you might as well wear a big sign that says ‘Look, I’m suspicious!’” Petra snarked.

“Not any sort of fancy hat, obviously,” I huffed. “I meant, like, a straw sunhat. Like a farmer.”

Petra sputtered and laughed mercilessly, doubling over alongside me.

“What, do you think I would look funny in a farmer’s hat? I could look the part!”

“Yeah, with the bow and arrow and everything,” Petra wheezed. “Typical farmer. If I saw you walking down the street, I’d immediately think you had something to hide.”

“Alright, alright,” I grumbled. “I get it, the hat’s a bad idea. Everybody’s a critic.”

We took a break from the sun in the shade of a tall oak tree, in a quiet corner of the town where only a few passersby came down the road. The temperature seemed to drop several degrees away from the sun’s rays, and we both sighed in relief, taking large swigs of water from our canteens.

“Have you ever thought about what comes next?” Petra asked, picking absentmindedly at a fresh bug bite on her arm.

“I mean, we should probably find something to eat, and a place to camp out for the night.”

“No, I mean in the future.”

“Not really,” I sighed. “We could go back to Verdigris eventually, hole up for the winter there. We could keep trying to blend in here, or who knows, there’s a whole world out there far beyond Amistadia.”

Petra chuckled, and I shot her a suspicious look. She raised her hands in defense.

“It’s nothing, I just never thought I’d see you without an over-thought plan,” she explained.

I shrugged. “What good did that do me before?”

So far, that summer had wrought us nothing in terms of success since we returned to Amistadia. With the royal guard now calling the shots, very little had changed, materially speaking, though their increased presence had certainly sparked a heightened sense of suspicion in the air, as though people were beginning to wonder whether they were being pinned down. Our efforts to spread the truth and connect with the rest of the Heartless had so far been significantly hampered by my ever-present need to play dead, but I was not feeling particularly deterred. There was still hope fluttering within me, alive and well, and while it was possible those wings would melt under the relentless summer sun, it didn’t matter. I would simply grow them anew again, a thousand times over if that was what it took.

“Should we keep walking? I think there’s a farmer’s market down the road,” Petra suggested.

I nodded and pushed to my feet. We continued down the street, Petra already grumbling about the sun again.

“You know, maybe I should get a hat,” she ribbed.

A light and airy chuckle escaped my lungs.

“Shut up, Petra.”