Naima

A girl crossing the waste to buy her grandfather one last wind

Naima is eleven, or says she is, and has walked her grandfather a hundred days across the Bright Waste on a plan she made herself and told no one until it was too late to be talked out of it. Her people came inland from the far western coast before she was born; her grandfather was a fisherman there, and is dying now, well and slowly, and has asked for only one thing — to smell the sea again before he goes. There is no sea within a thousand days of the Ninth Waystation. There is, on a shelf there, a bottle of the sea-wind, and Naima has been saving the fare for it the whole way.

What she wants

Wants: the sea-wind, for her grandfather, at whatever it costs — she has counted her coins so many times she knows them by their edges in the dark.
Carries: the particular stubbornness of a child who has already done the impossible part (the walk) and refuses to believe the easy part (the buying) could be the one that fails.

Her part in the tale

Naima is the fare the standing order cannot pay — the one traveller with a true need and the exact coin for it, come to a stall where every bottle is already promised to a man who will never open one. She does not argue cleverly or plead well. She simply needs, plainly, and waits, and that is harder to turn away than any argument.

Appears in

The Wind She Would Not Keep short story