Aliyah wasn't her name, really, was it? No, she'd had another name, a silly name long ago, too long ago to remember properly with any decent sort of attachment that people should put to names. That had been a dream, or like a dream, so intangible when placed beside her own sons and daughter, her granddaughters and grandsons, the sand and the sun and the horses and the thirst and the trail of small graves. But it had been true. She was not, by blood, one of these people she held so dear. The children's name for her meant [i]pale grandmother[/i] -- for even after a lifetime of browning sun, her fragile skin and eyes and hair still drew questions she couldn't answer.

Aliyah, so her name had always been, sat in a crooked chair by the tent flap, a knobby veined hand against the canvas while a bleary eye peeked out at the night fires. She knew the fire well, and the voices that spoke quietly in its warmth. She could name the occupants of each of the other tents, and whether they would be sleeping now, and who was having a nightmare and who would sing them lullabies. She worried for them, she loved every hair on every head, and she kissed her fingers and brushed those kisses out of the tent, wishing them all the happiness of the world. If she said goodbye they would convince her to stay.

She leaned on her walking stick, her legs creaking while she stood, and she threw a shawl around her head and shoulders with an energy unbecoming of the elderly. She pulled open a reed drawer, and for a moment she paused before drawing out of it a plain and tarnished brass key. She fondled it a moment, hoping the thin pads of her fingers might find some memory locked deep away, and she dropped it into a pocket and looked out of the tent again.

The men by the fire -- [i]keep them safe, may they be happy![/i] -- finally stood and walked together to tend the horses, which had begun huffing and scuffing under the strange close moon. Now was her only chance.

She stole out of the tent and rounded it, and she shuffled past the tents that held her sleeping grandchildren, blowing silent kisses as she went, until the moon greeted her round and bright in a crust of endless stars. The dunes were blue in the night. Above them, in the distance, a single craggy rock rose like a sentinel. It was toward this she walked, determined, slipping sometimes in the sand, shuffling. She would make it by morning, she thought. By the time her dear family discovered her missing they would never find her again.