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“Why haven’t you ever told me this?”
“Oh, I don’t know I guess I never really let myself feel how much it hurt But I kind of relived the whole experience that fourth night, waiting for this Sht years old
“Anyway then it was June, and the school year was all over Tio home But on the last day there was souess, but his assistant forgot, or the driver never showed, either way nobody came for me I sat on ot picked up one by one, and I kickedfloppy Peanuts books over and over again, and nobody came That was before cell phones, and they couldn’t track downbehind my back They felt sorry for me, but I could tell they kind of wanted o home
“I can still reh the glass doors, the sunset highlights on the wobbly linoleum tiles, the set it I’d look at the shadows and think, definitely he’ll have come by the time the shadow of theframe hits that corner of the bench, but then he wouldn’t co for the first time what a s toto them
“The staff let ot to do They ordered in from Popeye’s I felt so excited and special”
Eliot wished he could go back in tiet that mini-Janet, scoop her up and take her home But he couldn’t
“Then after dinner h the door, stiff-ar too fast He was probably pissed off at himself, about the mix-up, but it came off like he was pissed off at me somehow Like it was my fault He was pretty
“I guess you can see where this is going I was seriously weak at that point I had the spins I was falling asleep every five minutes I woke up at dawn on day five and I knew that the Save up It was over
“Soer would have stayed out there till they died Julia uess if somebody really wants to break me, it turns out I can be broken There it is I didn’t kno I know
“I walked back to the rock I still had o of it— else, I don’t knoas not in good shape, I can tell you I was so dehydrated I couldn’t even cry It was pretty much of a mad scene, like Ophelia in Hamlet Except, you know, a lot drier
“And then I was back in the city, and they were taking care ofme to a table where there was all this food and drink They were having a party The whole tribe was there Everybody was sht I’d failed, but that was just the way of things The desert was eternal, and I had fought it and done my best and lost and that was all I could do Everybody sat there s too
“The Foremost asked me to come up to where he was, at the head of the table, in front of everybody He told me to kneel, and he took the sack of metal from me and held it up
“You are an outsider, he said But you came to us, and you bowed before the desert, and you coers
“Dramatic pause
“You thought the desert would grant you its treasures The treasures of our people You thought it would give up our secrets Our ht you would take our desert from us, and rule over us
“Here is what the desert has given you: a bag of worthless sand
“And he poured my sack out onto the floor
“You will never find our uards its secrets It shares thehters Youof Fillory and tell him that I let you live Tell him that he may send us more whores if he chooses, this one was adequate”
Janet rode in silence for a minute Her back was to Eliot He didn’t know if she was coht He saw her touch her face once, that was all
“Janet,” he said
“The Foreh out of that last one, believe ed “He knew his audience All that black sand was in front of er out in the desert I still couldn’t believe it wasn’t metal I almost died for it
“But I didn’t finish the story before, about when I was at boarding school You knohat I did that day, whenspat on hiain I tore his expensive shirt He slapped
“But I’irl And the Foremost wasn’t half the man my father was
“I whispered so to him He had to lean down to hear me I whispered: I don’t need your secrets, Foremost But I’ll take your weapons And I’ll take your desert too
“Then I threw a handful of that fine black sand right in his eyes And I got up off
“And you can tell your god when you see hiuess that’ll be kind of obvious
“See, he’d ht when he sentHe er The desert made me look at my own secrets, the ones I kept from myself, and I did When I came back I didn’t have a weapon, I was a weapon