A Guide to Getting Lost

If it were up to her, Lily would trade her jeweled crown for a worn field journal and disappear into the Kalahari Desert dunes before breakfast. When she was young, she said she wanted to be a librarian when she grew up. Then she would’ve spent her days with her nose buried in a book instead of powdered and perfumed.

While the other girls in the kingdom danced in the ballroom and gathered in the courtyard for tea, she was on the other side of the castle piling books about long-forgotten kings into her hands or climbing the castle walls to sketch the ravens. But today, everything was changing. Today, Lily was strolling through the stalls of Sakhmet instead of practicing her posture. She had a prickly pear up to her nose, the sand beneath her sandals, and a dream to fulfill. She was going out into the dunes to study desert animals like zebras and giraffes for a new book. If she was lucky enough, she might even catch a glimpse of a pangolin.

The hot, dry air swirled around Lily, carrying the scents of different flowers and spices. She stopped at a peculiar stall that looked like it had spiky golden balls arranged in baskets. She leaned in to look closer and saw that they smelled like melons.

“You’ve never seen a kiwano, have you?” A voice below her asked.

Lily looked down in surprise to find a round, little man wrapped in a pale blue robe. “No, how could you tell?”

The man smiled. “Your beautiful gown, my lady. Only the finest palaces from the other side of the world can make silk that looks like that. Give it a try.”

Lily nervously picked up the kiwano, peeled it back, and took a bite. Once she got past the odd texture, she realized the fruit was actually bursting with flavor. Her eyes widened, and the man laughed.

“Ah, you were not expecting that, were you? Things in the Kalahari Desert are not always what they seem.” He raised his eyebrows. “Now, what brings you here, so far away from home? Come to play some Sakhmet Solitaire?”

“Maybe later! I’m here to study the animals of the Kalahari Desert for a book I’m writing.”

“Yes, yes, there are many strange animals hiding among the dunes. But I must warn you, my lady, you must stay on the main paths. Animals know places that maps do not, and the Kalahari Desert has a way of making things… lost.”

Lily shrugged off his concern. “I’ve spent years reading about this place. I know what I’m doing.”

The merchant shook his head. “So it would appear to be.”

Lily thanked the man for the kiwano and set out past the edge of Sakhmet to begin her search for rare desert animals. The wind blew sand into her face and her sandals struggled to get a grip on the sinking sands. She slipped on a smooth rock in the path and went tumbling down to the ground. She knew it wasn’t going to be easy to gather this data on animal habitats and behaviors. She brushed herself off and got back up.

Suddenly, Lily noticed bronze scales shimmer in the corner of her eye. She turned to see it and only caught a glimpse of a tail slithering behind a rock just off the path. No… could it really be the elusive pangolin? She stepped hesitantly toward the rock. When she reached it, she saw it. It was really there, a real pangolin! The animal looked up at her for a moment, as if to challenge her to follow it, and then bolted away into the sea of dunes.

The merchant’s words echoed in Lily’s head. He said to stay on the main paths. But would he have said the same if he knew what Lily would find? She knew what she had to do to write the perfect chapter for her book. All she had to do was step off the path. She took a deep breath and went racing after the animal.

Her chase brought her so far away from where she had started that she could no longer see the path in the distance. She felt the breeze on her cheeks as she raced across a sandy plain — and then she was falling. Tumbling down, all the way down into a dune-slide. It felt like she was falling forever until she finally rolled to a stop on a patch of grass. Wait, grass?

Lily got up and slowly spun around. “Wow,” she breathed, “What is this place?”

She was standing on a patch of grass with cactus blossoms dotted throughout. Palm trees spread their leaves overhead to create a canopy of shade over her and the river she hadn’t noticed was beside her. A stone bridge extended over the river and marked the beginning of a path through a humble village. She pulled her map out of her bag and inspected it. It was just as she thought. This hidden oasis wasn’t even on the map.

Lily walked over the bridge and into the village. An old man was weaving baskets in the street. Lily walked over and said hello.

The man jumped. “Hello! What brings you here?”

“Well… I’m actually here by accident. I’m Lily, and I’m studying desert animals but I got lost coming out of Sakhmet.” Lily held out her map. “Would you mind showing me where we are?”

The man crumpled up her map and handed it back to her. “What are you doing? You can’t do that! We must keep this village hidden!”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m just trying to get back on the path so I can get back to my studies. I didn’t know this was a secret village.”

The bearded man grinned. “Stick around, friend. You might learn some things. Come with me. I’m Elias.”

The man led her forward with a walking stick in his hand. When he looked back to make sure Lily was keeping up, she noticed a pangolin scurry out of his sleeve and onto his shoulder. “Elias, is it? Is that what I think it is on your shoulder?”

“Huh, this little thing? Yes, I believe the city folk in Sakhmet call these pangolins. I just call him Pebble, because he was barely the size of a pebble when I first found him.”

Lily almost laughed out loud. After that wild chase through the sand dunes, she ended up stumbling upon a domesticated pangolin! She scrambled to grab her field journal and pencil from her bag.

Elias gently put a hand on the journal. “I challenge you to live the story, not just record it.”

Lily nodded and put them away. “Sorry, I’m a student of the world. I can’t help it.”

Elias furrowed his brows. “Lily, you did not come to the Kalahari Desert to study books, no? You came to experience an adventure. To write your own story.”

Lily thought for a moment and nodded. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. I’ve learned more about pangolin behavior in the last few minutes than I have in years of library trips.”

“You’ve come to the right place. All of us in this village are trained in the art of storytelling. We can write, too, but we all choose not to out of respect for the spoken word. I am the village elder.”

“The village elder? But—you were weaving baskets in the street when I saw you.”

Elias smiled. “There is no job too great or too small for any one person.”

When they finally stopped walking, they had arrived at the village square. There was a large sandstone pyramid in the middle, bustling crowds weaving around different stalls, and an animated woman telling a story to a group of children around her. Two men were working on setting up a giant tent.

“We’re preparing for our summer festival,” Elias said. “There’s still much to be done.”

“What’s your summer festival about?” Lily asked.

“We give thanks to the desert for allowing us to make our homes in this oasis. We eat, we dance, and we tell stories about the history of the desert. On the last night, we feast on the rare Nara Melon.” His face fell. “But the Nara Melon is getting harder and harder to find. Visitors from around the world come to harvest it to make Nara Syrup to cure illness, and the desert can’t grow them fast enough.”

Lily remembered reading about Nara Melons. They only grew on the highest branches of the Nara tree. “I’ve learned about Nara Melons before. Maybe I can help. ”

“Oh, we would be forever grateful to you! Though this is a lot to ask of you. I know you did not travel all this way to climb a tall tree for your new friends.”

“I came here to learn about the Kalahari Desert. What better way to do that than by taking a journey through it?”

Elias clapped his hands together. “That’s the spirit! Come, let me introduce you to somebody.” He led her over to a tan woman wearing golden bangles and painting a clay vase. “This is Clio. She came to us from Sakhmet, too. She found us just like you did, by chance. Except she was chasing a Scarab.”

Clio waved. “Nice to meet you! You’re probably going to want to change your dress before you head out. The bark of the Nara tree will rip up that pretty silk. I’ll give you one of mine.”

Lily changed into a simple canvas shift dress that Clio gave her. She looked in the mirror at the sand smeared into her hair and the rip in her new dress and almost didn’t recognize herself. It had been days since she touched a brush, but she had never felt more at peace. She felt more at home now in this strange land, in these rough rags, than she ever did back at the castle she called home.

Lily stepped out of the tent and Clio threw her hands into the air. “That’s more like it!”

“Are you ready to go?” Elias asked.

“Yes, lead the way!” Lily replied. “Clio, are you coming too?”

Clio threw a hand up to her mouth. “Oh, no way, I’ll leave the adventure to you two.” She went back to painting a palm tree on a vase.

Lily and Elias set out early the next morning with supplies, walking past sandstone ridges and desert grasses. Lily had insisted on bringing her map and compass although Elias argued that they wouldn’t be much help around there. The young woman remembered reading that Nara trees could be found to the west of a river, and had urged the old man to travel west. But several hours later, there were still no Nara Melons to be found. All they had to show for it was an increasingly crumpled map and a growing sense of frustration.

“Lily, dear, perhaps we should try heading north instead. In the village, we tell stories about a wise old Moehog who found rare fruits past the northern palm grove and toward the Dark Plain. And those stories were passed down from our ancestors over thousands of years.”

Lily frowned. “That doesn’t line up with what I read. I think we should just stick to my plan and my map.”

She felt irritated that this had turned out to be so much harder than she had expected. The terrain ahead of them looked like nothing on any map she had ever seen and her compass needle was spinning around erratically. She started to worry that they might really be lost, and shook the thought out of her head. There was no use thinking so negatively when she had come so far.

Lily led the way with her nose buried in the map and Elias shuffling behind her. She was tracing the path she wanted to take with her hand, across a long plateau after the sand dunes they had just climbed. Elias shouted and pulled Lily back as her sandal nearly stepped over the edge. A rock broke off and tumbled down. They had reached a steep cliff overlooking a massive canyon.

“Woah!” Lily cried. “Thank you. But I don’t understand, according to the map, we’re supposed to continue straight right here.”

Elias calmly stepped over to a nearby sandstone arch partially covered by moss. “The Nara tree is that way,” he said, gesturing down a safer slope downward. “It always grows near the breath of the river moss, not the heat of the sun.”

Lily followed him down the narrow path. The bottom of the canyon was lush with Nara trees. She gasped as she saw the orange fruits hanging all the way from the highest branches. She had thought they were nearly extinct. The existence of this tree alone would fill up the pages of an entire book.

“Lily, this is as far as I can go. It has been many years since I was able to climb a tree.”

“Leave it to me!” Lily said, remembering her days climbing up to draw the ravens on the castle walls. She carefully climbed all the way up and down, bringing more Nara Melons down with her each time. By the time she was finished, the trees had been picked clean and the village elder’s basket was overflowing. She sat down on a rock to catch her breath.

Elias picked a Nara Melon from the basket and brought it to her. “For you. You must honor us by taking the first bite.”

Lily grabbed the Nara Melon and took a nibble. It tasted like no other fruit she had ever encountered. It was sweet like nectar, with a slight tropical tang. Before she knew it, she had finished the whole thing. Lily wiped her hands on her dress and picked up her field journal, then quickly set it down. She saw Pebble, Elias’s pangolin, playing in a patch of sunlight. She fed it a tiny cactus blossom.

“None of this is on any map,” Lily murmured. I would’ve missed it all if I hadn’t listened to your stories.”

“My stories? No. I have a story, yes. But these stories belong to the whole village. Your story has also been woven into the village’s. Now, let’s give them a good ending.”

Back at the village, the festival was in full swing. The villagers cheered when Lily and Elias returned with the Nara Melons.

Elias hugged Lily. “My friend, I don’t know how we can ever repay you. To start, I would like to offer you a place of honor in our village’s storytelling circle.”

Bittersweet tears welled up in Lily’s eyes. She was happy to have made such wonderful friends, and sad that she would have to say goodbye to them soon. “I graciously accept, Elias. But before I tell any stories, I’d like to pause and listen to all of yours first.”

Lily spent the rest of the night listening to tales passed down over the years about the legends of the Kalahari Desert, the secrets of the oasis, and—her favorite—all the little quirks about the pet pangolins’ personalities.

The next morning, when Lily was heading out of her tent, she almost tripped on a bundle wrapped in paper that had been left at the entrance. Written on it was a note reading: “Lily, I’ll break our rules just for you by writing this note. Thank you for joining our story. I stayed up all night painting this for you as my way to give thanks. Your friend, Clio.” Lily unwrapped the gift to find a glazed clay plate with the epic tale of Lily’s journey to the Nara trees painted around it. She smiled and stored it carefully in her bag.

On her way toward the bridge at the beginning of the village, Lily ran into Elias sweeping the streets. “Elias, I have to leave now, but I just wanted to say thank you for helping me see things differently.”

Elias stopped sweeping and raised an eyebrow. “Where are you going, home?”

Lily sighed. “Home? Oh, I don’t even know where that is anymore. I’ll go back to the castle for now, but after that, who knows?”

“It seems the young one has developed a taste for adventure in the desert.”

Lily laughed. “So it seems. Hey, Elias, I was wondering… do you think it would be okay if I wrote about this place? I won’t use any names or maps or anything. I’ll just tell the story. It’s just… I want to share these stories with the world in a way that they’re ready to listen to today.”

Elias nodded. “So long as you tell it with heart, not just facts.” The new friends embraced.

That evening, with the help of new directions from Elias, Lily was back in Sakhmet. She walked through the market again, this time in her canvas shift with a completely filled field journal tucked under her arm. She stopped at the kiwano stand again and admired the odd fruit, this time with a greater appreciation for what lay inside it.

The merchant looked at her with her disheveled hair as if he was trying to place where he had seen her before. “Lose your way, my lady?”

“No,” Lily said, smiling, “I think I finally found it.”

A year later, Lily was in her new study space, a small space she rented above a bookshop. It was no castle library, but it made her happy. She put the finishing touches on the last chapter of the book and titled it: “A Guide to Getting Lost (and Found) in the Kalahari Desert.”