Not that anyone they knew had ever been to the Golden City, but traders had passed through and told stories of its beauty and wonder. Nobody was entirely sure how many people got Selected and how often but, every now and then, the news would travel to Nob: a family here, a family there. And now it was their turn.

  The next week was filled with happy activity as the family prepared to leave their tiny dwelling and the small town of Nob forever. Freya’s mother hummed to herself as she bundled up their belongings and wiped down surfaces. Freya’s father patted her mother’s bottom as he passed her, and her mother giggled! Freya was shocked and embarrassed.

  If they had merely to pack up their house, it would likely have only taken a day, such a small amount of possessions did they own. But they also needed to harvest all their remaining crops so that they would be able to trade them on the way to the Golden City. Although being Selected meant that they were guaranteed a home and work once they got to the Golden City, they still had to make their own way there.

  This posed their first problem: how were they going to travel? They had no horse or cart to carry their possessions, and the Golden City was at least twenty days’ hard walk away. While pondering their dilemma and trying to decide what they must leave behind, help came from the most unlikely quarter: grumpy old Garret. He seemed to be eternally in a bad mood and was not afraid to show it. In fact, Freya couldn't remember ever seeing him smile or offer a kind word to anyone. He had also been seen consorting with Guards more than once—doing what, she didn't know. But whatever it was, it wasn’t likely to be anything good. Word was not to trust him as far as you could spit.

  Nonetheless, he now offered to take them to the Golden City in his horse and cart. And this for no payment, which was the most surprising part of all. Old Garret was normally the most uncharitable person in Nob, even though, for some reason, he had more money than most. But he insisted, saying that he'd always wanted to see the Golden City. Besides, they could buy him his dinner and a drink or two along the way. Euphoric with their recent luck, Freya's father, Thomas, gladly accepted the offer, as if accepting a gift from an old friend.

  Despite their busyness, Nan still had to graze, which meant that Freya had snatched opportunities in which to study her mysterious tablet. She would find a well-concealed spot in the scrublands, far away from anybody, and carefully unwrap the object. It was the same every time: looking at it in the daylight, the face appeared unmarked, except for the numbers at the bottom. However, if she shone a flame so that it cast its light on the surface, then the writing would appear. She pondered the meaning of the words. What was this marvellous place, Tyrelia, described in the poem? It sounded so wonderful, so idyllic!

  She asked her mother and her father, both of whom responded exactly the same: a distracted, “What? Don't know what you're on about. Please, can you ...” and then an issued instruction to continue to help pack up their lives.

  After that, she decided not to mention it to anyone. It seemed better that way. And someone had obviously gone to great lengths to conceal the tablet in the first place. Perhaps best she should keep it a secret for now.

  And what about the numbers? What did they mean? Could they be a code? The more she thought about it, the more certain she became that they were a code. She didn't know much about codes, but she knew about numbers: numbers were for counting.

  So Freya counted. First of all, she counted all the words. There were twenty-one words in the first verse, and twenty-four in the second. Added together, that only came to forty-five, and the first number was 50, so that didn't get her anywhere. Next, she tried counting letters. The fiftieth letter was the 'T' in 'beauty'. The sixty-third letter was 'J', the ninety-second letter 'A', and the ninety-ninth letter 'N'. That spelt 'TJAN'. Again, a dead-end. She tried counting the letters backwards: that spelt 'TENL'. Nothing made sense, but she couldn't stop puzzling over it.

  Then, before she knew it, they were all packed up: the harvest was loaded, Nan was tethered to the cart (she would provide them with milk on their travels, then be given to Garret as payment once they arrived), and it was time for them to farewell their friends and Nob. Farewell their old, poor lives, and set off for the promise of a new and better life.

  Not having any friends to say goodbye to, Freya instead visited her favourite places. She sat in the corner of Nan’s lean-to, breathing in the fertile aromas. She drifted around their empty house, trying to memorise every nook and cranny. Finally, she wandered into the wasteland within the shadow of the Wall. She searched out her cave and scrambled inside, remembering the day she discovered it. I never did get to turn it into a hidey-hole, she thought, ruefully.

  It was hard to be sad really, when everything was so terribly exciting. Nevertheless, tears streamed down her face, once her mother had torn herself from her friends and her sister and clambered aboard the wagon. Old Garret had clicked his tongue to Bertha, and they set off with a lurch.

  “Goodbye! Goodbye!” her mother called, waving a hanky at her lifelong friends until they could no longer make out the group that had formed to see them off.

  Freya’s father even wiped a tear from his eye. Her mother kept sniffing and wiping her eyes for what felt like hours. But all feelings of sadness quickly disappeared as Freya gazed around, eagerly drinking in the new sights. For her, who had never been farther than Forstdam to sell their harvest at the market (and that only once), it was a great adventure. She pestered her parents continually with questions about the Golden City. “Where is it? What's it like? How do you get there?”

  Her father laughed his gruff laugh, ruffled her hair, and answered her questions as well as he could. He told her that, if one travelled due east from Nob for many, many leagues, it was said that you would encounter the Golden City, built on and surrounding the Great Hill. Said to be the most beautiful city in the whole of Medar, it was the dwelling place of the Master. His palace was at the very top of the Great Hill, a dazzling building covered in gold: the most breathtaking sight in the whole land. “But,” he told her, “surrounding the entire city was an impenetrable wall, and not just anybody could enter: only those who were invited. And that included the few who were Selected each year.” They truly considered themselves the luckiest people in Medar!

  From Nob, they could not travel directly east and needed to take a southern route—the road that circled around the southern edge of Medar, about a hundred kilometres from the edge of, and following more or less parallel to, the Chasm. Her father told her the names of the towns they would travel through: Forstdam, Helderford, Tong, Dome, and finally, Targa, the city outside the gates of the Golden City. They all sounded equally exotic to Freya, but although she longed for more information about them, her father could tell her little. Like Freya, he had never been past Forstdam, and what he told her was from the stories of travellers who had by chance come to Nob over the years.

  Much to Freya's disappointment, it turned out that all those exotic-sounding places really weren't that different from Nob—just not quite as poor really. Same grey skies, same shadow of the Wall, same daily drudgery of working to keep families fed and homes maintained. Uneventful that is, except for the reaction that Freya got from everybody to her appearance. In Nob, she had become accustomed to the teasing from the village children, but the adults had treated her normally. As they travelled to new places, however, she found that people—children and adults both—stared at her with looks of pity, shock or even worse, disgust on their faces. At first, she just ignored them, and looked away, pretending not to notice.

  On the fifth day of their travels as they rolled into Helderford, it went too far. A group of people stood there and pointed and laughed at her. One of them yelled out, “Ugly Face!”, and they all roared with laughter. It was humiliating.

  After that incident, her mother dug a hooded cloak out of her pack, and Freya wore it so that it hung low over her face, concealing her scarred visage, whenever they neared a new town.

  That evening, when her parents thought she was asleep, they discussed the situation in hushed voices.

  Her mother asked, “How could they be so cruel?”

  She couldn't discern her father's murmured response.

  Garret muttered something like, “Good luck getting her into the Golden City.”

  Her mother gasped at that. “Do you think they would stop her?”

  There was a pause. Freya lay stock-still and breathed slowly and evenly. She sensed they were looking at her.

  Garret responded gruffly, “You know how important looks are, especially there.”

  To which came her father's measured response, “Well, we will just have to keep her covered.”

  The finality in his tone indicated that the conversation was over. She continued listening, hoping to hear more, but the only sounds were those of the adults preparing for bed.

  This turn of events was extremely upsetting for Freya. She knew she looked different to other people, but apart from the village children, nobody in Nob had treated her differently because of her looks. But now here was Garret suggesting that she might not even get into the Golden City because of her deformity! What would she do if her family got into the city, but she did not? She didn't believe her parents would ever abandon her, so she comforted herself with the thought that, whatever happened, they would always be there to protect her. A new thought presented itself to her: if she did manage to get into the city, how could she keep herself concealed ... forever? Would her whole family suffer because of her? Perhaps her family would be better off without her ... perhaps she should run away. But where would she go? Unbidden, an image of Tyrelia popped into her head. Well, I'll just go live there! she thought, but then she chided herself for confusing a fairy-tale with reality.

  However, she had distracted herself, and couldn't help thinking about her mysterious tablet. She soon drifted off to sleep dreaming of the magical place in the poem, where she and her family could live happily without fear of her deformity ever being a problem.

  FOR THE NEXT FIVE DAYS, as they continued their travels eastward, there were no villages and they encountered few travellers. On the evening of the tenth day since leaving Nob, they drew close to Tong as dusk fell, and they searched for a suitable place to stay the night. As they passed a group of people seated around a campfire off the side of the road, one of the men hailed them.

  “Good evening! Are you from around here?”

  Thomas responded cautiously, “Good evening to you, sir. No, we are travelling through these parts. How about you?”

  “We're travellers too. We've been Selected and are on our way to the Golden City.”

  “What a coincidence! We too, have been Selected and are also going there.”

  At this, the stranger invited them to join his family gathering. It transpired that they were from Helderport and that they, too, were headed for processing at Targa. Unable to believe their good luck at meeting people in such similar circumstances, Freya’s family gladly joined them, and all were soon enjoying a hearty meal together.

  “Do you know much about what's involved with this processing?” Thomas asked the stranger.

  “Can't rightly say that I do,” responded the other, “for no-one who's been Selected ever wants to leave the Golden City to tell us what it is like. I can't say that I blame them, neither.” This comment was met with nods and murmurs of agreement from all the adults around the fire.

  “All I know is that we present these papers here ...” – at this he tapped his breast pocket – “... to the officials at Targa, and then they take us to the Golden City. Seems pretty straightforward.”

  After that, the conversation moved on to speculation as to what their new lives might be like once they got into the Golden City. In the cosy light of the campfire, all thoughts of Freya's disfigurement, and the implications that Garret had hinted at, were remote and even ridiculous.

  SO IT WAS THAT, FOUR days later, around mid-morning two weeks after leaving Nob, the family finally arrived with much anticipation in Targa—the first trading post outside the Golden City. There they were to present themselves to the authorities for processing. Garret had explained to Freya that Targa was the second most important city in Medar, for everything that went in and out of the Golden City first had to go through Targa. That meant all goods, food, and people.

  Targa was roughly forty kilometres from the Golden City, and it lay on a direct route to the only gate in that city’s walls. The road on which they entered Targa from the south ended in the centre of the city, at the town square. Other roads radiated out from each side, but you could tell the one that led to the Golden City: it was a wide, beautiful avenue and, rather than just being a dusty track like the roads they had travelled on so far, it was cobbled. In fact, the whole square was cobbled, so that the horses’ hooves and cart wheels clattered loudly as they entered. The road out of Targa on the far side of the square continued on to the Eastern provinces, to places called Little Farthing and Elmwood, which were about as far east as one could go, and were probably as far away from her hometown, Nob, as you could get within the whole land. Freya’s mind boggled.

  In the middle of the square was a large pond with a model of the Golden City in the centre and fountains all around the edges. The model even had a copy of the impenetrable wall surrounding its base. The hill had roads spiralling around it all the way to the summit. At the very top was a replica of what she assumed must be the Master’s palace. The jets of water from the fountains splashed onto the model and cascaded down the hillsides, causing it to glitter and sparkle in the sunlight. It was the most beautiful thing Freya had ever seen.

  The town square was alive with people, who all had somewhere to go or something to do; it was a hive of activity, a blur of motion. On one side of the square there was a food market and the air was filled with delicious smells of fresh bread, roasted fowl and chestnuts. These mingled with the less savoury smells of livestock—pigs, cattle, and sheep—that were up for sale nearby. The air reverberated with the shouts of vendors announcing their wares, and of purchasers haggling.

  All of this, Freya observed through a knot hole in the side of the cart. She and her brother were lying in the cart, pretending to be asleep. Freya’s father located the small processing office that was positioned amongst the prominent government buildings along the north side of the town square. Her parents took the Selection scroll into the building, while Garret stayed with his horse and cart tethered outside.

  Freya noticed that he positioned himself so he could hear what was being said inside.

  From within the cart, Freya couldn’t understand too much of what was going on. A male voice with a strange accent congratulated her parents loudly, then got even louder as the man strode towards the cart.

  “Let’s have a look.”

  Her mother babbled, “Oh please, sir, my children are sleeping. Please don’t disturb them!” She sounded too anxious.

  Unperturbed, the accented voice said, “I just need to ensure that the information you have given me is correct.” A hand lifted Freya’s hood away from her face.

  It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay, she told herself. She forced herself to relax as though she were sleeping. She was lying on her scarred side, so the man shouldn’t be able to see a thing.

  “So, this is your daughter,” the man confirmed. It was not a question. She sensed him checking her brother. “And your son. They must be exhausted to sleep through this racket.”

  Her mother answered nervously, “Oh yes. We have been travelling for days. They are very tired.”

  “Okay, let’s go inside and finalise the paperwork.”

  As the official turned to enter the office, Garret cleared his throat and remarked nonchalantly as though to nobody in particular, “I thought it had to be blood kin to get in on the same Selection?”

  The official paused and with amusement in his voice asked, “I suppose you’re going to tell me that you’re related to this family?”

  “No sir,” replied Garret. “I just thought you’d like to know that the girl is not.”

  Freya couldn’t help herself—she sat bolt upright and demanded, “What?”

  The hood of her cloak fell back, exposing her face. Somebody gasped, but she didn’t see who, as she quickly pulled the hood back into position. The official hadn’t seen. He was looking searchingly at Garret, and then turned back to Freya’s parents. Freya suddenly realised that there was something terribly, terribly wrong: they weren’t denying Garret’s charge! She spun to look at her father: there was incredible sadness in his eyes.

  “Everybody inside,” the official said, taking charge. “It looks like you have some explaining to do.”

  The whole family was marched inside through a small waiting room into the official’s office beyond. The official seated himself behind his desk, with Freya and her family left to stand facing him. The Guards closed the door behind them and remained standing at their rear. The official calmly placed his elbows on the desk and, leaning slightly forward, steepled his fingers under his chin and gazed at Thomas with hard, cold eyes.

  “Tell me!” he commanded.

  And so, Freya’s father told the story.

  ALMOST FOURTEEN YEARS ago, on a cold, stormy night, a loud thumping on their door had roused the family from their cosy supper. Her father opened the door to admit a bedraggled, heavily pregnant woman. The woman was in fact already in labour, and collapsed into their house, begging for help. They had barely shut the door when she delivered a tiny baby girl. Martha cut the umbilical cord and gave the infant to Thomas to find something to wrap the baby in, while she continued to help the woman.