The taxi is already loaded, everything I own, everything I want to take with me already in the trunk. The meter is running, but I ask the man to wait and go down to the creek.

The sky is gray this morning, but the rain has finally stopped. Ice clings to everything. I slip three times before I make it down the path and reach the creek bed, but the ground beneath the old willow is dry. I push aside the thin branches and touch the old, twisted trunk. We used to play here when we were children. My brothers and I would moor our raft beneath the branches and leaves to keep it safe from prying eyes, from pirates and mermaids and goblins. And from the neighbor’s kids. This willow was our fortress, our safe haven.

Now it’s nothing. An old dead tree. I trace the heart carved into the bark, the initials I left there three summers ago with a boy who is long gone. This tree saw everything when I was growing up. My first broken bone, my first fish, my first kiss. I stayed in an empty house on a deserted farm for the memories in its branches. My brothers left a long time ago. One of them is in the Navy now, the other a bartender in a town without a name. Neither of them call.

I should have left too. I am leaving. The farm is sold, the house ready for its new owners. I’ve said goodbye to everything but the willow, and a new life awaits. A new me. It’s what I want, it’s what I’ve needed, no matter how painful it is. So, before the taxi driver gets impatient, I let go of the person I was here. I leave her weeping with the willow, lost in what should have been, and climb back up the path to the taxi waiting for me.

I have a future. Even without the willow.

She brings me with her when she goes out. Children bring in more money, she says. Children without shoes, without good clothes, with hunger in their faces and pinched cheeks. Everyone will stop for a hungry child.

So I go with her. We sit on the curb together, watching the rain fall, huddled together to share the warmth of a single threadbare blanket. The cobbles leech all the feeling from my bare feet, but she’s never let me bring so much as a box to sit on. I suppose it only helps if I’m cold.

I let her do the begging. She’s tried to get me to help, but I’m sitting here with her in the cold. That’s all the help she’ll get from me, no matter how ungrateful she says I am.

Instead, I watch. I watch the people go by, the families pushing strollers, the girls out shopping together. I watch the businessmen chatting on their phones, the women tugging their children on a little faster when they see us, the old war vet who sits opposite us and feeds the pigeons. I watch them all, and I remember their faces. Their clothes. The way her makeup is smudged, the way he keeps his hood up, his headphones in. The way she smiles and he doesn’t. I store them all away, their faces, their expressions. When we finally have enough, we go home, and I pull the sketchbook out from under my mat and draw the ones that I liked. The ones were messy, the ones that captured my notice. I don’t beg, but I steal their faces, their portraits. The way they looked at me, the way they looked at each other.

It’s a harmless kind of theft. I doubt they’ll ever notice.

They came from the south, it was said. Pilgrims from far off lands, from the edge of the sea to the valleys of the great deserts. Men saw them on the roads, children drew them water from the wells, and women gave them bread at their doors. They came with their heads covered and their sandals worn, with dust on their clothes and dust on their faces. Old and young, rich and poor, men and women, they came. The bridge beyond the village walls was their purpose, to cross and continue their treks through trackless wastes and over mountain peaks. Men watched them pass and shook their heads, avoiding the eyes of these dirty wanderers. They were the roamers, the pilgrims, and they were left alone.

They touched nothing in the village. The children gave them water, the women gave them bread, and they took what they were given and left nothing behind. The wind stirred the dust as if to erase their footsteps, the sun wiped their shadows from the ground, and they left nothing behind.

But when they had crossed the bridge, when the mountain torrent was behind them and the empty road ahead, they did pause. To leave something behind.

Cairns stood beside the road. Heaps of stone placed as carefully as coins on a miser’s desk, left behind by men and women with nothing else. Hundreds of them stood now, after countless years, stretching out along the edge of the river’s gorge.

The villagers dared not touch even a single stone. Altars to the gods, they guessed. Or monuments to the dead. Penance, perhaps, for sins long since committed. Whatever their purpose, they were sacred.

The children alone thought to ask. They questioned the men that passed through, the women they drew water for, anyone that would listen.

Few answered. Some shook their heads, as silent as if the gods had left them mute. Others only smiled and said it was a story for pilgrims, not for children. And so their questions went unanswered, their curiosity, unsatisfied.

But still they asked. And at long last their answer came with the sun’s rising in the east, with the morning wind and the breath of a new day.

He came from the deserts, the men told them. There was sand in his beard, age in his stooped back. The children gave him water and the women gave him bread, and they asked him about the cairns. Why leave them behind? Who are they for?

The man took their gifts and smiled at their questions, and when he rose to move on he said only, “Come, and let me show you.”

The bravest followed him across the gorge. The water was high at this time of the year, choked with ice and black with silt it dragged from the mountains. It raged and screamed with voices that woke their fear, and the rope bridge swayed beneath their small feet, but still they followed him.

On the far side he knelt and took seven stones from his bag. The children crowded around, watching as he stacked them by the edge of the road with weary hands. He kissed the last stone as he set it down and rose, taking up his staff to continue his journey.

The children ran after him. Why stack the stones? Why leave them behind?

The man leaned on his staff and looked back at the pile of stones he’d left behind. A smile touched his weathered face, and he said quietly, “They are there to remember. When there is a river that is too wide, a mountain too high, or a night that is too cold, I look back to the stones. To remember that here I was afraid, that here I was overwhelmed, that here I wanted to give up and despair.” He nodded at the stones. “Here I fell. And here I got up again.”

Long ago, between the forests of India and the waves and tides of the great ocean, there lived an honored Maharaja of splendid wealth and wisdom. Men and lords of men came to him from every corner of the world to ask for his advice, for his blessing, and for his gold. His advice he gave freely, to whoever might ask, but his blessing and his gold were reserved for an honored few.

The wise and the rich came to him, fools and beggars, strong and weak, men who were cruel and men who were kind. One needed money to build a palace, another weapons to fight a war, still another jewels to win the heart of a lady. They came before the mighty Maharaja with eloquent arguments, with gifts of spices and ivory, with slaves and promises of honor and worship for his help.

He listened to them all, powerful generals and ignoble beggars, with equal patience. When the last man had been heard, he stood and bowed to them all with great courtesy and invited them to follow him. He led them through his great palace to a courtyard littered with smooth pebbles, some as large as birds’ eggs, others smaller than the coins they begged him for.

“Here you will find all that you ask me for,” he told them solemnly. “Sit here and count the pebbles, and you will receive what you need.”

The wisest were the first to complain. “What purpose could there be?” they asked him. “To play with pebbles like children in the dust!” And they left him.

The rest, too, were angry, and they asked him, “Why should we count pebbles? Ask us to fight in your armies, or mine your gold, or build you another palace! Ask us something of worth! Not to waste our time.”

But he shook his head, and said only, “Count the pebbles.”

“For how long?” they asked. “For what purpose?”

But he replied, “Count the pebbles.”

Some left him then, shaking their heads in frustration. Others shrugged their shoulders and sat to begin. For hours they stayed there, sitting in the dust. Counting the pebbles. They piled them in heaps, heaps that grew by the hour. The sun rose higher and the air became thick with the dust they stirred up. More left him, their anger and humiliation stamped clearly on their faces. “He’s mocking us,” they said as they left. “He brought us here to make fools of us.”

The Maharaja said nothing as he watched them leave. At last only one was left, a boy who had come to ask for money to buy his father’s land from his debtors. He sat alone in the corner of the courtyard, a pile of pebbles before him. The sun sank beneath the horizon, the sky grew cold, and still he worked on. Counting pebbles. The dust settled and a wind from the sea blew through the courtyard, cold as the waves it had touched, and still he stayed.

At last the moon rose, and the stars appeared in the blackened skies. The wind blew harder, and the pebbles the boy had piled up were touched with the breath of the sea and the white of the stars. A sound like shattering glass filled the courtyard, and his pebbles fell, tumbling back to the ground as gems and coins, jewels and diamonds. The boy started to his feet, amazed. The Maharaja entered the courtyard then, and smiled at the boy as he told him, “Here is what you asked for. Go buy your land.”