The Salt Road

Theo Marchetti

Adventure

The Salt Road

Theo Marchetti

Writr

Chapter 1

The last bus

The bus stopped where the road stopped, which was a long way before the map said it would.

"That's it," said the driver, and opened the door onto nothing. Not nothing exactly. There was a sign, leaning, that said SALT LAKE 2 KM in letters the sun had chewed to grey. There was a shed. There was a camel standing beside the shed with the expression of someone who had been waiting a very long time and had decided not to mention it.

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Ines got down with her bag. The heat came up off the ground and through the soles of her boots, which were her brother's old boots, which was why she had two pairs of socks on.

"The ferry," she said. "The letter said there was a ferry."

The driver looked at her the way adults looked at her when they were about to say something kind and useless. "There was a ferry when there was a lake," he said. "Lake's been dry since before you were born. Nobody crosses now. You go round. Three days by road."

"I don't have three days. Dad's on the other side. He said come before the rains."

The Salt Road

The driver looked at the sky, which was the hard bright blue of a plate, and then at the camel, and then at her. "Then I suppose you'll want to talk to Barnaby," he said, and shut the door, and drove away.

Ines stood in the dust and watched the bus get smaller. When it was gone there was no sound at all except the tick of the cooling shed roof and, after a while, the soft complicated sound of a camel chewing.

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She turned round. The camel had not moved. He was the colour of old rope and he had a saddle on, a proper one, with bags, and a rope halter that trailed on the ground as if somebody had dropped it and never come back.

"Are you Barnaby?" said Ines.

The camel chewed.

"I need to get across the lake."

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Chapter book · Ages 8 to 12

The Salt Road

Name: The Salt Road
Price: 6 AUD
Rating: 5 (1 reviews)
Author: Theo Marchetti

by Theo Marchetti

51 reviewRated 6+

The lake dried up before Ines was born, and the only way across it is a road made of salt that nobody has walked in years. Nobody except, it turns out, a camel who seems to know exactly where he is going.

adventure
desert
camels
journeys

6 credits (A$6.00)

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Reviews

Dominic
The camel is the best character I have read all year and he never says a word.