The young man’s name was Faithful. He was twenty years old and quite a bit taller than Chris. He had worked in a workshop, and his palms were thick with calluses. He too came from the City of Destruction, though he had left before Chris. When he heard about the cracks, his expression grew serious.
“I’ve sent two letters home,” Chris said. “I don’t know whether they’ve read them.”
Faithful said that Palace Beautiful and the Interpreter knew people who carried letters. They could keep asking for news. That did not ease Chris’s worry at once, but it gave him something they could do.
As they walked, Faithful told Chris about people he had met. Someone called Shame had followed him, saying that people would laugh at sincere prayer, that admitting a mistake was embarrassing, and that learning from poor people was beneath him. “He spoke quietly,” Faithful said, “but he kept finding his way into my ears.”
“How did you get him to leave?”
“I noticed that he never asked whether something was right. He only asked how people would laugh at me. So I told him there are things we must say even when nobody claps.”
Chris thought of the leaves beside the courtyard wall and the coins in his father’s hands. He wished he could always be as steady as Faithful. But Faithful said that he too grew impatient, and sometimes became so eager to win an argument that he forgot what he had meant to do.
The road ahead climbed uphill. Suddenly, Chris felt like a race. Whoever reached that tree first would win, he said. Faithful had barely begun asking him to slow down when Chris ran off. His sturdy protective shoes made him feel that he really was more capable now.
Near the tree, he turned to look at Faithful, missed a stone, and fell hard. Faithful hurried over, checked his injuries first, and then retrieved the waterskin that had rolled away. Chris’s face burned hotter than his knees.
“Just now, I thought I wouldn’t make that sort of mistake again.”
“Your knees seem to disagree,” Faithful said, handing him a cloth.
Chris could not help laughing. When he had finished, he brushed the small stones away from his shoe and carefully steadied himself. Faithful did not use the moment to give a long lecture. They simply sat together under the tree until Chris’s knees hurt less.
While they rested, Chris broke his remaining piece of cake in half and noticed that Faithful had been carrying food for two all along. “How did you know you would meet me?” he asked.
“I didn’t know who I would meet. If I keep a little extra, someone can always use it.”
Chris slowly finished his half and remembered that. Next time he packed food, he thought, he could keep a little extra too. When they set off again, neither mentioned the race. But the road felt more comfortable than before.