Something moved. Something was there.
The great gangly bird stopped grazing and raised its head. Keen brown eyes watched patiently for a sign, a movement. The bird stood quietly in the tall grass of the wadi, a riverbed in the Hoggar, the high desert mountains of the Sahara. The ostrich was a three-year-old male, more than two and a half meters tall. A light wind rippled the grass but there was no scent.
The bird was near exhaustion. For three days it had eluded its hunters, through long awful hours of panic and flight interspersed with calm, as the hunters first found, then lost the track, then picked it up again, and the deadly game wore on. The effort was telling now. Even at rest its heart was pounding, its breath labored, its reserves of strength nearly gone.
The whole flock desperately needed rest. The little ones would falter first, then the adults. At the beginning there had been forty of them. Now only nine or ten others grazed nearby, their long necks appearing through the grass, bobbing up and down as they watched and grazed and wandered along the trickle of water that still ran down the sandy wadi in the wake of the storm. The rest had been caught or gotten separated during the chase, which had led hunter and hunted across the wild volcanic plateau that was torn with violent cliffs and veined with sharp valleys and strewn throughout with boulders. The plateau was a giant maze of natural tunnels and caves and passageways. It held a thousand hiding places to help the birds, but a thousand more traps and dead ends to help the hunters. Survival depended on taking the right turns.
Across the rocks, Moussa raised his head carefully. He wore the blue veil of a nobleman of the Ihaggaren, the master race of Tuareg who ruled the Hoggar. The blue men, the Tuareg were called, for the deep indigo dyes used in their robes and in the sheshes that covered their heads, and that often rubbed off and colored their skin. The soft cloth was wound round his head like a helmet, high and wide on top, then wrapped round and round his head and neck, covering everything except for a narrow slit like a visor, through which only his eyes could be seen. He wore his takatkat, the flowing blue summer robes of light cotton that covered everything except his hands and feet, and beneath it takirbai, broad trousers. He carried only a lance and club for weapons; a rope; a spyglass that had belonged to his father; and a guerba, a goatskin water bag, slung across his shoulder.
He maneuvered carefully downwind from the birds. He chose his steps cautiously, making his way through the boulders that lay upon the valley floor between him and the birds. It was the height of the Saharan summer, and the rocks were blazing hot, blistering the skin of anyone who touched them.
He, too, was near exhaustion. His body ached with fatigue. He had eaten no food since the previous morning, when he had permitted himself a handful of dates. His body had grown lean and hard in the desert. He was accustomed to infrequent meals, but now he wished he’d taken more. His stomach growled with neglect, and his muscles burned with the effects of extended effort. But this was his first hunt, and he pushed the discomfort from his mind.
The hunt was a timeless ritual between old adversaries, the blue men and the big birds. It had been five summers since there had been a chase with so many in the flocks. During two of the summers there had been drought and the birds had not come at all. For three summers after that there had been war in the desert, and no time for the chase. But then one afternoon they looked up from camp and saw the dark storm over distant mountains, and their blood ran fast and the Tuareg sprang to action.
Essamen! Lightning! Like magic, a great siren that beckoned man and bird alike. When the rare summer storms came, the skies grew angry and black and crackled with fire. The birds would see it and some instinct drew them together in pairs and the pairs joined with others until there were flocks and the flocks grew large, and then they would travel vast distances straight toward the fire in the sky, knowing that the lightning meant water to drink, and that water meant flowers and grasses to eat.
From other parts of the desert, the hunters would come as well, teams of them on fast, light camels who would alternate in relays as they wore their quarry down. The meat was a great delicacy, but it was the birds’ skins and feathers that were much prized. They would be traded with the caravans that came from the southlands on the way north to the sea, where it was said they were shipped to distant lands to become hats and boots. No one believed the stories, even when Moussa told them of the glorious chapeaux seen on the Champs-Élysées. What was not in doubt was that a good hunt meant great wealth for the tribe and honor to the hunters, and often laughter to those who managed to witness part of the chase. It was never certain who looked sillier, the hunters or the hunted.
Moussa found a resting place and stopped. He watched the ostriches and pondered what to do. He had become separated from the others late the previous afternoon. First his camel had died. No, that wasn’t right, he’d killed it with his empty-headedness. And then Mahdi had abandoned him, leaving him alone and on foot. Moussa flushed with embarrassment and anger when he thought of it: first his own stupidity, then his cousin’s treachery. Moussa had been riding his prized camel, Taba, with a group of ten other men. They were moving in a loosely spaced line to flush the ostriches toward another group of Tuareg who waited near Temassint. The ostriches would see them and run away, only to be turned again by the other group, the lines of hunters moving closer together as the birds ran themselves to exhaustion and could be caught.
Taba was a fawn-colored Tibesti camel, a present from the amenokal on the day Moussa had become a man and donned his veil. It was a superb animal, agile and cooperative and fast, surefooted on the rocks, and magnificent through the hunt. Together he and Taba had goaded six of the birds into a blind alley. Moussa was riding alone, consumed with excitement and the thrill of closing in on the quarry. He hadn’t called for help, hadn’t stopped to think. In his eagerness he had ridden up fast behind them, until they ran out of room. They turned around to flee, and found the tall rider,and camel blocking the way.
“Be careful,” the amenokal had warned him with typical brevity. It was Moussa’s first hunt, and his only lesson. “They kick.” Moussa knew the amenokal’s way with words, and to look for hidden meaning, to think beyond the obvious. But this time he hadn’t thought carefully enough.
Moussa had slowed and was gently moving toward the biggest bird, a giant black-and-white male that stood as tall as the camel, when he made the very mistake the amenokal had warned him about. Overeager, he got too close. The birds were tiring, but still had plenty of fire. In a panic the giant one lashed out with its powerful leg. Taba took the full force of the blow on the right foreleg. The bone snapped sharply. The camel bellowed and bucked and crashed to the ground, nearly crushing Moussa, who was just thrown free. Before he’d had a chance to get to his feet the ostriches had rushed past him, a little one in the rear running right over him in its mad flight and knocking him unceremoniously to the ground. Moussa grunted at the impact and fell hard on his back. The fall jarred him all the way through to his teeth. At length he picked himself up again, shaking his head to clear it.
Taba’s shrieks and sobs echoed off the big rocks and filled Moussa with anguish. As he brushed himself off he heard laughter. Without looking he knew who it was, and his heart sank. Mahdi had a knack for being there when Moussa did something stupid, and was never shy about rubbing it in. He had appeared just in time to see the disaster. He had come down a steep slope on one side of the rocks, too far out of the way to stop the fleeing birds, who by then were disappearing gracefully back down the wadi, bobbing and weaving, kicking up sand and splashing in the water as they went. They pranced like feather dusters on legs, stretching their stubby wings to help them in their flight. They made barely a sound as they disappeared.
Mahdi watched them go, then paused to savor Moussa’s situation before moving on. Mahdi despised his cousin, despised the way his own father, the amenokal, treated Moussa, despised the way he showered him with attention and gifts. The amenokal never treated Mahdi that way. Toward his own son the amenokal was harsh and unforgiving. Mahdi’s eyes had burned with jealousy since the day his aunt Serena had brought the soft child from France to live among them. Mahdi could beat him when they fought, for he was two years older and much larger, but he took no real pleasure in such victories. All he really wanted was for Moussa to tire of the hard life of the desert and return to France. Each passing year made that less likely, until all Mahdi could do was make each day as difficult as possible for the intruder.
“Well done, Cousin,” he said derisively from his mehari. “Another grand coup for the noble ikufar.” He used the term for foreign infidel; it was his usual insult. Moussa felt his contempt, and at that moment knew it was deserved.
“I almost had him,” he said lamely.
Mahdi whooped at that. “He almost had you, w’allahi! Brilliant trade. A mehari for a wisp of dust.” He turned to ride after the birds.
“Ekkel!” Moussa called. “Wait! I need another mehari! Leave one for me!” Mahdi was leading a dozen spare mounts. He was going to position them on the far side of the hunt, where they would be fresh and ready when needed. He could easily spare one, but had no intention of making it easy on Moussa.
“And let you kill it with more stupidity? Do I look so foolish? If you will have another, walk back to camp and let the women and children see the noble Son of the Desert on foot. It is best to get moving, Cousin. It is hard to catch enough ostriches to make up for a dead camel when one is walking.” He snickered and turned to ride off.
Moussa watched him disappear and kicked at the sand. He was angry with Mahdi, but angrier at himself. The amenokal would be disgusted. Oh yes, he would maintain an even gaze and his voice would have no sharp edges. He would not be so impolite as to directly chastise him. But Moussa would know the disappointment in his uncle’s heart and feel the failure worse in his own. In the desert, camels were life. Camels were wealth. Camels were everything. The others would talk about it, and laugh and shake their heads, and tell jokes at his expense. Except for Mahdi’s, their laughter would be good-natured, but that wouldn’t diminish his failure.
Moussa felt wretched and overwhelmed. He had donned the veil only a month before, when he turned sixteen. The veil! So long awaited, the tagelmust, so eagerly anticipated, that enchanted moment when the bare face of the boy disappeared forever behind the blue veil of the man. The cloth had come from the southlands, eight meters of it, a gift from his mother. From seventy leagues around had come the people of the Hoggar: other nobles, and vassals of the Dag Rali, the women and the children, the serfs and slaves and smiths, the marabouts and the chiefs, all there to witness the ceremony, that grand moment when their lives paused and they grew hushed, the moment when he felt at the center of the universe; and from that point on the people watching could only guess at the proud grin blossoming beneath the folds of cotton.
He stood in the sun that day and his great uncle, the holy marabout Moulay Hassan, invoked the blessings of God and with a flourish recorded his name in the register of the Kel Rela, proclaiming him a man before all the world. Before the veil he had received the takouba, the heavy killing sword that marked his rank. Swords were handed down through generations, from father to son. The best blades were enchanted, endowed with the strength of the men who owned them, possessed of the best properties of chivalry and honor and bravery that made their owners great. Stories of the battles they’d seen and the virtues they’d defended and the raids they’d repulsed were passed along with them.
As Moussa’s closest surviving male relative, the amenokal took the responsibility of finding him the blade. He had dispatched Keradji, the one-eyed inad who was the best smith of the Hoggar Mountains, to Murzuk, where a merchant had parted with the blade reluctantly, for it was hard and sharp, made of the finest gleaming steel of Seville. Keradji had fitted the blade to a hilt that was shaped like a cross. He inlaid the handle with jasper, and polished it until it was as bright as the sun itself, and it slid effortlessly into the tooled leather scabbard Moussa slung around his neck. It was a fine work. Moussa pointed out that the handle was too big for his grip, but Keradji squinted at it and then turned Moussa’s hand palm up. “You must be patient,” he said. “It is like the paw of a puppy. You’ll grow into it.” Moussa swung it for hours in practice until his muscles screamed, back and forth and over his head until he knew the sound it made as it swished through the air and could behead a willik weed at will. After the sword he had received new clothing and stone bands for both arms that would bring him strength and protect him from the swords of others. Afterward had come the finest prize of all, Taba. It was a heady time, the tides of masculine change swirling through his life, and he had reveled in it. For a month he had walked on air, practicing his swagger, strutting and standing tall and mixing with the men and their camels instead of the children and their goats. In a subtle way he thought people treated him differently. Nothing extreme, he thought, simply a new measure of deference and respect.
But that ceremony had been so much easier than this reality. He looked at the camel churning in agony on the sand, and didn’t feel like a man. He felt like a stupid boy, just pretending. The desert had shown him its reward for arrogance and inattention. Life in the Sahara was so difficult. One needed to be born to it to fully understand its ways, and even then it took great skill and cunning to survive.
Once he had been allowed to make a march of three nights with some of the men. It was near summer’s end, the air still searing during the day. Moussa had been given the responsibility for filling and carrying the water skins. The first day he loaded them on his camel and tended them carefully, making sure not a drop was spilled. That night after the last tea had been prepared, he propped the skins next to his bed on the sand, mindful to keep the tops up. In the morning he awoke and discovered to his horror that they were all empty, their water sucked through the skins into the sand. Because of him six men had gone without water for two days and nights.
The desert was full of such lessons that crushed one’s vanities. He despaired of ever achieving a mastery of it. Was he really ready to carry the weapons of nobility? Ready to assume the mantle of a lord of the Kel Rela, responsible for the lives of his vassals and slaves, responsible for their families and property, responsible for leading raids against the Tebu and the Shamba, and against caravans who dared pass through the desert without paying duty, and for trading with the masters of those caravans and for increasing the wealth of the tribe? The list of a noble’s burdens went on and on, and he felt only doubt. So much responsibility. Too much, he thought sometimes. More than a man could carry, and he wasn’t even a man.
He felt like a fraud.
Reluctantly, Moussa turned to his awful chore, to end his camel’s misery. He slipped the blade from its sheath beneath the robes of his forearm. Taba’s mouth was foaming, his eyes wild with pain. He struggled to rise, but collapsed and rolled over to one side. He gave a long slow sigh of rage and frustration. Moussa took the knife in both hands and drew a deep breath. He plunged the blade deep and cut quickly. The blood gushed hot and sticky, soaking his forearms and hands and robe. It was too late to get out of the way, so he just knelt there and let it flow and closed his eyes while the life ran out of the beast, into the sand.
It was not possible to love a camel, not in the way one might love a dog or a horse. Camels were quirky and ill-tempered and quick to spit. They could crush a man’s head with their bite, or throw up a nauseating green muck that they could aim with stunning accuracy. They cried and complained and carried on. They were awkward contraptions, not properly designed, really, for anything except desert travel. But he had come close to loving this one. Taba had dignity and a gentle nature. He had admired the camel long before it had become his own. He had helped train it, and tended its sores. He saw that it got the best pasture and that its hobbles weren’t too tight. He had checked its droppings for disease, and carried water for it when the watering hole was too deep. One day at dawn he had mounted the camel when no one was around. He rode it from one end of a clearing to the other, Taba responding instantly to the pressure of his feet. Moussa had laughed out loud when the animal produced an unexpected burst of speed, but he took care not to push it too hard. Then he’d looked up to see the amenokal watching. He slowed immediately, ashamed at having ridden the animal in such a way without permission.
“I am sorry, Abba,” he said. Abba, he called the amenokal when they were alone. Father. They were close, the chief and the boy, yet the amenokal could be stern and harsh and cold, and his words could sting like a whip. But that morning he only laughed and waved him on. “Give Taba your wings,” he said. “See how he feels in flight,” and Moussa’s eyes widened in delight. He spurred the animal on, and although the young camel had never been let go like that it ran strong and felt sure beneath him, and the wind blew through his hair and he bounced at first at the awkward gait but quickly recovered and held himself erect and took Taba faster, ever faster until they were at full attack trot, and he imagined himself at the head of a great column of warriors, his new sword lopping off the heads of the enemies of the Ihaggaren.
Yes, Taba, you were a good camel, he thought. A good camel that deserved better than to die at the hands of his incompetence. Eyes still closed, he stroked its head and whispered to it while it died. Hot tears streaked his cheeks. Even if they were hidden beneath his veil, he was glad no one else was there to watch.
When it was over he shook off his self-pity and set about salvaging what he could of the situation. Losing the camel was bad enough. He knew better than to lose the meat as well. Quickly he set about skinning and quartering it. He needed no salt. The desert air would dry the meat quickly enough. It would be tough, but there was nothing to be done about that. He found a natural shelter in the rocks where he could leave the meat and skin. After he had dragged everything to it he piled smaller rocks at the opening to keep the carrion-eaters away. Then he marked the spot with a stone cairn. He would return later with another camel to collect everything. His labors took most of the afternoon. When he had finished he didn’t rest. He was determined to redeem himself, and set off on foot.
He climbed to the top of a granite pinnacle that stood like a sentinel above the surrounding landscape. A lone cypress tree stood there. It was a massive, ancient tree that for two thousand years had been an unfailing landmark. Lightning had hit it a dozen times, leaving black scars up and down the knotted trunk. But the tree seemed stronger for it, twisted and scorched but unyielding, overlord of the land below. Its mighty branches had provided shade for a wetter world that once ran fast with chariots and cheetahs and sparkled with pools and streams that were alive with hippos and crocodiles and fish. The Roman legions of Cornelius Barbus had camped beneath it. There were still rare crocodiles and fish and lions, but most were gone now, having given way to the inexorable creeping desert.
But whatever became of the land, that tree would still be there. Moussa sat in its shade and looked out over the vast distances – the heat shimmering off the rocks, the earth before him all gold and black, stretching away to the ragged peaks of the Atakor, the highest part of the desert mountains. The Hoggar was an astonishing world whose beauty he was just beginning to appreciate. The Bled el Shuf, the Shamba called it, the Land of Thirst and Fear, but the civilized men of the Hoggar knew them to be ignorant, the Shamba, as empty-headed as they were savage, and quite incapable of comprehending such beauty. There were cones and spires and animated shapes that seemed alive, silhouettes of fantasia that fed daydreams and told stories and spawned legends. They were starkly beautiful, these mountains, each of them male or female, according to Tuareg lore, each with a name, a range of mountains that gave haven to hawks and eagles and mountain sheep, as well as to men. It was a fortress, the Hoggar, cooler and wetter than the surrounding desert, its rocks heaved into a great desert castle, a stone sanctuary in which its Tuareg inhabitants had found safety and food for nearly as long as the cypress tree had grown.
The mood of the mountains changed throughout the day, the colors rich and varied. Dawn was his favorite time, fresh and cool and full of promise. At midday in high summer the sun was master, humbling everything with its relentless fire. After the fire passed the desert seemed softer and the yellows ran to gold and at sunset the sky would flame red and orange before it faded to purple and gave way to a carpet of stars.
That afternoon the rains had washed the dust from the sky, and as the day died, it had no color but a blue so deep it was almost a night sky. The storms had spent themselves, and now there was no trace of them left in the sky, no distant clouds or even any humidity. He wondered if there would be other storms that year, or the next. Whenever it came the rain was savage and poured in torrents from the heavens. The first three years of his life in the desert it hadn’t rained at all. Even some of the permanent gueltas had dried up. In the fourth year the rain brought floods that wiped out an entire camp of Kel Ulli, leaving swollen corpses to dry in a blazing sun. He had seen their twisted bodies, the children and the goats and the men and women, lying among the flowers that sprang up from the storm. Beauty and life and death, all from a rain.
He peered through his spyglass and listened for sounds of the hunt, for the excited shouts that meant the chase was hot, for the bellows and roars of men and their camels that would reverberate through the rocks, but there was nothing. No Tuareg, no ostriches. Only a light wind, whispering from the east. He waited and watched and listened as the shadows grew longer and the afternoon became night. When it was dark he climbed back down. He made tea and then curled up in a sandy bed in the shelter of a granite overhang, drawing his cloak around him to keep out the chill night air. He was too troubled to sleep, and spent the night looking up at the heavy blanket of stars. He tried to count them but could not, and looked for the constellations his mother had taught him, and watched them turn their slow shimmering arc around him.
He remembered the awe of his first desert night, the dazzling web so clear and bright. He had never seen such a sky when he lived in Paris. The lights of the city were too bright. The lights, such lights… it was six long years since he’d last seen them. Or was it seven now, or even eight? The years ran together and time lost its urgency and sometimes he didn’t notice its passage at all. But surely it was a lifetime since Paris. He was happy in the desert yet sometimes longed to be back in the city, to see what it was like now. His memories of it were fond, the bad parts seeming not so bad, the good parts seeming better than they were. But the more time passed, the harder it became to remember at all. No matter how he tried to hold on, the treasures of his past no longer burned so brightly in his memory. The details dimmed and the people grew fuzzy, and he couldn’t remember what some of them looked like. He closed his eyes and tried to bring them up, Paul and Gascon and Aunt Elisabeth, but sometimes he couldn’t do it. It worried him terribly when it happened. It seemed as if he didn’t care. He did care, he told himself. He didn’t want to be unfaithful. He didn’t want to lose his other life completely. He asked the marabout for paper and drew pictures of his father with scraps of charcoal. The pictures were crude, but they helped him remember. He promised himself a thousand times that no matter what happened to the other faces and places in his mind, he would never let himself forget his father’s face. He folded the papers carefully and put them in a leather pouch that hung from his neck, and at night by the fire took them out to look. After he had folded and unfolded them many times the pictures would smear, and he would draw new ones.
One winter he had spotted a lone viper in the sandy wastes near Amguid, and he pointed at it excitedly to Lufti, his slave, and said, “Look, there’s a—” And he realized he couldn’t remember the word for it in French, and didn’t know the Tamashek word for it, and it terrified him. All the rest of that winter he silently reminded himself of the French word for everything he saw.
His thoughts came in both languages, but more and more they came in Tamashek. He fought the shift but couldn’t stop its slow progression. There was no one with whom to speak French except his mother, and as he grew older and spent more time traveling through the desert camps, he saw her rarely. He asked whether anyone wanted to learn the language, but none of his friends had any use for a barbarian tongue. So he contented himself with teaching Lufti, who paid rapt attention to his master’s foreign babble but learned nothing at all.
He missed Paul, terribly at first, so much it burned, yet time had dimmed those fires as well. He wondered whether his cousin still thought of him, on those nights when he couldn’t sleep. Was he looking at that star this very instant? Had he felt that wind on his face? He’d written him a score of letters, letters he gave to the caravan masters to mail when they arrived at the coast. But no letters ever came back. Maybe Paul had died in the war. Maybe the Prussians had burned the château and everyone in it. He asked for news of France from the same caravan masters. They knew of nothing save the conditions of their routes and the price of slaves in Tangier and word of plague in Hausaland to the south, of new taxes imposed by the bey of Constantine and the revolt in Tripolitania. Some of them could speak six languages, and their knowledge spanned thousands of leagues. But they knew little of France and her wars, and cared less.
And so over time a whole world disappeared.
He talked to his mother about it sometimes, but her eyes misted and her voice broke. He knew that memories were difficult for her, and so the silences about those times grew between them, and they dwelled in the present. Now it was only at night, when he was alone like this, that his mind wandered back to Paris – to brief flashes of the colors and fine carriages, to the white snows and fall leaves of the Bois de Boulogne; and the bitter winter nights when his father sat in his study before a roaring fire, reading a book or writing a letter, or telling a story to the two boys who sat with him; to afternoons spent ice-skating, and to the lazy Seine that carried more water in an hour than his new world saw in a year. It was another life, most of it hard to believe now. Sometimes, as he told new friends about the old world, he wondered which parts he really remembered and which parts he only imagined.
It was an awkward time, when nothing was settled in his life. He was stuck between things: neither French nor Tuareg, man nor boy. He had left France too young to comprehend what had happened there, and he still didn’t understand this desert. “You must be patient,” the amenokal told him. “You are in such a hurry for your life, for understanding. You are Moussa, and for the moment that is enough.”
He slept fitfully at last. The hours passed and the first gray light of dawn streaked the horizon. He shook off the night chill and made a fire for tea, and as he squatted before the flames his mind returned to the hunt. He would continue it alone.
At dawn he was moving again, trotting quickly through the rocky terrain, sometimes following the wadis, other times jumping from rock to rock, all his senses alert. He knew the most likely places to look, places that after the rains had the thickest growth and offered the best shelter for the birds. He alternately ran and walked and ran for hours on end. His feet shuffled softly atop the sand, the rhythm of his motion fluid and smooth as he looked for signs of the flock. At midmorning he drew up sharply. He saw their tracks in some hard-pack sand. He couldn’t yet read the signs well enough to know how many there were, or how fast they were moving, or even how fresh the tracks were. Lufti could have told him all that, and probably even what sex and age the individual birds were, but Lufti had stayed in camp, burning with fever.
He had been at it several hours when he spotted the big male, and behind it the others. He tried to contain his excitement, but as he watched the birds he exulted: This is my flock. It will make up for Taba. He set his rope and guerba on a rock and scouted the area. Carefully he climbed up and around, well out of sight of the birds. As he realized where they were his hopes soared. They were grazing at the narrow end of a glen with steep walls. At the far end the water trickled down from the plateau above, splashing into a small pool. He circled all the way around to be sure. The birds had no way out! Of course, he had to get them to run the right way, and then came the hard part, preventing their escape once they realized their predicament. He had no desire to see what a blow from the big animal would do to his own leg.
He began collecting bits of scrub and brush. There was a surprising amount of growth scattered among the rocks, and before long he had a pile assembled. He used stronger branches to make a framework along the bottom, and filled in the gaps with brush. He used his rope to loosely tie the brush together, until he had a long light pile of it, a little taller than he was and about three meters in length. If he could drag it quickly enough, he could block the entrance to the defile. He hoped the birds were too stupid to realize how easy it would be to get back past it, that to them it would simply look like an impassable wall. Of course he’d be standing there shrieking like ten djenoums to discourage their investigations. After that – well, after that he didn’t know exactly what he’d do. He’d never hunted ostriches.
When he finished he tugged on the end of the rope to test it. Some of the brush on top bunched up against the rope. Everything leaned to one side, and collapsed to the ground. Patiently he stacked it again, and re-routed his rope. It was a fragile mess, but there was no time to make it stronger.
Stealthily, he moved his little weed fence, crouching in front as he pulled it along toward the opening. He was downwind of the ostriches, who had shown no sign of fright. He could see their heads buried in their work as they pulled at the tender new shoots. When he had drawn as close as he dared, he jumped up suddenly, waving his hands and running straight at the small flock. The heads of the birds sprang up from grazing as the ostriches sensed his presence. As one they turned and shot down the wadi. Moussa whooped and shouted, even though they were deaf. As soon as they had passed, the opening that he intended to block, he stopped and raced back to his pile. Furiously he dragged it along, desperate to beat the birds, who would quickly reach the other end of the trap, at which point they would turn once again and race through the glen at full speed in his direction.
The going was tough. Twice a part of the contraption snagged on rocks, but he coaxed and pulled and prodded until he had it to the opening. He dropped his rope and ran to the rear, to pull it around to close the trap, when he heard the birds coming, all nine of them, the heaviest more than a hundred and fifty kilos, the lightest just a baby but still weighing more than Moussa did, and his heart caught in his throat. They ran nearly sixty kilometers an hour, lifting their legs delicately as if striding on air. The big male was in front, two other smaller males just behind, the females and yearlings in the rear. Desperately, Moussa pulled on the weed blockade, and as it closed the gap his heart sank. It was too short to completely block the opening. He could do no more with it, so he turned to face the oncoming horde. He stood in front of the opening, raising his arms high and wide to make himself as fearsome and large and terrible as he could, then waving his arms as he jumped up and down, choking back his panic as he watched the wings and necks and feathers and feet bearing down madly upon him. He started screaming at them, and at the last second, as he was getting ready to jump for his life, the lead bird turned and headed back the other way.
Moussa’s heart was pounding, his throat dry. In the distance he heard a shout. He couldn’t tell who it was, but he knew help was near. All of the birds turned with the big male except for one of the other males; it had spotted the opening and was determined to blow right past him. On and on it came, bounding closer with each step. Its mouth opened and it hissed at him. Abruptly it stopped, as if deciding what to do. For just an instant it hesitated, and then started forward again. Impulsively, Moussa jumped and reached out and caught hold of it by the base of the neck. He didn’t have any idea what he was doing, and neither did the bird, which madly flapped its wings. Powerful legs swept him off his feet, and he half-rode, half-dragged alongside, trying to keep his balance, trying to pull himself up, to get on top, too startled to do the smart thing and just let go. The ride was punishing, the bird panicky, Moussa’s head bouncing up and down with each step. One of the bird’s feet caught on his robe, and bird and boy went down. Moussa hung on for dear life, not wanting it to get back up again.
Behind him he heard howls of laughter coming from the other Tuareg, who had drawn up on their meharis behind his brush barrier and were watching his hunting technique with delight and disbelief. With a mighty effort the bird struggled to stand up again. It was too strong for Moussa to hold down, and it dragged him up with it. Moussa was on his knees when the bird broke free, and he fell flat on his face as the ostrich dashed madly away.
Three of the Tuareg on their meharis moved quickly into position in front of the brush, while the others dashed past Moussa toward the birds at the other end of the defile. Moussa recognized Taher, and behind him Zatab, their clubs at the ready. Even with veils, the Tuareg were easily distinguishable by the way they rode their meharis, by the way they walked, by the way they wore their robes and their arms, by their mannerisms, by the way they wound their veils, by a thousand different things. One didn’t need to see a face to know someone.
“These are my birds, Taher!” Moussa cried. “My catch!” He didn’t want the others to steal his victory.
Taher drew his mount alongside Moussa. His eyes were alive with merriment. “Eoualla, Moussa, of course the catch is yours. As Ahl-et-Trab is my witness I would not rob you of your prize. But they haven’t exactly been caught yet. I mean, they don’t look caught, anyway, not to me. Do you wish help finishing the job, or do you intend to ride each of them that way until they drop dead?”
Zatab laughed. “No, he was trying to scare them to death with his shouting.”
“Shouting? Was that shouting? I thought it was French poetry,” Taher replied. Taher was renowned as a master poet of the Hoggar Tuareg. “And that perhaps Moussa was going to lull them to sleep with it. Excellent idea, but more likely they’d die from it.”
“You are right, Taher, his words are better than poison. Strong poison. Such a blessing to die quickly and not have to suffer more French poetry.”
“Tell us your poem again, Moussa,” Taher pleaded. “Please. The one where your arms flap like palms and your mouth runs like loose bowels.” He imitated Moussa’s whoops, waving his arms up and down, and laughed so hard he nearly fell off his camel.
Moussa took their jokes in good spirit, ashamed that he had doubted them. Had Mahdi been with them the outcome might have been different, but Mahdi must have joined up with the other group of hunters after he left. “Eoualla, Taher. I thank you for your help. So much so that I will keep the rest of my poems to myself until we get back to camp.”
At that the meharis were off, and within three hours there were piles of skins and meat and precious feathers ready to be transported back to camp. It was a rich haul, and Moussa was feeling much better now about his failure with the camel. He had redeemed himself.
There was one escapee, a baby that Moussa cornered and couldn’t bring himself to kill. He was ready to club it when he let himself look into its big liquid velvet eyes. It looked so forlorn and innocent that he lowered his club without swinging, and after much posturing and strutting and chasing and cajoling managed to get a rope around the little bird’s neck. After that it was a matter of fending off the new jokes as the others teased him. The amadan, they called him, the animal keeper; and they all knew it was his great weakness. The Tuareg loved their dogs, but Moussa’s love for animals went far beyond that. He was even known to love his goats, when he was young enough to be assigned to tend them. No one knew anyone but Moussa who loved goats, because goats were not lovable. “He must love them in every way to love them at all,” one of them had joked, but Moussa didn’t understand the laughter and didn’t care.
And so that day as the caravan left the little glen and began its way back to the Tuareg camp, there were eight weary men; seventeen camels laden with skins and feathers and meat; and in the rear, one prancing baby ostrich led by a rope tied round its neck.
Hot and tired after the hunt, Moussa broke off from the others on the way back to camp to visit his guelta. It was his favorite place in the Hoggar, a deep pool nestled in a secret spot among the rocks. Taher promised not to let any harm come to the little ostrich, and took the lead rope from him. Moussa led his borrowed mehari up through the rugged terrain until it could go no farther. He hobbled it and then climbed the rest of the way on foot, following a path that was invisible to anyone who didn’t know it was there. Suddenly he was upon it, a deep sheet of blue shimmering in the sun. Winter or summer, the guelta never went away, even in a drought. It was fed by an underground spring that sent a constant lazy stream of bubbles to the surface. Clumps of grass clung to the rocks around the pool, out of the reach of the animals. Massive rocks rose above the pool on two sides. One of them formed a natural cave over the water, while on the other side a ledge ran down to the water at a steep angle. The rest of the pool was surrounded by a sandy bank that often bore the footprints of animals that came to drink at dawn or dusk, the wild Barbary sheep or the small herds of goats with their shepherds. A lone oleander tree grew in a pocket of rich volcanic soil, its fiery rose-colored blossoms as sweet smelling as they were poisonous. There were deep shadows around the guelta where Moussa could escape the oppressive heat, or rock ledges where he could sit on cold winter mornings and bask in the warmth of the sun. The guelta was completely sheltered from the wind by the rocks, and the silence that could be found there was as perfect as the deep blue sky.
No one else ever came to swim with him. They were superstitious about spirits that lived in the water, but Moussa believed they were afraid of drowning. They watched in fear and awe when he swam, certain when he disappeared under the water that he’d never surface again, or that if he did it would be with a djenoum riding on his back.
He climbed to the top of the rock overhang and stripped off his clothes, hesitating for a moment when it came to his veil. He hadn’t been swimming since the ceremony, and hadn’t taken the veil off at all, not even to sleep or eat. A Targui wore it everywhere, at all times. But he couldn’t swim with it on, and besides, there was no one to see him. He dropped it in a heap with his robe and pants. He dove into the pool, the icy water shocking his system. The pool was deep and crystal clear. He stayed under until his lungs were near bursting. He took a deep breath and then went under again, exhilarating in the cold, his arms pulling against the water, muscles rippling as he stroked back and forth beneath the surface, sweeping gracefully from one side to the other. Then he took more air and went straight down. He didn’t know how deep the pool was. He had never found the bottom. He played a game with himself when he came here, going deeper and deeper each time until his ears screamed and his lungs ached and he had to turn back. Someday he would touch it.
When he tired he floated on his back, closing his eyes and letting the sun warm his front while his backside stayed cold. The water grew calm, and he floated free with his arms outstretched, savoring every moment.
After a time he grew cold and decided to get out. Just then he was shocked by a splash, a deep kerplunk at the far end of the pool. Abruptly he opened his eyes and dropped his feet, treading water. Gentle waves rippled the pool. Someone had jumped in and was still below. A long minute passed. Afraid whoever it was had fallen in and might be drowning, Moussa went under to look. At first there was nothing, but then he saw a blur. He came closer until he could make out another swimmer, exploring the rocks. Moussa tugged on the person’s clothing. The swimmer turned to face him, and with a shock he realized who it was.
Daia!
She smiled, and said something that came out as a burst of bubbles. She pointed down at something in the rocks, but Moussa was too startled and embarrassed to see what it was. All he could think of was his nakedness. He turned and retreated quickly to the other side of the pool, where he came up gasping. An instant later she broke the surface just next to him. She shook her head, the water spraying off her hair, which she wore in long braids. She smiled, her teeth perfect and white, her eyes gleaming. She seemed totally at ease in the water.
Daia was fifteen or sixteen, he didn’t know for sure. She was of the noble Kel Rela clan like Moussa, but lived with a different drum group than he, so he saw her only rarely. She had been orphaned when just a child, her father the victim of a Shamba raid, her mother taken by fever. She was wild and full of life and energy. She could ride a camel better than a man and run faster than a boy. Other than that he knew little about her.
“Moussa!” she said, laughing. “Why did you swim away? There are fish there! I saw them!” She didn’t seem to notice his embarrassment. Moussa sank as deeply as he could into the water, and turned his face away from her, showing as little of himself as he could.
“Of course there are fish,” he snapped. “The pool is full of them. But you should go away. I am not dressed properly.”
“Properly?” she laughed. “You are not dressed at all!” Then she disappeared under the water again. Moussa looked up at the rock overhang, wondering how quickly he could get to his clothes. Fool! Why couldn’t I have gone swimming with at least my pants on? he thought, but he never had. He couldn’t get out, and he couldn’t swim with her. He paddled water and tried to stay at one end, turned away from her. A chill ran through him when he realized he’d been floating on his back, exposed to the world. He wondered if she’d been watching him before she jumped in. Of course she had, but for how long?
She swam about for nearly half an hour, by which time Moussa was so cold he could barely move. He swam to stay warm, but it made little difference. He said nothing to give away his discomfort, determined not to show any sign of weakness, convinced that he could stand the cold longer than she could. In the meantime he tried to keep his distance. She was completely carefree and at ease, moving all over the pool, laughing in delight as she explored. Several times she disappeared underwater, and he saw the ripples on the surface as she moved in his direction. Once she brushed against his legs as she passed underwater. He felt an odd thrill from her touch. She was all the way back on the other side before she surfaced. She must do this often, he thought. I’m surprised I haven’t seen her here before. With a start he realized he was staring at her, and that she was staring back. He disappeared beneath the surface.
Finally, when it seemed he could stand the cold no longer, she got out. He sighed in relief; she’d be going at last. But to his consternation she lay down on a rock by the water where the sun was hot and she could warm herself. As she got out he noticed her body beneath the thin cotton shift she was wearing. She had a very slight build. The wet material clung to her. He saw the line of her small breasts, and the outline of her nipples, and he felt an odd stirring in his loins, a tingling that was confusing but felt warm and wonderful and quivered all the way up to the hair on his neck and into his head, a warm feeling mixed with the cold, and he couldn’t take his eyes off her, yet it made him all the more ashamed of his situation. He didn’t know what to do. He was shivering, the skin on his hands shriveled. She closed her eyes. Moussa treaded water, waiting.
When he could stand the cold no longer and her eyes had been closed for a long while he quietly slipped out of the water. He started up the rocks toward his clothes. He heard a giggle. Her head was still resting on the rock, but her eyes were wide open and she was watching him, a smile on her face. Anyone else would have looked away, to give him his privacy, but Daia was full of mischief and just stared. Moussa looked down at himself. The cold had made his penis shrivel almost as thoroughly as his pride. It had shrunk as if trying to climb back inside his body. What remained of it looked about the size of a pea pod. The only blessing was that from where she was he guessed it would be just about invisible.
“Turn around!” His voice squeaked from the cold. Another little humiliation. He hoped his voice would change soon. He knew it didn’t sound much like thunder.
She said nothing, and made no move to turn her head. The smile stayed. She was enjoying herself, he realized angrily. And besides that she was warm.
He was paralyzed with indecision. He needed to use his hands to get up the ledge. He couldn’t do that without completely exposing himself to her, unless he went backward, and he couldn’t go backward up the ledge without looking like a complete idiot. He certainly wasn’t getting back in the water. He didn’t know what to cover, what to do. One hand went automatically to his groin, while the other went to his face. He stood for a moment that way and she giggled again. After another moment of agonized indecision he gave up trying. He dropped his hands and scampered up the rocks. As he disappeared from her view he drew up sharply, horrified. His sword was there, right where he’d left it. His dagger and sandals were there. His guerba still hung from the branch of a bush.
But his clothes were gone.
He groaned.
“Daia!” he called over the rocks. “What have you done with my things?”
He heard her laugh. He waited for her to say something, but there was only silence.
“Daia!” he shouted again. His voice echoed sharply over the rocks.
“The djenoum must have taken them!” she called back. “You have made them angry, swimming naked in their pool!”
“Stop it! Stop playing games! Where are my clothes?”
Silence.
He stomped around, looking in crevices and between rocks, hoping to spot the pile. He stubbed his toe and cried out in pain. He sat down to rub it. The gravity of his situation began to dawn on him. Would he have to walk all the way back to camp naked, like one of the children? It was too appalling, too horrible to consider. He’d kill himself before he’d do that. No, he would take his sword and wait until a caravan appeared, and then at night—
W’allahi! By God!
“Daia! This isn’t funny!”
He suffered more silence. He crawled to the edge and peered down and saw her still lying there. She didn’t move. He watched her. He could see her breathing. Again he noticed her figure beneath her shift, this time the curve of her legs, the way her hips were beginning to fill out. He wondered if he’d go to hell for looking. The goat girl was becoming a woman. She was very pretty. He felt the stirring again. He forced himself to turn away and sat cross-legged on the rocks, wondering what to do. The sun was warm, blessedly warm, but he was still cold to his core and his teeth were chattering.
A few moments later he sensed rather than heard something behind him. He looked over his shoulder. Daia had crept silently up the rocks and was standing behind him. She was smiling broadly. In her outstretched hands she held his clothing. “I found them below,” she said innocently. “The djenoum must have dropped them when they saw me coming.”
“Very funny,” Moussa snapped. He kept his back to her and drew his knees up to his chest to cover himself better, and looked away. “Just put them there and leave me alone.”
“You must come get them,” she teased.
“Never!”
“All right,” she said lightly, shrugging. “I’ll just take them with me back to your camp. I’ll tell them I found them—”
“No!” In a flash Moussa was up, reaching for them, his modesty forgotten.
She pulled her hand back so that the clothes were behind her, and he had to stop short. She looked him up and down, her eyes wide with fascination. He felt her eyes, looking into his face, and then down – there! Mortified, he realized he was getting the feeling again. As much as he willed it not to happen, his little penis was shaking off the cold, and stirring to life. He dropped his hands to cover himself, but not before she’d noticed.
“You should be ashamed,” Moussa told her sharply.
“For what? I kept my clothes on!” Her eyes lit with a wicked smile. Then without a word she dropped his clothes and turned and ran back down the rocks. He was struggling into his pants as he listened to the sound of her fading footsteps. By the time he had the robe over his head and was working on his veil, she was long gone.
If Moussa was mildly upset about his clothes, his return to camp crushed him. His swim had cost him more than his modesty. In his absence he had missed a djemaa.
His slave, Lufti, had been anxiously waiting for him at the bottom of the wadi that led to the camp. Lufti was ill, his eyes rheumy and red rimmed. He wore his veil low, exposing a broad nose that glistened with beads of sweat from his fever. He was chilled and even in the heat he kept an extra robe drawn around his shoulders. His eyes brightened when he saw Moussa. Even though his news was urgent, the slave was first polite, inquiring after his master’s afternoon.
“Sire, felicitations on the hunt. It is said you captured many ostriches using only poetry!”
“Master Taher said that?”
“Yaya, sire. It is all over the camp. No one has heard the like of it. And your swim, it was enjoyable?”
“It was memorable.”
Lufti took the camel’s lead. “But sire! Where is your camel? Why do you ride Master Taher’s mehari?”
Moussa shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about it.
“Master, you must hurry,” Lufti told him, almost as an afterthought. “There was a council. A big one. All the nobles were there. The lord amenokal, he was looking for you! I think you have missed it, sire. The others have been leaving. You should go now, quick-quick!”
“A djemaa? Without notice?”
“There was no time.”
Lufti led the camel away to be hobbled for the night, while Moussa hurried toward the amenokal’s tent. The camp was alive with preparations for the coming night. Young boys were returning from the day’s pastures with their goats, while others carried loads of brush for the fires. Naked children played tag before the great rocks against which the camp was nestled. Dogs barked and slaves tended to milking the goats and the cooking. The red roofs of the tents glowed rich in the fading light.
The amenokal’s tent was larger than the others, pitched on a high spot from which it overlooked the rest of the camp. Its roof was made from the skins of Barbary sheep. There were no sides to the tent, only grass mats, which could be rolled up to control the winds and the sand. A fire blazed to one side, where the carcasses of two goats had been roasted in the coals and then picked clean. Moussa’s heart sank. The feast was over. And so too was the djemaa. It would have been the first council he could have attended as a man. As a boy he had been welcome to listen, but could say nothing and had to make tea for the others. Now that he was a man, it would be Moussa’s privilege to participate if he chose.
And he had missed it for a swimming hole.
He recognized various drum chiefs of the minor tribes, who were now streaming out of camp. It had been an important gathering, with all the major families and tribes of the Hoggar represented. As he entered the amenokal’s tent he saw that only the amenokal and Mahdi remained.
The amenokal was suffering from the same fever that had stricken Lufti. Normally a hardy man, he had been bedridden for days. He was still terribly weak, racked by coughing spells, and was propped against a tent pole for support. “Ah, Moussa, you have returned,” he said.
“You enjoyed your afternoon leisure?” Mahdi asked, delighted to embarrass Moussa in front of the amenokal. “There was nothing urgent here for your attention. Simply a matter of war.”
“What has happened, Lord?” Moussa asked, ignoring his cousin’s barb.
“The Kel Ajjer are up to their old treachery,” the amenokal said. “We have learned they are massing for an attack near Ademer. All the tribes are agreed. We will storm the Ajjer before they can raise their hand against us. All the nobles are departing. Every available vassal of the Kel Ulli will be armed as well.”
The Kel Ajjer Tuareg lived to the east, near the plateau of the Tassili, along one of the great trade routes between Tripolitania and the southlands. The war had started over the defense of the rights of a small tribe of Tuareg, and had raged for three years in a series of skirmishes and all-out battles.
“Will the Turks help them again with troops?” Moussa asked. The previous year the Turkish bey of Murzuk had provided arms and Arab troops to the Ajjer Tuareg in exchange for the establishment of a garrison in the oasis of Ghat. The Turks, seeking to extend their influence in the region, had nearly tipped the balance against the Hoggar Tuareg in a massive battle.
“I think they want no part of this war,” the amenokal replied. “I sent an emissary to the bey. He says he has no wish to invest further in our quarrel. I believe his intention is to weaken the Ajjer now as we ourselves were weakened before. In this way he hopes to keep all the people of the veil too weak to challenge his influence. But his motive does not matter. Our purpose is served.”
“So the Ajjer are abandoned by the Turks to our blades,” Mahdi said.
“Do not discount more treachery,” Moussa said. “I do not trust the Turks. While we tend to the Ajjer in Ademer we should place a reserve force outside Ghat. In case the bey forgets himself.”
The amenokal smiled. The boy had learned much. “It is a pity you missed the djemaa. Your counsel might have added to our deliberations. That order has already been given.”
“Had I known of the djemaa I never would have missed it, Lord.”
“Had you not been consorting with your fish like a foreigner you would have known,” Mahdi said. Moussa flushed crimson, thankful his veil hid it, but the amenokal ignored his son’s taunt.
“You have not told Moussa of his duty here, Lord,” Mahdi said. Moussa stiffened. He could feel the smirk in his cousin’s words.
“The tobol of the Ihaggaren will ride with Ahitagel. He has already departed with a force of nobles, and leads in my name.” The tobol was the war drum, symbol of the amenokal’s authority. Ahitagel, the cousin of Serena and El Hadj Akhmed, was the heir apparent. With the amenokal too ill to lead such a force, he was the logical replacement.
Moussa’s heart leapt. “I will leave immediately and join Ahitagel, Lord,” he said.
The amenokal shook his head. “You are to remain here, Moussa, with ten Kel Ulli.” The Kel Ulli, the people of the goats, were vassals of the Kel Rela. They fought only rarely, carrying weapons with special permission and always under the command of a noble.
Moussa was horrified to be left behind. “But Lord, it is my duty to—” he began.
“It is your duty to do as I wish,” the amenokal rasped curtly. He doubled over in a spasm of coughing. It was a moment before he could continue. “The Kel Ajjer are not the only predators in the desert. I cannot leave the defense of our camps to the women and children and one sick man,” he said, referring to himself. “You will remain here, and mind our backs. You will command the Kel Ulli, of course, after they arrive. This is your duty, Moussa, and it has great importance.”
“Yes, Lord,” Moussa said, bitterly disappointed. Of course, someone had to stay. But it was a humiliation to be the one called. It was not duty as war was duty, to watch over the goats and the children and the vassal camps and slaves. It was second best. He wondered if Abba did it because the amenokal didn’t believe he was ready. For three years he had watched as others carried the fight, blooded in battle and returning as heroes. There were many who did not return, but it seemed not to matter. Poems were written about the warriors, both the living and the dead. Songs were composed. Swords were celebrated and legends grew.
But he would be left out of it, his own legend seeming forever stillborn. Already he could feel the blistering ridicule of Mahdi. “So, the noble ikufar will mind the babies and the camel shit,” he laughed scornfully as they left the tent. Moussa tried to ignore him. That night after the nobles had left for war he checked the camp and then wandered out to brood in the moonlight.
They swam in slow circles just beneath the surface, passing ever closer to each other with every turn. Her image was blurred, mysterious, and beautiful, the details becoming clearer each time. He could see only that now she wore no clothes, that incredibly, she had come nude into the pool, to join him there. He looked at her, trying to make out the secret places of her body, but the water and the darkness swirled around her, leaving only a graceful mystery that made his blood rush. She beckoned him to follow. He tried to catch up, but each time as he drew near she pulled away from him, swimming faster than he, looking over her shoulder, waving and smiling. She swam so effortlessly, so free. She seemed never to have to draw a breath. He followed her until he could stand it no more. He came to the surface, gasping for air. The moonlight was bright on his face, bright like the daytime, the water shimmering in silver pearls around him. The sand around the pool was deserted, the rocks barren. He knew they were alone.
With a thrill he realized that she knew it too.
He took a deeper breath this time and disappeared again, blinking as he looked about for the soft light of her passage. This time he felt rather than saw her, as she came from below and behind him and reached up to him. Her touch sent a shock through his body. He turned to her and she drew up from below, her fingers delicate and curious and slow. He felt her on his ankles, then his calves. She caressed the hollow behind his knees, and then his thighs, and he closed his eyes and floated with it all, luxuriating in the sensation of her skin like silk against him, her warmth flowing around him in the gentle current. Every hair, every pore of his body felt wild and fired by her presence. She touched him on his hips and ran her fingers lightly up his sides. She drew level with him. Aroused and hard, he pulled her close, feeling her nakedness against him, their bodies quivering. He had never felt anything so soft and smooth as her skin beneath his touch. He ran his hands down her back, using just the tips of his fingers, softly, slowly, both of them lost to the feeling, floating in the water, entranced, the curves of her hips and her breasts pressing against him until without knowing what to do or what he would find he brought himself to her and they clung to each other, and there was a frenzy between them, a frenzy of bubbles and heat and passion as they joined together, and together they rose for breath and burst through the surface and cried in wonder and she shouted his name and he felt himself letting go, felt the fire leaving his loins…
Confused, excited, Moussa awoke in a sweat. He was breathing heavily, still lost in some delicious place that was like a warm and wonderful bath. Soft night sounds flitted into his consciousness. He heard the wind rippling the roof of his tent. Low voices murmured from near the fire. His mind rose slowly from the mists of the dream.
Vaguely he realized he had an erection, stiff and throbbing and warm. He touched it. His robe there was warm and wet and sticky. The touch made him shudder again, the pleasure shooting all the way through him like a bolt of lightning, making him tense and then relax as the feeling washed over him and he came again. He tingled all over.
His head swam in the wonder of it. This had never happened to him before. He still didn’t know where he was, or where she was. Was it real? Had she been there? He knew she had not, but let himself deny it for long pleasurable moments. He tried to hold it all in his mind, to recover it all: the feeling, the dream, Daia. But try as he might he could not hold it. He closed his eyes and sought her under the water, but could not see her. He drew the folds of his robe close, to touch her once more, but could not feel her. The world intruded on his private place. She slipped slowly from him, disappearing beneath the surface of his mind, until she was gone, and he slept once more.