Sting of the Scorpion Read Free Page B

that he would one day be accepting their hospitality, enjoying their food and sleeping in their tents.
    Ramose offered to sleep outside, but Zeyd refused. Ramose slept a dreamless sleep, more peaceful than any since he had left the Great Place.

    They spent the next two days travelling through the desert, seeing nothing but sand. Each morning the tents were taken down, the camel was loaded up and the nomads walked through the desert, herding the goats in front of them. They left behind them nothing but their footsteps and the tent stones, piled together for other nomads to use.
    Ramose sat on the sled at first, but by the second day he was able to walk for part of the day. The children took it in turns to carry Mery’s basket. Even the smallest insisted on carrying it for a few paces.
    The sand stretched out before them flat in all directions. It was hard and, as they walked, their feet made a hollow, booming sound as if they were walking across the stretched skin of a drum. The sun burned down on them and turned the yellow sand to a glaring white.
    “I can see water ahead,” said Hapu as they walked. “Look, there’s a lake!”
    Karoya laughed at him. “It’s not a lake. It’s the sun playing tricks on your eyes.”
    Ramose could see the shimmering mirage as well, a pool of reflected sky just ahead of them.
    “My people call it the devil’s mirror,” said Karoya.
    Ramose shaded his eyes to look at the mirage. They kept walking towards it, but they never got any closer. It was always just ahead of them.

    After two days of seeing nothing but flat sand stretching in every direction, two dark dots appeared in the distance.
    “Is that another mirage?” asked Hapu.
    Karoya shook her head.
    As they drew closer, Ramose could see that it was two piles of rocks. Zeyd smiled and nodded when they reached them. The women replaced rocks that the wind had blown from the piles. Then they swept away sand that had built up against them.
    “They are signposts,” said Karoya. “It means that we are heading in the right direction. The piles of stones are a gateway leading to the road ahead.”
    Hapu walked between the two piles and looked around him. There was still nothing but sand.
    “It looks like a gateway to nowhere,” he said.
    The nomads laughed at Hapu, even though they couldn’t understand what he said.

3
GATEWAY TO NOWHERE
    On the third day, the landscape changed. The sand gradually started to rise and fall. Then it piled up into dunes. The dunes grew bigger and bigger until they were towering above them on either side. The colour of the sand changed too, from yellow to pink to pale purple.
    “I didn’t realise that sand could be so many different shapes and colours,” Ramose said to Karoya as they walked.
    “I told you the desert was beautiful,” said Karoya. “You didn’t believe me.”
    “I still wouldn’t call it beautiful, but I’m starting to see it a little differently.”
    Ramose didn’t feel threatened by the desert as he had when he first left the Nile Valley. He still couldn’t imagine living in it permanently, but it didn’t hold the same fears for him as before.
    “Do you have any idea where we’re going, though?” asked Hapu, joining them as they walked.
    “We’re walking south, that’s all I know,” said Ramose, looking up at the sun.
    “Eventually we’ll have to stop going south and find the river again,” said Hapu.

    At midday, the nomads stopped for a short while to drink milk and eat bread. Then they continued their journey. Hapu was getting bored.
    “Let’s play a game,” he said enthusiastically.
    “If we stop to play, we’ll get left behind,” said Ramose.
    “I was thinking of a game we could play while we’re walking,” said Hapu. “I’ll think of something that we can all see. I’ll tell you what sound it begins with and you have to guess what it is.”
    “It’ll be a short game. All we can see is sand!”
    “Try it and see,” said Hapu. “It’ll be