She’s been walking for a long time. How long? Hours probably, without knowing where she’s going, simply in the opposite direction of her shadow, toward the other end of the horizon. Out there, the tall red mountains seem to be hanging in the sky, there are villages, a river maybe, lakes of sky-colored water. Then suddenly, without her understanding where he’s come from, the Hartani is there, standing in front of her. He isn’t moving, dressed as he is every day in his homespun robe, his head wrapped in a piece of white cloth. His face is black, but his smile lights it up when Lalla walks up to him.
“Oh, Hartani! Hartani!”
Lalla presses herself against him; she recognizes the smell of his sweat and his dusty clothes. He too has brought a little bread and some dates in a damp rag tied to his belt.
Lalla opens her bundle and shares a little bread with him. They eat quickly, without sitting down, because they’ve been hungry for a long time. The young shepherd glances around. He is studying the landscape carefully, and he resembles a bird of prey with unblinking eyes. He motions to a point, far away, out on the horizon over by the red mountains. He puts the palm of his hand under his lips: there is water out there.
They start walking again. The Hartani is out front, jumping lightly over the rocks. Lalla tries to place her feet in his steps. The boy’s frail, light-footed silhouette is forever out in front of her, he seems to be dancing over the white stones; she watches it like a flame, like a reflection, and her feet seem to move all by themselves, in rhythm with the Hartani.
The sun is beating down hard now, it weighs on Lalla’s head and shoulders, it aches inside her body. It’s as if the light that entered her in the morning was beginning to burn, to well up, and she can feel long painful waves moving up her arms and legs, becoming lodged in the cavity of her skull. The burn of the light is dry and dusty. There is not a drop of sweat on Lalla’s body, and her blue dress rubs against her belly and thighs, crackling with static electricity. The tears in her eyes have dried; crusts of salt have made sharp little crystals like grains of sand in the corners of her eyelids. Her mouth is dry and hard. She runs the ends of her fingers over her lips and thinks that her mouth has become like that of a camel, and she’ll soon be able to eat cactuses and thistles without feeling anything.
As for the Hartani, he’s still springing from rock to rock without looking back. His nimble white silhouette is farther and farther away; it’s like an animal fleeing, not stopping, not looking back. Lalla would like to catch up with him, but she hasn’t enough strength left. She staggers haphazardly over the chaos of stones, eyes trained straight ahead. Her wounded feet are bleeding, and in falling down several times, she’s skinned her knees. But she can hardly feel the pain at all. All she can feel is the withering reverberation of the light everywhere. It’s as if there were a bunch of animals jumping all about her on the rocks, wild dogs, horses, rats, goats making tremendous leaps… There are also large white birds, ibises, secretary birds, storks, beating their long fiery wings, as if they were trying to take flight, and they begin an interminable dance. Lalla can feel the breeze from their wings in her hair; she can hear the rustling of their quill feathers in the thick air. So then she turns her head, looks back to see all of those birds, all of those animals, even the lions she glimpsed out of the corner of her eye. But when she looks at them, they instantly melt away, disappear like mirages, and recompose behind her.
The Hartani is barely visible. His light silhouette is dancing over the white stones, like a shadow detached from the earth. Lalla isn’t trying to follow in his steps now, she can’t even see the immobile red mass of the mountain in the sky at the other end of the plain any longer. Maybe she’s not moving forward anymore? Her bare feet stub up against the rocks, bleed, stumble over holes. But it is as if the path is always undoing itself right behind her, like river water slipping through your legs. Most of all, it’s the light which is flowing by, it runs down onto the vast empty plain, flows by on the wind, sweeping over the open space. The light is making a sound like water, and Lalla hears its song, without being able to drink. The light is coming from the center of the sky; it burns down on the earth in the gypsum, in the mica. From time to time, in amidst the ochre dust between the white pebbles, there is an ember-colored flint, sharp as a fang. Lalla keeps her eye on its glint as she walks, as if the stone were giving her strength, as if it were a sign left by al-Ser, to show her which way to go. Or else, still farther out, a plaque of mica just like gold, with reflections that look like a nest of insects, and Lalla thinks she can hear the humming of their wings. But sometimes on the dusty ground, there just happens to be a dull, gray, round stone, an ordinary shingle from the sea, and Lalla looks at it as hard as she can; she takes it in her hand and holds it tight, to save herself. The stone is burning hot, all striped with white veins that make up a route in its center from which branch other routes as fine as baby hairs. Holding it in her fist, Lalla walks straight ahead. The sun is already going down toward the other end of the white plain. The evening wind is sweeping up flurries of dust that hide the tall red mountain at the foot of the sky.
“Hartani! Hartani!” Lalla shouts. She’s fallen to her knees on the stones because her legs refuse to walk any farther. Above her the sky is blank, ever more vast, ever more blank. There isn’t an echo to be heard.
Everything is clear and pure, Lalla can see the smallest pebbles, the slightest shrub, almost all the way out to the horizon. No one is moving. She’d love to see the wasps; she thinks she’d really like that, watch them making their invisible knots in the air around the children’s hair. She’d really like to see a bird, even a crow, even a vulture. But there’s nothing, no one. Only her dark shadow stretching out behind her, like a pit in the too-white earth.
So she lies down on the ground, and thinks that she is going to die soon, because there’s no strength left in her body, and the fire of the light is burning her lungs and her heart up. Slowly, the light fades, and the sky becomes veiled, but perhaps it is the weakness inside of her that is dimming the sun.
Suddenly Hartani is there again. He’s standing in front of her on one leg, balancing himself like a bird. He comes up to her, leans over. Lalla grabs onto his homespun robe, she clings to the cloth with all her might, she doesn’t want to let go of it, and she almost makes the boy fall over. He squats down next to her. His face is dark, but his eyes are filled with intensity and are shining very brightly. He touches Lalla’s face, her forehead, her eyes, he runs his fingers over her cracked lips. He motions to a point out on the stony plain, in the direction of the setting sun, over where there is a tree next to a rock: water. Is it near, is it far? The air is so pure that it’s impossible to tell. Lalla tries to get back to her feet, but her body isn’t responding anymore.
“Hartani, I can’t go on…” murmurs Lalla, nodding toward her bleeding legs doubled up underneath her.
“Go away! Leave me, go away!”
The shepherd hesitates, still squatting next to her. Maybe he is going to go away? Lalla looks at him without saying anything; she feels like going to sleep, disappearing. But the Hartani puts his arms around Lalla’s body, slowly lifts her up. Lalla can feel the muscles of the boy’s legs trembling under the load, and she tightens her arms around his neck, tries to make her weight blend in with that of the shepherd.