“So he sought a safer place to hide.”
“More likely he was creeping close, to see if he could aid us.”
“Anyway, he was in the open when the Karauna suddenly fled.”
“And they saw him and snatched him up and took him with them.”
“At the first opportunity, they will kill him.” It was Uncle Mafio who said that, and he said it in the voice of one bereaved. “They will kill him in some bestial manner, for they must be furious, thinking we arranged that ambuscade.”
“They may have no opportunity. The Mongols are close behind.”
“The Karauna will not kill the boy, but hold him hostage. A shield to ward off the Mongols.”
“And if the Mongols hold off, which they may not,” said my uncle, “think what the Karauna will be doing to that little boy.”
“Let us not weep until someone is hurt,” said my father. “But whatever the outcome, we must be there. Nostril, you stay. Mafio, Marco, mount up!”
We laid the sticks to our camels. Since we had never pressed them before, the beasts were so startled that they did not think to complain or balk, but went at a stretch-out gallop, and maintained it. The movement made my head seem to pound upon the neck-top of my spine with an excruciating beat, but I said nothing.
On sand, camels run faster than horses can, so we caught up to the Mongols well before dawn. We would eventually have met them in any case, as they were leisurely returning toward the oasis. The dry fog having settled to the ground by then, we saw them at some distance in the starlight. Two of them were walking and leading the horses, and supporting the third in his saddle, where he sagged and wobbled, being evidently badly hurt. The two called something to us as we approached, and waved their hands to indicate where they had come from.
“A miracle! The boy lives!” said my father, and lashed his camel harder.
We did not pause to speak to the Mongols, but kept on going, until we saw far off a scattering of dark, motionless shapes on the sand. They were the seven Karauna and their horses, all dead and much hacked and arrow-punctured, and some of the men lay separate from their severed sword hands. But we paid them no mind. Aziz was sitting on the sand, in a large puddle of blood from one of the fallen horses, his back propped against its saddle. He had covered his bare body with a blanket he must have pulled from the saddle pannier, and it was drenched with gore. We jumped off our camels before they had entirely knelt, and ran to him. Uncle Mafio, with tears pouring down his face, fondly rumpled the child’s hair, and my father patted him on the shoulder, and we all exclaimed in wonder and relief:
“You are all right!”
“Praise the good San Zudo of the Impossible!”
“What happened, dear Aziz?”
He said, his little bird voice even quieter than usual, “They passed me from one to another as we rode, so each could take a turn, and so they did not have to slow their pace.”
“And you are unhurt?” my uncle asked.
“I am cold,” Aziz said listlessly. Indeed, he was shivering violently under the threadbare old blanket.
Uncle Mafio persisted anxiously, “They did not—abuse you? Here?” He laid a hand on the blanket between the boy’s thighs.
“No, they did nothing like that. There was no time. And I think they were too hungry. And then the Mongols caught us up.” He puckered his pale face as if to cry. “I am so cold …”
“Yes, yes, lad,” said my father. “We will set you soon to rights. Marco, you stay by him and comfort him. Mafio, help me look about for dung to make a fire.”
I took off my aba and spread it over the boy for an extra cover, uncaring about the blood that soaked into it. But he did not hug the covers about him. He only sat where he was, against the sideways saddle, his little legs stuck out in front of him and his hands lying limp alongside. Hoping to cheer and enliven him, I said:
“All this time, Aziz, I have been wondering about the curious animal you challenged me to guess.”
A faint smile came briefly to his lips. “I did riddle you to puzzlement, Marco, did I not?”
“Yes, you did. How does it go again?”
“A desert creature … that unites in itself … the natures of seven different beasts.” His voice was fading again to listlessness. “Can you still not divine it?”
“No,” I said, frowning as before, and pretending to delve deep in my mind. “No, I confess I cannot.”
“It has the head of a horse …” he said slowly, as if he were having trouble remembering, or having trouble speaking. “And the neck of a bull … the wings of a rukh … belly of a scorpion … feet of a camel … horns of a qazèl … and the … and the hindquarters … of a serpent …”
I was worried by his uncharacteristic lack of vivacity, but I could discern no cause for it. As his voice dwindled, his eyelids drooped. I squeezed his shoulder encouragingly, and said:
“That must be a most marvelous beast. But what is it? Aziz, unriddle the riddle. What is it?”
He opened his beautiful eyes and gazed at me, and he smiled and he said, “It is only a common grasshopper.” Then he fell abruptly forward, his face hitting the sand between his knees, as if he had been loosely hinged at the waist. There was a sudden, noticeable increase in the prevailing stench of blood and body odors and horse manure and human excrement. Aghast, I leaped up and called for my father and uncle. They came running, and stared down at the boy, unbelieving.
“No living human being ever bent over flat like that!” my uncle exclaimed in horror.
My father knelt and took one of the boy’s wrists and held it for a moment, then looked up at us and somberly shook his head.
“The child has died! But of what? Did he not say he was unhurt? That they only handed him back and forth as they rode?”
I helplessly raised my hands. “We spoke for a little. Then he fell over like that. Like a sawdust doll from which all the sawdust is gone.”
My uncle turned away, sobbing and coughing. My father gently took the boy’s shoulders and lifted him, and laid the lolling head back against the saddle, and with one hand held him sitting up while with the other he pulled down the gory covers. Then my father made a retching noise and, repeating what the boy had told us, he muttered, “The Karauna were hungry,” and he backed away in sick revulsion, letting the body topple forward flat again, but not before I also saw. What had happened to Aziz—I could liken it to nothing except an ancient Greek tale I had once been told in school, about a stalwart boy of Sparta and a voracious fox cub he hid beneath his tunic.
6
WE left the dead Karauna where they lay, carrion for the beaks of any scavenger vultures that might find them. But we took with us the already bitten and gouged and partially devoured little corpse of Aziz, as we headed back for the oasis. We would not leave him on the surface of the sand, or even bury him under it, for nothing can be so deeply buried in the sand but the wind will continually cover and uncover it again, as indifferently as it does the karwan leavings of camel dung.
On our way forth from the oasis, we had passed the white fringe of a minor salt flat, so we stopped there on our return. We carried Aziz out upon the trembling land, wrapped in my aba for a shroud, and we found a place where we could break through the glittering crust, and we laid Aziz on the quaggy quicksand under it. We said our farewells and some prayers during the time it took the small bundle to sink from our sight.
“The salt slab will soon re-form over him,” mused my father. “He will rest under it undisturbed, even by corruption, for the salts will permeate his body and preserve him.”
My uncle, scratching absentmindedly at his elbow, said with resignation, “It may even be that this land, like others I have seen, will in time heave and break and rearrange its topography. Some future journeyer may find him, centuries hence, and gaze upon his sweet face, and wonder how it came to pass that an angel fell from Heaven to be interred here.”