The coming of Djadek was a quiet affair. Miriba barely registered the padding of camel hooves, the jingling harness, as he rode past the boundary wall that was her only protection from the cold night air. The sounds seemed merely an addition to her dream, the usual one in which she was running, chasing someone always tantalizingly just out of reach.
She quickened her pace in time to the hoofbeats, but her quarry quickened her pace too. "Wait for me," she called out. "Please, wait." But the woman in the coral pink dress didn't slow or turn round, didn't give any indication that she had heard her cry...
When Miriba eventually awoke, brushed the dirt off her ragged skirt and blouse, and plodded in the dazzling sunlight to the market place, ready for the day's begging, an unusual sight awaited her. Instead of the early morning hubbub of stallholders and customers haggling over foodstuffs, pots, baskets and camel hides, silence reigned. In the middle of the square, firmly holding the leading rein of his camel, was a stranger with a hooked nose and thick eyebrows, his dark hair swept back into a pony tail. Facing him, in a semicircle, stood the village Elders.
Normally the Elders cut imposing figures in their formal robes--the vivid reds and blues were a speciality of the village dye works--but today they looked like stick men in gaudy, illfitting sheets. The stranger's clothes were so well tailored they almost succeeded in disguising his large belly, and the finely woven fabric of his cream-coloured tunic and trousers bore a subtle pattern of apricot, malachite, and rose.
Miriba blinked. The man was like some exotic desert bloom, and his camel was the healthiest she had ever seen, its eyes clear, its skin taut over wellmuscled flesh. She strained to hear the conversation but caught only the word 'seeds'. The senior Elder suddenly nodded and squatted comfortably; the others did likewise. The stranger smiled, reached into his camel's exquisitely tooled saddlebag, and pulled out a fabric pouch. Miriba moved closer, accidentally stepping on the hem of someone's skirt.
"Watch where you're stepping, girl," hissed Bima, the washerwoman.
Miriba ducked her head in apology, but continued to press forward through the crowd, eliciting hostile murmurs about good-for-nothing orphans and dirty beggars as she went. At last she had reached the front, and she stopped. Too late, she realized she was standing next to Cirak.
Her chief tormentor, a boy two years younger than herself, was wearing his best blue tunic and trousers, and his long blond hair was freshly combed. He turned and glared at her, his mouth an ugly line. She looked at him warily, but his hands were empty. The small cut on her forehead was only just starting to heal, and she fingered it nervously. Unexpectedly, Cirak flushed and looked away.
What was this? she thought. Fear that she might tell someone about the thrown stone? Surely he knew no-one would take the word of a beggar girl against that of an Elder's son? She sighed and peered over the bald heads and boney shoulders of the squatting Elders, trying to see what the stranger was doing.
He had placed something on the ground, and was pouring water from one of his water skins onto it.
"What a waste," she murmured. Then abruptly she forgot all about wastage. Something was moving where the stranger had poured the water. Something green and spindly that wriggled and crawled towards the sky. A surprised murmur rippled through the onlookers, and the Elders muttered to each other.
"It's a snake," said Cirak, but Miriba could already see that he was wrong. A seedling, she thought. Two leaves, now four ... It was growing at an amazing rate. As she watched, a bud swelled into being at the plant's crown, the delicate petals a deep blue, almost indigo. She found that she was holding her breath.
With a slight pop, the petals opened and a strong fragrance wafted through the market place. The onlookers gasped.
It smelled like the earth after the rains, she thought, inhaling deeply. Or like ... She frowned, trying to grasp the elusive scent ...
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