I rushed to the newborn and took it in my hands. It was limp and slimy with blood, amniotic fluid, and threads of mucous. Its eyes were covered by a veil as diaphanous as spiders’ webs. The eye beneath the coating was extinguished. The lamb quivered in my hands once and then a second time before it subsided, forever.
The mother also quivered as she released her final breath at exactly the same moment.
4 Evening
I HEADED FOR THE CAVERN decorated with the wisdom of the ancients and spent several days there. I did not feel like eating and was disgusted by everything, even the hunk of meat that had sparked greed in my heart the day lightning incinerated the ewe formed from the body of a gazelle and the head of a Barbary ram.
Whenever I recalled that taste, I saw in my mind the image of the Barbary ewe that had fled from me forcing from her body her stillborn lamb — a-swirl in fluids — and her last breaths. Then I was unable to keep myself from vomiting till I almost spat out my guts. My only consolation came from kneeling to beg for forgiveness beneath the images that the ancestors’ shamans had traced on the hard walls. I brooded about my situation for two days following the death of the ewe and her lamb. The only cure I could devise was to admit the truth. After a prolonged internal debate, I realized that all along the source of my conflict with the herds had not been, as I had originally tried to persuade myself, my conquest of beauty, but my seizure of prey capable of quieting gluttony’s call in my belly. Yes, greed was the cause. The gluttony revealed by my consumption of the illomened morsel had not only poisoned my body but had stripped me of my camouflage as a member of the herds. That was the cause. So how could I free myself of these poisons and absolve myself of my error?
Yet, it seemed my hunger for meat turned out to be the stronger drive, for my feelings of nausea eventually disappeared, and the image of the ewe and her newborn also faded away, so that I found myself, without any conscious decision, prowling around the herds’ grazing lands once again. I prowled there for a long time without bagging a victim from either species and was finally reduced to employing a different type of amulet, one I dubbed iyghf or “reasoning.”
I brought fresh palm stalks from the groves and began to plait them into a circular form. By trimming away the leaves, I created a perfect circle. Then I crisscrossed the heart of the circle with rows of twigs that I fastened to the circular frame by threads of bast. I called this base fabrication tasarsamt or “trap.” After that, I headed to the pasture where I dug a pit as deep as I could reach and then placed my ignoble handiwork exactly over the mouth of the hole. I spread dry material and plants over the contraption so that it was invisible. Inspecting what my hands had wrought, I found it excellent. Then I retreated to a nearby acacia to relax as a reward for the effort I had taken to craft this excellent device. I rested under this bushy acacia and began to dream of the antidote that had restored my memory until — I do not know how or when — I dozed off.
I slept profoundly and did not wake until dawn had traced its talisman across the horizon. I went back down to the plain but found neither snare nor victim. I searched the area excitedly and discovered near the hole’s mouth some fur tufts that convinced me the prey that had run off with my snare was a gazelle. I followed the tracks through depressions that twisted around before leading to the northeastern valleys. I descended into the low-lying valley bottoms, but their sides soon began to climb and rise to become, in the tracts beyond, trails that would ascend the peaks of the stubborn sand ridges. In the muddy valley bottoms I could see the track much more clearly. My victim had circled an acacia tree repeatedly, as if appealing to it for help in liberating herself from her shackle, but the tree had snagged her body in the form of bits of furry hide stuck to thorns. At a steep bend, where the ravine rose stubbornly to join gullies that came down from the highest reaches, I found blood on smooth rocks that crowded together at the mouth of the ravine like a thicket of boulders.
I darted over their smooth tops, which were rounded like the tombs of ancients in the northern desert. Here I lost the track but found it again after I had left the stone thicket and the trail became easier, less challenging, and higher. In this easy stretch, the shrubs fell away to the rear to disappear among the lower rocks, fleeing from the vanguards of the sandy rebel. In this area, only some low-lying plants blanketed the earth, seeking refuge from the fiery sky with the sun-baked surface of the aggressive ridges of sand. The track was clearer on the sandy soil. It seemed that my victim had risked her life attempting to free herself from the snare, for the struggle waged over this interval had resulted in heavy bleeding and in her shedding tufts of blood-soaked fur. Then, suddenly, the track disappeared. I retraced my steps to scout the area where the trail forked into two gullies. I followed the gulley that turned off toward the east without finding any tracks there. I stopped to peer around. I looked to the south and the north. I spotted her. I saw her with my heart before I noticed her with my eyes. I sensed her presence before I caught sight of her. Had it not been for this strange sensation, I would not have retraced my steps. I would not have explored the second gulley. I would not have paused at this spot rather than another. I would not have peered to the south and the north only to espy her hidden in a pit located between the two trails. A dense bramble of dry, interwoven branches hid her from view. The snare that I had laid over the hole played a part in concealing her. She was trembling violently from fear and pain, and snot was streaming from her muzzle. From the leg held by the teeth of the trap flowed fresh blood, which was mingled with clots of dry dirt. The silent call that had guided me back to her had been prophetic, for when I seized hold of her, I discovered that her leg had worked free from the snare and that its teeth no longer grasped anything save a hoof, so the doe would definitely have freed herself had she bolted from her hiding place. As I grasped hold of her with two quivering hands her trembling became even more violent.