The hero broke in: “What do you mean?”
“Sticks are a method of casting lots and therefore a game supervised by a god named Luck.”
“What are you saying?”
“The god of sovereignty is the Spirit World, and its partner is Luck. Luck and sovereignty share a homeland. What alternative do we have to commissioning Luck to bring us a comrade who is his neighbor in the Spirit World?”
Ah’llum looked around anxiously at his comrades. The man with two veils explained, “Games of chance have many aspects, but the ones farthest removed from calamities are the path our ancestors chose and what they preferred over all others.”
They held their breath, extended their necks, and waited for more information with greater concern than if awaiting a prophecy.
The man with two veils raked the fire with a poker and added with a sage’s cool detachment, “When a matter puzzled them and no inspiration came, they bathed with herbal salves, sacrificed a chameleon, and rushed off to choose the first man they met in the wilderness to be their ruler.”
He was silent for a long time, gazing at the fire. Then he said mysteriously, “We’ll set off tomorrow and bestow the title of leader on the first creature we meet inside the walls of the oasis!”
THE SCARECROW
1
They reached the oasis at dusk but did not breach the walls or traverse the Western Hammada Gate till sunset’s gloom had mastered the earth. Then they crept through the land, which was enveloped in threadbare darkness that was not concentrated in tenebrous recesses but remained mysterious, excited whispered enticements in weak souls, and opened a portal to the nether reaches, which released a morose creature disguised in human raiment to lay a trap for mankind. The Spirit World’s foot soldiers rallied their allies to form legions of armies to combat the people of the wasteland and take revenge for their tyranny. These legions returned to their homes in the Spirit World bearing booty and loot. Simpletons — people who had never ever suspected that other creatures might share the desert world — simply assumed, however, that their tribe had been attacked in a treacherous raid by some neighboring tribe. The pious ancestors were also pleased to emerge in the dark gloom from their spiritual world. They disguised themselves in the rough attire of wayfarers before visiting their descendants in this or that hamlet, where their offspring whiled away the night entertaining them the way desert people honor travelers, till morning drew nigh and light threatened to assail the wasteland just as drowsiness was assailing their hosts. Then the guests slipped away and melted into the open countryside, leaving their descendants some treasures stuffed into a knapsack.
In the tenebrous depths’ void, other night creatures materialized, but they deliberately chose their former bodies to terrorize their relatives. They emerged to frighten and harm their former enemies.
In these dark recesses Wantahet awoke to devise the project of the eternal ruse. He, however, unlike all the dark recesses’ other denizens, waited till day to accost the tribes — the better to deceive them.
In the desert gloom, creatures were generated in people’s souls — creatures those people did not recognize. Then with all the impetuousness of ecstatics, they liberated themselves from their souls, which they pawned to other people in order to gull them of their souls and to downplay their own disgrace, referring to this sacrificial offering as “passion.”
In the gloom of the barren continent, inanimate objects exchanged roles and beings migrated to the bodies of other creatures. Then the desert itself migrated from the desert’s patch of ground.
On nights when no moon was visible and lights were slow to appear, cunning strategists were cautious at crossroads, because they knew from experience that talking to strangers after dusk is a danger that always risks being a trap, an evil, or a snare.
2
They hovered around him like jinni specters, addressing him with incantations. The first shouted as if performing a sorrowful ballad, “We, master, are a people who have been unable to select a head of state. Therefore we have entrusted the affair to its master, to the entity we refer to in our stupid language as a Spirit World.”
The second sang, “We obeyed the report that eternity sent us as a prophecy. So we set forth, rolled in the dust of emptiness, and washed our hearts with separation’s water. Then we were told that our only recourse lay in following the example of our ancestors.”
The third sprang aside and then leaped with a gracious bound that mimicked an avian dance and perhaps also the ecstasy of folks who are obsessed by longing and who go into a trance when people sing. He recited, “We have come to entrust the matter to destiny’s hand. We have come to court danger!”
The fourth specter shot off, fleeing toward the right for a long distance. Then he returned only to flee to the left for a longer distance. On both laps, darkness swallowed him. All the same, he returned from the Spirit World with a talisman: “You, master, from today forward are the master of this oasis. May all the nooks hear the news and may the Spirit World bear witness that we have conveyed the prophecy.”
Stillness descended on the area, and the mysterious being returned from his exile to govern the oasis. Then the creatures restrained their tongues so they could eavesdrop on this creature’s whispers in a pantomime of lost time. The detestable guffaws, the lethal laughter, and the suppressed cackling that people of the oasis had often heard when they passed the scarecrow in the fields and that they glossed as the voice of the Unknown — this mysterious, mischievous rattle — immediately burst from the chest of the twilight specter. Then the stillness was at once shaken, and the place became chaotic. The mysterious being, whom people had known but never seen, fled and settled in the farthest corner of the austere tract spread beneath the moon.
3
In the oasis, griots and gossips have related the story of the scarecrow. They said that an alien migrant sorcerer, when he came from the Unknown and settled in the oasis, disguised himself in rough haircloth — as members of this coterie always like to do. Then he claimed he was a metalsmith whose specialties were using metal tools to carve poles, saw planks, and turn trees into saddles. Not long after the new immigrant rented a workshop in the metalsmiths’ market, residents became convinced that the man’s boast was not only accurate but that he was even being modest, because his saddles differed from any they knew in markets in the oases or had purchased from blacksmith shops. His were unique for their captivating carving. People had also never seen any as skillfully crafted. Thus his renown spread in a short time, and the oasis’s nobles — who had never lost their yearning for the traditions of mounted warriors — and other real cavaliers, who were leaders of tribes scattered through neighboring deserts, headed to his workshop. Traders from passing caravans also flocked to his door to buy all the saddles he had in stock. Then the merchants carried them to the deserts of the South and the cities of the North. So the cunning artisan offered evidence to slothful tribesmen and slugabeds of the oasis that anyone who perfected a task while alive would inevitably be rewarded by the Spirit World, which would convey his fame to the farthest corners.
The secret behind the smith’s renown among far-flung peoples was his expertise, but it was a different story inside the oasis walls. Clever men have long realized that there is no honor for a soothsayer or diviner in a land where people do not recognize prophecy and that a product does not succeed in a land where local people view it dismissively or disdainfully. So if merchants and mounted warriors from neighboring tribes had not purchased the clever artisan’s saddles, the man would not have enjoyed any share of the respect he deserved. Indeed the market for his products would have remained tepid for a long time in a land where people hid their past and piled their old saddles in the corners of their houses, allowing them to be destroyed by moths and grit. They had also traded in their purebred Mahri camels (on which tribes prided themselves, celebrating them in poems) for matted, morose, behemoth camels with bodies like an elephant — beasts fit only for transporting heavy loads.