[crow]

He wore gloves and loose robes and a cloak in the local fashion. Walking in the midday sun, there was no part of him exposed. He burned anyway. The locals he travelled with, when he travelled with anyone, would look over the reddened skin and marvel at him. A pale northerner, straying too far from home, they would say. Some were pitying; others laughed. He supposed he deserved as much. They weren’t wrong, really.

They gave him more cloaks, and a salve to rub into his skin, and joked about the foolishness of foreigners. Go home, some of them urged him. He had nothing to prove. What could he gain by doing this?

They quieted when he spoke of finding his mother. Whether it was pity or understanding or something else, he didn't know.

[crow]

He hadn’t told them that he was looking for the mirage village. He could imagine what their responses would be then, without having to say anything on the matter. The book itself had said that natives to the region didn’t really believe it existed. The book was old, but there was no reason to believe anything had changed.

No one spoke of a hidden village, and other pilgrims like himself were few. If something so marvelous had really been discovered, he doubted it would have stayed secret for long. Adventurers would have come calling, hoping to test their luck; even if all of them went home disappointed, there would still be others foolhardy enough to take up their search.

[crow]

What he did tell them was that he was headed to the heart of the desert, following his mother’s last whereabouts, as best his relatives could figure. It had been a long time since they’d heard from her, he admitted. He didn’t dare say how long; that would certainly have given him away as something other than human, or a madman.

What he read in their faces this time really was pity, and he smiled a little to himself, wryly. He half expected them to tell him that she must have been very beautiful, very kind, the way others had done. They didn’t. It was more of a relief than it should have been.

[crow]

“The heart of the desert, you say,” said the elder. He made a ‘hmm’ sort of noise, and blew on his pipe, a treasured purchase from a trader from some nation far to the west. He’d been very proud of it when he first showed it to Dante, and Dante had played the part of the awed young man. Dante heard him not saying that she was probably long dead, that anyone who burned like Dante did would never survive very long there. Not even the locals lived there any length of time, if they could help it.

The old man refilled his pipe before he spoke again. “Well, we’ll take you as far as we can. There’s another caravan headed to Armid. We’ll introduce you when we meet at the next well.”

[crow]

Dante nodded; Armid was the closest town to the desert’s heart, as close as anyone could be brought to settle there. He had known when he joined with this caravan that they wouldn’t take him to his destination, but he had already been passed on a few times. It was the only way to get anywhere, if you couldn’t be sure of finding your own way.

Fortunately he had coin enough to satisfy them. He was only one traveler, and after the first caravan, he had the advantage of a good reputation. He didn’t fuss or demand anything, as other travelers sometimes did; he was merely prone to burning. Apparently this was a small enough evil, as outlanders went. The novelty, one young man told him, made up for it.

[crow]

They reached the well after another two days’ travel. The other caravan was nowhere to be seen when they arrived, which made Dante uneasy. The elder was not worried, however, and merely said they would be staying here for some time anyway, to replenish their supply. The other caravan would do the same, and he was certain they could not have missed them by so many days.

Dante, used to the uncertainty and consequences of lost post during the war, would have begged to differ, but said nothing. He was a stranger here, even though he and the elder were in fact quite similar in age. There were things he did not know.

[crow]

Fortunately, his fears turned out to be unfounded. He felt a little foolish for it, but better that than to be disappointed, by far. The expected second caravan arrived two days later, camels in tow, to exchange happy greetings with the first. The two elders were old friends, and on the whole their caravans were on good terms; the one familiar with Dante now guffawed as he shared the story of the worrying outlander.

“You should see the way he goes up in the sun,” said the old man, as one tale wound down. “Pale as flatbread, he is. We had him under three cloaks, sweating for all he was worth, and still there were new burns across his back that evening!”

[crow]

“You’re pulling my leg,” said his friend, a woman who in Dante’s private opinion more resembled a mummy. Most of her teeth were gone, but there was a sharp gleam in her eye, and she moved well enough despite her wizened looks. “We all know they’re a lily-skinned bunch, but three cloaks? You’ve gone senile faster than I thought.”

“You’ll see for yourself soon enough,” said the old man placidly. “Ah, Dante. Come here.” The desert people pronounced his name with a strange lilting accent, which made it sound musical and rough. He hadn’t quite gotten used to it. He made a bow when one elder introduced him to the next, and remembered enough to give a stumbling, customary greeting in the local way.

[crow]

She looked over him appraisingly, taking in his heavy garments and well-worn travel sack. He would have liked to make a good impression, but it was impossible to read anything in her face. “He’s been here long enough that he won’t fall off the camel,” said the old man, laughing again. The woman laughed with him.

“He’d better not,” she said. “We’ll leave him here if he upsets the beasts.” They laughed at that too, but Dante knew they meant it. If a camel didn’t take someone, that was it for them. The desert folk didn’t take on anyone their camels wouldn’t tolerate, no matter how much coin they had.

[crow]

It was probably a good thing that camels didn’t mind him. Some animals balked at him the way they balked at vampires; whatever his mother had given him clearly wasn’t enough to mitigate that entirely. But then, maybe vampires weren’t a deal-breaker for camels.

Did vampires exist in the desert? Was there any reason for a camel to worry over their presence? Dante couldn’t imagine them surviving here, in a land where the sun felt as if it was tearing at his skin. But then, there were settlements, and on occasion there was land firm enough that they could build underground. It wasn't impossible. The nights were nearly as long as the days, and almost as uncomfortably cold.

[crow]

It was just hard to imagine that a vampire would want to settle here, with such unfavorable elements and so few people to feed from. Blue, perhaps, if simply to deter anyone from coming after him. Perhaps Dante ought to suggest it to him when he returned.

If he returned. There was no guarantee that he would. He didn’t like to think so, but then, hadn’t he thought he’d be home by now, when he had first set out? There was no telling how much further this journey would take him, and how much he would survive. And what if he did find his mother? What then? There was too much, still, up in the air.

[crow]

Before he could dwell too long on these thoughts, the old woman beckoned to him. “We may as well sort you out now. No use in wasting time,” she said. She and the other elder would catch up some more at the fire tonight, he was sure. She pulled him along with a surprisingly firm grip to where her own string of camels were being watered. After a pause, she selected one, though Dante couldn’t tell on what grounds. Try as he might, they still all looked the same to him.

“She will be carrying you,” said the woman. “See this pattern here? Remember it well.” She indicated something along the flank of the creature. Leaning in, Dante could begin to make out a pattern, just as she’d said, shaved into the fur.

[crow]

Much of it was abstract, but the main iconic image was of a sun. The irony wasn’t lost on Dante. He would have laughed, except he was certain that would have offended the elder. He glanced at the camels flanking his, to see if they had similar patternings, but theirs were different in their depictions. The style, and many of the shapes, were similar, but only his was clearly a sun.

“I will remember it, thank you,” he said solemnly. How could he not? She gave a satisfied nod, and guided him away from the camels to introduce him to the rest of the caravan.

“Now, I won’t fuss too much, since they’ve vouched for you, but don’t you go making trouble. That means no skirt-chasing, you hear me?” she said.

[crow]

“Yes, ma’am,” said Dante, who was privately quite amused. He had seen enough of the desert women to know that he hardly warranted such warnings. They were a hardy, unreserved lot who had no issues telling off a man they don’t like, outsider or otherwise. The ones closer to the desert’s edge were too used to outlanders to be taken with his pale skin and fine features, and by now he figured he was much too burnt to be appealing. None of them, he was sure, viewed him as a real prospect for marriage.

Sure enough, when the old woman introduced him and he made another bow, he earned himself a few laughs and nothing more. Most of it was for the way he dressed; his cloak was up so there was not much of him that they could see.

[crow]

There were a few who eyed him with suspicion for that same reason, but at the moment there wasn’t much he could do about that. He would shed them later, when it was safe to do so under the cover of night, to assure them that he was not hiding beneath their volume. Then they would have a laugh at his expense again, but it was better that than hostility. Dante had seen enough of that to last him a lifetime.

Despite their initial excitement at having encountered each other at last, the heat quickly drowned out most of the chatter. Even the desert people were not invincible in the face of it. They retired to rest, to take the mid-day naps that were favored here in the south.