By now we were on the Tih plateau where the stones were worn as smooth as polished marble from the abrasion of the wind. We had to lead the donkeys forward by their bridles or else they would have slipped and fallen. Even the camel swayed uneasily, its head swinging close to the ground as it groaned with dismay.
For days or perhaps it was for weeks, we had seen nothing growing in this dead land, but then suddenly there was the luxuriance of a patch of thorny bushes and next to them something that resembled an apple tree but bearing a gray-green fruit that was so bitter even the scent of it made the inside of my mouth feel parched and rough.
We had grown accustomed to the stillness of our surroundings, where nothing moved unless it was blown by the wind, but then we stumbled right into a colony of desert rats, hundreds of them scattering and leaping and bumping against the donkeys’ legs before vanishing back into the land’s camouflage.
I shall never forget the herd of gazelles, their delicate bodies materializing like mist out of the empty hills. In my surprise I dropped the orange I was holding and one of them darted forward and snatched it up, carrying the golden ball triumphantly in its mouth as if it had caught the sun itself.
We came to an open mine shaft which had been worked for precious metal and next to it an underground hall where anvils and hammers were laid out neatly on wooden benches, waiting patiently for the return of the people who worked here. But they had already been gone for many generations, the leper said, it was just that things could remain undisturbed in the desert, time was different here.
And then a cave cut into the yellow side of a cliff. The welcome relief of cool air and partial darkness. The musky smell of an animal that had this place for its home and signs of where its heavy body had pressed into the soft sand on the floor.
The leper and I spent one night together in that cave. His mouth on my mouth so that I breathed his breath as if it were my own. My hands running over the scars where his damaged skin had been healed by the sunlight and I could feel the light touch of my fingers as if his body were mine. When I looked into his eyes I saw myself reflected there.
That night I slept and woke and slept again until I had grown so accustomed to finding the leper lying close beside me that we seemed to have been together for many years. But when the morning came he would not speak to me. He had a strange wistful look on his face. I asked him what was the matter but he only put his finger to my lips to quieten me.
We left the cave and continued on our way until we were confronted by the silhouette of two mountain peaks outlined like two huge heads against the sky. We followed a long descent into a ravine with the authority of these mountains watching us.
I remember seeing the footprints of an ostrich and thinking that it looked as though a leaf had been walking along the track. And then a lion with the face of a man was observing us from a far ridge and I wondered if this was the creature whose sleeping body had been imprinted on the floor of the cave.
All I can remember of what happened next was passing through a narrow cleft of rock. That was when I lost the leper. He must have stepped back in the same moment that I was stepping forward. I turned to look for him but he had gone.
Just ahead of me there was a grove of fruit trees and a haze of green where the ground had been cultivated. When I tried to see beyond this image I could not, because everything at once became blurred and indistinct. I knew then that I had reached the edge of the world that the leper had allowed me to share with him. It was the end of the journey. I was ready to go home.
Epilogue
The priest went back the way he had come, rewinding the thread of where he had been, retracing his steps from south to north, from heat to cold, from olive tree and palm to oak and silver birch.
By the time he arrived at the port of Great Yarmouth he had been gone for more than a year and that meant it was over two years since the day on which the mermaid was found washed up on the sand.
He walked along the raised path through the marshes and past the old barn where he and the others had spent the night together with the sound of rats rustling in the straw. The same dog with pale eyes that had watched them go was there waiting for him among the trees, close to the boundary stone, its tail wagging in nervous expectation.
“Where are the others?” the people from the village asked him when he came to their houses. He tried to explain how he had lost them all one by one and they nodded their heads as if they understood what he meant, although they remained perplexed.
The bottle of Jordan water was put into a silver casket and propped up on a little shelf in the church, close to the bell tower. At a certain time of the day the light through the window on which the feathered angel was painted would shine directly onto the casket. It was found to be very good at protecting those at sea from shipwreck and drowning.
The priest gave away his other mementos of the journey, although he kept the pebbles. He set them out in a line on his desk and he would often place one in the palm of his hand and let the place it contained seep into him. And he still had the book of travels which the leper had given to Sally. He read it to himself over and over again until he knew most of the words by heart.
Sometimes when I sit in the sunshine with my back against the rickety wooden hut, close to the fishing boats and the black stone under which the mermaid’s hair is buried, I see the priest standing there beside me staring out towards the horizon. But I never try to talk to him. Nor do I walk down the main street of the village with the ground beneath my feet rutted by the wheels of carts, or peer into the open doors and windows of those battered houses which once reminded me of the nests of birds. Not anymore. That time is over. The place has changed and I am a different person now to the one I was then.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Julia Blackburn is the author of The Emperor’s Last Island, Daisy Bates in the Desert, and The Book of Color. She lives in Suffolk, England.
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