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No, I couldn’t. But what else could I do?
You can stop and think for a second, dolt! Think about the men! What did they do when Youssef ordered them to prepare for the sandstorm?
Of course! Ripping my water bottle from the camel’s saddle, I screwed it open and started pouring. In my haste, I wasn’t careful: I emptied almost half its contents over the piece of cloth covering my mouth and nose before my sense returned and I remembered that I still had to have something to drink later on. But still, the relief was immediate: Instead of forcing its way through the cloth into my throat, tiny particles of dust started to cling to the wetness outside.
‘Mr Ambrose!’ With new energy, I started shouting, clutching the wet cloth over my face. ‘Mr Ambrose, where are you?’ Driving the camel forward, I raced further into the storm, to where I thought I had last seen a hint of his black tailcoat. ‘Mr Ambrose!’
No answer.
Of course not! Why would he deign to say anything, when he is so well practiced at keeping his lips nailed shut? It’s only his life that is in danger, after all! No reason to suddenly become unnecessarily vocal!
Then I saw it: a bit to my left, hardly visible through the roaring sands around me, a tattered piece of black cloth waved at me, like a black snake wagging the end of its tail. Did snakes have tails? This one did, anyway! One tail of a tailcoat!
There he was: Mr Ambrose, striding along as if the sandstorm blasting into his face were a mere annoyance. Somehow, he had managed to misplace his camel in the storm, but no matter. His powerful long legs were pumping, carrying him forward, his eyes were narrowed to slits, his top hat was somehow, miraculously, still on his granite head. He looked as if he could go on like this for hours.
And then he fell.
‘Mr Ambrose!’
Whether he heard my cry I knew not. His knees gave way beneath him, and he slammed his hands into the sand, trying to hold himself at least half upright. His chest was heaving, racked with coughs I couldn’t hear over the cacophony of storm and singing sand.
‘Mr Ambrose!’
This time, he did hear me. Turning his head, he glared at me, as cold as he had ever done. I swear, for just a moment, particles of ice mixed with the particles of sand between us.
‘Stay - where - you - are!’
For just a moment, his voice drowned out the thunder of the wind. The power of the command nearly knocked me backwards off my camel. Then I gritted my teeth, and glared right back at him.
Stay?
Ha! Not bloody likely!
I tried to spur my camel on to move faster. Anger flared in his eyes. He tried to push himself up, to get to his feet. He actually managed to raise himself up a few inches. For a moment, he remained like this, a fallen Titan rebelling against his fate, Prometheus about to be bound - then his strength gave way and he collapsed to the ground in a heap.
‘No! Mr Ambrose!’
As if in triumph, the sand storm gave a ravenous howl, and a gust of sand blasted between us. His form faded into the whirling mass of 0.0024803-inch pebbles and vanished from sight.
Trapped
‘No!’
My heart almost stopped. There wasn’t a trace of Mr Ambrose left. None! The sickly, biting mist of stone around me, dark brown by now and getting darker by the minute, had swallowed him up completely.
Stay calm, Lilly! Think logically! He was just in front of you, right? So, if you keep going straight ahead, you should stumble over him sooner or later.
How wonderful!
There was just one problem: Where was straight ahead, exactly? And since we were on the subject of directions, where were left and right? All directions were swallowed by the roaring cataclysm around me. Just as he had been swallowed. Swallowed, chewed, and digested.
No! No, please not that!
Well… if he was chewed and digested, he had to be excreted again sooner or later, right? Maybe even in one piece?
And maybe you are taking this whole bloody metaphor a little too far, Lilly Linton! Get your butt moving!
So I got it. My butt moving, I mean. Or rather the camel’s. It bleated in protest as I urged it to go faster, but we sped up, and a moment later I saw something in the sand right in front of me that made my heart jump: footprints! They were barely discernible, and disappearing as I looked, but they were there!
