Lilith’s Dream: A Tale of the Vampire Life (2 page)

She turned her head away from the sky and went on, following the scent of the jackals’ fur. But where were they leading her? It seemed wrong. In fact, she was sure that it was wrong. The Romans were in the opposite direction.

Perhaps they had another, quicker way to the Punt road. That must be it, a quick trip through a crack in the mountains, then down to the road. Maybe they were even going toward the smoke of a resting caravan.

Darkness rose. Now, high above, hung the glowing outer arm of the galaxy, the border of the known world. Her eyes focused, then focused again, until the firmament revealed its wonders to her. The reefs of stars became a jeweled host as she began to perceive each individual strand of light. As the rays entered her eyes, each sent its own message to her heart.

She could not keep from singing, and she raised her voice in the long, rich tones of her kind, a shimmering regiment of notes like the deep songs of the whale and the wind. The jackals laughed and yapped, and when she stopped, she heard them rutting again.

Her songs were not songs of joy, though. When she saw the night, she remembered fields bowing in night’s wind, and being tired after a day of threshing, and the warm scent of bread.

But she did not eat bread. She couldn’t eat bread.

Motionless, she waited for the jackals to return to their task of guiding her. Her stillness was as precise as her movement. Indeed, she was so still that a cruising owl used her as a perch, hooted twice, then swept back into the sky, its wings trembling the silent air. She thought nothing of this, who had slept upon the desert reaches in the company of lions and, in her youth, swum the waters off the point now called Aden, singing until the whales rose from the dark ocean. Aden…she had called it Adam, after the lost love of her dreams, and in the first days had stood there listening to the sea, and called out in her loneliness, “Lest I forget you, O my love, Adam.”

But even his face and even his voice, if ever he had been, had been swept away by the running river of time. There remained only the longing.

She walked steadily and precisely, as silently as the jackals, a shadow in the shadows of the night. But for her skin glowing pale beneath the hood and her eyes gleaming with a tiger’s shine, she revealed nothing of herself to the world around her.

Long before she came upon the camp, she knew that it was there. Ten leagues away, she spread her nostrils and drew in the scent of blood and cooked meat and dates, and the scintillating odor of human skin. She lived as much by scent as sight, and it was one of her favorite smells. They liked to be kissed, which was a matter of indifference to her. But she would kiss them to smell them. She knew the different ways each part of the human body smelled, and enjoyed it all.

Romans bathed and slicked themselves with oil. So these were not Romans. She lengthened her stride. The jackals scampered ahead of her, then stationed themselves on a tall outcropping, their forms dark against the sky glow. She moved directly toward them, knowing that the encampment of the humans would be in their sight.

She caught the sweet, milky scent of young children, and the odor of men with sweat in their hair. Also, now, the musk of the women, of whom there were three young and two old. She went closer, rising to the point on which the jackals stood.

As she approached, they melted away. She looked down into the top of a canyon. There were three pinpricks of light lost down there in the darkness—cook fires.

Then she noticed something odd. On the far horizon, just where the afterglow of the set sun marked the edge of the earth, there were lights moving back and forth. She listened. Below, she heard expected sounds—soft adult voices and the sharper cries of children, the rattle of flames and the hiss of cookpans—human sounds no different from any others. But the horizon offered a different noise. What was it, though? It was extremely faint, perhaps thirty or forty leagues away. Not growling, not a living creature. What, then? She could not place that noise. Almost, the rumbling of wagon wheels. Almost, the running of a waterfall. Almost, but not quite, either of those things.

She could make a nice meal down in the campsite, but her instinct was not to take even the smallest chance. Far better to do it in a back alley, to some social cull, than to cut out a paterfamilias or a valuable slave and cause the others to rush from the shelter, barking and waving torches.

What would they do if a noble came walking out of the dark of the night? They would think her a goddess, no doubt of it. That would be well. She would prevail upon their transport, and they would relate to their grandchildren the story of the deity they had conducted to town.

When she started down the mountainside, the male jackal yapped three times. She stopped. Why, in a setting that offered absolutely no threat, would it sound warning?

She drew in scent. Nothing but the peace of the cook fire and the fragrance of the bodies. She listened. The voices were as calm as the night.

She continued. Again, Anubis sounded warning. Again, she stopped, and again detected nothing. The moon rose above the mountains behind her. A chill had come into the air, the ancient cold of the desert night. The warning seemed to penetrate very deeply, raising some deep inner string to uneasy vibration. There was really no question connected with it, not if she allowed herself to see clearly. The warning was a fundamental one. It was her world telling her that she was about to do something that she had not done ever, not in all her years here. She was about to go into the places of men without guide or guard. She would enter now the land of the tall grass, the jackals seemed to say, where danger concealed itself in innocence.

As she went down the mountain, the campfires grew and became more defined. Soon she was close enough to see the creatures moving about. They were all heavily clothed, and so prosperous enough to afford ample cloth. Could they be Sumerian merchants, then? They had far more linen to weave than Egyptian peasants, and wore long robes to announce their wealth. She might take a Sumerian merchant, who had far to go before he could raise an alarm. Or maybe they were travelers from Nubia to the south.

The women were covered all over, even their faces. Now, this stopped her. It was strange. But no, when she’d gone to examine the Englishmen in Cairo, the women had gone about in the streets like that. Yes, they must be Egyptians living in this new fashion. The Egyptians were thriving, to have this much cloth. Even the children wore blue leggings and white shirts imprinted with letters and designs.

She came to the edge of their firelight. One was playing on an instrument and singing. They watched their fire with sleepy eyes.

She walked into the camp. For a moment, they did nothing. Then the one with the musical instrument stopped playing it. The children became quiet. She stood before their fire and said, in Egyptian, “Carry me to Thebes.”

One looked to the other. A smooth boy went against its father’s hip. She repeated her demand. It was obvious, though, that they did not understand her. She tried the next logical choice, which was Arabic. “Please convey me to your city. God is good.”

“We are wanderers, by the mercy of God.”

“Then to the Romans. Take me to the Romans.”

They glanced at one another, muttering. Finally, the oldest one spoke, a creature with a white twist of beard and a dirty cloth turban. “Do you mean those ruins in the Abu Ma’mmal? Are you a tourist?”

Some of the words passed her by. “I am a traveler,” she said. She drew back her hood. The men all gasped. Their eyes opened wide. Behind their veils, the women did the same. The children went into defensive postures, clinging to the adults. Two of the men began backing on their haunches, slipping away from the firelight.

A sour whiff of fear told her that she had only seconds to deal with this unexpected situation. She opened her hands, palms out. “I am in need of your help.”

A woman whispered, “It’s a djin. A djin of the night.”

The elder man raised his own hand in a gesture of dismissal toward the woman who had spoken. “God willing, would you take some tea?”

Lilith came closer to them. “It would be my pleasure, sir.”

It had been a long time since she had done this, but she found herself enjoying the company of her creatures more than she had expected. Really, now that she thought of it, she’d been tucked away in her cave much too long. Here, beside an open fire, beneath the blazing of the moon, surrounded by the jackals and the sailing night birds, this was good.

The old one came close to her, his eyes down, his poor hands trembling so much that he almost spilled the tea. She watched the veins of his neck throb. They were a little caked inside, and would offer a hesitant draw. With this one, she’d go straight to the main artery and with a single heave of her belly dry him to dust.

Laughing easily, she took the tea. “Thank you.”

“May God be with you.”

As she sipped her tea, the tension among them continued to rise. The children and women had repaired to their tent, and could be heard speaking softly together. A little boy was whispering, “It is a rich djin, look at the gold!” A female replied, “It is an American.”

That was a word she did not know. She made a note to discover its meaning.

Taking tea with her were four males. From their eyes, she could see that they found her beauty very great. Her spell was coming down upon them as swiftly as the dew that falls before dawn.

She noticed, however, that they were moving themselves about, maneuvering so that her way was blocked except directly behind her, which would take her into their tent. Within, there was rustling. An ambush? She said, “How may I get to Thebes?”

The old man nodded toward the west. “The road is there. You can get the bus to Cairo. There’s tours to Thebes.” There was another unknown word for her list,
bus.
“A few kilometers.”

There was no road off in that direction, she knew quite well. If she walked west, she would go many leagues before she reached the Nile, a journey that would kill a human. Perhaps they were trying to trick her to go off into the desert, with the intention of following her and attacking her.

If they did, she would take them all. She’d bloat like a tick, but she wouldn’t need to eat again for quite a time. Her tongue was stiffening with eagerness when she heard a distant and very surprising noise: a clanking sound, followed in a moment by clattering that quickly became continuous.

“My cousin comes,” the elder said. “He will take you in his car as far as El Maadi. There you can take an East Delta bus into Cairo. Is your hotel there?”

She had understood some of it. His “cousin” would be a blood relative. But the rest—whatever did he mean? How was it that there were so many new words in the language of Arabic, in just—what—oh, it couldn’t have been more than a hundred years or so.

Of a sudden, the clanking sound became louder. There was a rhythm to it, and it seemed to be moving faster than was natural.

All the animals that had been lingering about her in the shadows hustled away. To the west, she saw a glow. She had no idea even how to ask a question about it, so she remained silent. In what seemed like just a moment, it became enormous and burst over the edge of a nearby hill. The light was accompanied by a terrific roar and an odor of some sort of bizarre fire.

Forgetting all of her careful poise, Lilith jumped up, cried out, and scrambled into the tent. She tripped over a child and went sprawling, her cloak settling around her as the great light swept across the thin fabric walls.

Then it went out. A moment later the noise faded, and with it, but more slowly, the odor.

“God be with you,” a male cried cheerfully. “You have a lost American! What beautiful good fortune for us, my brothers!”

“She speaks Arabic,” one of the young men murmured.

“Well, all the better, may God be pleased! My dear lady, come forth, would it please you.”

She stepped from the tent. There was a carriage visible in the light of the fire. It had obviously come far, for it was covered with dust. It was also the source of the odor of fire. There was not the faintest scent of a horse, or sound of one, or sight of one.

Very well. It was a puzzle that would be solved.

“Look, I can take you for twenty pounds. Do you have a cell? Is there somebody to call? What hotel are you in?”

None of the questions were sensible. In fact, only the inflection told her that they
were
questions. “All is well,” she said. “May I go now into the carriage?”

“She talks like an old movie,” the cousin said. “What kind of Arabic is that?”

“It’s her way. But look at that costume. She must be a rich one.”

The cousin gave her a long, frank stare. “You are pale,” he said, after his appraisal was over.

“I have not been much in the sun, in these past years.”

“Hey, Abi, I have to get that line back up tonight, or the boss’ll be on my ass. The fatties don’t get their air conditioners at the monastery until I do.”

“How many fatties?”

“A bunch. Big busload. First-class extra and a bit.”

“Tips if we go to be pictured?”

The cousin nodded. “Borrow that camel from Duli. You’ll get nice money. But be late. They’ll not be up with the sun.” He laughed then, through gaps in his teeth. Then he looked to Lilith. “Lady, we go now.”