A STONE IN THE DESERT

Set in a never time between the Creation and biblical Revelation, maybe now or maybe then....

The desert was a boring place to live and consequently the boy was bored. The sand bored him, the adults bored him especially when they suggested things for him to do like tidy up or rid the beds of stones, and the girl next door bored him because, being a girl, she wasn't allowed to play with boys.

Boys, she was told, were special. Girls had only been put on this world for two things, and those two things were to have babies and to sin. Boys would grow into men and rule the world whilst girls would grow into women and serve men in any way they could.

His mum served his dad, and his dad beat her when she did it wrong. That was the order of things. That was what had always been and would always be. His dad had told him that much.

But the boy wasn't stupid. Far from it: had he lived in a different age he would have been accounted really bright, but he lived, as we all do, at the time when he did and where the desert stretched like an endless boring yellow blanket everywhere. He was a nomadic boy, and proud of it. His dad had told him that was how to feel.

“I'll show you mine if you show me yours,” suddenly and unexpectedly whispered a voice from the tent next door. It was the girl's voice, and he might have cursed her had he not been curious as to what she had to show him, though she was a girl and he daren't be seen having much to do with her. He'd be thrashed well nigh to death if his dad caught him thinking about girls, especially the one next door.

“What?” he asked in a whisper. “What could a girl possibly have that would interest a boy?”

“You'd be surprised,” she teased. “After all, I've been studying stuff all my life!”

“Studying what stuff?” he asked, more curious than he liked to admit even to himself. After all, didn't he pride himself in being a student of stuff?

“Oh, this and that: this and that,” she teased, and he heard her leave her own tent and knew when she was standing just outside his own. Little sounds told him, and amongst the stuff he was a student of little sounds figured pretty prominently. They had. They saved him from many a beating.

He peered out.

She stood there, a half-smile on her face �" a face, he decided there and then, which was really quite nice. He'd never looked at her face before, not in a particular way anyhow, so this was the first time it crossed his mind that it was nice.

“What have you got to show me?” he enquired, shyly.

He didn't understand why he was suddenly so shy. Maybe it was the girl. Maybe she overawed him with her pretty face.

“I've got this,” she whispered, and held one hand towards him. In it was a stone. A simple stone, rounded, the colour of the desert with nothing special about it. In fact, there were millions of stones like it. They were everywhere, even under the sack-cloth floor of the tent. He knew that because they sometimes stuck into his back when he was trying to sleep, and annoyed him.

“It's only a stone,” he sighed. “A silly, worthless stone.”

“It's the only one on the whole desert like it,” she explained, grinning. “You show me yours. We agreed.”

“I can't be bothered with stones,” he replied, a little crossly. “There are so many of the silly things that a lad like me with a bright future doesn't need to be bothered with them.”

“What's this bright future, then?” she asked, her eyes alight with a kind of honest curiosity that he liked. Damn it, he thought, I like this girl!

He didn't know anything about bright futures, though. But he needed to think quickly. He needed to interest this girl, to show he that not only was he superior in every single way to every girl anywhere, but that he was also going to be superior to most men when he grew up.

“I'm going to find the magic garden,” he whispered after the briefest of pauses for thought. “When I'm bigger, that is. I'll find the magic garden and show everyone what a magical place it was, once, in the beginning...”

“In the beginning?” she breathed.

He nodded. “And that'll be better than that silly stone of yours,” he replied, though he didn't particularly like himself for scoffing at her. After all, she's nice, a voice said in his head. But she's only a girl, it replied to itself.

“In the beginning there was a magic garden, and the big god in the skies put the first man in it,” he confided in her. “It's an old story. My dad told it to me. And he said that the first man was like us, of our tribe, but got cast out of the garden and all of its beauty because of a woman.”

“I've heard that story too,” sighed the girl. “The trouble is, I don't believe it. It's only a story.”

“It was the fruit of the tree that she picked and ate,” said the boy. “I'm going to find that garden and that tree and I'm going to chop it down! That first man should have done that, but maybe he didn't know much about chopping down trees.”

“Who are you talking to, boy?” rasped a voice and his father came up from behind the tent. The girl melted away so swiftly it was amazing, went into her own tent, and the boy shivered with fear. He might get a beating, talking to the girl.

“I was talking to myself,” he stammered. “I was saying how I'm going to find the magic garden...”

“Stuff and nonsense!” roared his father, brandishing a stick. “You get some work done, boy! You help your mother and me! For a start, you can sort through the stones...”

“Sort through the stones, father?”

“Sort through the stones, boy! Cast the big ones out so they don't cramp my style in bed at night!”

“Like this one?” The boy held the stone the girl had proffered to him and his father dashed it out of his hand. “That's a worthless stone!” he roared, and because he had a temper and was feeling bullish he lashed his stick against the boy, marking him and making him cry out.

“A man's a man because he knows all about beating the weak and feeble!” grated the man. “A man's strong. A man's holy. A man knows his gods. But more, he knows that silly playing with stones is a girl's affair!”

The boy wept. But he also knew stuff.

He knew that of all the stones in the desert the one that had been dashed out of his hand was unique. The girl had said there wasn't another exactly like it, and he knew the girl was right. And its very uniqueness lay in the simple fact that the pretty girl had held it in her hands.

In her precious hands.