The sun was hot on the back of her neck. Her legs ached and she seemed to have been walking for a long time, but strangely she had no desire to stop. Some instinct beyond her control urged her on. Her blouse was soaked with perspiration and her hair clung damply to her skin. She raised a listless hand to ward off a persistent fly droning angrily next to her ear. Her head felt muzzy, and she was very, very thirsty. She thought longingly of a glass of fresh lime-juice—then she halted suddenly in her tracks and stared back in the direction in which she had come.
She was lost! Completely and absolutely lost. She had broken the first law of the desert. She had wandered away from the sheltering protection of the oasis and no one knew where she had gone.
What was worse, Zahra and Umm Faisal were to visit Saud’s mother during the afternoon, and probably no one would realise that she was missing until she didn’t appear for dinner! The harsh reality of her plight dispersed the woolly misery clouding her brain. No matter how hard she searched the horizon there was no sign of the oasis—no sign of anything apart from the vast solitude of the desert itself.
She had to sit down because her legs suddenly refused to support her any more, and anyway, wasn’t there something about staying put in one place because when you were lost you just wandered round and round in circles, exhausting the body’s pitifully frail defences and making rescue harder? Felicia licked her lips and tasted the salt rimming her top lip. Closing her eyes in despair, she remembered the salt tablets she should have been taking. Sickness and giddiness swept her in alternate waves; her eyes ached from the fierce glare of the sun, everywhere she looked an unending vista of sand upon sand.
At length when it finally sank in that she was well and truly lost, she crept into the lee of one of the sandhills hoping the meagre shade it afforded would provide some protection from the sun’s dehydrating heat.
Nothing moved. The only creature foolish enough to brave the elements was herself—a pale, singularly ill-equipped female.
Time passed. She slept and awoke, stiff and more thirsty than ever. The world was a molten brass bowl with nowhere for her to escape the burning rays of the sun.
She closed her eyes again and tried not to think of the tinkling fountains in the courtyards. Her tongue snaked over cracked lips. Her throat felt as though she had swallowed the entire Sahara. Had her absence been noticed yet? Without her watch she had no means of gauging time.
Slowly at first, and then with growing fear, she acknowledged that by the time anyone did realise she was missing it could be too late.
She would have cried, but she had no tears left. Sick and exhausted, she tried to crawl a little farther across the sand, but fresh waves of nausea racked her, the landscape swayed unsteadily beneath her feet as her eyes stubbornly refused to focus properly.
She gave a dry sob. She was going to die, alone in this harsh environment, her bones picked clean by scavengers and vultures.
Hysteria bubbled up inside her. Stop it! she commanded herself. Nothing would be achieved by giving way to her emotions. She had no one but herself to blame, and anyway, what pleasure did life hold for her now?
The lengthening afternoon sun threw long shadows across the desert. High above the inert figure on the sand, a bird wheeled and hung motionless, a tiny speck in the distance. Its acute hearing, more finely tuned than any human ear, picked up a sound carrying on the clear air and it circled the girl once or twice before winging westward.
Voices impinged upon her consciousness with the imperfect clarity of waves heard from a sea-shell.
Felicia struggled to make sense of what she could hear, but it was too much effort and she succumbed to the desire to close her eyes and keep them closed.
Someone was rolling her over on to her back, touching her skin with hard, sure fingers, and she pushed ineffectively at them, wanting to be left alone in her comfortable, pain-free cocoon of nothingness.
She wasn’t allowed to, though. Those merciless fingers touched and prodded until she was forced to acknowledge their presence.
‘She’s suffering from salt deficiency,’ she heard someone say, ‘and over-exposure. Fortunately she had the sense to keep her face covered. We’d better get her in the Land Rover….’
The Land Rover! She stiffened. The Land Rover was associated with pain, and she had had enough of that, but it was useless, she was being lifted and carried by someone—the same someone who had discussed her so dispassionately—a someone whose identity hovered lazily on the periphery of her awareness. She could feel the rise and fall of the chest against which she was held. It was very comforting to be held thus, and she had a childish desire to remain there, surrendering to the cotton-woolly sensation that made nonsense of her efforts to comprehend what was happening.
‘I’ll drive, Raschid.’
Raschid! Her contentment splintered into a thousand tiny fragments, and her eyelids flickered open as a small moaned protest escaped her cracked lips.
‘It’s all right, Felicia, you are quite safe now,’ Achmed comforted her.
Safe! Weak relief spread through her. Gone was the intense heat, punishing her sensitive skin, but still her body trembled with convulsions of reaction she was powerless to control. Of all her senses only those of touch and smell remained unaffected, and through her trembling palms she felt muscles contracting in what she guessed to be tightly reined anger, the scent of male sweat pungently close to her nostrils as the arms holding her tightened fractionally.
Raschid offered her security and she took it gratefully like a tired child too exhausted to reason, her head dropping like a dust-streaked flower too heavy for the slender stem supporting it.
She remembered now! She had wandered out of the oasis because Raschid had hurt her, but her muddled thoughts could not tell her why. She only knew in his arms were peace and safety, a haven for which she had longed all those weary hours in the blistering sun. She closed her eyes and let her senses dictate her actions. Her fingers curled instinctively into the soft cloth of the dishdasha beneath her cheek, her breath expelled on a soft sigh as she sought and found the opening which gave her access to the sun-warmed male chest. Unaffectedly she turned her face into it, breathing in the scent of male skin, unaware that above her Raschid’s face tightened, a small muscle beating suddenly in his jaw, as he looked down at her passive body.
‘Little fool! She could have died out there….’
‘She gives you her trust, Raschid,’ Achmed murmured, looking from his wife’s uncle to the girl lying against him. ‘It is a precious gift.’
‘She is still unconscious. I doubt if she is aware of anything at all,’ was the uncompromising response. His fingers clenched and emotion broke through the barrier of his reserve. ‘What possessed her to wander out into the desert? If Nadia had not alerted us….’
‘She will tell us when she recovers,’ Achmed told him gently. ‘Now is not the time for recriminations and lectures. Let us praise Allah that she is safe. Thank God Zahra and Umm Faisal are still at Saud’s. They at least have been spared the anxiety. Look,’ he added, his eyes on Felicia’s face, ‘she stirs. She is recovering consciousness.’
Awareness came and went in encroaching and receding waves. Water splashed down on to her face and she drank greedily from the flask that was proffered, but she had barely done more than wet her lips with the life-giving nectar when it was withdrawn.
‘Gently!’ a stern voice warned. ‘Too much will make you sick.’
The effort drained her. She closed her eyes and the world swung away. When she opened them again they were approaching the oasis. She heard Achmed say something to Raschid, and then the Land Rover stopped.
Achmed opened the door. They were in the courtyard of the villa. Nadia came hurrying towards them, her face breaking into a relieved smile when she saw all three of them in the Land Rover.
‘She is safe?’
‘Quite