Even though time and space don’t matter in this world, the Fool ran into the Knight of Wands somewhere and sometime. It was in a hot desert full of sand dunes. Up and down he walked over those dunes. It was like being lost in a sea of sand. He saw a snake swimming across the sand.
In the distance he saw pyramids. He made his way towards them and found a figure there standing alone, wearily watching the Fool on his approach. The wind was hot. The man was in a fur hat and decorative uniform. In his hand he held a wand. He seemed out of place in this desert.
We have been left here, the man said, but I’m not sure we are supposed to be here at all.
In the distance, the Fool could see a military camp, with cook fires and men milling around.
Djinn keep swooping in from the east and taking men, the man continued, and all that we find are bleached bones sticking out of the sand.
The Fool could see dust devils twirling around in the sand all around them. He could feel the wrongness of the place. These men were from across a sea, and shouldn’t have come here. The man had a fear-plastered grimace on his dirty face. His uniform was gaudy.
A dust devil blew in from the plains and swept through the camp. Men screamed and scattered. The man the Fool was speaking with turned and squatted down defensively and they watched as the dust devil picked up a soldier and carried him into the dunes. The Fool and the man ran over the dune towards the dust devil’s path. Between dunes they came to a small valley filled with bones that were completely picked clean. Some shreds of clothing blew away from the wind.
Just beyond the bones was a sinkhole of some kind. The sand poured into a funnel and the funnel poured into the earth. A low moaning sound came from the hole. It was a sorrowful song, and the Fool felt a lump in his throat. It was such beautiful sadness.
You are the aliens in this world, the sinkhole said. We have been in the desert for thousands of years.
The soldier and the Fool looked at each other and back at the sinkhole.
What are you? the soldier asked.
We were the first, the sinkhole replied, and we have become your myths, your religions, your nightmares. Some called us genies, while others thought us angels, or demons.
The melancholy song never ceased as the ground croaked its story. The Fool recalled that he always heard the earth cry this way, but being conscious of it was always just beyond his ability to concentrate on. Sometimes the world got quiet, and he would hear the very earth he walked on emitting this same low guttural moan, but he had always dismissed it as his wild imagination.
We don’t wish to be here anymore, the sinkhole continued, but we wait to be called back into the ether, the other plane. We eat your time, and sometimes we eat you too, if we hunger enough, but your time is usually enough. You kill yourselves off often enough for us to fatten.
You aren’t of this time, the sinkhole said to the Fool. I see no start or no end in you. You are a gift from the moon for this soldier and his fellow man to follow. It seems you have lost your way, and you need to go back to your journey.
The Fool knew this to be true, and so he parted company with the Knight of Wands and the Many-Eyed-One. The Fool thought about how much man just doesn’t quite belong. He supposed he was supposed to help with that.