I John W. Warner IV She coughed hard. Ive had dealings with the Germans, intimate dealings. Theyll torture me to death. I stole something of theirs a while back that was quite valuable. An aircraft. So we are both thieves. Takuta stood. Well Im in. No way in hell Im going to rot and bake in some open-air prison camp. Everyones short of water and food. Gwafa locked eyes on him. Brave talk, fisherman. Va te faire enculer. But I agree. I would be bored to death the rest of the war. Nothing to steal, no one to fight. Bea managed a slight smile. You gents are made of tough stuff. Im honored. Rest, madame, rest. Days later, morning light touched Beas face and she awoke. She stood and steadied herself on the wall. Dizzy, she walked a bit in a circle. The dense silence of the desert enveloped her at the entrance, the odd breeze and murmur of the sand over rock the only sounds. She then sat. One could hardly imagine that war was in the north, the lonely beauty, rocky plateaus, dunes, and a rare oasis painting the whole of it just for her, an island of rocks and sand, an oasis of relative peace. The writers, poets, singers, and artists were all correct, the desert a canvas of surreal imagination taken to its limits and beyond, a burning sun of a dream within a dream come alive. It was so hot she felt cold. In the distance, the slow, raspy rumble of German Iron-dnnie aircraft engines could be heard to the northwest, then nothing. She cleared her mind and meditated, a technique she learned at the Shieldmaiden school in Austria; the negative thoughts dissipated when positive ones drifted in with the breeze, a slow effortless process like the gentle petrifying of a tree into stone. Mother Earth and her animal life were also being killed or maimed in the war she thought, especially the horses and camels; this was total war, everyone and everything was a combatant. Takuta arrived from his patrol and handed her a tin cup with sweet powdered tea and water. Hes been gone twenty-nine hours, mum. We have about two daysworth of water left. Right. Nothing broken, but Im sore as hell. Knees still a bit swollen. As my father always says, Ill live. He opened a can of bully beef and gave her some on a hard tack biscuit that he had soaked in a cup so they could chew them. Tooth Duller,mum. Its hot at least.