The Spice Tent

There was a spice tent outside Arraman where lived a man that told you when you would die. I visited it once. You only need to visit it once, I suppose. I pushed until my horse followed the sun into the sand, leaving me alone with the moon. I pushed until my bones were dry and my limbs ached. I would not stop. I did as I was told to do to reach that place. In desperation, you will find me, and it was only when I lay in the sand, waiting to be swallowed, wondering if it were all a story, that it became real. A thin trail of bleak grey smoke marred the portrait of the moon. I cannot recall ever seeing something quite as beautiful. My body ached, but less than my hunger to know. Such a foolish hunger it was. What question did I hope it would answer? Which path did I hope for it to change? Which path did I think it could change? I climbed the dune like a hungry dog on the scent of meat, empty stomach on the sand, fingernails grappling with the shifting desert. My mind ached for knowledge more than my body for food. I still see it when I close my eyes. Stripes of patched fabrics; a quilt of unwanting, smoke seeping from the top into a grey pillar, reaching into the sky, piercing the night's clouds. I pushed myself into the tent without another thought. There was so much time to think. As my horse was swallowed, the days I spent walking, and the hours I crawled across mounds of desert sand. There was only time, then. Thirst shed from my dry bones and hunger faded as a man beckoned me in. My crawl turned to a walk; I was limber as I had been when I set out from Arraman. He offered me a seat by that fire, the small flame that raised smoke to the heavens. He offered me tea. I refused. I wanted only one thing, and that he gave me. He asked me to look into the fire and to not look away, so I watched. First, I watched the flames licking the air, climbing up to the roof. He asked me again to look into the fire, so I gazed into the midst of it, the heat singeing my eyes. He asked me a third time and I looked at the logs, blackening and churning into the fire, giving itself to the heat that threatened to blind me. How I wish that it had. I saw my final breath in that flame, something I shudder to recall, yet a thing I cannot help but see in the darkness behind my eyes. I have spent years cursing that tent when the sin was my own. There is one thing I regret, and that is seeking my death. Now, I cannot live.