The little camel said nothing at all, but simply followed in
her footsteps
“Quickly now, darling, come with me behind the trees here and show me the necklace,” she whispered, and she hurried him off out of sight of the others. But now that they were quite alone, the youngest camel only hung his head. “Quickly, quickly, where is it? I’ve never been so anxious to see anything in my life—”
“Mother,” said her child miserably, “there is no necklace.”
“What?” she cried, tottering back under the tamarisk trees. “Do you mean to say—oh, can it be possible—oh, good heavens, it can’t be all a lie?”
“I don’t know if it’s a lie or not,” said the little camel, and he turned unhappily away from the sight of her grief and fingered the tall grasses absent-mindedly. “I made it up so you would forget about the heat, so perhaps that isn’t quite so bad as lying. I kept thinking perhaps the necklace was really there, although I couldn’t see it, like the caravan of white camels that girdles the earth, and like Mohammed—”
“Oh, this is too much!” moaned his mother, covering her face with her arms. “I never would have thought you could—I never dreamed—oh dear, oh dear—”
“But music’s invisible, isn’t it?” said the little camel in a gentle voice. “I kept on saying things like that to myself to make the necklace seem all right. I said, ‘Music’s invisible and history’s invisible and memory’s invisible and love’s invisible and still they’re all really there.’”
His mother had now sunk down on the ground in despair, and realizing she was on the verge of tears, her son took his harp off his shoulder and shyly touched the strings.
“I wasn’t sure if you’d feel like singing me to sleep tonight,” he said in a low voice. “After all that happened, I thought you might rather not. So I made up the words of a lullaby myself, and if you feel too badly I’ll sing them instead.”
His mother was weeping now and she did not answer, so he ran his fingers lightly over the strings and began singing in a sad beautiful voice through the night.