The Stone Camels

Polly was hopping along the wall, keeping the little channel company, when she stopped mid-step. Shapes were emerging from the rock in front of her.

Camels, carved into the canyon wall at the size of living animals, and beside them the figures of walking men, the merchants of a vanished age. Wind and rain had spent centuries rubbing their faces back into the stone, yet the camels' legs still strode out of the wall as clearly as the day they were cut.

Polly positioned herself beside a single carved camel foot and found it larger than her entire body. She pictured the real caravans that had brushed past this very spot, swaying under loads of spices and sweet incense bound for distant markets.

Wind funnelled through the canyon with a sound uncannily like slow, patient footsteps. Polly listened until the light shifted. Then she followed the water channel deeper into the mountain.