Purple Orange by Eugene DeVinsens

"Well, since you asked. Let me tell you.

This place where we live is very special to us. For many special reasons. And it once was not a bustling palace at all. It was once barely even a livable abode. In fact it was once no more than a whole in the ground, made by a very distant relative of your very own."

The little boy turned away under the funny gaze of his great grandfather. The moment he'd asked the question he'd regretted it. At just 6 he understood that it was best to avoid great grandpa's long stories. But now he'd done it. And as it went he was going to hear a long story. So he looked for his mother or one of his many brothers, but there were none in sight. Instead he resigned himself and hunkered down for a story, and hoped it wouldn't be as long as the last one.

At least they were in the top of the palace, in the high turret that he loved, from which you could peer out the windows and see the endless desert that extended on all sides. And at least he had a large brimming cup of the water from the well, the magical oasis way under the palace.

His great grandpa gave him a wink and smiled his funny smile, and he took a deep breath like he always took right before a story. The longer the breath, the longer the story, and this one seemed to go on forever.

"It all started after a huge fight that a certain Aluishus…"

"Isn't that your name, grandpa?"

"Hmmm, isn't that a coincidence?" Aluishus said conspiratorially and then starting again from the beginning.

"It all started for Aluishus after a huge fight he had with his brother Edward…"

"Uncle Edward?" the boy interrupted excitedly. Because he loved his great uncle Edward.

"Yes. Uncle Edward.

It had been such a fight that you wouldn't believe. Aluishus had spoken his mind fully to his brother on the subject of the upcoming sale of the family secret and his brother, Edward, had countered with mean and angry words. It was unfair as far as Aluishus was concerned, unfair and uncivilized. Really, one would think that the greatest nomadic family in the desert would have had a little more constraint. Especially since their greatness came from great wealth.

Edward had barely known their father, but Aluishus knew that he had slaved to keep the recipe in the family, and that he exploited and cajoled more hours of his life than a healthy man should, and that all that would be lost should Edward sell the family recipe. For a moment he stopped and took a deep breath.

Through the cloud of anger Aluishus realized that he had better get back to the tents before he got stranded out there in the desert. So he started walking back in the direction he thought he had come.

It just didn't seem right to Aluishus that his brother should so easily dispose of something that had kept his family in the green for so long. Edward didn't see that in the long run it would deprive them of their money, and that the sum paid now, though a very respectable sum, would not sustain them forever. And their reign, as most reigns are, was based on the fact that they had no competition. Competition has a way of getting you. It's not right and should be avoided as often as possible…Now where was that camp? It really couldn't have been that much farther than here, he thought while he stopped and rested on a low dune. But the camp was nowhere to be found.

"Damn," Aluishus said out loud. He looked all the way around him again squinting his eyes from the afternoon sun hoping for a glint or movement somewhere on the edge of his vision. But none came so he said it again.

"Damn."

This was all his brother Edward's fault. If he died out here it would be on Edwards conscience. And then maybe he'd deserve his self-taken title. The Magnifiterrible.

His younger brother Edward, as far as he was concerned, was magnifinothing.

The wind kicked up his loose robes and sand blew in his face.

What he wouldn't give for a hotdog right then. And a nice tall glass of nectar. Or even just water. Aluishus rubbed his rather large tummy and licked his lips, nervously smoothing his short beard.

"What to do, what to do," he questioned the desert, just realizing that this could actually be a serious situation. And being coddled during so much of his life he wasn't a courageous or rugged man. So his demeanor changed rather quickly.

"My brother will surely send someone to look for me."

"He wouldn't really leave without me, I'm his brother. No matter how angry he was with me. I mean it was just a little fight. Nothing to get too upset over."

The wind blew again and shot some sand right up Aluishus' pudgy button nose as he sat down contemplating his fate. He snorted it out losing his calm for a second and rubbed his face comically trying to ease the itch the sand. He sank down into the warm sand resolutely.

"I'll just wait here," he said, to himself this time. "Someone will surely be out to fetch me in no time."

And there he waited. And the day dragged on. And still he waited, through the hottest part of the day and still there was no sign of his brother.

"Damn," he thought to himself. Damn.

When the sun was about two inches from the horizon, huge and orange, blindingly picturesque and terrible, there was a rumbling in the ground. Aluishus stood nervously. He must have dosed off. He rubbed the sand from his face and his beard and looked around realizing slowly again where he was. The rumble came again, low and deep in the ground. He searched the horizon.

Something was happening to the south. He squinted his eyes and strained to see what it was, but it was just a blur. So he brushed the rest of himself off and started walking towards it as the rumble grew less distant and started to vibrate the ground under his feet.

He walked a few minutes nervously stumbling and the blur stayed a blur, but impossibly it seemed to be moving closer to him much more quickly than he and his little legs were moving towards it. Again wind whipped at his turban, but this time it was no breeze. It whipped up and almost took his turban right off. And what's more it didn't die down. He stopped in his tracks and whimpered in fear. He turned to run but knew there was nowhere he could run anymore. He should have known. The signs were there. He blinked his eyes and prayed for his life. A sandstorm. And it was coming right for him.

Aluishus prayed wildly, mouth moving, feet frantically trying to get him away. The sandstorm came on quickly, and the ground shook with its force and the sand all around him began to whip in all directions. There was no escape.

In his high state of panic he thought he remembered a place that he had passed where there had been stones on the ground big enough to tunnel under and hide. He changed directions running west, towards where the sun had been, and hoped it was the right way. The strength of the storm had not yet caught up to him and some last part of him clung to the hope of shelter somewhere somewhere out there. He ran so hard that sweat streaked from his brow. The storm moved up slowly, but came closer steadily behind him. He looked back to check it's progress and it gained, but not so fast. And then something strange happened.

Aluishus tripped on a rock in the sand. Now this isn't strange in itself, understand. Men trip on small rocks in the sand all the time. But in this case something strange happened in the process. As he fell to the ground, rather than falling forward as most often people do, Aluishus fell forward, and then rotated over ninety degrees before hitting the ground on his face. He faced face down, but his head pointed east, when before he'd been decidedly running to the south. In fact now he pointed east northeast, and it had happened as he'd fallen through the air.

Aluishus was so surprised by this that he forgot for a moment the great peril that moved behind him threatening to eat him alive with it's force.

"How marvelous," he thought over the roar of the blowing sand. It was, he was sure, decidedly a sign from some higher being that would lead him to some immediate shelter. So, he clambered back to his feet looked over the shoulder at the storm that seemed to stall somewhere behind him, and then took off running again as fast as he could in the direction that the rock had dropped him.

What he didn't know was that the storm was now directly behind him, following him at a less than comfortable distance, as if in league with the rock that had directed him. It blew and growled and he ran and ran, ran and ran and ran, and eventually the night came.

Aluishus' little legs ached and his throat screamed by the time morning came. He was still running, though it was more of a shuffle than a run anymore, with only two breaks during the night of about five minutes apiece. During those times the storm had seemed to wait, abate, and then start up again and push him onward through the freezing dry desert. The sun rose slowly and for the first hours it warmed his freezing aching bones, but before it was even breakfast time on a regular day it was cooking him in his tracks.

Aluishus didn't know if he could go on. He had never done anything so strenuous in his life, including being born, and he thought that no matter how slow the storm moved now, or how many times it allowed him to rest he would surely keel over and die before the day was over.

Just the thought seemed to weigh him down. He stumbled and fell. The sand that had been blowing into his eyes and nose rose up to meet his face this time solidly and with a pow. The storm crept closer behind him, the ground shook and it didn't seem that this time he was going to escape.

"Fine," he thought. "Let it come and devour me. I have come too far already." And with that thought he closed his eyes and fell unconscious.

When he woke he was in a tiny abode. The walls were a marbled white stone, and the floor was carpeted with a fine woven rug. There was a small table in one corner, a small alter in another corner, and then the cot that Aluishus was laying on comfortably, not sandy, not thirsty, covered in a very soft blanket. There was one window in the wall, but it was too bright outside to see anything. The doorway at the other end had no actual door in it, but a cloth that was hung up at the moment. He blinked his eyes, stretched his body and sat up. "What an incredible boon," he noted

That's when the hunger hit him. His stomach gave a loud gurgle and tightened in disapproval. After 35 years of fine wine, grapes, hummus, rice and of course at least one hot dog a day, his stomach felt insulted. He looked around the room desperately for something to cram into his little mouth, to appease his large stomach, but there was nothing. At first glance at least there was nothing. But on second look he saw that the small alter, just a little stone dais of the same white rock as the walls, had an orange placed in the center on top.

His mouth watered like a dogs even though his mind told him that he could not eat it. The person or people who had saved him were obviously taking very good care of him, and would not look kindly on his eating their offering to whatever they were offering the orange, and he knew he should not, but he just couldn't help but inch over and smell it.

"I'll just smell it," he thought, "to appease my senses, and then I'll get back to bed, or call out and ask someone for some help." But before he'd even finished thinking this, pieces of the succulent orange were dripping down his throat, tastier than even the best hotdog he'd ever tasted, tastier even than anything else he'd ever eaten. And he wasn't a huge orange fan either. But this orange was intense and all juice and so filling and perfect and pure that he barely had time to notice the fact that it was a dark royal purple. And then he just stood there by the tiny alter breathing quickly and letting the nutrients seep into his body.

And they seeped. But something more than that happened too. Something else beside the juice and the vitamins entered his system. Something that he could not yet understand. Because, you see, now I'm going to duck out of the story for a second to tell you: that orange was not just any piece of produce. It was a fruit with a history, a fruit grown in a long line of unusual fruit. A lineage of citrus cultivated by a long and arduously interesting line of unusual women. Women who understood longing, and the old kind of magic. The kind that came from the deepest heart, the kind that only altered time the way a river alters the land, by working.

Aluishus felt all that streaming into his parched blood, not knowing what it meant, or what it was, but the magic was there, I assure you, and his eyes swam as his heart swam, and his legs threatened to give way.

Just then a woman appeared in the open doorway. So brown and beautiful Aluishus almost choked on his tongue.

"I guess you're feeling better," the woman said. Her voice was easy, but in it's edges it held hues of a very deep kind of passion. 'A passion unmatched in the desert in one thousand years,' Aluishus thought. But he was wrong about that. Alina's voice held only a sliver of the passion that her great great grand mother's had.

"You shouldn't be out of bed so soon," she said.

The sound was vaguely longing, while over toned with jubilance. She noticed the rind that Aluishus held in his short fingers and her smile spread, and Aluishus was rendered helpless in the brilliance of that smile. She was like nothing he'd ever seen.

"Yes," said Aluishus. "I seem to be."

"What?" She asked.

"What?" he asked. She blinked at him and held back a giggle. He was being a fool. She walked to his side and took his hand, the opposite of the one that was still holding the dark purple orange rind.

He decided, prudently, to give up talking and just obey her. So, Alina led Aluishus to the cot and helped him to lie down and pulled the rough blanket up to his chin. All the while he smiled, and then she kissed him on his forehead and whispered something soothing.

"Now that you've eaten the orange, I know," she said.

"What?" Aluishus said sitting up so quickly that he bumped his head against hers and they both reeled back.

"Umm. I know," she repeated awkwardly.

"You know what?"

"Well, I'm not really ready to tell you," she said embarrassed. They stood looking at each other unsure of what to do next.

"Then why did you say anything in the first place?" Aluishus finally said in an annoying way that he'd perfected in his youth.

"I was being dramatic," she said, looking a little upset that this was going so badly.

"Just tell me," Aluishus pressured.

"No," she said.

"Tell me. Come on."

"I said no. It's just not time yet."

"Well, you'd better not be expecting me to go to sleep now. Wondering will keep me up forever," Aluishus said lying back down in the bed peevishly.

"I don't think so," Alina said. "You were just chased all night through the desert by a sandstorm, and all you've had to eat was the Orange from my Orange tree, grafted from my mother's tree, which came from my great great grandmother's tree…"

"Which came from her mother's tree. I've got the picture," Aluishus interrupted rudely.

"Actually no. My great grandmother was the first one to grow the purple orange."

"It was purple?" Aluishus asked looking down at the rind in his hand and realizing for the first time that it was. Alina stood up, now obviously annoyed at the little man that she'd saved and that she'd known would be her husband. Because that's what the magic dictated. But looking at him, and the way he was acting made her wonder why her magic had brought him. He hadn't even noticed that the orange was purple. And he was acting like a child. It wasn't fair.

She flounced her hair and huffed and narrowed her eyes.

"Go to sleep," she said.

"I don't feel like it. You go to sleep," Aluishus retorted.

"I'm not tired," Alina said, momentarily confused and then, realizing his game, she got angry. "Such behavior isn't becoming to a man. What are you a pig? You don't even notice what you eat?"

And that hurt. Aluishus pulled back from her instinctively and frowned. He was the brother of the great Arabia hotdog king. This wasn't how he was supposed to be treated.

"Listen. I don't need this. Yesterday morning I had a fight with my brother about selling the hotdog recipe. I slept all day in the desert. I was chased all night by a sand storm until I passed out. I don't need this. I'm tired and hungry."

"Did you say hotdog?"

But already Aluishus was out the door and marveling at the fact that there was not a single other house, nor an oasis.

"Where is everyone?"

"What are you talking about? There is no one but me. And my great grandfather."

"Great grandfather?" Aluishus looked at her puzzled. He scanned the miles and miles of sand in every direction and wondered where her father could possibly be.

"Yes. My Great grandfather and I live here on our own. Until now that is."

"What are you saying?"

"Now that you've eaten the purple orange you will be joining us."

"…" Aluishus's brain was too wrapped in fat and comfort to work this hard and so it shut down.

"Come. You can meet father and he will tell you. He can tell you the story."

"I still don't understand why you can't just tell me."

Alina ignored his him and went back into the little stone house and knelt down in the middle of the floor, pulled back the carpet revealing a trap door, and then pulled it open to reveal a stone set of stairs leading down into the earth. She motioned Aluishus and he obeyed, though stubbornly, and then she followed him down the stairs into the dark.

What would have been about one flight down there appeared sconces on the wall, and Aluishus could see that he was walking a circling staircase down a 40" diameter cylinder into the depths of the desert. Below it was still too dark to see anything, but on the walls were tapestries and other types of decorations, and when he looked up at Alina she just nodded her head and reassured him down down down.

Fifty steps from the bottom Aluishus could just make out a pool at the very bottom, and something floating in the middle of it. As he approached the final step the thing that floated turned slowly on the water and revealed itself to be a man.

At first Aluishus thought it was just a trick of the light, but the man seemed abnormally small for a man. And he was small not in the normal way of a man who was born slightly below normal size. He resembled much more a full sized, or even slightly large man who had been shrunken. Aluishus had never seen anything like it and was puzzled. The man, most likely Alina's grandfather seemed to read Aluishus' face and he spoke.

"I am so old that time has shrunken me to the size of a dwarf, but not abnormally shaped."

Aluishus rubbed his eyes and cleaned his ears with his pinkies hoping beyond hope that this was a hallucination, but the small man remained, and so he resigned himself to listening again, peacefully.

"I can only talk for short periods of time because I am so old," the little man said in an old whining voice like steam escaping a very small hole. "And so I will relate all you need to know in the form of three stories. The first is the story of the blue camel, the second is the story of the purple orange, and the third is the story of the greatest hot dog recipe ever to grace the desert."

This all caught Aluishus' attention. Because beside the Blue Camel story, all three stories had direct meaning to him. Because he had eaten, apparently, a purple orange just recently, and he had lived with the comfort of a king his whole life because of a great hot dog recipe. Some would even say the greatest to grace these deserts. He turned his attention avidly to the small storyteller, thinking he was happy he had cleaned his ears even though it had not made the man go away, because now he would hear these stories even better than he could have before.

The Story of the Blue Camel and the Rotten Gambler:

"On a fine Monday afternoon my great great great grandfather was walking near a line of oasis that were known to be the dwelling places of a bad element in society. Gamblers and prostitutes hung out there, and thieves as well. Respectable people did not go there, but since my great great great grandfather was a swindling poker player he hung out there quite often, and even visited a few of the especially talented and beautiful hookers who lived there from time to time despite the fact that he was married with fifteen children and no job. But on this occasion he was not there for sensual delight, but out of monetary need. He looked all afternoon for some sap to strike up a crooked game of poker with, but no one there was biting, because they all knew that he was a swindler.

And that was one of the problems with old times. Everyone knew everyone.

So, just as he was about to turn and go back home to his fifteen children, and his wife, my great great great grandmother, he bumped into someone because he was ogling a woman and said excuse me to whoever it was he had bumped. He may have been lowbrow, but he was not impolite. The person who my great great great grandfather had bumped said that it was no problem, but he had a strange accent, so my great great great grandfather thought this could be the sucker he'd been looking for. When he turned to look his sucker in the face, however, it turned out that it was no sucker after all, but a camel, and a rather blue one at that.

"Hello," said the blue camel.

"Hello," said my…let's just call him by his name, Sharif, since saying great great great grandfather is getting tiresome.

"Am I mistaken or are you blue?" Asked Sharif.

"Why no sir, you are not mistaken. I am blue, though I hardly think that it's appropriate to mention the color of a persons skin directly to them. It would be like me asking if you were brown."

"I am," said Sharif. "I've never come across a camel of your persuasion," he continued more carefully, "are you from around here?"

"Why no," said the camel. "I am not from here, but from across the desert. I've come with loads of money to buy the wares of the people in the village nearby, but must rest here for the night. You wouldn't happen to know where I could find a game to pass the time here would you? I can get so tired of just waiting in the evenings, and since it is against my religion to drink in this season, I can only hope to pass the time by gambling and visiting with women who will give me pleasure for money."

Sharif liked this camel. And he liked the fact that the camel was crawling right into his scam. It almost seemed too easy.

"Why I know exactly where you can find an honest game of poker if you like. It takes place right here by this well, and the player is me."

"That seems lucky," the camel said, and the two walked over to the well and sat, the camel on the ground and Sharif, my great great great grandfather on the rock ledge that was there.

They played games for many hours, and as he always did Sharif cheated shamelessly. The camel lost lumps of his money, and by the time the sun had been down an hour had almost none left.

Sharif felt magnanimous, and smiled from ear to ear at the great length of his earnings for the evening, picturing the prettiest of all the women in the camp taking him happily to bed that night. But in doing so he became careless, and the camel noticed that he dealt his own cards from the bottom of the deck.

"Cease!" said the great blue camel in a booming voice that filled the desert night.

"What?" asked Sharif sincerely startled.

"You, Sharif, Great great great grandson of Hummar, and Great great grandson of Huzzar, and Great grandson of Zimmar, oh you get the point…Cease now you no good cheater!"

"Cheater, why sir…" Sharif began humbly, but he knew the jig was up. He grabbed as much of the money as he could and made to run, but he only got a step away before he was frozen in space and could not move an inch.

Now no one in the oasis was expecting that. Least of all Sharif. But there he hung in mid air in mid getaway step, with nothing to do but wonder.

Now, what he didn't know was that the camel was no camel, but the great god Kinderfamelduggeri, the local god of cheaters and liars, and that he had powers greater than any man on earth.

"Stop!" said the blue camel. "You have cheated me, and I have watched as you took my money without remorse. You shall now pay. I will kick you so far that you will bore a hole into the earth where you land and there discover a magical well, and there you will stay, while all of your descendants but one leave you, and this will happen to their children and their children's children and on until your riches, which will be stolen mid way in the lineage, are returned to you by the one who will bring your family back to stay. And then you will be free again to do as you please. But by that time you will be dead, and it will be your kin who may do as they please. I misspoke. Excuse me."

And with that the camel turned around, lined himself up perfectly, took a few practice swings and then kicked Sharif so hard that he flew hundreds of miles across the barren desert and landed so hard that he traveled into the earth twenty stories, and there water seeped into the whole.

For days Sharif lay there in the water unconscious, but as soon as he woke up he remembered exactly what happened and climbed out of the hole. There was desert everywhere.

"Well, there is only one thing to do," he said out loud, and started following the sun back towards his home in the east. By the time he reached his home however he was so thirsty that he felt he would die. At least, he thought, that would prove the blue camel wrong. But instead he did not die.

In fact, he gathered up his family and supplies and made his way back across the desert, because no matter how much water he drank he still felt parched, and soon understood that he would not feel quenched until he returned to the pool in the middle of the desert."

At this point the old old storyteller stopped talking, caught his breath a bit and drank a cool glass of the clear water in the pool that was all around them.

"And that was the story of the Great Blue Camel. Any questions?"

"Well, actually yes," Aluishus began, but the man put up his tiny hand and told him to stop.

"I meant that rhetorically," said Alina's father.

"How could you mean that rhetorically? Are you saying that you meant to ask if I had any questions in general in life?"

"Yes. May I go on? Thank you. The Story of the Purple Orange:

Well, Sharif and his family had now been living in the desert for many years, and together they had built a house, and a beautiful garden using the well to irrigate the land immediately surrounding their house. Things were fine, the family ate well from their garden, and there was always water to bathe in and drink but the Sharif knew well that his sons were coming to that age that sons reach, when they need to meet women, and soon will need wives. So to avoid the pain of being told by his sons that they were leaving, Sharif made the hard decision and sent them away, back to the city to get rich. He had all confidence that his sons would meet and marry gorgeous young women, make big bucks and bring not just their families but all sort of people back to populate the area around the magic well, and provide Sharif with a little Saturday night entertainment.

And they did just that.

Besides the returning part.

They did go to the city and meet and marry gorgeous women and make large sums of money, but they never returned. In fact, Sharif and his wife and their only daughter waited endlessly for them, but none of them ever even sent a messenger back to say hello, or even sent a card for the holidays. Things became so boring at that well in the middle of the desert, in fact, that one day Sharif's wife, my great great great grandmother just walked off in to the desert and was never heard from again. Which left only Sharif, and his only daughter, Melinda, to take care of him. And over what seemed like a boring eternity, Sharif grew older, until he was no longer young, but middle aged, and his youngest child, his only daughter reached the ripe age of marriage.

Sharif didn't know what to do because his plan of sending the boys off hadn't worked, and staying in the desert alone, as he knew he had to do, sounded incredibly lonely and boring. He spent weeks, and even months trying to figure what he could do that would salve his daughters loneliness, but nothing came to mind. And then something happened to break the monotony and shake things up just a bit. A man showed up at the their door late one night clutching an orange in his hands. He was old and his limbs were gnarled. He had the weight of life obviously on his forehead.

"I have found you, finally, after weeks. I have been wandering the desert and I have finally found you," he said. "I was beginning to lose hope."

But Melinda wasn't sure that she recognized the man. He looked familiar, almost like the youngest of her brother's, Malif, but he was so old he would have to have been Malif's lost great uncle.

"I'm sorry," she said in her extremely polite way. "Do I know you?"

And with that said the man broke down and cried, but he was so dehydrated from his age and his time wondering the desert that the tears came out not as liquid, but as crystals of salt that tumbled down his cheeks and disappeared into the sand in front of the door.

Melinda took the man's hand, and wiped the salt from his cheeks and brought him in and laid him down on her own cot and brought him a tall glass of water from the well below.

When the man regained his composure she asked again if she knew him and he just smiled and looked into her eyes and touched her cheek.

"Oh little sister, Melinda, how have you stayed so beautiful all these years when all of your brothers have grown old and dyed in the city and left only me to return and find out if you were still here? It is me, your brother Malif, I have come back to you so that I may die in the bosom of my family."

And Melinda looked and looked into the eyes of the old man and realized that it was true. It was her brother; the youngest of the boys, her closest friend for so many years, but he was so old, and he was dying of old age.

Melinda went down into the well to find her father, my great great great grandfather, and when she foun him she told him what had happened.

They walked immediately up the circular stairs to find Malif already dead on the cot, with a soft sad smile on his face.

"How could this be?" Sharif asked himself? How could he still be only middle aged when his oldest son had just died an old man on his daughter's small cot? He considered the problem endlessly for the entire night and the next morning he woke early and dug a deep grave in the desert, and cut some very vividly colored desert flowers and laid them in the hole with his son. At sunset he and Melinda had a small ceremony and covered the body with the sand from the earth, and then went inside and shared a silent dinner.

Afterwards Melinda went outside and sat by her brother's grave and wept.

"Oh, Malif. Having you back for just one moment makes me realize suddenly how lonely I have been, and how I will too grow old, and how I am fertile and strong and wish for a husband so that I may have babies and be a mother and be strong for them."

And it was true. For sixty years had passed since her brothers had left the house, but the water from the magic spring had kept her and her father young so that they aged only one year in 8 and it was time for her to have a husband, and she knew that she could no longer bare to be alone with her father.

So, that night Melinda planted the orange that her brother had been clutching when he arrived. She planted it, and uttered a prayer that night, a prayer for the gods of the desert, the blue camel and any other god that might be listening, that they would bring her a husband. And she repeated that prayer every night in the moonlight of the desert until one day a sprig sprung from the earth.

Soon after the sprig became a plant, and soon after that it became a tree, and every night Melinda prayed to it, to the soul of her brother, and to the gods of the desert to bring her a husband, until one day the tree bore a single perfect fruit. It was an orange. She marveled at it all day but was afraid to pick it in case it was the only fruit that her tree would ever bare. It was unlucky to pick the first and only piece a fruit a tree bore. But the next morning another orange had grown, miraculously large over night, and incredibly orange on the outside. But when she picked it and peeled it and looked inside she saw that the insides had grown dark purple with her desire, and her passion, and her loneliness. It was the purplest purple that any orange has ever been.

Melinda ate the orange and it was so sweet that it made her giggle uncontrollably, and that night she had amazing dreams.

She dreamt that she was a sandstorm that occupied five square miles of desert, and blew with such fury and strength that it seemed like calm to her. And in her storming she saw a handsome man walking in the desert alone, and she moved toward him and he ran, and she moved again and again he ran, and this continued for many miles, until she had chased him almost all the way through the night, and in the distance she could see a small house in the middle of the desert, alone and unguarded. The man in her dream saw the house and pushed himself towards its shelter, but could not make it, and fifty feet from the door to the house he collapsed. And at that very moment Melinda woke from here dream to the first rays of the morning sun. She felt strange and disoriented, and when she got out of bed she was parched, and there was sand in her sheets and pajamas. It was strange, but she barely thought of it, so keyed in was she on the wild and vivid dream she had had the entire night before. After getting a drink from the well she walked out in to the sun of the day, and as she expected, somehow, strangely knowing, there was a young man laying in the desert not fifty feet from the door of her house.

Melinda went to the man and dragged him into the house and put him on her cot. She cleaned his face with the water she had in a basin by her bed, and then she went down into the well to get more water for him to drink when he awoke.

When she returned she found him sitting up, and holding in his hand the rind of the other orange that had been growing on her tree.

"I'm so sorry," was all he had strength to say, but she knew that it was all right. For that orange was meant for him, it matched the one she had eaten perfectly, as they would match perfectly, and in fact they did just that. Within weeks the man, named Edgar, had found his place in the routine of the house, and before long Sharif married the two in a quiet ceremony outside under the moon of the desert sky.

And that's the story of the Purple Orange."

"Wait, wait. So let me get this straight. Melinda became a sandstorm and drove the man to her home where he ate the orange and they lived happily ever after?" Aluishus asked feeling a bit perturbed by all the storytelling and the seeming inevitability of it all.

"Did I say that they lived happily ever after?"

"No," Aluishus answered like a schoolboy being scolded.

"Well, then don't assume that that's what happened. Because it isn't."

"Well, then what did happen?"

"You're very impatient, you know that?" Alina butted in for the first time.

"That's enough, that's enough," the old man said and waved his hands as though to shoo the bickering from the room.

"If you would listen I will tell you exactly what happened. I did say I had three stories. And it is true what my grand daughter says. You are impatient.

The Story of the Greatest Hotdog Ever to Grace the Desert:

So, My great great grandfather Edgar, and great great grandmother Melinda were married and things seemed pretty good. Edgar was not only handsome but hardworking, and he took over all the hard labor of irrigating the area and growing the plants. He even took a long trip from the well one day, though after eating the orange and marrying Melinda he was subject to the curse and was extremely thirsty when he left, and while he was gone he traded some of the wondrous exotic vegetables grown from the magic spring for a few piglets from a band of travelers who passed within twenty miles of the well. When he returned he drank what seemed like gallons of water. And after that built a pigpen to raise his nine cute pigs.

So all was going well. Sharif, now that the burden of keeping things going was off him, seemed to age more quickly than before, and soon he even looked old.

Edgar and Melinda had some children, four or five boys, and one young daughter and as the boys grew up the land around the spring became lusher and more beautiful with every passing year. Soon the family no longer lived in the middle of the desert, but in the middle of a great oasis, alive with greenery and with a fat and healthy flock of pigs. Everything was great. Sharif was the happiest grandfather ever, and Melinda the happiest wife. And because of the longevity of life that the spring gave, when the youngest child turned what would seem like the age of fourteen many many more years had passed, and Sharif had reached an age beyond any other man on the planet. So, when he died that year no one was too sad, they felt happy that he had gone to rest, and things almost seemed normal.

But soon after something happened that no one had expected. Edgar, a wonderful father and provider had been dabbling in hotdog making. This is not so strange with so many pigs around, but as time passed it became kind of an obsession, and he came out of the well area, where he had his hotdog laboratory, less and less often. But that was not what I'm referring to as unexpected either, though some might think it strange, because it didn't really change life at the spring so much. The boys were all old enough that they could tend the plants and pigs, so that stayed on fine, and Melinda found as much pleasure in being a mom as she did being a wife so that was no problem either. The family just regarded the hotdog thing as no big deal.

Edgar would emerge on a pretty regular basis and have the whole family try a new hot dog and they would rate it in comparison to the previous batches, and then Edgar would disappear into the cave again for a while, and come up only for dinner, and then bring another batch again and again until one day when he brought up a batch of hotdog with a new air of grandness in his eyes.

"This is the recipe," was all he said, and they boiled them up and put them in buns, and each family member ate one. And after a long and silent dinner with expectation oozing out of the walls each member of the large agreed. This was the greatest hotdog ever made. It had a flavor that was unparalleled. It had a firmness that made the teeth jiggle with excitement. When asked later how he'd done it Edgar commented that he wasn't exactly sure. He had just been making and making, changing a little thing here and a little thing there, until that one day when he changed one last thing just the slightest bit, and everything seemed to fall into place like a puzzle that was just finished perfectly. He knew even before he tasted it that this was the recipe to beat all others.

With that done, Edgar emerged from his cave for good, and again became a loving husband and father, and everyone ate very good hotdogs regularly, and worked hard in the gardens, and the sun rose and the sun set and the desert receded from the house. And when the boys reached the correct age and were supposed to leave the house as the Blue Camel had predicted they didn't and things became even happier because the family thought that they had beat the curse and that it had only taken them one measly generation.

But then something unexpected happened. And this is the thing I was referring to as unexpected before. Someone appeared at the house one day and introduced himself as Jerome. He just knocked on the door one day and asked for a drink because he'd been wandering the desert for days without water. Of course the family was hospitable, not only because it is the law of the desert, but because they were nice and they had far more than they needed, and they didn't get many visitors either. So, Jerome drank the water and stayed a few days. Everyone liked Jerome, especially Edgar, so much so in fact that against his better judgment Edgar made one of his hotdogs for Jerome. With great pride he served the hotdog to Jerome, and Jerome was flabbergasted at its lusciousness and flavor. He marveled at the firmness of the dog, and he smiled for the entire night after eating it.

The next morning Edgar went down to ask Jerome again what he had thought of the hotdog, but to his surprise Jerome was gone. This upset Edgar, so he instinctively went down into the well to make sure that everything was okay. But as he descended the stairs to his lab he knew instinctively that it was not.

Not only was Jerome gone, the precise recipe that Edgar had painstakingly made was gone as well, and all the previous recipes ruined, having been thrown into the well and dissolved.

Edgar flew into a frenzy. He ran up stairs in a rage and gathered his things, with many gallons of water in pitchers, gathered his children, all but the youngest son and daughter. Scanning the horizon with rage in his eyes he sent each son into the desert in a different direction, and he himself went as well, to find the thief and bring him back with the recipe.

But none of them found the thief. At least not as far as Katarina, his only daughter, Sharif, his youngest son, or his wonderful wife Melinda ever new, because not a single one of the family returned.

They waited days and then weeks and then months and soon years, and all along they let the oasis shrivel and the pigs die, and their things get old and broken, because expectation and waiting took up all their time. And then one day they realized that the prophecy of the camel was still a curse on their lineage, because they had now lost everything, and nothing remained of their riches. All that remained was the sacred Purple Orange tree, which Katarina tended as she always had because it had been her sacred duty and her chance for love since she was old enough to do it.

Melinda grew tired with sadness and grew old in the face, and one day she too disappeared, though not into the desert, but into the water of the spring that had sustained her.

Katarina and Sharif, named for his grandfather, mourned the passing of their mother with giant tears, and they sat for weeks saying nothing at all.

"So was that Sharif you?" Aluishus asked, figuring out prematurely what the old man was going to tell him soon enough.

"There you go again with the impatience," Sharif said. "The next line in the story was going to be: And that Sharif, so sad and alone, was me. But now you've ruined it. So I'll skip that I guess and move on to the next part."

Aluishus felt bad this time and looked to Alina for some support but she just rolled her eyes at him and flipped her hair annoyed.

"Sharif and Katarina lived on in sadness for many years, but then, as it always does, Katarina's desire for love and marriage over shadowed her sadness and she ate her orange and called to her a man and they were married, and they had many children. But the land no longer was fertile, and no matter how the new men around the house tried, nothing would grow. So one day they all took off except for the youngest girl and me, Sharif, and Katarina, not being able to bare that kind of loss again, walked off into the desert to die.

And I did all I could, and grew older and older, but nothing changed, and my niece married a man through the purple orange, and the same fate befell her family too, and then my grandniece married as well and left behind Alina here for me to care for. And that is the story of the Greatest Hotdog to grace the Desert. And that is where my story telling ends."

And with that Sharif the Second pushed his float back into the oasis, and turned his back on Aluishus and Alina, the newly and strangely matched couple leaving them apparently to sort out everything he had said.

"Wow," Aluishus commented as soon as they emerged from the cave with the spring far below and back into the regular light of day. "That was really bleak."

"Oh, thank you very much. That makes things much easier," Alina said bitterly.

"And after telling me that you think I'm going to stay around to take part?" Aluishus asked not really being one for tact.

"Well, we are destined, as you can now see. I ate the orange, chased you through the desert, and then you ate the orange. That's the story. So get it through your skull."

"No, you're very nice, that's not it, but this isn't how I want it to go. I know this story, I've heard it. I'm not going to marry you and make some kids and leave you behind like the rest of the guys. That's a terrible idea."

Obviously, Aluishus realized the connections between himself and the stories that Sharif had told and saw that he had some hand in all this if he chose it. Because he knew deep down in his stomach that he'd eaten some of the greatest hotdogs ever created, and now he knew where they had come from. He had always found the story of his uncle Jerome going into the desert and being blessed with the greatest hotdog recipe by the pig god a bit suspicious, since every boy on that side of the family had been a bit shifty. He saw the line here that Alina could not because she had no idea that he was the brother to the air of the greatest hotdog empire in the desert.

"I've got something I need to do, but I'll be back soon okay?" he said hastily, and this made Alina, who was now sitting on the cot trying to look seductive, burst right into tears.

"You aren't even going to stay long enough to have sex with me? You are just leaving right on out at first glance? That's just my luck."

Aluishus felt bad seeing her cry, and he sat next to her on the cot and looked at her and did something he'd never really ever done before. He comforted her. He'd never really had the chance to comfort anyone before, but looking into her eyes that were even fierier and more beautiful than when they were dry he realized that he didn't want her to be sad. And that made him even more anxious to leave.

"Just trust me okay? I ate the orange right? We're destined and all that right? Just sit tight and I'll be back and we can work this thing out, okay?"

But Alina did not understand and she turned away.

So, Aluishus gathered some supplies in silence without her help and walked out the door into the desert.

"Now then," he said to himself. "Which way to go."

But he knew that if he trusted he would find the right way, because it was the way of prophecies and curses to direct you if you just surrendered to them. So he found a big rock, took a running start and ran right for it. When he tripped on it he fell, but not forward. Instead he fell to the right almost 70 degrees, and standing up pointing himself in that direction he took off walking in search of a way to end all the sadness for Alina.

Aluishus walked along very thirsty for what seemed like weeks trying to locate his brother and the great hotdog caravan. He took several hard falls on the way over rocks but they always pointed him in the same direction, so he always traveled that way, but found nothing.

This was a lot harder than he'd thought it would be. He'd thought that since there was a prophecy and that type of thing, that he'd just head on out and run straight into his brother. But instead he came to an oasis, and then another, and asked everyone if they had seen the hotdog shah, but none had, not for months. So, he just continued on, drinking water that did not quench his thirst and food that did not satiate his not much smaller tummy. But he continued on and walked all day and all night, and if he ever felt like quitting he thought of Alina, and her beautiful eyes after crying, like liquid emeralds in a swirl of fertile earth. He thought of them as he went to sleep and woke to them shining more brightly than the sun.

Then one day, when he had felt as though he'd been gone forever and his stomach was nearly completely gone, and his tongue felt like an old cloth that had been used to clean up sand on the pantry floor by the beach for fifty years, he stumbled upon a settlement. It was tattered and saddened, it was dark and quiet and yet it was unmistakably the settlement of the long traveling caravan of the hotdog shah. It was much smaller than he had remembered, it had now but two giant tents, and there were only twenty camels outside instead of one hundred. And there were no parties or sounds of enjoyment going on inside as there always had been in his younger brother's tents. Despite the great embroidered hotdog flag that hung flaccid above the main tent, Aluishus questioned if this really was the camp of his brother. But he walked into the tent and there sitting alone by a sparsely set table was his brother looking forlorn and anxious.

Aluishus surveyed the scene and it looked as though someone important had died, and more than that, like someone important had disappeared never to return, and that all of the people here had expended all of their emotional and physical energy searching for that person until there was no hope left. His brother did not even look up from the table when he walked in, but sat morose and stared.

Aluishus tried to think of who or what could have been lost that would cause such disarray. Had his mother died? Had one of his favorite aunts finally passed away from her diet of too many hotdogs? Who could have gone that could cause so much sadness that the parties had completely stopped. And suddenly his perspective changed. There sitting there, was his brother looking like he had been up all night since the day that Aluishus had gotten lost. The parties were gone, the frivolity was gone. There was sadness and mourning all around. And it was all for him. How strange, he thought. He had always loved his brother and his family well, and he knew they loved him too, but it had never occurred to him that they had loved him so much. But thinking about it, looking at his brother, he imagined how he would look if it had been the other way around, and he knew it would be the same.

This had not been what he had expected at all, and it was terrible, and he meant to put an end to it right then.

"Edward?" He said calmly, but Edward the formerly Magnifiterrible neither responded nor even moved.

"Edward, look here right now," Aluishus said more loudly and more authoritatively.

And slowly, forlornly, like it weighed one thousand pounds, Edward raised his head.

There was a moment when neither man did anything. They both looked, looked very hard at each other, studied and researched, enough research to fill three books, enough studying to pass five exams. And then they both took a breath, a breath that recovered them from such intense thought, such intense emotion, such running throughs of histories and pasts and memories, and then. And then. And then Edward rose from the table and ran to his older brother and flung his arms over those previously rounded soft shoulders and he laughed and cried at once and together, and soon so did Aluishus, and soon so did the tent and the candles and the night air and the moon itself.

And the group of them cried and the group of them laughed and the group of them laughed and laughed and laughed and joy poured out of their pores carrying all the bitter poison of guilt and bitter potion of worry with it as it went, and morning found them sleeping all in a pile, moon and night, tent and brothers, together, again. Together.

Before Edward could say twenty words Aluishus was getting him ready to leave on the journey back to the well and his wife, and the camels were flipping their tales, and the few remaining members of the clan were packing their things. And it wasn't until the caravan was on its way that the one brother told his story to the other, and not until they reached the first oasis where they purchased building materials of plenty and seeds and most importantly pigs, that the other brother told his story to the one.

Edward had searched for the entire time, a month or more, and the whole time he felt that he had been responsible for his brother's death, his only brother's loss. All over a stupid hotdog recipe. So, he turned down the buyers, and in fact vowed never to make another hotdog again. Unless he could make it for his brother Aluishus, who had ketchuped his first hotdog for him, and had helped him to become the successful and happy man that he was.

And by the time both were done telling their stories they had traveled to the next oasis, and they picked up friends and old flings, and adventurers and travelers, and by the time the reached the last oasis before the long journey across the desert they had brewed up a batch of the finest hotdogs the desert had ingested and then farted out in one hundred years.

And they sat by the light of the moon, healthy and full, drinking the water of the oasis when Edward realized something.

"How's your tongue?" hs asked.

Aluishus puzzled for a moment trying to figure out what his brother meant. And then he remembered how thirsty he'd been for so long.

"You've been drinking the normal water, and it's quenching," Edward pointed out. "The curse must be broken."

Aluishus moved his wet tongue around his mouth and wondered.

"You must be right," he said, and stuffed one last bite of hotdog into his mouth to chew thoughtfully. "You must be right."

One desert journey later Alina woke in the morning on her crying cot to the most intrusive noise she'd heard in her secluded life by the well. It sounded like a great caravan of two hundred people and sixty camels and droves of pigs, and pots and pans, and wood and tents, and when she looked out the little window that's exactly what she saw. And there at the head was someone she knew.

"Honey," Aluishus cried triumphantly disbarking from the camel he'd been riding all week. "I have brought a few guests to stay. I hope you don't mind."

And Alina strut out to his side hugged him and smiled. And that night they were married in front of both of their families, and friends and camels, and of course, pigs.

And then they feasted. And even Sharif joined the festivities, saying that the taste of the hotdogs brought back his childhood in vivid pink.

And that is not the end, but rather the beginning of the story for tomorrow."

His youngest grandson had fallen asleep hours earlier, but others had passed and found themselves listening intently, to Aluishus tell the story all the way to this very end. His fat face smiled so joyfully that it could not be measured. As he viewed his progeny, his brother's and their friends, as he viewed the great palace they had built, and out the window the lushest oasis, and beyond that, the trade road that carried hotdogs all over the desert. The room stretched and smiled, yawned and stirred, and Aluishus sat back and looked at his family, of so many different ages.