The voice.  It called to him.  It had been years since he’d heard the song last, yet now it was all he could do to keep from losing himself in the embrace of its mournful tune.  It haunted him as he wandered the city streets, only dimly aware of the stares of others as he passed absently through the throng of people.  The song cried out to him, urged him to follow.

     Too old to resist its pull as he once had long ago, the man allowed himself to be dragged by unseen strings, out the city gate, headfirst into the blistering heat of the desert.  Seemingly untouched by the fire of the noonday sun, he swept across smooth rolling dunes, shielding his eyes every so often as the wind picked up wisps of sand and debris.

     Only when dehydration and hunger had ravaged his body did the man show any sign of weakness.  Yet, even then he continued on, crawling on hands and knees, grains of sand strewn about his long windswept beard.

     The tune grew fuller and somehow more alive as he clawed at the rocks below, tugging him forward with ever increasing strength.  It filled him so that even unbearable unrelenting pain felt a distant thing.  The voice encouraged him, promised him prosperity and peace, if only he would follow.

     Placing a blistered trembling hand atop the surface of a large stone outcrop, the man inched forward before letting his face fall to the ground, the heat pulsing around him in time to the rhythm of the song.  Burned and exhausted, he turned over on his back and let the sun bake his failing body.  Closing his eyes, he let the voice take him.  Cracked sand-blasted lips twitched upward, then were still.

     The voice carried him away on the winds of time, consumed him so that he himself was a part of the song, age old and without end.