Past where the mountains meet the metropolis and the metropolis meets the pregnant fields and those fields meet a saline lake and then, even past where the pregnancy of the earth has come to term and is no more, where the dirt becomes dry and hard, a small city erupts from the land's caked surface.

And while the world beyond the city walls continues foolishly into the cruelty of the desert, the world within harbors a lush paradise.

It is a universe of ever-blooming fruit trees and brilliantly plumed birds, where golden tendrils weave an infinite spell around those inside.

A child Eve is master of this world. Her tiny fingers are a magician's wand flying over a small portion of a gigantic loom. Silken rivulets of color fly deftly from her fingertips onto the loom-strings, where they gracefully break the smooth flow of a crimson sea. Birds soar, fruits ripen, flowers emerge and flourish past all bounds of reality on the velvety surface of the rug she weaves.

Inches from her face, her fingers twist and twine the precious threads. Their movement is so quick, so independent from her consciousness, that they hypnotize her into a swaying trance. Her veil falls back from her hair. In her stupor she sees the rug as the one in the legend: it will fly her to a treasured place. It will be her fame.

She will lie back in the plush garden she has created and ease the tense little ache in the pit of her stomach. With the toy fingers whose blood has deepened the scarlet hues of the carpet she will trace its vines of flowers and figs. The now-deformed fingers, once greedily inspected by the rug-dealer, would no longer provide her family mealy rice and bones, but with foods richer than those of a sultan's table.

Months pass. The day arrives. Her work is done. The huge rug is cut from its prison of wood and string. The little Eve crouches to the side as it falls heavily to the floor. Three men must lift it onto the waiting donkey. The rug dealer throws a few coins at the girl's feet.

Unseeing, she steps over them as she stumbles toward the beast and the spell-bound whisper of her garden. It moves away. Her deformed fingers clutch the veil over her streaming eyes.

The donkey moves on. Past where the bereft land meets the saline lake and the lake meets the pregnant fields, and those fields meet a metropolis, and even past where the metropolis meets the mountains, a man and a donkey cross by night toward the harbor. The precious cargo is unloaded, a black-market dream that sails through the night past warm waters into cold, past blue seas into gray, to where a tremendous city crouches on dingy shores. Past where highways become roads, to a home too comfortable to live in, where a little Eve is master of the world.

She lies back onto the warm crimson sea. The golden tendrils of the carpet interweave with the golden tendrils of her hair, and, tracing the vines of flowers and figs, she leans back and eases the ache of her too-full stomach.