Ines Hums the Way Home

"Hmmm," went the sand. "Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm." The dunes were humming again, the way they did every evening, when the wind combed over them slow and soft, like a big hand smoothing a blanket. Ines put one hoof down on the cool sand and felt the hum right up through her leg. Behind her the camels came on with their big soft feet, and the sand sighed where they stepped. It was the best sound in the whole desert, and she stopped walking to listen to it.

Ines was a young unicorn. She traveled with a caravan, which is a long line of camels walking one behind the other, and she had known every camel in that line since she was small enough to sleep under a saddle blanket. Her best friend was Milo, a camel calf with knobbly knees, a soft nose, and the longest eyelashes in the desert. Milo could flip his eyelashes up and down like little fans, and he did it whenever he was pleased with himself.

Most unicorns have horns that point straight up at the sky, tall and silver, like a spoon standing on its end. Ines's horn was small and curly, like a snail shell, and it did something the other horns did not do. When Ines was happy, or nervous, or just standing still, her horn hummed. Hmmm. It was a tiny hum, no bigger than a bee in a teacup.

Sometimes Ines felt wobbly about that horn. "Mine doesn't point at the sky," she told Milo one evening. "It doesn't do anything big." Milo flicked his eyelashes. "It does a hum," he said. "That's something." Ines wasn't so sure.

Every evening, the caravan walked from the hot day sand to the little oasis, a round pool with mint growing green around it and water as cool as a stone in the shade. To find it in the dark, you listened. The water sang one low note under the sand, and the dunes hummed it back, and the hum was loudest right beside the pool. So the camels walked, and the little bells on their harnesses went tink, tink, tink, soft as rain on a roof, and everybody knew the way.

Tonight they were halfway there when the wind stopped. It didn't slow down and it didn't wander off. It just stopped, the way a song stops when the singer takes a breath and forgets the next line. The dunes went quiet. The sand lay flat and cool, and every dune looked like every other dune, round as an upside-down bowl.

The camels stopped too. Milo's grandmother lifted her long head and looked around. "No hum tonight," she said. "The wind has gone to sleep. We'll have to find the oasis ourselves." Ines looked at all those dark round shapes and felt wobbly again, right in her middle, like a small stone rolling around.

"I'll find it," said Milo. "I'm tall." He stretched his neck up as high as it would go and looked and looked. He saw the dark, and he saw more dark, and he saw one shape that might have been a bush and might have been a very sleepy camel. Then his tummy went grrrr, long and loud. "Ha!" said Milo. "I hear the pool!" "That's your tummy," said Ines. Milo thought about it. "It does sound a bit like water," he said.

Next, Ines's mother tried. She lifted her nose and sniffed for the mint tea and the cool green mint leaves. She sniffed left. She sniffed right. "Only cool sand," she said. "The air is too still to carry a smell tonight." She gave Ines a nuzzle behind the ear. "We'll think of something."

Ines stood on the cool sand and hummed, the way she did when her middle felt wobbly. Hmmm. It was such a small sound, no bigger than a bee in a teacup. Every camel ear in the caravan turned toward it, soft as leaves.

Then the sand hummed back. Hmmm. Low and round, out of the dark. Ines's ears went up. "Did you hear that?" she whispered. "Hear what?" said Milo, with his mouth full of nothing. So Ines hummed again, a little louder. Hmmm, hmmm. And the sand answered her, hmmm, hmmm, and this time it came from the left.

"It's answering me," said Ines. Her cheeks went warm and her hooves went tippy-tappy on the sand. "Everyone be quiet and listen." So the camels went quiet, all twenty of them, and Milo stopped chewing, which was the hardest thing he did all evening.

Ines hummed her hum. Hmmm, hmmm, hmmm. The dunes hummed back, low and long, and the sound came from behind the third dune, right where the sand curved like a cupped hand holding something safe.

Walking to a hum is slow work. Ines went first, humming every few steps, and the camels followed her with their big feet going shfff, shfff in the sand. Milo walked beside her and tried to hum too, but his hum came out like a gate creaking, so he stopped and just listened.

The caravan walked toward the sound. Three dunes, three hums, and then the air turned cool and green and minty, and there was the little pool, round and shiny as a dropped mirror, with mint growing all around it. Milo put his nose right in the water. "Cold!" he said, and then he had another drink, because cold is the best thing there is when the day has been hot.

Ines's mother lit the little lamp and set it on a flat stone. Everyone sat on the cool sand in a circle and drank mint tea from small cups. There was one grain of sand in the bottom of every cup, the way there always is, and Milo said that was the extra flavor.

"That was a good hum," Milo's grandmother said to Ines. "The sand knows your hum now. It hummed back because you hummed first." Ines looked down at her small curly horn. It didn't point at the sky. It didn't do anything big. But out here in the wide dark desert, when the wind had gone to sleep, her horn had hummed, and the sand had hummed back, and the whole caravan had found the way.

The lamp was turned down low. The stars came out, more than anyone could count, spilled across the sky like sugar on a dark blue table. The dunes hummed their goodnight hum, slow and soft, and Milo's long eyelashes went down and stayed down.

Ines curled close to her mother, where it was warm and smelled of mint and camel blanket and cool sand. Her horn hummed one last small hum, the smallest hum of the night. Hmmm. And far away, softly, the sand hummed back, the way a friend says goodnight from the next room.