Sodom Stole a Man's Carpet and Billed Him for the Dream

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The Soil That Sparkled Like Gold

The ground of Sodom glittered. Turn a spade in that valley and the dirt threw back light, veins of gold running so close to the surface that a child could gather a fortune before breakfast. Sapphires sat in the furrows. The people who lived there had more than any city in the world, and it had made them terrible.

Wealth like that should have loosened their hands. Instead it closed them into fists. They could not stand the thought of a stranger walking their streets and carrying away so much as a crumb, so they went to work on the roads. They tore up the highways that led into the valley. They flooded the paths until the landmarks drowned and no traveler could find the way in or the way out. A city rich enough to feed the world hid itself so the world could not reach it.

Even the birds offended them. Flocks came down to glean the fields, and the men of Sodom counted every seed a bird carried off as robbery. They drove the flocks from the sky until nothing with wings would cross the valley. A place where the soil was gold, and no sparrow would land.

A Weary Man Came to the Gate

A traveler came anyway. He had come from Elam, far to the east, and the road had worn him down to dust and thirst. Across the back of his donkey lay a carpet, a bright and heavy thing woven in many colors, the one treasure he carried. He reached the gate looking for nothing more than a wall to sleep against and a little water.

No door opened. In Sodom hospitality was not merely missing, it was against the grain of the place, a thing the city had trained itself out of. He stood in the street while people passed him the way they would pass a stray dog.

Then a man stopped. He looked the traveler over, and his glance caught on the carpet and its colors, and something moved behind his eyes.

The Sly Fox Opened His Door

Hedor was his name, and he had the cunning of a fox. He smiled the way a generous man smiles. "Come," he said. "You will not sleep in the street tonight. Bring your beast, bring your goods, and be my guest." The traveler, who had met nothing but stone faces since the gate, could have wept with gratitude.

Hedor gave him bread. Hedor gave him a corner to lie in. Hedor pressed him to stay a second night, and the weary man, disarmed, agreed. The carpet lay rolled in the corner the whole time, and every hour Hedor's eyes went back to it.

On the third morning the traveler rose, loaded his donkey, and reached for his carpet to strap it down for the road.

It was gone.

The Carpet Became a Dream

"My carpet," the traveler said. "Where is my carpet?"

Hedor's face was a picture of gentle confusion. "What carpet?" he asked. "You carried no carpet. You dreamed it, friend. You have had a dream, and a rich one, and you are fortunate, because I know how to read such things."

The man stared. Hedor went on, warming to the work. "The rope you used to bind this carpet you imagine? That is a long life, stretched out before you, year upon year. And the carpet itself, all those colors? An orchard. Fruit trees of every kind, a garden that will be yours." He spread his hands as though he had just handed the traveler a kingdom. By his account the stranger owed him thanks, not an argument.

"It is not a dream," the traveler said, and his voice climbed. "It is my carpet. You took it. Give it back."

Hedor did not flinch. He did not return the carpet. He had one thing left to do.

The Cry That Rose From the Road

"Now," Hedor said, "there is the matter of my fee. Dream reading is my trade, and a reading such as that one does not come cheap. My usual price is four pieces of silver." He paused, and let a little warmth back into his face. "But you were my guest. For you, three."

He had taken the man's only possession, called the theft a dream, and then presented a bill for the insult. In Sodom there was nowhere to carry a complaint, because the theft was not a crime there. It was the ordinary business of the town, dressed in the manners of law.

The same manners governed how Sodom killed. When the men of the city marked a wealthy visitor, two of them would go to him as friends, walk him toward a half-fallen ruin, and hold him in pleasant talk. One kept him listening. The other worked loose the base of a leaning wall until the stones came down on the guest's head. Then the two of them split what he had carried, and went home, and this too was simply how things were done.

The traveler from Elam went out through the gate the way he had come, poorer than when he arrived, while behind him the city glittered on, gold in its very dirt, deaf to every voice it had ever robbed. The cries of the wronged did not stop at the walls. They went up. And one morning, out of the same sky the birds had been driven from, the answer came down as fire.