On the second day, the boy climbed to the top of a cliff near the camp. The sentinels allowed him to go; they had already heard about the sorcerer who could turn himself into the wind, and they didn't want to go near him. In any case, the desert was impassable. He spent the entire afternoon of the second day looking out over the desert, and listening to his heart. The boy knew the desert sensed his fear. They both the same language.
 
 
 On the third day, the chief met with his officers. He called the alchemist to the meeting and said, "Let's go see the boy who turns himself into the wind."
"Let's," the alchemist answered.
The boy took them to the cliff where he had been on the previous day. He told them all to be seated.
"It's going to take a while," the boy said.
"We're in no hurry," the chief answered. "We are men of the desert."
The boy looked out at the horizon. There were mountains in the distance. And there were , rocks, and plants that insisted on living where survival seemed impossible. There was the desert that he had wandered for so many months; despite all that time, he knew only a small part of it. Within that small part, he had found an Englishman, , wars, and an with fifty thousand palm trees and three hundred wells.
"What do you want here today?" the desert asked him. "Didn't you spend enough time looking at me yesterday?"
"Somewhere you are holding the person I love," the boy said. "So, when I look out over your sands, I am also looking at her. I want to return to her, and I need your help so that I can turn myself into the wind."
"What is love?" the desert asked.
"Love is the 's flight over your sands. Because for him, you are a green field, from which he always returns with game. He knows your rocks, your dunes, and your mountains, and you are generous to him."
"The falcon's carries bits of me, myself," the desert said. "For years, I care for his game, feeding it with the little water that I have, and then I show him where the game is. And, one day, as I enjoy the fact that his game thrives on my surface, the falcon dives out of the sky, and takes away what I've created."
"But that's why you created the game in the first place," the boy answered. "To nourish the falcon. And the falcon then nourishes man. And, eventually, man will nourish your sands, where the game will once again flourish. That's how the world goes."
"So is that what love is?"
"Yes, that's what love is. It's what makes the game become the falcon, the falcon become man, and man, in his turn, the desert. It's what turns lead into gold, and makes the gold return to the earth."
"I don't understand what you're talking about," the desert said.
"But you can at least understand that somewhere in your sands there is a woman waiting for me. And that's why I have to turn myself into the wind."
The desert didn't answer him for a few moments.
Then it told him, "I'll give you my sands to help the wind to blow, but, alone, I can't do anything. You have to ask for help from the wind."
A breeze began to blow. The tribesmen watched the boy from a distance, talking among themselves in a language that the boy couldn't understand.
The alchemist smiled.
The wind approached the boy and touched his face. It knew of the boy's talk with the desert, because the winds know everything. They blow across the world without a birthplace, and with no place to die.
"Help me," the boy said. "One day you carried the voice of my loved one to me."
 
 
 "Who taught you to speak the language of the desert and the wind?"
"My heart," the boy answered.
The wind has many names. In that part of the world, it was called the sirocco, because it brought moisture from the oceans to the east. In the distant land the boy came from, they called it the levanter, because they believed that it brought with it the sands of the desert, and the screams of the wars. Perhaps, in the places beyond the pastures where his sheep lived, men thought that the wind came from Andalusia. But, actually, the wind came from no place at all, nor did it go to any place; that's why it was stronger than the desert. Someone might one day plant trees in the desert, and even raise sheep there, but never would they harness the wind.
"You can't be the wind," the wind said. "We're two very different things."
"That's not true," the boy said. "I learned the alchemist's secrets in my travels. I have inside me the winds, the deserts, the oceans, the stars, and everything created in the universe. We were all made by the same hand, and we have the same soul. I want to be like you, able to reach every corner of the world, cross the seas, blow away the sands that cover my treasure, and carry the voice of the woman I love."
"I heard what you were talking............