Nahla

Scrub grass rattled like warning snakes. A howling gust forced the boy forward. His knees buckled as he breached the crest of the hill. He was thirsty. So thirsty, so thirsty. It made him delirious, and made the dips and crests of the sand look like an ocean that was tossing him. It was tossing him- and he fell forward, spitting out sand as the wind howled in his ears.

The wind at his back roared, and he pulled his blanket up over his head, the sand stinging his exposed legs. And he felt the fear of nighttime tales fasten his pulse. Only this time, he wasn’t under the blankets held in the bosom of his grandmother.

He wasn’t sure where he was or how long he had been walking. He remembered the blow on the back of his head, the pain still throbbing. He remembered the beating of hooves on the dirt. The calling of men, a scream maybe. He didn’t know. Could not discern the chattering of memories from the hiss of sand over stones. He was thirsty.

The wind eased a breath, and he scrambled to his feet. Used an arm to shield the glare of the hot sun and looked toward the chasing storm- a wall of sand-tan clouds stampeding like beasts towards him.

“The jinn are playing at battle.” His grandmother said.

The blue sky faded to grey and pale yellow. The rushing wall of sand and wind was but two crests away. The boy turned to run, knowing his legs too weak to go far. He would eventually fall, so thirsty and so tired, and be drowned in the ocean of sand.

A gust at his back, sand stinging his legs, and grit between his teeth- he saw it flicking like a mirage. Shelter. A barn. The boy brought his blanket up around his head and over his mouth. The wind rushed again, and the sandstorm engulfed him. He squinted into the pale yellow, seeing the haze of the barn through grains in the air.

“Not a mirage.” The boy thought as he reached it. The barn rattled and hissed as sand threaded through holes in its walls and roof. He thanked God but could not stop to give praise rightly.

The boy pulled the door, pulled again, and forced it to part the sand that was building up around it, enough for him to squeeze inside. His feet slid on the sand, pulling the door back closed despite the growling of the wind. He fought for control of it and sank to his knees when he won.

He was so thirsty. His tongue licked at his lips, a single bead of sweat caught at the corner of his mouth. He turned to face the barn’s interior and saw a well, a mud-brick base circling it. His heart jolted, and he crawled towards it, too shaky to stand.

The boy grabbed the edge and looked into its depths. Found the rope that descended into it. Yanked it and felt the weight of water in a bucket. He nearly cried as he pulled it. His head throbbing. Arms weak. He had to pause when his grip almost let the bucket slip back into abyss. He pinned the rope beneath his knee. Hands shaking, he hoisted the bucket up, lack of balance threatening to topple him into the well, and drank until his stomach hurt. He vomited water then drank more.

All was at peace as he settled, resting his head on the ledge of the well. The howling winds were not heard and instead soundlessly vibrated the barn walls, whose gaps in the decaying wood shown yellow glow from sand outside. The sun was visible through the open hole in the roof, peering in at him, haloed in gray haze. It lit the barn in gold, set against hard black shadows. The water in the bucket beside him was bright blue, like a herd dog’s iris. The air still. His heartbeat audible. There was a strangeness. It unsettled him.

Then the boy was opening his eyes. He had thought he only blinked. The moon replaced the sun, the water bucket was empty, and his stomach bloated. The air still gold and shadows harsh- he only questioned the etheric unnatural light a moment before the flickering of fire drew his attention to a still-intact animal stall.

He got to his feet, worried he might be trespassing. Then reason calmed him. Whoever had entered would not have missed him sleeping in the open. Perhaps they too trespassed. He listened close and thought for a moment he heard the watery murmur of voices.

“...” The boy tried to speak, but it caught in his throat. “...Hello?” He managed a rasp.

The watery voices stilled. The firelight flickered on the wood.

The boy took a step, then another, listening for an answer that did not come. “Hello?” He tried again. He was an arm’s length from the stall.

The door was closed. He was too short to see over. He heard shuffling inside. Felt the presence of another person. The sensation of being watched. He grabbed at his waistband for a dagger that he did not have. He glanced over his shoulder, then back at the door. He expected to see a face peering at him.

Nothing.

“I’m opening the door.” The boy said.

The lock was held together by a rusted iron rod, bent at the top to keep it secure. He pulled at it, worked it side to side, breaking where the iron had decayed together. It looked to him like the naw of water-eaten hooks and loops of a bucket. Years of submerged decay. But he was snapped from the oddity of it when the iron rod screeched and turned. The boy worked the rod free, dropped it in the sand. He caught the smell of pipe smoke and an odd chattering he could not place as he pulled the door open.

The stall was void of the characters he imagined inside.

Instead was fresh straw and layers of blankets overtop. At the center, an eight-legged wooden table with a round brass tray that sang a memory of adults drinking coffee. Scattered atop were dried dates and figs. At the center was a palm-sized, clay oil lamp blackened where the flames had licked, and flickering shadows onto the walls.

“Hello?” He asked again. Robes and clothing were mixed into the blankets over the straw. The boy looked back at the well but saw no one else in the barn.

Settled at the table, he watched firelight dance over the figs and dates, waiting for the owner’s return. His stomach growled, but thievery was a sin.

“Hello?” The boy tried again. “Hello? Hello?”

He hoped the angels looked away, took a fig from the brass table, and ate.

His eyes fell closed with its taste. When he opened them, he thought to take another but paused from the glimmer of something in the straw. His mind raced with stories of bandit hideaways with gold and relics dug up from tombs of kings passed. The boy took the clay oil lamp, moved to the glimmer, and bent to illuminate it. Mixed into the dirt, underbed, and layers of blanket and clothes- were golden coins.

His throat was dry, not from the desert heat. His heart pounded, not from fear. He went to the door and searched again for bandits or waiting sages hiding in the shadows. Again the glimmer of gold jumped out to him. It was in the sand scatter on the floor, along the walls, and holes in long-abandoned sacs and boxes. All about him was the glitter of treasure. The well at the center was not mud-built, but ivory dirtied from time, and sand, and traveler’s hands. He held the oil lamp out to take it all in.

The shadows bent in towards him. From the corner of his eye, he caught two, one on the floor and one on the wall, leaning up to say something to the other. They gestured towards him. The boy noticed the rest of them, figures pooling in darkness with black blank faces directed at him. They were watching him. They were not shadows at all.

“J-jinn.”

He staggered back, and the change of light made them move, swell and grow bigger. Panicked, he darted forward, held the oil lamp upward, and watched them shrink. He rushed to the well’s edge and held it up over his head, arm trembling, and banished them to the backsides of pillars and beneath debris. They chittered in the creaking of wood, and wind, and shifting sand.

He did the work of God, he thought, and let that tickle his pride. Then, in the flame of the oil lamp, he saw two white eyes staring at him. The boy dropped the lamp, terracotta shattering on the well’s edge.

The shadows jumped in close, danced about the walls, and darted in to touch him. The fire laughed and exploded. It became like a mad bull bucking from wall to wall, beam, straw, and roof. Howling like a pack of wild dogs. Chirping and chattering, entangling with the shadows. The wood aflame and snapping like the beaks of vultures. Sand began to spill in through the roof. A wind storm whipping up, swirling around, full of flame and sand and falling embers.

He felt the name of God within him. He tried to speak it, but the laughter of the fire rushed at him, and the boy fell backward into the well. Above him was the haloed moon, in flame and twinkling sand captured in the wind. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.

The back of his head smashed against the stone, and his body hit the water. He felt the warmth of blood spilling from him and leaving him cold. Ears full of water, he thought he heard the sound of hooves, shouts from men, a scream from a woman.

“He fell in the well! Help him! He fell in the well!”

He took in a lungful of water, felt it burning, burning, burning, then silence. He reached a hand upward towards his grandmother, bent over the edge, and reaching for him. Her tears pittered onto the surface.

Behind her, the moon swelled large and bright light the sun. Like the patterns on the mosque floor. Like his mother’s eyes. Her body became long as she bent in, took hold of his outstretched arms, and pulled him from the cold.

He stood before a woman made of wavering heat off the afternoon sand. Her face was the smile of everyone he had ever met. Her voice was the song of childhood.

“Are you content to wander the sands for eternity?”

He could not answer.

“Do you yet remember who you are?”

“...No.” The boy shook his head. “Who are you?” He asked.

She laughed and shook her head. He felt her love and her sadness.

“I am the first touch of water on your tongue among the heat of the desert.”

“Your wish is my command.”