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He took shelter in a hollow between the tall rocks. Above, and all around, he heard the sand skitter and rattle against stone, picked up and blown by the night wind. He took a drink from his goatskin. The water was still warm from his trek under the desert sun, and tasted of quartz dust, just like the air. If he survived another year of this, perhaps he’d stop caring. Perhaps he wouldn’t even notice the taste of dust and the weight of stuffed lungs. It would be clear air and clean, cool water that became strange and unsettling.
It was fitting, he supposed. He remembered what he had seen below Memphis, where no one else would be persuaded it was worth looking. He kept the black fragments of Irem in his bag, even after all others had chosen to forget them. When the sky was cloudless, he looked up, and knew that there was more space between any two of those stars than in a thousand earths put end to end, and that each dot of light was a furnace hotter than all fires men had ever lit combined. It was right and fitting, he had since decided, that he should train himself to see what others considered “normal” or “natural” as the exceptions, and that which they feared to speak of or experience as the rule.
He tied the waterskin shut again, and hung it back on the hook of the saddle. His camel was asleep already, legs folded beneath him, eyes shut. He knew he must not let it out of his sight, or he truly might not live another year, or even another week. The Bedouins had turned back after the last attack. He’d offered to double his payment, but the sheik had told him that even tripling it would not cover the cost of the stricken camels should they finally drop dead. If his own mount was killed, or sickened to the point where the desert heat and dryness could kill it, there’d be none within days to rescue him. He couldn’t bring himself to blame his erstwhile guides, of course. Most men chose life over knowledge, and comfort over truth. They were not wrong for choosing thus, any more than he was wrong for choosing the opposite. Like the burning furnaces in the sky, and the flying sphere of the earth underfoot, and the rattling sand against the windblown rock, they each acted according to their natures, and could have chosen nothing else.
He leaned his head back against the stone, and listened. There were no insects or nightbirds singing here, but he recognized a chord of al azif in the rattling of the sand, and the way it fell wistfully away to a mere whisper after each high, howling note of wind. With each repetition, he knew, something unseen would travel through the earth, into distant lands far to the north and south. And, in response, power would pulse through the sky, and be felt and answered by something else far across that empty space. The crickets heard the answer, and timed the string-plucks of their chirping legs to its refrain. There were no crickets here, but he’d studied them in enough other places that he could fill in their part in the harmony himself, if only he had something with which to play. He was half tempted to draw a parchment and let his ink-tipped feather follow the notes in space and shape, even though he knew he would need to conserve his writing materials, when he heard another sound from inside the hollow.
Sitting upright, he looked around, holding his hand above his eyes and peering through the darkness and the stony crevices all around. Was that an animal, he had heard? It had sounded like an animal. If it was a wild beast or a runaway goat or donkey, he decided, he had best kill it and save more food for the journey ahead. What he truly hoped for, however, was that it was not an animal of the kind that could be found in just any of these northern deserts. What he most hoped for was that the beast that had preyed upon the camels was returning for another meal, and that this time he could see the creature in the light of his torch. Such a sight, he was sure, would be well worth spending ink and parchment on. Padding quietly toward his camel, letting the moaning wind and the rattling sand cover the sound of his feet, he retrieved the oilcloth torch in one hand, and produced the sword he’d been gifted in Medina from its sheath in the other. The wind fell again, and after the rattling of the sand he heard another heavy footstep from further in the dark crevice. A footstep…and the swishing of cloth.
And a smell. One unpleasant, and wholly unfamiliar. Chemical, like a medicine or a strange embalming fluid.
He narrowed his eyes.
“Come out,” he called out, raising his voice to be heard over al azif, “I’ve already heard you!”
Silence. The kind of silence he’d learned not to trust. He narrowed his eyes and peered further into the darkness of the crevasse, and took a quick look upward to make sure nothing clung to the rocky walls overhead.
“If you understand my words,” he continued, “know that I do not wish to harm you. I seek only the City of Irem.”
At the mention of the legendary City of Pillars, from whence the fragments he owned had come, there was another shuffling sound from the darkness.
“Irem.” A female voice. A Bedouin accent, like those of the guides who had left him. Low in pitch, but with an energy that suggested youth. “Why do you want to go there?”
He struggled to see who he was speaking to, hidden in the darkness below the closing of the rocks above, but could not. And yet, somehow, he knew that she could see him perfectly. “I am a scholar. I wish to learn.” He paused for a moment, considering. “Even those things the Caliph would rather be forgotten.”
A risky move, he knew. The Ummayads were not popular in this region, but one could never be sure. After another refrain of the wind and sand, he saw a human figure detach itself from the darkness of the cavern ahead and step forth into the weak blue starlight. She was a girl of perhaps twelve or thirteen years, though tall and broad of shoulder. She had a flat face, small eyes that pierced even through the darkness, and the longest, wildest, dustiest hair he had ever seen. Her head was shamelessly uncovered. Her robe was ragged and dirty, hanging almost in ribbons in some places. As she walked forward, she did so with a slight stoop, as though limping or burdened. The smell sharpened, as if she wore some harsh-smelling oil as a balm or perfume.
“Irem,” she repeated. She shuffled closer, looking closely, skeptically, at him. “You want to go to Irem?”
He nodded his head, lowering the lamp (which he had not yet had a chance to light) back into its case and putting both hands around the hilt of his sword. He had heard of the demons that guarded the City of Pillars. If this strange Bedouin girl was one of them, or a witch with whom they consorted, he hoped that he could bribe or barter with her, but feared that battle might be unavoidable. “Yes,” he repeated, keeping his voice calm and placating, but ready to strike if she did. “I wish only to look, and to learn. Not to disturb.”
She blinked at him. Her eyes were strange, somehow. As if they were bigger and smaller than they should be all at once. “I…we used to go there,” she said.
“We?” He lowered the blade, but remained at the ready. “Your tribe?”
“Yes.” She nodded her head. Very slowly. Her beady eyes turned downward. One look at her expression told him that he should not ask where her kin were now.
Instead, he simply asked “How long have you been alone?”
“I don’t know. A long time.”
Outside, the wind picked up. The sand rattled, each beat against the stone drum more insistent than the last. The clouds danced aside, and the stars brightened their stare.
“I’m sorry,” he told her. He lowered his sword to the ground, but didn’t sheath it just yet. “Are you thirsty? Hungry?”
She nodded yes. Her eyes, though still sad and downtrodden, rose up to the saddlebags slung on the camel behind him.
“I don’t have much,” he said, “but I can share with you tonight.”
She pursed her thick, strangely wedge-shaped, lips together, as if afraid of pursuing that line of discussion. He cocked his head, raising a hand to his beard as he tried to parse her reluctance. Then, he followed the line of her gaze, and realized that she hadn’t been staring hungrily at the saddlebags.
She was staring hungrily at the camel.
“Please,” he said, speaking very slowly, keeping his sword pointed downward, “answer truthfully, and I won’t be angry.” His heart beat faster. Overhead, the stars seemed brighter still, as if their light were reaching down toward the crevasse. “Was it you who wounded our camels, last night and the night before?”
Her head tilted downward again. Refusing to meet his gaze. His heart beat even faster, outpacing the drumbeats of the windborne sand.
“Then you are the ghul they tell tales about, in the villages north of Aqaba? The demon that drinks the blood of camels and goats brought too near the red desert?”
She continued looking downward. Limp. Shivering. “I don’t know.” he just barely heard her whisper. “I think so, though.”
A smile broke out across his dusty face. She blinked, clearly shocked at his reaction, and craned her broad, flat face and uncovered, wild-haired head back up toward his.
“Alhamdulillah!” He exclaimed, still beaming. “I dreamed of finding you, but never thought I would really be so blessed!”
She held perfectly still, aside from her hair in the wind. Staring. As if unable to comprehend what she was seeing and hearing.
“Please,” he continued, “if you do not wish to tell me anything more about yourself, I certainly cannot force you. My offer of provisions is open, either way.” He chuckled to himself for a moment. “Though I will need my camel healthy enough to ride back southwest.”
“You’re not afraid of me?” Her head perked up, slowly, almost like a camel raising its neck. “You don’t want to kill me?”
He shrugged. “I’m afraid of everything. A sandstorm could kill me. A hungry hyena or feral dog could kill me in my sleep tonight. I could trip and fall from this tall rock and die. For most of my life, I have been surrounded by men with swords and bows who could kill me if they chose. Are you any worse than them, that I should fear you more?”
They stared at one another, as the stars reached down and the wind and sand sang their accompaniment. One smiling. The other shaking.
“I might be,” she said, finally. “I don’t really know.”
“I don’t either.”
She took a step closer. She was big for a girl, and even for a grown woman come to think of it. Her skin was darker in complexion than most of the other locals he had met, and the shape of her eyes and lips were foreign altogether. “What’s your name?” She asked.
He sheathed his sword. He didn’t know that it was safe to tell her his true name and origin, but he reasoned that lying would be far worse if she ever found out. “I am Abdul Alhazred, of Sana.”
“It's nice to meet you.” She sounded genuine. As if she meant every word she said, rather than simply acting out of manners. “They called me Aliyah.”
“You…are…”
She looked at him defensively, thick, heavy eyebrows narrowing as she pulled the new robe he had purchased for her tight around her midsection. The clay walls of the rented room were lit only by lamp, the window shutters closed and bolted to keep out any prying eyes from the late afternoon street. The smell had been growing more pungent ever since they’d set foot inside their temporary abode, but Abdul found it more curious than anything else.
“What.” Her voice was sharp. Deeper even than usual. “I’m what?”
“You are,” he repeated, eyes open in awe, “one of the most beautiful things I have ever been so blessed to see.”
She pulled the robe tighter. Glaring at him with unmasked skepticism.
“I’ve seen creatures pulled by fishermen from the Red Sea,” he assured her, “animals shaped like flowers, with moving petals the color of sunset. Globes of solid, living water, through which red and violet shooting stars fly one after the next along pale threads. Corals layered upon each other, more intricate than any palace. You’re like all of them.”
Aliyah looked back at Abdul, bemusement written all across her flat, yellow-brown features. “Oh. I didn’t know there were creatures like that.” She took in a deep breath, and looked downward. Contemplative. “Well, I guess I never even saw the sea, until you brought me here.”
“I’ll leave if you’re uncomfortable,” he said, “you told me that your family used to watch you eat and drink, so I didn’t think it would be any pr-”
“I’m fine,” she cut him off, raising a hand to quiet him. “I’m not…like that. Ashamed of being seen. I’m not. I never was. It’s just that.”
He waited, patiently, unspeaking. She had the look that came over her whenever the subject of her family or childhood arose, and he had learned not to prod her at those times.
“The last time a stranger saw me, it…ended badly.”
Abdul nodded, slowly, putting the rest of the story together from the hints she’d given so far. Anger welled inside of him, but he reminded himself that there was no use for it. The tribesmen who found a family of witches and demons near the haunted red desert had acted according to their nature. They could have no more helped themselves than the sand could decide not to rattle against the desert stones, or the birds and crickets could choose not to sing, or Aliyah could choose to live without blood.
“I will not watch you, then,” he said, turning his head away. Before he could though, she stopped him.
“No. I would…I would like you to see me, now. I know you want to learn. And…it’s been a long time since I felt this safe.”
He smiled, and picked up his parchment and quill again. She dropped her robe, letting it cascade down to the floor, and approached the sickly young goat that he’d bought for a pittance, tied to the table and weakly struggling.
“We will seek Irem again, someday,” Abdul told her as he watched, struggling to recapture just a crude representation of the shifting colors and rippling motion on parchment, “we will learn exactly what you are, and how you came to be. We’ll need more money, to feed both of us along the way.”
“How can we get money?” She asked him, looking up from what was left of her meal.
The mausoleum dripped with dust and grime. A low, pulpy squishing, rhythmic as a heartbeat and clear as a calling nightbird, came from all around. The darkness at the edge of Abdul’s lamplight parted, and more oily gray cloaks with drawn hoods and trailing sleeves squirmed through, standing just barely upright as they put one unseen foot before the next.
Abdul looked back at the first figure, who wore a gold and silver mask and a colorful, cone-shaped headdress in place of a hood above the collar of its ancient cloak. It remained silent, just angling its time-tarnished helm of precious metals down at him in judgement, or in anger. Aliyah’s back was pressed against his; she held a torch of her own, and he felt her wild hair that resisted all attempts at grooming or even cutting swish back and forth as she looked for an escape.
"This tablet was never yours!” He shouted at the crowned and masked one. “And neither was this tomb! Depart here at once! Pl’yughu forol mbwul Yog-Sothoth gerlyuli tha’gu-”
The shuffling figures all around retreated at his incantation, merging back into the liquidy darkness beyond the lamplight with a chorus of wet, heavy squishes. The cloaked thing in the tall cone did not. It stepped wetly forward, raising a gloved hand. Abdul’s voice caught in his throat. He coughed. All around them, the darkness began oozing again with the shuffling, wetly squishing figures. He tried to advance himself. Tried to recall his Sumerian for a plea for mercy. The darkness thickened as his torch slid from his hand.
Then, suddenly, he could breath normally again. The crowned one thrashed, bulged and writhed grotesquely beneath its cloak, and then collapsed into a molten pile of ancient jewelry and swollen, spongy cloth. Aliyah had rushed toward the figure, and it had collapsed before she could even lay a hand on it. As Abdul’s head stopped spinning and his lungs took in more musty tomb air as if it were the kiss of life itself, the other figures squished and flopped hastily away, vanishing into the shadows by the unseen walls. They did not return.
“Are you alright?” Aliyah looked down at him, concern in her beady, heavily lidded eyes.
“Yes,” Abdul pulled himself straight again, retrieving his fallen torch. He gave her a bewildered look. “He pulled the air from the space around us. How did you breathe?”
Aliyah shuffled a little in place. There was a small movement beneath the front of her robe, and a thin, annulated tube, its hollow mouth lined with a gently rippling mane of tiny hairs that strobed with each beating of the girl’s heart between lapis lazuli blue, emerald green, and coral pink, emerged alongside her neck.
Abdul laughed. “Ha! Of course, like when you hide under the sand and reach up for air! But how did you know there would still be air just an arm’s length away?”
“I didn’t. I just guessed lucky.”
He embraced her, and she him. Then, he returned his attention to the fallen pile of robes and royal ornaments. There was still a weak, undulating motion beneath the cloth, and in the light of the oil torch he could see the cause. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of earthworms wriggled out of the collar and sleeves, and from inside the gloves and masked headdress. As their tangled bodies oozed and crawled away in whatever direction they could manage, the cloak flattened out further, losing the appearance of anything like a human body within.
“Interesting.” Abdul pulled his foot back away from the expanding circle of worms. As Aliyah stepped up beside him, the worms all changed course, twitching and flopping their indistinguishable little heads away from her and trying to writhe back into the refuge of the cloak, or across the dusty stone floor on the far side. Just like the madly terrified rats back in Mosul, and the vultures that had taken flight in fear throughout the wilderness. He did not let any of the worms touch him, nor did he lay his finger on the gold and silver mask and headdress, though they could have surely funded the next two expeditions.
“Accursed, they told me,” he whispered, “is the grave of a magician.” He wondered, as he watched the wriggling mass, if he himself qualified as that, at this point. If his memories and habits, too, would find their way into whatever flies or grave-worms found their way into his remains.
Aliyah looked back at him. “Should we find his own grave next?”
Abdul shook his head. “I don’t believe that would be wise, at least until we’ve learned more about such spirits.” He withdrew from the expanding mass of writhing pink, and placed a hand on his pack, making sure that the rectangular tablet – gray as stone, but harder than diamond – was still in place. It was. He even felt the raised outline of the five-pointed star shape that occupied most of its center through the hide of his bag. “Let us return to Mosul, for now. We must find a way to translate the writing on the tablet, and the Hidden Priests will pay to study it themselves.”
Abdul was still on his knees, nearly an hour after he’d sunk down before the statue. Aliyah wasn’t sure she could really blame him. He had an eye for artwork that she only wished she could share. Her mother had showed her images and carvings, at the outskirts of Irem and elsewhere throughout the red desert, that were far closer to life than anything made by Semites. Closer, even, then the Greek and Roman knick-knacks Abdul had shown her. But even they did not compare to this statue. With every flicker of the lamplight, she thought she saw the tentacles twitch and slide, as if the creature was reaching outward toward the kneeling Abdul and would touch him at any moment.
She felt her own limbs aching to do the same. To hug. To enwrap. To do…something else. She wasn’t sure what. She shook these confusing thoughts out of her head, and returned her attention to the contents of the secret chamber the Hidden Priests had finally granted them access to. A spongy, sea-green statue so convincing it could almost be a living creature turned to stone.
“Are you alright?” She asked, startling him a little. “You haven’t moved.”
“How long has it been?” He didn’t turn around, or take his eyes off the octopus-headed icon.
“Long enough that you should have finished by now,” she said. She paused a minute. “And you aren’t even drawing it.”
Abdul nodded, reluctantly. “I’ve seen this being so many times, in my dreams. At times I could almost make out his name, in the sounds that I heard. In truth, it was my dreams of him that led me to leave Sana all those years ago to seek the truth. And all this time, right here in Mosul, this statue has been worshipped.”
She stared at him, confused. Wondering if perhaps he was toying with her in his playful way. “It’s just Cthulhu,” she said.
He turned around, still on his knees, and stared at her over his thick black beard and mustache. “Just Cthulhu?” He sounded disbelieving.
“Well, yes,” she replied, still unsure if this was some kind of joke, “when you dream deeply enough, you find him.” She paused. Something occurring to her. “Wait, Abdul…the mysterious god you spoke of, and asked me about. That wasn’t just Cthulhu, was it?”
Abdul stared. Blinking. It was answer enough. She raised her eyebrows, surprised herself now.
“I thought everyone knew about him,” she said, looking bewilderedly back at the statue, “he’s not anything special.” She paused for a moment, unsure how to react to Abdul’s silent, openmouthed expression. Feeling suddenly self conscious, she looked back up at the statue. “That’s a really good carving, though. I’ve never seen one of anything that looked so real. You really should draw it.”
Abdul pulled himself to his feet, turning fully toward her. “I think,” he said, “it would be best if you didn’t say such things where the priests can hear. After we leave, I would like to hear more. I think I can trust your version more than theirs.”
He looked back at the statue. “Alhamdulillah,” he whispered. The word sounded halfhearted.
They rode morosely along the Via Maris. They each rode a camel of their own, now. The half-dozen small wound’s on Aliyah’s mount were freshly bandaged, and it only had a little bit of trouble keeping pace, but another feeding would be problematic. Behind them, Abdul could still hear the village dogs, barking themselves hoarse from the village walls behind the hills. Abdul had nearly been bitten, when he interposed himself. Aliyah’s eyes were downcast. As the sun slipped down behind the Mediterranean, the flies and moths began to flutter, and Abdul recognized their looping rises and falls. After every ten and two thirds repetitions, there was a louder lap of the waves against the shore, and the rattling of sand that whispered their barely audible tune. Beneath Aliyah’s robe, he knew, the brilliant green and violet lights were matching every note he could hear, and many others from parts of al aziz that he could not hear. The wind came in from the sea, filling his nostrils with the smell of sickly chemicals from Aliyah that drowned out the sulfur and brine.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, finally.
He shook his head. His beard was longer than it had been when they’d met last year, and his hair poked wildly out from under his keffiyeh. “For what?” He gestured to their mounts. “For making us wealthy?” He chuckled. “If only we’d known the Pnakotic script was the same one your mother taught you, we could have done this months ago. If you want to apologize for something, apologize for not remembering before!”
“It won’t last,” she replied. “I’m…I’m hungry again, Abdul.”
The smile drained from his face, like blood from the dog that had been foolish enough to chase after them. Even with her head downcast, he had to crane his face upward a little to look her in the eye. Had she really been that tall, when they’d first met?
“Do you think you can catch some fish? Will that be enough?”
“I think so. I hope so.”
Abdul gestured to the sea. “We’ll find a hidden place along the shore. I’ll watch the road and make sure no one sees.”
“How many of them have there been?” Abdul wondered aloud, as he did more and more often these days. “How many, and how long each?”
He stood atop the low-ceilinged temple that rose above the sand. In all directions, there were but rolling yellow dunes as far as the eye could see. He had just completed his latest illustration. A tiny man with a huge head, a pair of curving horns upon it, and covered in the green scales of a lizard or a crocodile, crouched on his long-armed hands and finger-like toes. It joined the others. The two-headed starfish that crawled on one set of tips; the ancients to whom mankind owed its very existence. The cone-shaped slug with terrible claws on the end of its ropey dorsal arms; the shadows out of time. The winged centipede-crab with four pairs of hands; this image drawn not in his own hand, but in the creature’s own, realistic in a way that made most of the men he’d showed it too scream in fright. And, of course, the bloated man with the face of an octopus who he saw so often in his dreams, the sight of whom had first driven Abdul to leave his family home in Yemen to seek answers; Cthulhu, who was touched by the minds of so many dreamers, but cared for none of them. Men had lived on earth for half a million years or less, as best he could tell so far. These others…they had gaps in their histories, temporary leaves of absence, many times that length.
“That is not dead,” he whispered to himself, looking down at the half-buried nameless city they’d just exited, “that can eternal lie.” He spoke the word “eternal” in a way that nearly made him spit. Sarcastic beyond description. What meant eternity, to a human? Ten million years? One million years? A trifling thousand years? It was like calling the rock under them “the world,” when hundreds of them could fit between any two stars. There was a stirring, below these shifting, rattling sands, and if it ever stirred too far there would be an awakening. Minds peered from the past into the future, from the future into the past, around and through the world of Abdul Alhazred as if it were but a thin cloud of smoke disappearing in the wind. The octopus-faced man, and the others like him, they weren’t even really dead. Not even asleep, perhaps. Just waiting.
“It’s all theirs. Nothing is ours. The old ones were, the old ones will be, and the old ones are.”
A heavy footstep fell on the roof behind him. He turned around, and saw that Aliyah had just climbed up onto the roof again. She looked confused. As if she’d just woken up.
“Aliyah? Where did you go?”
She blinked. Staring quietly downward with her hairy head, and up at him blankly with her lower eyes. “I’m not sure.” She bent down a little, bringing her head down to the height of his own. Her face was bearded, now, or rather furred. For months, Abdul had been passing her off as a man to those who asked, when she was forced to go unhooded or unmasked.
Of course, neither of them were quite sure if she actually was female or male. More and more, Abdul had began suspecting she was both. Especially if those couplets he’d translated from the quartzite tablets meant what he thought they might, about whose face peered out from her unclothed lower body. Ten years ago, he’d have prayed to Allah for her sake, or to one of the smaller gods that his family still made small offerings to when the men of the Ummayad governor were not present. Three years ago, he might have beseeched Cthulhu, or Yog-Sothoth. He now knew better than to pray. At best, it would do nothing. At worst, something might actually listen.
“It’s happening more often,” she said. She paused for a moment, three gently luminous stalks shifting up, covering her face from his view as they shifted from deep cyan to bright turquoise. “I think I killed one of our pack. I’m not sure. I’m not hungry anymore, and my throats are wet.”
More stalks snaked and wrapped their way up to hide her hairy, apologizing face. Just as she’d said, fresh blood trickled down the semi-translucent necks of three round, toothy mouths. The eyes Abdul saw now were not apologetic. They weren’t anything, really. Just empty, staring irises, whose protective sheathes of cilia pulsed and rippled with every wail of the desert crickets and with each rattle of the sand in the wind. The wind changed for a moment, and he felt lightheaded with her harsh, unyielding perfume.
“We’re almost done here,” Abdul said, as much to himself as to her, “and what these old ones knew may help us. I think we can return to Irem, now.”
“I’m…Abdul?”
“Yes, Aliyah?”
She was silent for a moment, as well as invisible behind the mass of light and slithering.
“I…I don’t know if I want to, anymore.”
He tilted his long-bearded face with its prematurely graying hairs. “You don’t want to come with me?”
“No, I still want that. I…I still love you, Abdul. But I don’t feel like there’s anything wrong with me, anymore. I just…I feel like if I have enough food, things will be fine. I don’t want to shrink again.”
He exhaled slowly. He no longer smelled the dust. “I see. We may have to part ways when I enter a town or city, then, and meet again outside. And you’ll need to hunt more for yourself, if you keep growing.”
“I know. I don’t want to stop our research, though. I…I think we should go back to Irem, too. Not to change me. Just to learn.”
He managed to smile again. “We shall.” His shoulders relaxed. “I was afraid you were about to say you wanted to leave for good.”
She shook her heavy, bristly head, smiling with her scaly lips and undersized teeth. “Never. You’re all I have in this world, Abdul.”
The black pillars of Irem rose, high and jagged, from the mass of rocks and sands and swampy, mud-filled pits. The gibbous moon brought forth lines of shadow over the texts, shadows that made other letters, in other texts. All at once, the voices of the frogs rose, chanting, like a single beating heart, calling down the moon and ushering the unseen pulses from the far north and south. She could hear it now. He had taught her to listen, instructed her in how to decode the sounds and feelings that had always been on the borders of her consciousness. Her other face was the key. It was with its ears that she had to listen. With its eyes that she had to track the magnetic chains that her older pair couldn’t see. With its hairs that she smelled the chemical contribution to al azif, where her nostrils wouldn’t suffice, and interpreted it as just another musical instrument in the melody, for not all music was sound or even light alone.
And now, with what he’d just read, the same verses that her mother and uncles had read from the moon-shadow letters hidden on the pillar walls of Irem, she finally understood it. The song was telling her what it was that must be done.
She didn’t want to do it. Or did she? She wasn’t sure. To want two things at once, two contradictory things. No judgement, Abdul had always told her. Everything acted according to its nature. But until this moment, she had never seen him look so terrified.
“I…don’t…know…” she said, thrashing her head violently away from him as he stood by the basalt pillar, torch in hand, eyes wide and fixed on her. “It, yes, its familiar. I didn’t understand until now. But that’s not me. It’s…us…but…not me. I’m them, I’m Him, but I’m…”
The frog voices rose in salute, again, every other second, higher and stronger each time. With every repetition of the chorus, the moon seemed to fall lower, and the insects rose higher in their madly dancing cloud.
“Maybe you can also change,” she said, stepping toward him. He took a step back, and even though she could see his reluctance to do so, it hurt her more than anything since the deaths of her mother’s family. “We can…you can…WE can find a way to make you like me. Like us. We don’t have to…to end like it says.”
“Aliyah,” Abdul finally said, “think of all we’ve learned. All we’ve managed to do. I love you because you’re you. If this happens, you’ll stop being you. If we do as you say, I’ll stop being me. Would you still love me then?”
“I…no, I wouldn’t…I want to, but…”
Suddenly, she’d knocked one of the smaller pillars over. Her mouths were stuffed full of frogs and fish, and a pile of dry, empty little bodies were scattered all around.
She looked around, panicked, eyes – all of them – going wide. “Abdul?” She raised her voice. It was deeper than it had been, he was right. “ABDUL??”
It was a great relief when she heard him answer, from a hiding place behind another, thicker pillar.
“It just happened again,” he told her what she already knew.
She nodded. She’d lost the ability to cry over a year ago, but there was a dull sting in her older eyes that reminded her of the loss. It was difficult, but she convinced herself that now was not food time, and that this problem could not be solved by killing. Slowly, her limbs stopped twitching, and she lowered herself down onto her feet in the rock-laden mud.
“I’ll return to Damascus,” she heard Abdul call out, “all the favors owed to us, all the notes we’ve written…I’ll find a way. Please, just agree that you’ll cooperate. Agree to let me turn you back. I’m afraid of you, Aliyah!”
Those words. The ones she’d dreaded above all others. She’d known they would come. He could never lie to her. She hung her head, bristles hanging down past her hips. “I…yes. I don’t want this to be me. Not only this. Not if it means…”
She didn’t need to finish the sentence. He remembered the bandits better than she did. Especially the part where she’d nearly grabbed him by mistake.
“I’ll come back,” he said, still hiding, “I’ll come back, and I’ll help you.”
Three parchment scrolls were wrapped up around wooden pins. A fourth was spread across the stone table, the light of the open window falling all across it. He blinked down at what he had just written, copied from one of his many, messy notes. He’d already written this passage, he knew it. Heart rising in his chest, he scrolled back, and found empty, blank parchment.
He let out a sharp, horrified breath. No wonder he wasn’t able to put it all in order, connect the facts and make them make sense. No wonder they whispered behind his back when he went to the market for ink and parchment. And food, sometimes.
The knowledge he’d recovered from al azif, and from the places it had led him, was fragmented, because he was fragmented. Or he was fragmented because it was. Perhaps both at once? Was this how it began? The person breaking into tiny parts, collapsing under the weight of the information it had absorbed? Each bit or mote of what had been self ready to be swallowed by a maggot or an earthworm, who would forever more try without success to become one again? His beard was white, long, and tangled, and he was only…how old? What year even was it? He hadn’t thought to ask anyone since before they’d gone to Irem, and he’d promised Aliyah he’d return with the cure. His beard…did it look like worms, already?
He felt compelled to get up and look at his reflection in a basin of water, but he had to finish organizing this information, he couldn’t take breaks. Not in the middle of the day. Not when there was sunlight to work by. But…he was thirsty, wasn’t he? Maybe that was why he’d become so scattered. He needed water, to drink, not to look in. Reflections couldn’t always be trusted anyway. The well water in Damascus was probably vacant, but if someone moved in the reflections could lie. He should probably rebuke it before drinking, just in case. It had been a while since he’d last done that. He’d just bundle up before going outside. The heat was unpleasant, when he did that, but he didn’t want his skin to hear the sun’s sinister verse of al azif and decide to start growing out of control.
The obvious occurred to him very suddenly. He laughed, hoarsely and harshly, as he walked out the door of his abode and onto the busy street of the Ummayad capital. People stared, but he ignored them; the joke was on them, at least as much as it was on himself. He at least was prepared for it. They really had no idea at all. Growing out of control? There never was any control in the first place! No one was themselves. Everything was a part of something bigger, and made of things that were smaller, and almost none of them knew! His skin grew in the shape of his body underneath because it was seduced into obedience by the words of his flesh, but why should it not forsake them if so it chose? Was the sun not a more glorious master than the flesh of Abdul Alhazred? Not Abdul himself, just his flesh. Different parts of flesh could give different instructions. That was the entire problem he had to solve.
“Abdul.”
He stopped in place. Was he dreaming? Was he more thirsty than he realized, and hallucinating?
“Abdul…look.”
The voice was deeper than bass, felt in his bones as well as his ears. He smelled it as well, that chemical foulness. He wanted it to be his thirst, but everyone around him was looking back at the source of the voice. An instant later, they screamed, and all was pandemonium of kicked up dust and fleeing bodies.
“Is…that…you…Abdul?”
He saw her shape in the kicked up dust that surrounded her body. Her face, her Aliyah face, nearly hidden, up above, and touched by only a tiny amount of dust. She walked toward him across the paved street, but neither of her hanging, club-hoofed feet touched it. She tried to look down at him, but her head barely moved, as if she were drugged or paralyzed…but the rest moved faster than he’d ever seen her do so.
“No,” he whispered.
“Abdul…help…I need you…”
He dropped the bucket, and staggered back away. She’d grown so much faster. Why? Why would it accelerate so suddenly? He shouldn’t have left her alone. He should have found a way to stay with her, to keep them together, no matter how much danger it put people in.
“I’m here!” Abdul shouted. “You’ve found me! I can try, soon!”
“Try…”
The deep, bass voice was confused. Struggling to remember.
“Abdul…I need…I need you…for…I…”
He ran toward he,r arms raised, even as the dust dripped off her tendrils, leaving her nearly invisible save a slight gleam in some of the eyes and the saliva dripping from open mouths. “To turn you back! Yes, we-”
His throat caught. Stinging, piercing, pain. Pressure, like he was squeezing himself from inside. He felt his feet rise from the floor.
“Help…please…”
Another stabbing pain, this time into his heart cavity.
She was frustrated. She’d managed to follow him. She remembered his smell. She had needed him for something, but she couldn’t remember what. She didn’t think what she’d done was the right thing. The sight of his bloodless body saddened her, for whatever reason. If only she had eaten more, on her way here, she could have remembered better.
More shouts and screams from all around. Pain, as sharp arrow heads embedded themselves. She roared, her previous situation forgotten, and turned on the attackers. Thirty-five of Caliph Hisham’s soldiers died before she was forced out into the wilderness, bleeding from a hundred wounds. When she died, hungry and confused, blood and ichor leaking out across the bushes and grasses outside the city, the birds and insects sang along with her final breaths.