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Paul had Seen Chani returning to him, knew that it would happen.
He didn’t want to force it. No, Paul felt he deserved her ire. Loyalty meant everything to her, and he had betrayed her, had spoiled all of his grand promises, when he turned from the only path she was willing to walk. She had known better than to trust an offworlder, an outsider, but he had convinced her. Tricked her. Tricked himself, really, into believing he could be something else. Something more.
So he didn’t want to force the issue, to take the actions he knew would draw her to him quicker.
But Paul also knew that he would not survive without her. Sure, he might live, but all the best parts of him would be dead. The parts of him that he only discovered by standing with her in the desert, feeling ignorant as a child while she explained the things every Fremen knew. She had humbled him, and he had never felt more free. No more striving to live up to impossible expectations, no more worrying about the people whose lives he’d held in his hand. As soon as his House had fallen, none of it had been his responsibility. When he’d shrugged it off, allowed himself to be captured by the desert, when he’d fallen into Chani’s arms…
His memories were as clear as daylight, but the future was always churning, murky, full of strange shapes and refracted light. There were too many choices ahead of him, the decisions that would alter the shape of humanity. Until he made this one, the others would not hold his interest.
So he asked Chani if she would join him on Caladan.
It was three days before she said yes.
Chani did not like the Heighliner. It was a massive steel box, like the spice harvesters only worse, the noises it made were louder than the rare brood of cicadas she’d heard when she was fourteen years old. The creatures rose out of the ground once every three decades, their voices shrill and their bodies inedible, no matter what you did with them. Impossible to think with the damned things cackling all day and night. Impossible to think inside a steel box, too.
So much metal around her, no open air or real light. Arrakeen had been bad enough. The Heighliner was all the worst parts of the palace, needlessly vast and poorly constructed, a machine which only produced waste. What if this foolish contraption exploded as soon as it left Arrakis? What would become of her water then?
She had not told Muad’dib why she’d said yes, when he asked her to accompany him. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to tell him at all.
Though Chani knew there was a chance that Muad’dib was already aware. She didn’t believe he was the Mahdi, she would return her water to Shai-Hulud without ever believing that the man she’d slept beside was anything more than a man. But even the frailest Sayyadina could See things. Chani had trained to be one, once, she knew what the worm’s poison could do. It converted the arcane dreams of the spice into clear focus. There was a chance, a good chance, that Muad’dib had looked into her past and Seen what she’d kept hidden. Chani would have, had their roles been reversed.
When she’d been young, Chani had asked a Sayyadina if her planet would ever be free. The woman had answered what is freedom and promised nothing. It was a kind of truth, and the truth appealed to Chani.
She would tell him. She might. There was still a chance that things would change.
Even knowing that the Guild Navigators could pull the ship through space in an instant, the sensation of being in one place and then suddenly arriving in another unnerved Chani. It should not be such an easy thing to leave one’s home, she thought.
She was seated near the entrance of the ship, where Usul (no, Muad’dib—no! Paul) would make a grand exit. His longed-for and triumphant return home. Because of course, this was where he truly belonged. This was the land that had birthed him, formed him like a wind-carved tunnel in the limestone. The unessential parts of him, like fidelity and steadfastness, had been worn away, until only the barest elements of him remained. The man she knew, the man who once called himself Muad’dib, was not the same as the man who stood now, waiting for the doors to fall away, for the grand procession to begin.
He no longer carried himself the way she expected him to—the silhouette that was seared into her memory did not walk beside her anymore. He seemed taller, though that was not right. Movements too precise, yet lacking all grace. His shoulders were rigid. An illusion of power. Chani hated it.
She missed the clumsy, awkward young man who fumbled with the sand compactor whenever she looked his way, even though he knew well enough how to use it.
No point in dwelling on it. Change was the only constant, the eternal fact of life. Just as the sand wiped away all traces of the day, the desert suffered nothing to remain the same. People died. New ones were born. There was no time for grief, because grief was a luxury. Fremen would shed one tear, if the death was meaningful, because there was space for reverence when well-deserved, and respect was vital in the desert. But that was all. No, there was no point in dwelling on what was past. Dwelling would not change anything. Only action in the here and now had the power to do that.
Chani’s resolve was met with thunderous fanfare as the doors slipped away and—and Paul walked out into the light.
He’d asked her if she wanted to be part of the procession. She didn’t. Now, seeing it, she did not regret her choice. She had no desire to stand among these soldiers, these enchanted men who dreamed of blood and victory, in the blade-carved path toward paradise. What is freedom. Chani thought of her mother’s laboratory, the stubborn plants that grew, so determined, from their little canisters. As a child, Chani had dreamed of paradise. It looked like cavernous halls with circular rooms, strange instruments and beautiful crops, and a smell she would forever remember yet could never describe.
Now she stood in her stillsuit, in the shadows, not cowering, merely waiting for the procession to complete its ridiculous ceremony—she was standing at the gates of paradise.
Does water really fall from the sky? A child’s question. But her heart was a little heavy as she walked out and saw familiar sunlight, no droplets of water falling like a gift from heaven. I should not expect anything of this place. There. That was an easy resolution. Expect nothing and protect yourself from disappointment. Entitlement was for lords and great Houses. It had no place in the desert, which would claim you no matter what you thought you were owed. Chani knew that nothing belonged to her, not really. It was all borrowed. Even joy. Even pain.
But the air. When she stepped out of the Heighliner. It did feel different. Almost cold against her exposed forehead. But not quite cold. It felt.
What did it feel like?
“You don’t need your stillsuit,” Paul’s quiet voice did not catch her by surprise, because she was no baby, and her senses did not rest. Still, she scowled at him, certain he could tell despite the mask covering half of her face.
“Is your water discipline so weak?”
He smiled, that soft, stupid smile.
“The discipline has a purpose, but it’s not needed here. An excess use of energy. One might even call it a waste.” His eyes were sparkling, because he knew what Fremen thought of waste.
“Tell it to your worshippers. I haven’t forgotten who I am.”
She nodded over Paul’s shoulder, where there were loud cries rising up from the broad-chested Fedaykin who had been chosen to accompany them. Their faith absolute, their loyalty unquestionable, these men and women truly believed they had been led to paradise. Not just some planet which had always been there, waiting, brimming with abundance. They were cheering because the greenery that sprung from the ground was soft, full of water. Had they forgotten that green was the color of mourning? There was something in the distance, rippling and bright, darker and more solid than the mirages of the desert.
“This is so little,” Paul said, in a tone that might have been mistaken for sad. But Chani was not going to be taken in by it. “There’s a forest just beyond those hills, with trees that were planted over a thousand years ago. Through it runs a river so clear you can see the bottom. And to the west, hidden behind those buildings… the ocean.”
He’d told her of the ocean. Said the water in it was salty, not for drinking, but one could swim in it or sail on it. How luxurious it had sounded, to have so much water that plenty more could be spared for recreation!
“And what of the smoke?” Chani pointed to a dark smudge marring the sky. “Is your grand city burning?”
“No.” He was so serene. Very annoying. “It’s a cloud. Not filled with sand, but with water. When water in the air evaporates it rises, condensing overhead. The cloud means it’s going to rain. Not for a few days though. Right now the storm’s just gathering strength.”
Why did he say it like an apology? It wasn’t the apology she wanted to hear. There was no apology she wanted to hear.
There was nothing more she wanted to say at all, so she turned away from him. There was an attendant hovering, as there always seemed to be now, waiting for her to make any number of demands. She’d been tempted to ask for something absurd and impossible, except she’d seen the religious fervor in the eyes of everyone who accompanied Paul now. No point in jesting with them. They believed Paul was the Mahdi, and Chani bore some degree of their reverence by association. For her, they would do the impossible, or likely die trying. Fools.
More fool, she, for believing in Paul when she’d known he was only a man.
She did not sleep that night.
It wasn’t the Fremen custom to sleep at night, and they’d departed early. Though that was not the whole of the reason. It felt unnatural to sleep in these walls. No water reclamation system hummed around her, and there were windows. Windows! Chani could feel air flowing freely through them, even when they were tightly shut. Nothing more than glass separating her from the outside. Glass was so permeable. So fragile.
She’d been given quarters that were larger than the dining hall of her childhood sietch. This had been true on Arrakeen as well, but the vastness here felt ominous. Like she was entirely alone on an alien world.
All her life, Chani had shared space. Traveled in tents among other Fremen, where one learned from an early age the art of selective hearing. Slept in communal rooms, shared a cot with two or three other children, gaining private quarters when she reached adulthood, and those were only temporary, transitory. Even there, the human sounds of her fellow warriors had echoed, like a lullaby, a whisper of safety in numbers. She had never considered the sounds of home until Arrakeen, where her world had been silenced.
Caladan was worse. In Arrakeen, she could have run. She had run. When Paul had first become Emperor Atreides, she had left him. Like a bride abandoning the altar, she had ridden a sandworm all the way down to the south. She had knelt in the abandoned temple and screamed.
And when her hollowed-out throat burned with the remnants of her rage, then what? There was nowhere to turn. Paul had united the Fremen. They followed their Mahdi, believed in him, worshiped him. There was no sietch that had not been tainted by faith. Shishakli and Jamis were dead—they had once been her companions in skepticism. But Shishakli had died believing in Paul, protecting his retreat, and Jamis had died on Paul’s blade. The blade I handed to him, Chani had thought bitterly. As if she herself had opened the door for the Lisan al Gaib.
Hadn’t she?
So Chani had returned to the north, worked to rebuild Sietch Tabr, and had been there to receive Paul’s distrans. Come with me to Caladan. Nothing else.
But there she was.
There was no point in staying awake in her vast, too-fine bed. Why had she come to this place? Because she’d wanted to see it for herself. Might as well get up and see, then. What did it matter that it was dark, that the moonlight looked all wrong? A warrior doesn’t shy away from the unfamiliar.
Chani dressed, feeling better as soon as her stillsuit was on, and slipped out of her chambers. It wasn’t easy to escape the notice of the guards posted at the door, but she was clever and quiet and in no mood for a fanatic to be haunting her steps. She didn’t follow the winding maze of great halls that she’d been marched through to reach the wing of the palace reserved for royalty (royalty!), instead following her instincts toward a narrow, dimly-lit passage that led to what she realized were servants’ corridors. The walls were closer together, the light gentler, the tiles underneath her feet unadorned.
Nothing like a Fremen sietch, where each yali was more or less the same, where expansions seemed to happen organically as the tribe grew and efficiency ruled over form.
Chani let her curiosity lead her, avoiding detection easily. There were guards everywhere in the main halls, but the service passages were quiet at this hour. Chani suspected the staff would awaken a few hours before the main household, but in this witching hour, she was on her own.
Much of her life had been that way. Her father had been a warrior, dead when she was young. Her mother had been something else. An ecologist. Always going to Arrakeen, or to send her reports to the Emperor, or else locked away in the laboratory. Calculating water use, measuring crop yields, all sorts of other arcane research that she’d never bothered to explain to her daughter. Chani had been raised by the Fremen, by the children she’d grown up beside. So many of them lay dead, their bones ground into fertilizer, their water returned to the cisterns.
She heard footsteps, and turned a corner, opening the first door she found and sneaking inside before she could be detected. Chani found herself in a storeroom filled with fragile-looking bottles. Wine, she thought. Probably not the stuff she’d had on Arrakis, the nabeez made from fermented dates and drunk before it became an intoxicant. That had been a special sweet brought out for major occasions during her youth. Her first solo trek through the desert. Her first raid. Her first kill.
This though, the dark bottles with their dry, sour stink, this was wine , the stuff that great nobles would over-satiate themselves on, drunk and decadent.
Chani wanted to smash all of it to pieces.
Instead, she caught the scent of fresh air trickling in through a door on the opposite end of the room, and forced herself to take one step, then another, until she was outside. The cool air hit her all at once, clean and sharp. There was a smell of something unfamiliar on the wind, with a salty taste that reminded her of sweat or tears.
She stiffened, remembering the last time she’d cried. It had been against her will, her body momentarily not her own. One moment she’d been fuming, and another she’d been leaning over Paul, cheeks wet, his lips soft. Fulfilling a prophecy she’d never believed in and never wanted. The resentment, the rage, all of it came licking up the surface of her like flames. Even as a child, Chani had known what to do with rage. When the universe, in all its grand cruelty, was unfair, she could train her body to become stronger. She could join a raid, or plan the next one. She could fight back against the face of her oppressor and sometimes she could win.
What was she supposed to do with this?
“The stars take some getting used to.”
The crysknife was against Paul’s neck and Chani knew it was him, knew , but she let her instincts lead her anyway, glaring into his eyes while she debated whether or not to cut him. Not that it would matter now. Killing him wouldn’t undo anything, stop anything. She didn’t need the Water of Life to see that. Chani could slash Paul’s throat, rip his body to shreds, and he would still be the monster that had taken her home, her war, her people from her.
And the way he looked at her, like he didn’t care either way whether she left him forever or cut him down, why did that make her chest ache?
It wasn’t proper to sheathe a crysknife without letting it bleed someone, so she took a ceremonial cut from Paul’s neck before finally putting it away.
“What do you want?”
“I miss you, Chani.”
She scowled.
“So you summoned me like one of your servants? You could have come for me.”
At the word servants, Paul stiffened, though he didn’t deny what he’d done. It would have been a pointless argument.
“I don’t think you wanted me to come for you.”
That was true enough. Chani was not the kind of woman who would pretend, acting coy around the object of her desire, all the while hoping to be chased, hounded, won. She took what she wanted or she learned to live without it.
Was that what she had to do, now? Learn to live without Paul? Usul, she knew, was gone. But he’d left behind this corpse in the shape of Emperor Atreides, and Chani had to decide what to do with him.
“You said something about the stars.”
Paul nodded, glancing upward. Blood trailed down his neck, slipping underneath the collar of his nightshirt. Soft-looking material, not durable at all.
“When I first arrived on Arrakis, it took me such a long time to recognize the sky. I would look upward every night, searching for constellations that were lightyears away, finding patterns that weren’t there. Now that I’m here, I find myself seeking the cielago or the scorpion.”
Chani shrugged. The stars weren’t what bothered her about this place.
What bothered her was that they were standing in a courtyard, and every corner held pots with purely decorative plants, none of them parched or withering. Just beyond them, down an intricately carved staircase, there was a vast garden, lush with flowers in every shade. Moss grew in the crevices in between the stones of the courtyard, and even that humble plant was a wealth. So carelessly neglected, something to be walked over and ignored.
Her people would have fought for half of this wealth. On Caladan, all of this was not even considered wealth. No, that was counted in solari or advances from CHOAM.
“I’m glad you came,” Paul said.
“Don’t be. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do yet.”
“I know.”
She wanted to shove him. She wanted to turn around and get as far away from him as she possibly could. She wanted to go home.
Except home wasn’t home anymore. Her planet was free of the Harkonnens, but they had been replaced by Paul. Their fury at injustice, at always being placed last in the stupid hierarchy of the empire, had been replaced by a jihad in the name of the Mahdi. Paul would be the bloodthirsty liberator, and his disciples would spread the good word of him at the edge of the sword.
“I want to know what it’s like here. Not in your castle, not for the Lesser Houses.” She hadn’t planned on saying it, didn’t realize she wanted it until the words were dropping out of her mouth like stones on sand. “I want to know what normal people are like on Caladan.”
Paul listened to her, and for a deceptive second he had the same wide-eyed expression that he’d worn during those first weeks.
“Perhaps a walk through the mountains? Most people are at leisure during the offseason, and the forests of the Pelopian Hills are often a retreat for those that wish to sleep under the stars.”
Was that what people did on Caladan? Chani had no way of knowing. But Paul was offering her an escape from this fortress, and she wanted it badly.
But she didn’t want to make him feel good about the offer.
“I suppose you know best,” she sniped before turning on her heel. Chani didn’t look back to see if she’d wounded him, told herself she didn’t care either way if she had or not. She retraced her steps with the ease of someone who had never had anyone to help her find her way when she got lost. Chani returned to her cavernous room, shut the door, sat down, and did not sleep.
It was too easy to fall back into an easy rhythm without the walls of the palace to remind her that Paul was not to be trusted, not ever again. They carried all they needed with them on their backs. No stillsuits, Paul had insisted, because stillsuits weren’t waterproof. He’d said that water would sink into the material and lead to rot, maybe risking immersion syndrome if the nights were cold enough. But he’d provided her with new gear that reminded her of the comfortable utility of her stillsuit. Boots with durable yet flexible soles, breeches with feather-soft lining, a shirt he’d said was made of silk and a knee-length jacket that went over it. There were concealed pockets and protected seams and a special kit for repairs. Plenty of space in the sleeve for her green kerchief to wrap around her left shoulder.
Still, it was hard to leave her suit behind.
Or perhaps it was just difficult to let him close to her, close enough to confirm that her gear was in good order, closer than she’d let him get since Arrakeen. He didn’t look her in the eye, but she felt his breath. Imagined it, more like, because her garments were thick. Remembered it, maybe.
Forget it, Chani told herself. Memory is just a curse you choose to carry.
They walked.
There were moments of dissonance as Paul led her toward trees that towered over her, blocking out the entire sky. It did not seem possible that trees could grow so tall! Chani found herself sandwalking without realizing it, even though this planet could not conceive of Shai-Hulud. But when Paul knelt to pitch their tent, when his delicate fingers moved methodically to stake it into the ground… the familiarity blurred with the strange and Chani needed to step away for a little while.
It made her sick to her stomach, releasing her water into the ground. She hated the feeling of it trickling out of her. Waste waste waste waste was the thundering of her thoughts, with the sky above her and nothing but the open air and the trees surrounding her, there was nothing to reclaim her water. Worse than in the stone towers here, where she could at least pretend that the facilities led to an efficient reclamation system. The water didn’t even belong to her, it belonged to her tribe, to her kinsman, and she was spilling it on this strange world, giving it to Caladan, a place that did not deserve it.
But she was not going to admit weakness, or do anything that would make Paul suggest they turn back. She gritted her teeth and swore she would steal this amount of water and more for when she returned to Arrakis.
When she returned, Paul had gathered some of the detritus of the forest and lit a fire.
“I’ll prepare dinner in a little while,” he said, watching the flames. “There’s a spigot near the trail if you need to drink.”
Chani shrugged, sitting on a rock across from him. The campsite he’d picked was… unlike one they would have chosen in the desert. There was a canopy above their heads, dense tree branches thick with leaves blotting out the stars. Thick trunks on all sides. They were only a few feet away from what Paul had called the hiking trail (though if there was a trail, it was not one that Chani understood, for the path they trod seemed much like the ground all around them—blanketed with growth she was afraid to think about).
She was used to the paths of the desert, the ones only Fremen could see. She missed them.
“What do you think?”
Chani didn’t want to look at Paul, because she knew that tone of voice, the open, earnest expression that went with it. But she wasn’t the kind of person who kept her thoughts to herself.
“It smells different. Missing the cholla in the afternoon, and agave after dusk. Instead there’s this…” she shook her head, trying to place what she sensed. “Something like the fungus that overtook the onion grass if it wasn’t tended to properly. And there’s something starchy.”
“I’d forgotten how it smelled here,” Paul mused. “I suppose I never noticed it much. I took it for granted.”
Was that supposed to be a compliment? Oh, how wise and worldly you are, Chani, to have noticed the smell of your homeland. How connected to your earth you must be, how attuned to the natural world. Chani frowned. Paul had never spoken to her like that. She was putting words into his mouth, making him into a different kind of villain than the one that he was. Unnecessary. And dangerous, because she needed to see him for what he was. Not some idiot, who never would have bothered to understand her or the Fremen or Arrakis. No, Paul was something worse. He had taken the time to understand, to assimilate, and then he’d used that knowledge to throw a harness and yoke over everything that she loved.
She’d been quiet for a while. Paul filled the silence.
“The fire is ready. Do you want chicken or lentils tonight?”
Chani knew chicken, it was similar to sandgrouse, though it had a fattier taste. She’d heard of lentils, but couldn’t remember what it was. But she was used to eating whatever there was, and not having much choice in the matter. This was strange country, in a strange land, and Chani knew that the wrong choice in the wilderness could mean death. She had enough humility to know that Paul had wisdom, at least in this place.
“Do what you think is right,” she said, not meaning for the words to hurt, but not minding when she sensed that they did.
He didn’t speak to her for the rest of the night. When they went to bed, he kept distance between them, as much as possible on their shared cot in the tent, and Chani told herself that this was what she wanted.
As she lay in bed, she did her nightly tallies, counting the names of the dead. All of those she had lost since she’d joined the struggle. It began with her father, always, a hazy face she barely remembered and a laugh that had rattled her bones. It ended with those that had fallen when the Fremen overtook Arrakeen.
In her heart, it ended with Usul.
Noise.
Like wind rattling the tent, like a rain of bullets hitting rock far away, like hands on drums, like…
Like the instrument Chani remembered from her childhood. A long wooden tube carved with words she hadn’t been old enough to read and pictures she didn’t understand. It had been smooth and solid in the hands of the elder, who had tipped it up and down, up and down, so gentle. It had been hollowed out and filled with smooth pebbles. The instrument had been called a rainstick, the tradition passed down all the way to a planet that did not know rain.
The sound. It was just like that.
Paul was asleep beside her, one arm outstretched as if beckoning to her. His chest rose and fell, soft as a breeze. Eyelids flickered, but from dreams, not wakefulness. He had always been a light sleeper in the desert, always the first one awake when there was any sign of danger. This noise hadn’t disturbed him.
Chani grasped the hilt of her knife anyway, because she was no fool.
She unclasped the tent, pulling back the opening. At first she saw nothing—it was dark, and they were surrounded by trees and so much lush green growth she thought the air might choke on it all. But there was movement, some flicker of something shaking the trees and the leaves and the grass and maybe even the very earth beneath their feet.
Chani remembered the sound of the rainstick, and held out her hand.
Skin bare, having removed her gloves to sleep, she was startled by the cold wet strike against her palm and retreated back inside the tent. Wet! She knew what water felt like. But to see it glistening on her fingertips, trickling down her knuckles, knowing it had fallen so freely…
She looked again, squinting into the darkness. Tried to make out the raindrops in the fluttering, opaque mass in front of her. Tentatively, carefully, she reached out of the tent again with her hand, and even though she was expecting it this time, she shuddered when the raindrops fell against her skin. Cold. Cold and wet, an abundance of water. In a few brief minutes she felt enough had fallen to keep her alive in the desert for a full day. And it was just soaking into the ground. Chani sat at the edge of their cot, too stunned to move any further outside, and let the raindrops fall between her fingers. The water fell away like sand.
Her knife lay, not forgotten, by her hip.
When he woke in the morning and inspected their campsite, Paul turned to her and said:
“Looks like it rained last night. Did it wake you?”
“No,” Chani said. She didn’t care that he knew it was a lie.
A cool smoke that Paul called fog and also mist had settled over the ground overnight, but it dissipated with the light of the sun. There was a spigot near the trail with fresh water, and they both drank and refilled their bottles. Chani suppressed the temptation to hold down the spigot just to see how much water would come out, certain there must be an end to it. But they didn’t have many containers and she was not going to waste water. Not even on Caladan. They ate a morning meal of oats and dried fruit, packed their tent, and set off.
There was quiet between them as they walked, though all around them the world was alive with sound. It was all foreign to Chani. She knew the heartbeat of Arrakis, knew when a lizard was burrowing for the afternoon or a hawk was circling up above. What were the scurrying sounds that surrounded her now? She knew that a variety of creatures dwelled here, though she did now know what they were called. Many months ago, Paul had told her the story of the bull that had killed his grandfather, describing a creature the size of an ornithopter cockpit with two sharp horns on its head. Surely a beast like that would make more than a whisper of a sound if it passed them?
The midday meal was what Paul called lentils—seeds boiled until soft, with a stony taste to them. There was spice mixed in, there would always be spice mixed in; after drinking the Water of Life Paul would always be dependent on it. He’d also added seasonings she couldn’t name which smelled of moss and brittlebush but tasted like something else entirely. Acidic and sweet, Chani thought.
“Garlic and onion, a bit of tomato, some coriander and parsley I think,” Paul swallowed another spoonful. “When I was small, I was sent down to the kitchen to help. Children don’t work on Caladan, as a general rule, but it was important for me to understand the work it took to keep the palace running. I peeled a lot of potatoes. And I watched the cooks making food just like this.”
Chani listened, said nothing, and ate.
After a lifetime subsisting on a diet of only the barest necessities for survival, the only variety being the quantity of spice and the season in which it was harvested, the novelty was a little off-putting. Not that Chani would ever turn her nose up at good food, even if it was strange to her, to do so would be a grave insult and reflect poorly not just on her but on her people. She did wonder whether this meal would be enough to sustain them, whether it had all of the nutrients needed to keep their wits sharp and their bodies strong, but she kept this mistrust to herself.
They set off again, Paul insisting they shouldn’t waste the daylight. Chani understood the wisdom in it; they weren’t in the wide expanse of the desert, where one could walk for miles in one direction without anything to divert one’s path. The forest was crowded, and Chani knew she would struggle to traverse it as soon as it grew dark. But it felt wrong to her to walk in broad daylight.
Paul turned westward, and the terrain grew steeper. The burning in Chani’s thighs felt good, gave her something to think about that wasn’t Paul’s back, vulnerable, just a few feet ahead of her.
After an hour, she realized that the thrumming she felt wasn’t just the blood rushing through her veins. There was a roiling, crunching, windy noise. It was growing louder the further they ascended. She thought again of the bull—no Shai-Hulud, but certainly large enough to take them down if it wanted to. Did they stalk their prey here? But Paul was still ahead of her, not slowing down, not concerned. He was too serene, had been ever since the Water of Life. She couldn’t trust him.
“What is that sound?” She finally bit out.
“It’s no danger to us,” Paul said, not turning around. “We have nothing to fear.”
Chani knew that was a lie. There was plenty in the universe to fear. She’d heard him muttering the litany, heard his mother say it too, and thought it was all foolish. Fear was useful. Fear let you know when you’d gone too far, when you were risking too much and putting your people in danger. Fear was a constant reminder that life in the desert is often short. Cowardice was unacceptable, but fear was human, and Chani valued her humanity too much to toss it away just because it was sometimes inconvenient.
So it was with fear that she climbed the ridge, following Paul’s path, and faced the waterfall.
By now it was a roar. It was a hundred thousand rain sticks. It was the sound of a rocket fired from her shoulder, the screech searing her ear as it flew. It was the music of sand rippling over the body of a sandworm as she rode, gliding across the face of the desert with a mighty beast underneath her. This was the sound of water as it fell. So much water. An unfathomable amount of water.
Chani wasn’t sure how long she sat. She didn’t even remember sitting down. After she realized it, several more minutes passed before she said:
“What is this place?”
“It’s called the Karanos Waterfall. It’s eroded a bit, but I think it’s around 70 meters tall now. The river up above is fed from the snow at the top of the mountain.”
Chani nodded, though she wasn’t sure she understood.
“When will it run dry?”
“This is as close as it gets. As the season grows warmer more snow will melt, and the excess water will run its course through the river.”
Excess water.
Chani had never heard such a term in all her life. Even if she had, she could never have imagined what it might mean.
The roar of the water consumed her and she sat, watching, for a long, long time. Wordless, Paul waited. When she finally stood, there was nothing to say. He merely turned, and mutely, she followed.
It was already dark when they reached the bothy. Chani was struggling to find a safe place to put her feet as they walked, though she would die before she complained.
Bothy. Paul had explained the term while they walked. Chani had let the words flow over her, easy as the breeze, and she hadn’t paid him much mind. It was some sort of ancient practice, a leftover from prehistory. Lords of vast estates would maintain humble shelters, free of charge, for any traveler who might need one. In the distant part of her mind that was never quiet, never fully disengaged, Chani had thought that the principle only sounded magnanimous if one believed in lords and property in the first place. Every sietch was for communal use. If a stranger from another tribe needed shelter, they would be welcomed, so long as they demonstrated all the usual courtesies and competencies. Chani came from a people who did not own the water within their own bodies. How could anyone presume to own something as detached as a roof and four walls?
She knew this was not the way the world worked, the way the empire worked. She knew the earth she stood on belonged to Paul. That the earth of every world belonged to him. Chani knew this, but she could not make herself understand it. The soil beneath their soles would remain long after she and Paul were both dead. It existed to be traversed, tilled, and tended.
Her mother had tried to explain this to her, that empires existed because people needed to know who was owed what. But Chani, in her soul, was too Fremen for this. People were owed nothing. You were born to serve the people who raised you, the people who nurtured you and taught you how to survive. Her childhood had been a gift, a life-debt that she repaid as a Fedaykin, that she would have repaid serving as a Sayyadina had things gone differently. All that was hers in life was what she could hold with both hands, and even that was only temporary.
She’d tried to explain this to her mother, who had been too Imperial to agree, though she’d been too Fremen to believe that the Empire had the right of it.
It was dark, the trek had been difficult, and Chani knew better than to chase old hurts. Memory is just a curse you choose to carry. They reached the small, sturdy building and Chani let herself feel relieved.
They weren’t alone. Chani had a hand on the hilt of her crysknife before she remembered that Paul had warned her this might be the case. They had encountered no one since leaving the palace, and Chani had grown too accustomed to being alone with Paul (which, in most ways, meant growing accustomed to being alone). But if she was tense and guarded, these strangers didn’t notice, because Paul spread his arms wide and greeted them warmly.
She noticed the way he spread his cloak, allowing it to billow and giving her time to unclench. Noticed, and resented him for it, because it was kind, and any kindness from him felt patronizing.
There were three women and one man, all traveling together. Chani didn’t catch their names, they were unfamiliar and the syllables didn’t quite make sense, but she gathered that these were childhood friends reuniting for a holiday. They seemed happy. Chani and Paul were invited to take seats around a hearty fire with welcoming smiles and polite gestures. She took off her cloak and hung it beside Paul’s, taking a seat beside him.
“I didn’t catch your name,” the man said to Chani.
“This is Siona,” Paul interjected. “And I’m Saul,” he added.
These people did not recognize him. Their newly-forged Emperor. His image had been circulated, Chani was sure, though in it Paul had been clean shaven and wore all the regalia that marked him as belonging to the Empire. Of being a creature of the Great Houses. She supposed that someone who had not spent months in the desert staring at that face might not know him. Someone who had not memorized the curve of those brows, the shape of them over a stillsuit mask, so that he might be found quickly in a crowd of Fedaykin. Someone who didn’t know him as intimately and wholly as Chani did.
The door opened behind them, and two more travelers joined them. Introductions were passed around, along with a sweet, spongy bread that the first group had brought with them. It had a floral, tart flavor and Chani chewed it while the others talked.
Paul mostly asked questions, subtly deferring any inquiry into himself or Chani. No one noticed, pleased to tell the story of their journey, the sights they had seen, their plans for the next day. It felt like any other fire Chani had sat beside. As a child, she’d been brought to many sketches, seen so much of Arrakis. Her mother had wanted her to know the planet, its people, its ecology. The evenings of her youth had been much like this, the gentle give and take of “where do you come from” and “where will you go next” that characterized such transient friendships. She would have been comfortable were it not for Paul.
There was nothing wrong with him. He was not alert, or stiff, or closed-off. Not that he had been any of those things since the conquest at Arrakeen.
Chani realized, watching him, that the man she’d been traveling with had been, up until this evening, limp. A shadow. As if the victory over the Harkonnens and the Corrinos and the Guild and the entire universe had hollowed him out like a gourd left to dry in the sun. She hadn’t noticed because she hadn’t been looking. As soon as she’d seen that he would survive his wounds from the battle with the na-Baron, Chani had turned and ran to the desert. Since Paul had summoned her, since she had followed him to Caladan, Chani had not really looked at Paul. But now she knew: he was empty.
She knew it because, at least for a moment, the fire and the company and the freedom of being not Paul had given him life again.
Listening to trivial stories of a childhood on Caladan, working on a rice farm, crafting jewelry out of pearls, listening to all of it had given Paul back the color in his cheeks. His eyes were bright again. His shoulders, which had been so rigid they might have been held up by steel, were loose. He even laughed, that gentle, subdued laugh that Paul held close to his chest when he was happy. For a moment, a treacherous and terrible moment, it was as if all that had been lost between them had returned, and Paul was merely a man, a traveler sitting at a fire, filthy and tired yet still asking for one last tale.
Chani made some excuse, she was already standing, needed to be outside again. Of course, the world outside was strange and cold and too dark. There was an opening in the tree cover, but overhead there was only one solitary, unfamiliar moon, and its light felt wrong to her. Everything felt wrong to her.
Paul must have sensed that she needed to be alone, because no one came looking for her. He would sense it because just as she knew him so thoroughly and intimately, he knew her. Knew that when she felt overcome by a strong emotion, she became gruff and efficient until she could remove herself. For a long time this had meant being alone. But she had grown comfortable… for a while it had meant retreating into Paul. Putting herself in his arms. Breathing in the scent of him. Letting him make her promises he would never keep.
She was startled by a tapping sound, followed by a drip of water on her head. It was raining again.
Her cloak was inside, but she didn’t want it badly enough to go back. This was not the discipline of Caladan, where people protected themselves from falling water and slept at night and walked among trees that blotted out the sky. Nor was it the discipline of her home. It was a childish choice, an indulgence, and Chani felt herself torn and twisted as she sat on a stone beside the bothy and let the rain soak through her clothes.
Wet down to her skin when the voices inside finally quieted, she found Paul in the dark and slipped into their shared cot. He did not say a word, merely lifted his arm. Cold, shivering, completely untethered from herself, Chani slid underneath him and let him hold her.
It was easier to talk after that night.
Not about anything consequential. Not of the bloody chasm that lay between them. But Chani would ask a question here or there, about the birds above or the flowers below, and Paul would answer. They did not see the Atreides hawk, but there were swallows and finches and warblers. It was an uncanny inversion of those first weeks Paul had spent with the Fremen. He hadn’t known how to walk, how to set up a windtrap, had been so awkward holding the maula pistol.
He’d had a gift with the knife, though. And he’d grieved for Jamis. It had been that grief, and his stubborn will to survive, that had drawn Chani to him. Even when he’d been clumsy and overconfident, she’d seen that he could be trained, could be made useful. When all the unfinished edges of him were chopped away, the courtly training and the regal air, she’d known that the complete version of him would be formidable.
A knife and a tear. A maker and a gift of water. Thinking of it, Chani understood why Stilgar had been so eager to see signs of greatness in Paul Atreides.
Would anyone remember that it was Chani who had given him the knife? Or would she be remembered only for the tear that was coerced from her, water stolen from her people, so that the Mahdi might rise from death?
She told herself that it didn’t matter, that she had no wish to become a memory. Dukes and Great Houses, none of that was for her. She had never wanted it, had spent most of her life hating it. When she died she would be bones, and her water would be returned to her tribe. That was how it was always meant to be.
But now she was being asked to become something else. The kind of person that history remembered. Who would carry the curse of her through the ages if she did?
“What are you thinking of?” Paul asked, turning to her. She had been quiet for a while.
“The attitude of the knife,” Chani said. “I’m thinking about where this ends.”
Paul considered this for a moment.
“Where do you want it to end?”
Chani shrugged.
“It’s not up to me.”
Paul’s gaze was cloudy for a moment, as if he was staring off into a great unknowable distance. He probably was. It was the same hazy look that the Sayyadinas would get when they peered into the past or caught glimpses of tomorrow.
“Some things are left for you to—”
“I don’t mean that,” she cut him off. “What I do today, and tomorrow, those will always be up to me. But the course of my life is already set, was nearly set from the day I was born. As was yours. The only reason our paths crossed at all was because of some great accident, because of the most unlikely of circumstances. And it changed our course.” She took a breath. She had not meant to say this much; had not said this much to him in weeks. “But I was always going to die. Knowing my future won’t change that.”
Paul was solemn.
“It would change the manner of it.”
Chani shrugged.
“What does the manner matter? Dead is dead. The things left for me to choose, I’ll choose. Knowing what comes after won’t change anything. It ends where it will end.”
Paul absorbed this, silent, for a stretch of time that felt heavy. Perhaps it was all the water in the air, humidity, he had called it. It made the space in front of them feel thick, made their skin and hair feel damp even when they’d done nothing to capture the moisture.
Chani waited.
“Very well,” Paul finally said. “If that is what you prefer.”
She could have said a hundred things to that. You didn’t ask me what I prefer when you proposed to that Princess in front of me. But that would have been petty, and so unimportant in comparison to the other terrible choices he’d made knowing damn well what her preferences had been.
What use was that anger? Paul had made his choice. And Chani had learned her lesson: she would never trust him again. Not the way she had; maybe not at all. There was no point in clinging to her rage at the boy who had shared her tent, because that boy was as good as dead. He was never coming back to her, and Arrakis would never be free of the Empire, and her people would never turn from worshiping Muad’dib while she lived.
Anger. Chani knew anger like this was not real anger. It was not the pure, righteous fury that came from injustice and oppression and lies and grief. This anger was about regret. She’d allowed herself to imagine a future with him. Not Paul—Usul. She’d imagined fighting side by side, laying down at night beside a warrior who understood her, whose blood cried out for freedom just like hers did. She’d even let herself believe her people’s liberation was within reach. Pride and vanity had driven her to believe that she could turn the tide, she could push her people forward, despite all the odds against him and the beliefs that curdled in their fervent hopes.
The rage she carried inside her, it was just the last remaining vestige of a life that would remain unfinished. She had to cut it off.
“Yes,” Chani said. “That is what I prefer.”
It seemed to lift one weight off Paul only to replace it with another, but he accepted her answer.
“We have a few more hours until sundown. Let’s eat, and then keep going.”
Though they hadn’t discussed it (Chani, when they departed, had not been particularly interested), Paul did have a destination in mind. They were hiking through the mountains, and the trail which she was starting to see would eventually lead them to a town called Orestis, and from there they could ride a bullet train back to Cala City. This was apparently a popular destination for the people of Caladan, because the closer they grew the more of them Chani saw. She’d nearly forgotten the desire that had prompted this excursion in the first place. I want to know what normal people are like, she’d said.
Unburdened, mostly. People on Caladan came in every shape and color, all water-fat. Though, Chani realized, she would look much the same if she spent enough time there.
“We should rest during the afternoon. The view is best in the evening,” Paul said.
Chani was skeptical—Caladan was so much darker than what she was used to. What could possibly be seen better after the sun set? But she didn’t argue. They hadn’t walked a greater distance than what she was used to, but the mountainous terrain had drawn on different muscles than those she was used to, and she was sore in places she rarely thought about. Paul brought her to an inn and bought them a room using an alias. A midday meal of fish stew and warm bread was brought up to them by a serving girl who flushed when she looked at Paul. Chani wasn’t bothered. She knew he was handsome.
“You’ll be able to see the water through the window over there,” Paul gestured behind Chani. “I thought you might like to have a view.”
She turned, parting the soft curtains to look through the glass. At first it was hard to tell what she was looking at; beyond the tiled rooftops all she could see was a bright light. It looked a bit like the desert at the edge of the horizon, blurred and shifting, the heat distorting one’s vision and bending light so that it reflected the sky above.
But it was too dark, too solid, to be merely a reflection. And there were white caps rolling across the surface like sand blown in gusts of wind.
“The ocean.” Chani said.
“Orestis is a coastal town,” Paul said, joining her. “There’s an energy-harvester fueled by the tides further north. Most of the people who live here are employed, in some capacity, by the harvester. The rest fish, or process salt, and there’s a school for medical training further up the hills. I understand many of the young people here choose that route.” He looked awkward for a moment, an echo of the boy she’d first met. “You said you wanted to know what it was like on Caladan. For ordinary people.”
“I did. I do.” Chani forced herself to look at Paul instead of the vast wealth swaying in the distance. “They seem comfortable.”
Paul nodded.
“It wasn’t always like this. But in my lifetime, in living memory, yes, my people have lived comfortably.”
Chani could fill in the rest. That all this prosperity was fragile. She knew enough Imperial history to know that Caladan had held only a tentative grasp on power. That, left alone, it could sustain itself without any support from the rest of the Empire. But it had never been independent, not since the days of the Butlerian Jihad. House Atreides had held it for thousands of years, but only because they had been allowed to. Whether House Atreides ruled gently or harshly was of no interest; all that mattered was how well they bent the knee when the Emperor came calling. As soon as they had shown even a hint of backbone, this planet had been taken from them. It was only luck that had kept cruelty from overtaking this place, these people. Only good fortune that had kept its overseers from extracting every bit of wealth from its soil and leaving its inhabitants to starve.
“Would you like a bath?” Paul asked, interrupting her grim thoughts.
Chani had noticed the vast basin in the corner of the room, though she hadn’t considered using it. There had been tubs like that on Arrakeen. City-dwellers would wait outside the palace gates to drink the water from the house’s bath towels.
“It’s how ordinary people live,” he added. “If you’d like to experience, not just see.”
Chani stiffened. There was something defensive in his voice, as if he was waiting for her to reprimand him for the waste of water, the indulgence. Wouldn’t it have been easy, she might say, to send some of this water to my people so that we wouldn’t have to ration every single drop?
But what would be the point? They both knew the answer. Yes, it would have been easy. And foolish, and certain to start a war with either the Harkonnens or the Emperor himself, and then where would House Atreides have been? Still buried in the desert. The outcome would have been the same. Only neither of them would have been standing here, and Chani’s people would never have enough water.
“I wasn’t going to say no.”
Paul took in a slow breath, as if he’d been hoping for something else. Maybe he’d wanted an argument. Perhaps he’d seen ahead, and in some version of the future they’d fought, and she’d said everything she wanted to say (and some of the things she didn’t) and things were changed between them after. But Chani had wanted the freedom to choose for herself, and not for some future version of her that could only exist if she followed the correct path.
Paul still hadn’t moved.
“You might as well join me. It’s big enough for two.”
Paul turned, ostensibly to draw the bath, though Chani saw a pink flush on his cheek.
The tub was more than large enough for both of them. It had a bright copper finish, glowing bright where the sunlight hit it. Paul fiddled with the faucet jutting from the wall and the tub filled quickly. It made Chani a little dizzy, seeing so much water at once. It was more than a small band of Fedaykin drank in a day.
Paul tested the temperature of the water with the back of his hand.
“A little cool. Will you mind?”
Chani shook her head. The temperature of the water wasn’t what was bothering her. But she’d chosen this, hadn’t she? Not just the bath. She’d chosen to come to Caladan, chosen to answer Paul’s message when it came. Chosen to be with him. Chosen to hand him a crysknife so that he could fight Jamis with honor. There was no escaping what she’d done.
Wordless, she undressed, leaving her clothing in a neat pile at the foot of the bed, her green kerchief on top. Paul did the same, neither of them looking at the other.
When Chani finally turned around Paul was standing beside the tub, waiting for her like an attendant. He held out his hand, palm upward.
“Can I give you a hand?”
She took a breath, closed the distance, and placed her hand in his. She stepped into the tub, just one foot, submerged for the first time.
The water was cool. It rippled on the surface, but underneath it felt calm. Not solid, but nothing like the air. The way the light was distorted made her calf look strange. Like there was a passing shadow touching her skin.
No point in waiting, Chani lifted herself all of the way into the tub and then sat. She heard Paul doing the same, and realized that she’d closed her eyes. Why? When she opened them again Paul was seated across from her and the water was swaying against them both, pulling back and forth between them. He was being careful not to touch her. Chani looked down at her hands. She pushed them against the water, feeling it drag between her fingers. It was smoother and softer than sand, but it moved in much the same way.
“How often?” Chani said.
“Hm?”
“You said this is how ordinary people live. How often do they do this?”
Paul was looking down, tracing invisible lines on his kneecap.
“Every day, give or take. Most people shower, but I thought you’d prefer this.”
“Why?”
“Because you wouldn’t have to watch the water go down the drain.”
Chani glanced at the silver plate at the center of the tub, sunken ever so slightly. So the water could trickle downward and vanish, she realized. He’d been right, she wouldn’t like that. When the Fremen bathed they used pumice stones and sand. They used water sparingly after that, nothing potable, just a little sprinkled on a scrap of linen to wipe away any stubborn grit. The linen would then be placed in a water reclaimer, the water recycled for use in the cooling system.
“Did it feel like this when you came to the desert? A million little things you’d never thought of that came naturally to me?”
Paul exhaled in a way that was almost a laugh.
“Not at all. I knew if I made a mistake, I’d die. If I got on your nerves, you’d leave me to my own devices and I’d die slower.” He sighed, wistful. “Saying it like that, I should have been terrified. But I wasn’t. I should have been grieving, and I was. My father was dead, and most of the men I’d known all my life, and I missed them. But in some ways, those first weeks in the desert were the happiest I’ve ever been.”
Chani didn’t know what to say to that, so she said nothing. Instead, she looked at Paul. She’d seen him plenty on this journey, but it had hurt to look at him, the kind of hurt that felt like an indulgence, like reeling in self-pity.
Paul was thin. He hadn’t been eating enough, probably, and there were dark circles under his eyes. There was a harsh, star-shaped scar on his right shoulder, still red despite all the healing technologies of the Empire. She’d seen the way Feyd-Rautha had driven in the knife, had known it ground against bone and shredded sinew. There was another on the left side of Paul’s abdomen, ragged and thick. A miracle the blade hadn’t punctured anything vital.
A miracle.
She was thinking like Stilgar, like the other fanatics. Paul had been trained to fight, knew the weak points in his stillsuit, knew how to keep his body alive for long enough to reach a medic, even in the heat of battle.
Chani had told herself that the man she loved was dead, had said it over and over again to comfort herself, but she’d seen for herself that he wasn’t. The parts of him that she’d chosen to love might be gone, but the man himself still breathed. A comforting lie was still a lie. It would fester long before an uncomfortable truth would. And the truth was that she’d chosen Paul. Not the moment he’d asked her to carry his water rings, before he’d known what it meant, but later. When he’d fought beside her. When he’d asked her a second time, knowing what he was asking her. When she’d made her vows, started wearing blue, all of that had been her choice.
She’d chosen Paul, and he’d chosen to lead her people into battle. And how many of them had died so that he might be Emperor? So that he could rule them instead of someone else?
The water had grown foggy. How long had they been sitting there?
“There’s soap in the dish behind you,” Paul said, breaking the silence. Chani had grown tense. Thinking about that last fight, the way Feyd-Rautha had smirked at her. Or perhaps it was just the way it felt to be sitting in a pool of immeasurable wealth. But Chani reached for the soap, a stone-like lump instead of the dry powder she was used to, and handed it to Paul. He rubbed it in between his wet palms and it began to give off a flowery scent, soft foam trickling between his fingers. Paul spread it across his arms, rinsing them with the water.
“Here,” he said, handing it back to her.
Chani imitated him. The soap felt like silk in her hands, melted like the butter she’d seen served at Arrakeen. It wasn’t coarse enough to break down the grime that had accumulated since she’d arrived on Caladan, but when she rinsed herself she saw most of the dirt from their trek through the forest was gone.
When she was finished, she placed the soap back on the tray.
“What are these?” She gestured at the bottles beside it.
“Those are for hair. The one on the left won’t be as drying.”
Chani handed it to him.
“I’ll use my own.”
Paul smiled.
“Most women here do the same.”
Chani did plunge her head underneath the water, just to see what it felt like. When she pulled her head back up, her hair was heavy, laying thick on her shoulders. Soapy water trickled down her cheeks. She realized immediately that it was going to be difficult to braid her hair now that it was wet, and she had no idea how long it would take to dry. At home, with a reclaimer running, not long at all. But this was Caladan, there were no reclaimers, and the air was already so thick with water it didn’t seem possible she could truly breathe.
“Is there anything else?” Chani gestured at the tub, the wealth of water surrounding them.
Paul shook his head.
“Nothing else.”
Chani nodded, standing. She reached for a towel, out of habit trying to catch any water that didn’t trickle off her back into the tub. Paul had been right, she didn’t want to see it all go down the drain. If she dried herself like this and then looked away, perhaps she could imagine the water being reclaimed and repurposed, instead of being treated as waste.
“I’m going to rest,” she said.
“There are clean clothes in my pack,” Paul said behind her.
It was a kind thing to have done, to carry fresh garments for both of them. Considerate. But the sound of the water draining from the tub was awful, a gurgling sound too much like reclaiming water from a still-living body. It was impossible to ignore, impossible to pretend the sound was anything else. Chani lay down on the bed in her fresh clothes, smelling of flowers she couldn’t name, and recounted the names of the dead.
“You feel guilt,” Paul said.
They were seated outside, in a stone courtyard beside the inn, with sun trickling in through the clouds overhead. Chani had learned the word overcast used to describe the almost-twilight feeling of the sun being high in the sky and yet dimmed by vapors in the air above them. There was soft, salty bread on a plate between them. She had a delicate cup in her hand, warmth seeping into her skin through the thin ceramic, holding a drink like weak coffee brewed from leaves. Chani didn’t know where the water for this had come from. Not from her own body, not from Paul’s, not from the courteous staff of the inn. Had it belonged to someone? Could something that came from the sky belong to anyone?
“Guilt,” she said.
“Your face reminds me of the weeks after Sietch Navra,” he murmured. “The way you looked at me. After we found them.”
Chani could still remember the smell. The bodies had been burned, some of them still-living when they’d been scorched. Their soot-blackened hands had left claw marks on the stone.
“You wanted me to believe there was nothing we could have done, that it wasn’t our fault for not being fast enough, strong enough,” Chani said. “I didn’t want to hear it then and I don’t want to hear it now.”
She wasn’t yelling, didn’t need to, and anyway it was an unnecessary exertion. A waste. But her words were clipped and she knew he felt them.
“I won’t try to convince you. Not again. I only wonder…” Paul looked somewhere beyond Chani, toward the horizon. “Two generations ago, my House was strong. My grandfather would have been shocked to see how far we fell, and overjoyed to see that we’d risen again. What did people from your grandfather’s generation hope for the Fremen of today?”
“You could ask them,” Chani bit out. “There are some who still live.”
Not many though. When Fremen became too weak to be of use, they walked into the desert and returned their water to Shai-Hulud, which was proper. Most didn’t survive long enough to receive the final honor.
“And what do they say about what has happened?”
Chani glared.
“Haven’t you heard them cheering your name?”
Paul sighed.
“What of the ones who weren’t cheering? The ones you joined when you left.”
Chani glanced away. There was a toddler, barefooted, playing in the grass a few meters away. Smiling, at ease, with water-fat cheeks. Chani couldn’t remember being that small, though she knew she had been once.
“They were pleased to hear of the victory,” she said after a long breath. “Concerned about where things might go next. Not happy to have the Empire’s eyes on us. Plenty who think we should stick to what we know, nurture our planet, our people, and not waste time on anyone who hasn’t seen the truth.”
“The truth,” Paul mimicked with a strange grin. “Something so plain should be self-evident enough to require no explanation, and yet it is rare for that to be the case.” He shook his head, dispelling the thought. “They do not say they are happy, but they do not say they are unhappy, is that so?”
Chani shrugged.
“We wouldn’t say it like that. Happy, unhappy, what matters is what needs to be done.”
“And on Arrakis, what needs to be done is a constant struggle. One that never ends, but…” he paused, watching her. “It does grow easier.”
“Not much,” Chani grimaced.
“Not much. But day by day, year by year, generation by generation, the Fremen have grown stronger. Have made themselves stronger. And things have grown easier.”
Chani nearly rolled her eyes.
“You think you’re not the first person to tell me about incremental progress, to try to convince me that the struggle is a long journey, not a day’s sandwalk?” She downed her tea in one gulp, nearly choking, having misjudged how difficult it would be to drink so much water in one go. But she wasn’t going to waste any of it. “I know patience. My people have been waiting for centuries to be free from the Empire. We were so close to something so much bigger than us. So close…”
Paul reached across the table, not touching her.
“I know. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to counsel you. I only…” he sighed. He looked young again, like the boy she’d first met. The boy who had never killed anyone. “I needed to hear it. Seeing all that there is, all that there can ever be… I feel sometimes as if humanity should just get on with it. So many unnecessary deviations, so much waste and harm done, only to lead to the same conclusion. Over and over again.” He shook his head. “A million wrong turns and fatal mistakes lie ahead, even on the best path. It twists and it turns for centuries, even though the way is so clear.”
Chani understood. The way forward was clear to her, too, but she could not rip the world out of its stupor and into its proper place. It was strange to hear that Paul, the man with more power than anyone who had ever lived, felt just as useless as she did.
“But I know why the road twists,” Paul continued. “I know why humanity refuses to align itself with its own destiny, to fight for its own betterment instead of its own destruction.” He smiled, sad and tired. “What happens if you walk a straight line in the desert?”
Chani looked at the toddler again. Children always seemed too small to her.
“You die.”
Paul and Chani walked side by side down the serpentine cobblestone roads to the shore. The sun was setting, and the air was chilly. Yet the streets were full of people, noisy and comfortable, voices echoing off the stone buildings. If Chani closed her eyes she could imagine she was coming home to Sietch Tabr. Paul was leading, but she could sense where he would turn by the subtle movements of his body, and they walked without speaking. There was a rhythm that they’d found, an easy way of keeping the same amount of space in the middle as they moved, that Chani had been missing without realizing it.
After going downhill for a quarter of a mile, the stone beneath their feet gave way to sand.
Chani looked down; the sand was different than what she was used to. A lighter color, and softer when she bent to touch it. There was a salty smell on the breeze, mixed with a bitter shrublike scent that reminded Chani of her mother’s botanical research.
“Can you smell it?” Paul stood beside her, a dark shadow springing from her feet.
She could smell something. It was saline and rich, a little sour, something that reminded her of the iodine powder used for burns.
“That’s the sea,” Paul said, answering the question she hadn’t asked. “Just over this hill, we’ll be able to see it.”
Chani nodded, standing.
She was not sure what she saw at first. It looked like a mirage, a blur, a shimmering horizon. But there was a sound like the wind rattling through the spires that helped conceal Sietch Tabr. She saw white crowns atop churning waves, people weaving in and out of a vast, all-encompassing darkness. The breeze that licked at her face felt wet and she touched her cheek, half-expecting to find tears there, though she hadn’t cried since she was four years old. The ocean, the vast darkness, stretched across the horizon from end to end, unbroken. It made the land underneath her feet feel small, as if it might be swept away in an instant. The sound of the waves crashing against the shore was unceasing, in and out and in and out, churning and roiling.
Paul had a hand on her arm, grounding her, the most he’d touched her since before they’d taken Arrakeen.
“I’m all right,” she said. “I’m fine.” She swallowed. “It’s just. Vast.”
“Vast,” he murmured. “It is that.”
She glanced at him. Paul wasn’t mocking her; for all that she hated him, she knew he wasn’t cruel like that. It would have been easier, hating him, if he had been cruel. But he remained gentle, thoughtful—all the things she’d liked about him remained. Chani missed the purity of the hatred she’d felt for the Harkonnens, for the Emperor. The old emperor. This new feeling, this complicated, twisted up viper of a thing she felt for Paul… it was doing her no good.
She’d been raised with the attitude of the knife. Chopping off what's incomplete and saying: Now, it's complete because it's ended here. The war she’d fought with the Fremen, for the liberation of Arrakis, was over. Her planet was free. And her planet would never be free. The Fremen were no longer to be ruled by a tyrant who thought of them as vermin. The Fremen would forever be ruled by their religious fealty to the Mahdi. It was an imperfect, bitter victory that would forever taste like defeat to her. But it was over. The life she’d planned with Paul, with Usul, that too was over. Usul was over. This lingering she was doing, a decision to leave or to stay only halfway made, it needed to end. She was either going to kill this man, or remain his concubine and raise his children.
He offered her a soft smile.
“I took it for granted, growing up so close by. Much like a Fremen might take the beauty of Arrakis for granted. Seeing this place through your eyes… it is a gift.”
Chani took a deep breath, and chose.
She slipped her arm out of his grasp, but then reached for his hand, cutting off what was incomplete.
“Lead me to it, then.”
Paul nodded, accepting her decision, because of course he knew it for what it was.
As they grew closer, Chani saw children running by the shoreline, dragging their fingers through the water. Where they touched it, blue lights sparkled in their wake.
“They’re particularly bright this season,” Paul said, his voice quiet. “Those lights are made by bioluminescent microorganisms. It’s why people visit. Every year the plankton emerge and propagate, filling the ocean with lights. It’s a defense mechanism, deterring predators. Though their natural predators are likely scared away by the crowds more than the lights.”
In the distance, the ocean lit up as a ship glided over the surface. Chani had heard of ships, propelled by the wind with a sail that looked like a moisture trap.
“You’re welcome to swim, if you’d like,” Paul gestured at the water. There was such an unimaginable amount of it. So much that it made the bath they’d taken seem like nothing, like a drop of sweat. “We’ll have to be careful to stay near this stretch of the beach; to the north of us there are rip tides. Can you see the way the lights are glowing over there?”
Chani nodded.
“The current is really strong there, it can pull you under and out. Even strong swimmers are taken by surprise.”
“Maybe another time,” Chani said. “I think… this is a lot. To take in.”
“Of course.”
It wasn’t just the indescribable, colossal sea. It was the people all around them. Standing just beyond the waves, floating, a bright blue glow following their arms as they swayed with the water. Families lounging on the beach, not even looking at the ocean, more concerned with one another. Children splashing one another—picking up bucketfuls of water and throwing it. Unthinkable! When Chani had dreamed of water, of having plentiful water, she’d dreamed of gardens that didn’t wither in a bad season, of food that didn’t leave her mouth feeling dry and sore, of having enough so that elders didn’t feel the need to walk into the desert when they became too frail. She could not have dreamed of all this.
A child’s toy flew through the air, landing by Chani’s feet. She picked it up, looking for its owner. A shy girl, maybe six or seven years old, emerged from a crowd. She had unruly dark hair and a cautious grin.
“Is this yours?” Asked Chani.
“Yes. We’re sorry.”
“That’s all right.” Chani handed her the toy. “Are you having a nice day?”
The child nodded.
“Yes. Thank you!” She turned and ran back toward her companions. Then she paused, looking at Chani. “Come play with us?”
Laughing a little, Chani looked at Paul.
“The invitation was for you, not for me,” he said.
She shrugged, chasing after the little girl. The toy was some sort of baton, part of a passing game with clapping hands and stomping feet. It reminded Chani of the wedding dance from back home. The children moved to and fro, passing the baton, sometimes tossing it in the air for another to catch. Chani didn’t know the steps, but she was lightning-fast, and caught the baton every time it came too close to the ground.
Paul was close by, hovering. She found she didn’t mind. She’d made her choice.
After a little while, the children scattered, hungry for dinner. Chani rejoined Paul.
“Are all children on Caladan like that?”
Paul looked past her, in the direction the children had gone.
“I didn’t spend much time with other children when I was one. But yes, children here are more or less like that. Not little warriors or conservationists. They go to school and they play.”
“Not a bad life,” Chani murmured. “Do you envy them?”
Paul’s expression shifted.
“I think I would if I knew how.”
Chani didn’t have anything to say to that; she knew the feeling. It was impossible to envy people like this, who were so careless with all the bounty they had.
“Ah,” Paul said. “I think it may rain.”
It almost made Chani laugh. The man could see so far into the future that he could tell you, with precision, when one’s great great grandchildren would be born. He knew whether or not it was going to rain.
But then she felt a droplet on her forehead, and remembered, rain.
No tent to shield her this time, nowhere for her to hide. There were dismayed cries from the beach, children being recalled to their parents. There were open-air shelters some distance away, and people began to crowd underneath. Paul looked at Chani, wordlessly asking if she wanted to do the same. She didn’t. More droplets began to fall. As the rain hit the ocean, it began to glow with an ethereal blue light. Like stars painting the sky, only these lights were in constant motion, swaying with the tide. The rain was cold, pattering against the sand, trickling down her cheeks. When had she opened her arms?
Chani spun, catching as many of the raindrops as she could. Not because they were precious, but because she could.
Her hair was wet. Her clothes were soaked. Even her feet felt damp in her warm socks and sturdy boots. Still, she spun. It felt like dancing. There was the forever drumbeat of the waves breaking on the shore, the hollow place in her chest where grief had made its home, the strength in her bones and the fortitude of her spirit. It was all the music she needed. Chani spun, twirled, danced.
Paul waited for her. His hair stuck to his forehead, hung heavy around his shoulders, dark and tangled and sodden. The raindrops sparkled all around them like broken glass, like a million fractured shafts of sunlight. More precious than gemstone on Arrakis, more bountiful than grains of sand here.
He reached for her, and Chani took his hand.
They didn’t rush—their clothes were already waterlogged. It should have been unpleasant, all that dragging and additional weight, but Chani couldn’t shake off the novelty of it. Her clothing was drenched with more water than she could carry in her stillsuit. It stuck to her skin. The fabric was lush and thick with water. She wanted to wrap herself up in this feeling until she dissolved.
Paul led her to a tall stone building at the edge of the shore. It was a round column with a spiraling staircase inside.
“We’ll have a nice view at the top,” he explained.
It wasn’t a difficult climb, though after the days of hiking Chani felt sore, and she wasn’t used to so many stairs. Their clothing made strange smacking noises as they moved. Chani shivered, cold. But even that she was enjoying. She’d never felt cold and wet before.
When they reached the top, Chani found that the tower was open on all sides, shielded only by thick glass. She could see the mountains behind her, just beyond the shore. Ahead, she could see the ocean. It was somehow even more vast from up above. It looked infinite. Chani knew that wasn’t true, knew that this planet, like all others, had an end. The horizon didn’t go on forever. It merely wrapped around the globe and met the other side somewhere behind her. But this view, from this height… it felt like the water would never end.
At the center of the room was a giant glass bulb. Paul saw her looking at it.
“It’s a Fresnel lens. Ancient technology. My ancestors built lighthouses like this out of some nostalgia for the past—a past they had no memory of. The light was used to warn sailors when they were coming too close to the shore. They would scrape their ships against the rocks underneath the water and sink.” He shrugged. “This one is just for show. It’s not in the right place. The town will turn on the light for certain celebrations, but that’s it.” He finally rested his gaze on Chani. “You’ve come to a decision.”
Chani nodded.
“You know why I came here?”
“I do.”
She swallowed.
“What you broke.” She stopped herself, started again. “Things will never be how they were. I need you to hear that. The way I loved you is over.”
He didn’t flinch; she hadn’t expected him to.
“I understand.”
Chani straightened, bracing her shoulders.
“But I want our child to know you. To have a father.”
There. She’d told him. No more debating. No more lingering in the halfway place in between decisions. He knew.
When she looked at him, she could tell that he’d known from the very beginning.
She’d chosen. Not the life she’d dreamed of, but the struggle she could accept. It would grow easier. And it would be the seed for a new generation, one whose burden would be a little easier to bear.
That night, before she fell asleep, the last name on her lips as she tallied the dead was Usul.