The Daughter and the Desert
A girl’s journey to maturity in the style of 1001 nights.
A girl who feels trapped by life finds a way out.
With only fourteen years under her robe, the young girl’s heart is still soft as lamb’s wool, even with her drunkard of a Papa. She and the town’s only spring are very alike. They start with so much beauty and energy, only to be covered up by grime and inattention. Things are tough in her dying oasis town, but they are always tough.
Even so, she traverses the dunes with the joy of the sunrise and the speed of a hawk. Covered head to toe in vibrant sunset-colored robes, she runs. Yes, in the dunes she is free.
Everyone has their own ideas of how she should be, of course. Her mother molds the girl to one day be a mother. Her brother wants nothing but a fun-loving sister with boundless imagination. He doesn’t have to do any chores, besides milking the goats. Man’s work, that is. It’s about the only thing her Papa does, anyway, besides smoke hookah and drink swill. He doesn’t spend all day washing or cooking or weaving. He doesn’t have to deal with the other girls, who watch her like desert hawks, waiting to strike. At the washing wells or in the markets, she tries to keep her head down and eyes on the people just in front of her. Not making eye contact makes her invisible enough to escape the judgment of those wealthier girls, those who don’t have a drunkard for a father and a laborer for a mother.
These same people, who have known her forever, say she’s too in love with the world outside the walls. That she doesn’t realize her highest station in life will be child-bearer. Those people don’t see that this is the reason she spends so much time in the desert, far from them and further from her fate.
Outside the town, great cliffs rise to form the solid horizon behind her. The desert meets the risen rock walls and eats away at them, claiming more and more land each year. As much as she can, the girl explores the towering cliffs and mysterious desert. She’s gone farther than most go in their lifetimes. But she never ventures too far. Only the merchants can surmount the cliffs with their secret roads, or navigate the desert by starlight. The girl looks at the village from atop a mountainous dune, watching the sun tease the land with its early light.
It’s so small. Her thoughts are heavy with sadness.
The girl dreams of a day when she can leave, yet knows that day will never come. Besides, she loves her mother and brother and she understands why she must marry. It’s always been done, it’s her duty. Unless something changes, her only freedom in marriage will be the little things in life. That list of little things gets shorter every day as chores are added to her tasks, as her Papa searches for suitors. Marriage and its duties are growing near: even more chores, childbearing, and suffering a strange man’s company the rest of her days. The girl has heard that marriage can be a gift, then again, she’s only heard about it from her mother and aunts. If she had any friends her age, she might have known more.
She imagines life beyond the sands. Cities beside an ocean of water, immaculate and white. Ships that carry her to new places, filled with smiling people. Markets full of colorful spices, foods, and treasures. The fantasy washes over her like she’s there, an oasis of fantasy that she frequents.
She notices how high the sun is and clicks her tongue. Better get home soon, or I’ll get a lecture
And if she misses lunch, she’ll be in trouble. How much trouble depends on how much her papa drank and she doesn’t want to find that out. As she turns, a gust of wind ruffles her clothes. This gives her pause. The girl searches the horizon, looking for telltale clouds of dust that signal a sandstorm. She’s witnessed many punishing tempests that start from nothing but a whisper and consume whole caravans. If those bodies are ever recovered, sand spills out of their chest and ears and eyes, drowned. There is no worse way to die.
She doesn’t have to look long.
She finds that the desert has snuck up on her, while she’s been visiting her fantasies.
A storm is nearly upon her like an open talon.
A sudden wind blows sand into her eyes, and the next rush of wind turns her in circles, making her lose her sense of direction like being plunged into a very, very deep pool. She falls down the dune.
Sand flies and spreads, showers and dots the smooth slope. Eventually, at the bottom of a bowl, she comes to a stop. Her heart beats fast for a moment while she examines herself. Sand is in her mouth, ears, and nose, but she isn’t drowning. Her robes are disheveled, their folds carrying dirt deposits like bags of heavy coins.
The girl stands and shakes out the grit as much as she can, knowing her hair will harbor it for days when she combs it from her curls. She re-wraps her face covering, its brilliant colors dusted over. Above her, the storm’s front line advances quickly. Soon, she will not be able to see the sun.
She looks around for an easy route to summit the dune, but the slope is very steep all around her. This dust bowl doesn’t look like anything she’s seen before. An adult would see that the formation is unnatural, that something beneath the high dunes formed this sunken area. A scribe, if her village had one, would notice the outline of an ancient structure. This scribe might gasp and scramble away, knowing that the ground could very well sink beneath their feet.
With her route hastily chosen, she goes to leave and stumbles for one of her feet is completely swallowed by the earth. She shifts her weight to the other leg and the ground gives way. The desert is always hungry, they say.
Fear races up her spine as she sees what’s happening. Yet, it is not in her nature to give up when the odds are against her, when she’s surrounded and knocked down. Not when the girls tug at her unkempt hair and call her nasty names. Nor when Papa throws the bottle at her head, possessed by his drink.
So, the girl fights the desert’s irresistible pull and continues to sink. The sand condenses around her, draws her further and further in. It’s not long before she’s down to her waist. The girl has finally encountered something far bigger than she’s ever faced. Her fighting means nothing to it.
She presses her hands to the ground, twists her body to no avail. Now she screams and cries, her eyes like bursting streams. The tears run tracks in her dusty cheeks and the desert drinks them up. She’s sinking, fast now, up to her sides, up to her narrow chest and shoulders. Her screams ring out until she takes a final, gasping breath.
…
Sucked into the earth, there’s no air to move or breathe. She slips by the remains of a stone roof and a tower, unseen. She realizes that she forgot everything her mother taught her about sinking sand, and hates herself for it. She hates that a stupid, childish mistake like that has ended her young life, that she will never see her young brother, her kind and rigid mother again, and even regrets that she will not hear her father’s laugh. But all of these ideas operate beneath the panic of suffocating to death. This panic persists even after the sand deposits her into an open space with plenty of air.
She coughs, unsure if she’s actually alive, and a cloud of dust bursts from her mouth. When her eyes open and the complete darkness greets her, she thinks she might be in hell. But, if she is dead, then surely she wouldn’t feel anything. What she does feel is relief and gratefulness to be alive, yet only for a moment. She begins to pay attention to her new, dark world.
With a groan, she rolls to her stomach, for it doesn’t seem wise to her to stand when she cannot see. Crawling, she places one hand before the other and touches cold, ancient stones. Their coolness and the musty air betray a hint of moisture. There is water here, somewhere, in the dark. She decides that if this is not eternal banishment, then this is how you get there.
“Please, God, I want to go home. I’ll never swear or think awful thoughts again. I’ll be nicer to Malech. I’ll do my chores with a smile. I’ll…” Her pleading ceases as she realizes there is no real hope of escape, but she can’t stay there. The girl pinches herself to stop her spiraling thoughts. Moving forward, she tests every surface before putting weight on it. She crawls in two directions and only runs into walls. But on her third attempt, she hits no wall and continues crawling through the looming, terrifying darkness.
To calm herself, she thinks, Better to be eaten by darkness than sand.
The floor is smooth and barely makes a sound against her robes, so her entire world shrinks to her breathing and crawling. It’s an eternity before the passage changes. She tries not to imagine that it goes on forever and ever, that she will crawl until she dies. When her hand hits something in her way, a sigh escapes her. She feels gritty sand flowing over a fallen pillar. One in an enormous hallway that once guided devout worshippers to the great hall.
No matter. The girl climbs over it, slips on the way down, and rolls over something that bites her forearm. She scrambles away, thinking it’s a snake or scorpion. Nothing comes after her. The girl puffs out her cheeks at the pain, but it’s a shallow cut. Returning to where she fell, she feels around for what cut her. Her fingers tap hard, cold metal, and grasp the hilt of a blade. The wound is worth finding this weapon. It gives her strength.
There is no scabbard, but she does find a dry piece of wood nearby, then another that’s oddly shaped, and then a round one with two holes in the front. Strange wood with strange shapes, and surprising lightness. She drops the skull and shuffles backward.
The girl knows the feel of animal bones, from tearing off animal sinew for sewing, but no animal can carry a sword. A curse escapes her lips. Bones and bodies are unclean, and the spirits of those bodies are worse, especially those that die alone and forgotten.
She inclines her head. “May God take your soul to the eternal oasis. May you find peace.”
To her horror, she feels the soul shift. Goosebumps spread across her as it moves, freed by her prayer. It whispers, “Beware the serpent,” before it exhales its long-held breath. She lets out a choked squeak and runs, forgetting caution. The sword swings dangerously in her hand until she hears the sound of moving water. This sound eases the girl’s fear and she slows, takes an instinctual look behind her.
The side of her head cracks on a slab of the collapsed ceiling in the hall and she stumbles from the force. The sword drops and clangs to the ground, narrowly missing her bare toes, and disappears with a splash. With the ringing pain in her skull, the girl does not register the sword’s disappearance, nor the sudden loud sound of rushing water. The same water that forged its own through the thick stone, splitting the floor and carving a precipice. Dazed, the girl takes a step away from the fissure, then two forward. It’s one too many.
She falls into rushing water.
…
It all happens so fast the girl has no time to breathe. The underground river tosses the girl around, bashes her body into the ancient walls, drags her through submerged passages, then casts her out into the air. A shallow pool catches her a second later. She surfaces with a gasp, everything hurting like she was beaten with stones.
It’s her mind, more than her body, that forces her to move until solid ground meets her fingertips. She does not lose consciousness, tough as she is, but the girl is wrung out. For some time, she lays half out of the water, shivering and aching, aching and shivering.
“I want to go home,” she begs. “Please let me go home.”
When the cold becomes too much, the girl pulls herself forward, painfully. The sword, shot out by the force of the water, sticks up from the sand ahead of her. She reaches for it and stops. Her hand is in front of her, visible. She wiggles her fingers and laughs weakly.
“I can see,” she rasps.
With new hope inside her, the girl goes to stand and notices a dark shape in the water. It looks up at her with menacing, bright eyes. No, looking down. It’s a reflection.
Her head rises slowly as if seeing the thing piece by piece will dissipate her shock, and she wonders how she didn’t hear or notice it before. Every detail is more apparent, instead. The creature is thick as a cypress tree, the sound of its breathing like a thousand bellows. Its shining, black scales are as beautiful as polished obsidian.
“Hello, Daughter of the Sun. Have you come to kill me? Have you come to end my suffering?” The serpent’s esses are long and chilling, its words echoing in the air, conjured from nothing.
It’s a devil, she realizes. What sort of suffering is it talking about?
It creeps forward and creates a circle with its scaly bulk. It moves into the water and back onto the sand, moving slowly with those eyes locked on her. The serpentine body goes on forever, like the darkness in the passage. Encircled, trapped, hemmed in on all sides, the girl feels choked like when the sinking sand took her; her dread rising as the world shrinks. All she sees are the pitch-black scales, those venomous eyes, and the long, protruding fangs.
“Well? What say you, Daughter of the Sun?”
Her mother’s voice says, Never trust demons. Never make deals with them. Most of all, never give them your name.
“I’m not here to kill you.”
“But you have the same blade as that soldier of fortune.”
“I didn’t strike you with it! And didn’t choose to be here,” she says. “I was pulled down into the sands by fate.”
“By God, more likely.”
“And what do you call yourself?”
It opens its mouth slightly, shifts its eyes to a distant time and place. “I was once a god to this fruitful valley before it was a desert. I built a kingdom to rival God’s! And when I’d taken the hearts of many men, women, and children, he struck me down. Like a worm.”
The only way out of his deathly spiral is to flatter him, she thinks, for devils love themselves more than anything.
“Was this your temple?”
“Yes! The crown jewel of the desert. I ruled here for a thousand years, before God broke heaven’s hourglass over my head, burying me in the desert. My servants were stuck here with me, plenty to drink but nothing to eat. Man cannot live on drink alone, as they say.”
“Tell that to my Papa,” she mutters. This snaps the snake out of its reverie.
“You know, with a sharp tongue like that, you must be a descendent of my subjects. They, too, had dark skin and sharp, stunning faces like yours. Although, they were better fed.” Its tongue flicks out. “You taste of fear and frustration. Yesss, frustration. You weren’t in the desert by accident.” She clenches her teeth, afraid at how much the devil figured out just by tasting the air. “You don’t fear the desert, do you?”
“I don’t fear anything!” She’s nervous now, unsure of what to say.
“That’s not true. You fear getting stuck, don’t you?” It says, dropping that head down to her level. “You want out.” He did not clarify if he meant from his presence or her life. The serpent shares an ugly smile. “There is only one way out and we need each other to take that path.”
The girl takes a moment to master herself and says, “What choice do I have?”
The serpent speaks sweetly, “None. All I need is your name.”
“No,” she says firmly. This takes the serpent aback. “I know what you are. If I give you my name, I lose myself.”
It chuckles. “You have no choice. God left a single, narrow path to the surface, through that arch over there. It goes straight to the top, he told me. And the only way to take his path is to show my true self. The irony is, once I do, I cannot move of my own accord. I even offered up my treasure, I gave up my hate, I bit off my wings, and it is not enough for him. God always wants more.”
She tries to see the exit, beyond the enormous blaze that gives light to the room. The devil moves to give her a view. There it is, a narrow archway carved out of the once-glorious hall. That’s how she gets out, and to do so, she must deal with a devil.
The girl imagines herself at the market, bargaining for something she desperately wants. You have to let merchants name their price first, or they twist their words to make you pay more. What she wants is her life. The snake is the merchant.
She looks it in the eyes, resolute and hard as packed earth. The serpent hisses long and deep, the stench blood-curdling.
“I don’t like that gaze, Daughter. I hate it. You think you can look at me like I’m lesser than you! I’m your only way out. If you won’t give me your name, I’ll kill you. What’s another thousand years to me, the Devil of devils?”
Those dagger pupils cut into her soul, paralyzing her with their brilliance. It opens its jaws wider and wider, threatening to swallow her whole. All she has to do to save her life is say her name, just whisper it. She whimpers. That unholy mouth draws back, hisses, and shoots forward to swallow her whole. The girl blinks and finds herself peering down its moist gullet. She is not dead yet.
“You are brave, Daughter. Far braver than that soldier of fortune. I broke him and tossed him back the way he came, up through the rushing water. I will make a deal with you.”
The girl is left on her hands and knees in the water. She’s shaking. She’s shocked. She’s won.
…
They look at the arched portal, the only exit from the great hall. Behind them is the stone brazier, filled with an eternal flame. Piles of gold and jewels glimmer in its light. There’s a pair of enormous wings, with raven-black feathers soft as silk. What the serpent said was true, as far as that goes.
“Besides the path, the only other way out is by fire. That’s the only reason God gave me this light. Eternal death or eternal suffering. He loves his absolutes. Now, what could this brave Daughter desire? Gold?”
She tilts her head thoughtfully. The gold would be useful.
“I could give you my wisdom. It will make you powerful, irresistible. Everyone you know will serve and love you.”
She raises a brow. With influence like that, she could be the one the girls flock to. Boys and men would see her as something more than an object. To be seen, well, that’s something you can’t buy. She waits for another offer, knowing that she has bargaining power still.
“No? Well. Let’s see.” That tongue flicks out again. “You’re young but old enough to be married off and bear children.” Disgust flashes across her face. “Yes, to care for some old, greasy man and fill his household with the cries of his brood. To weave and sew, to break your back for his comfort. Yes, I see it now. This is how your life will go. Unless…”
“Unless…?” She’s drawn in and she can’t help it.
The serpent senses his bait has been taken. “If you carry me to the surface, I will free you from this destiny. No man will ever have hold over you, least of all your dear Papa.”
That dream is all she’s ever wanted. It’s all she hopes for when she runs to the desert, looking for a way out of a life she didn’t choose. With her heart pounding, she forgets her mother’s lessons.
“Make me an oath, and I will carry you wherever you wish,” she commands with a hard voice.
The serpent swiftly coils itself into a spiral, before she changes her mind, and grips its tail in its mouth, biting down hard and drawing blood. It drips to the floor. Then the serpent shifts its head over to where the girl stands. It locks eyes with her and she feels like she’s staring into the cosmos at night. “I oath myself to thee, Daughter of the Sun, that I shall free you when you free me. Hold out your palm.”
She raises her hand warily, the fingers held in a white-knuckled fist. The girl grimaces, unable to trust herself or this snake. Those eyes wait and watch. A few tears escape her eyes, the result of the pressure of the moment. And she exhales a deep breath, then extends her hand and fingers. The serpent hangs his head over her, drips blood and venom onto her hand. A groan escapes her lips at the pain, now weaving its way into her very bones. The oath, spoken into being, becomes a scar in her palm, in the shape of a serpent coiled on itself.
“It holds no power without our true names,” it says. And there it is, the first caveat. “The venom will kill you if you lie.”
“You first,” she says, staving off the stomach-dropping fear at what she’s done.
“My true name is Lucifer.”
“And mine is Hava.”
The snake raises its head, surprised. “I have not heard that name in an age…,” Lucifer whispers.
His body begins to shiver. Those polished, obsidian scales rattle like loose roof tiles. He raises his head to the ceiling and begins to gag and convulse. Hava covers her ears and turns away, disgusted. When the room stops shaking and the treasure stops shifting, she opens her eyes. Lucifer’s head is right in front of her, mouth open, and something is inside. A lump of moving flesh.
“Take me,” Lucifer says. Hava hesitates. “You made an oath,” he hisses. The girl grimaces and approaches his gaping mouth. She has to stick her upper body in to get a hold of the thing. It’s covered in slime and bile, the smell and touch making her drop the thing, spin around, and retch.
“Sorry,” Hava says, wiping her mouth. She steels herself this time. Her hands grip the thing, a creature of some kind, and pulls. It doesn’t come free easily. She tugs and groans until the tissue rips like meat and she falls on her backside. Lucifer’s giant head collapses and sends up a cloud of dust. Hava looks down at the thing in her arms. It’s a demon child. The near-human baby has scales near its eyes, the stumps of wings on its back. It has a short tail, covered in human skin. The girl is amazed at how precious, pure, and soft the child is, despite the inhuman features. All are born children of God, after all, devil or not.
This is why he needed an unbreakable oath from her. Without her, this child cannot escape. Hava thinks that she could leave this child behind, or use the blade to end its life. The oath mark burns her as she thinks this, warning her. Only Lucifer knows what will happen if she breaks her oath. On her way through the portal, she scoops some treasure into her surviving pocket, feeling entitled to it.
…
Hava carries him through the narrow tunnel and onto a precipice where a hot wind blows from below. She feels the heat curl up her face, a welcome reprieve from the wet chill. To her left runs a carved path sloped to climb up the steep walls. She starts her trek, eyes directed upward with Lucifer peacefully sleeping. When the first doorway is far behind her, Hava shifts Lucifer to the other arm. Not long after that, she shifts him back.
She holds him out and sees that’s he’s much larger and his infantile skin is turning into scales before her very eyes. He did not tell her this would happen. He made the deal, as all crafty merchants do, without showing the hidden costs. And she let him. The girl curses her foolishness, and bares her teeth, and knows that the only way out is up. Every time a foot slips, her grip weakens, or a back muscle twinges, she snarls and carves more strength from herself.
God knows how long she climbs until she sees that light. Hava smiles, hunger and hope in her face when the doorway comes into view. With a growl, she hurries to the doorway but has to drag Lucifer the last ten steps, for he’s too heavy. Both of them barely fit through the tunnel. The girl has to crouch and shuffle sideways, pulling Lucifer’s dead weight with all her strength. His wings and body fill the volume up, seeming to swell with each passing moment. The girl panics, thinking she’ll get stuck in there with him, or that she won’t fulfill her end of the deal and face an end worse than death.
She squeezes out of the thin passageway with hardly any room.
Dropping him, Hava falls to her knees and offers a prayer of thanksgiving. She stops when she sees unfamiliar hands and arms, sticking out from her robes. Did her robes shrink in the water? No. She stands to take herself in. The rise of breasts surprises her. The rest of her is tall and lithe, like a palm tree, even her legs are twice as long as before. Delicately, she feels out her unfamiliar body.
“Now, you are free,” Lucifer says. She twists to face him, sees that the child is completely gone. He is the winged devil once more.
“You changed me.” She looks at her hands and adds, suspicious, “Is this all you have done?” Even her voice is unfamiliar.
“I could have fulfilled the oath in many ways,” Lucifer says darkly. “I could have taken your womb, spat venom in your face to sully your chances at marriage, and more. Maybe the eons have made me soft.”
“Why has the oath not disappeared?”
He laughs. “Our oath is eternal, Daughter. I might call upon you in the future.”
The woman hisses. “People will see this and know I’ve made a deal with a devil.”
He smiles again. “A small price to pay, yes?”
The woman narrows her eyes and looks at her body again. When she looks back, Lucifer and the door are gone, replaced by a feather gently floating to the ground.
…
Hava shivers in the desert’s night. The new moon’s sliver of a face follows her, looking very similar to the serpent’s pupils. Hava absently rubs the oath mark on her hand, unable to escape the thought that she’s made a mistake. What choice did she have down there in the belly of the earth? She had to do what she did to escape, to get out and get back. Back to what? Her dying oasis village? Her duty to her family? An arranged marriage? The chores? The other girls?
Hava’s face twists in anger. She didn’t make a deal with Lucifer himself just to go back to her life. And now her destiny is full of endless decisions. Where should she go? What should she do? Where does she get food and clothing? She’s swamped by this tyranny of choice. Hava arrives at the shabby village gate with no decisions made, besides going home to get one last look.
She passes the snoring old man who keeps watch, and he starts at the groaning hinges.
“Whazzat? Who’s there?”
“A lost traveler,” she answers.
“Oh. I thought it might be someone else. A young girl was lost to the desert today. There was a sandstorm.” She stares at him. He bows his head and says, “May she find peace wherever her spirit goes.”
Hava frowns and inclines her head in return and walks on before he starts asking questions. So, they think she is dead. Is this another gift from the serpent? Her death means real freedom. She doesn’t even have to say goodbye if she doesn’t want to. Furthermore, they won’t recognize her or believe her story. Still, she heads home.
The old, squat mud-brick house looks sad as a sheared sheep. Even more than when she’d left it that morning. Had so much changed since then? Her body, without a doubt. Her mind, a little, for it had been tested by the Devil of devils. And what about her heart?
Inside, the house is dark. There is no cooking fire, no sweet scent of hookah, no sound of a bellowing drunk. When she listens carefully, she hears sobbing in three different octaves. Has her father been sobered by loss? This sound is heartbreaking and somehow feels worse than all the fear and pain she experienced that day. But she doesn’t rush to comfort them, for she understands there’s nothing in there that she wants to go back to, especially since they think she’s dead. This, the only life she’s ever known, is no longer the one she wants to live. For all her toughness, a few tears creep down her sharp cheekbones. There is no going back, she thinks.
She gathers herself with a deep breath. Under the light of that moon, like a devil’s eye, the woman named Hava leaves her home behind. She embraces her new destiny, without fear or the shackles of guilt. After all, she’s never faced anything that can keep her down.
Not the endless desert, nor the Devil himself.
Tell me, did you like this story?