Before we begin, let me talk about a publication I really love:
Here’s some info about them:
The Storyletter is a community-driven publisher that seeks to platform emerging and independent creators. Join our growing Substack for prompts, contests, and paid publishing opportunities. We primarily publish speculative short fiction and poetry. If this interests you, check out our free catalog featuring original stories and interviews. Can't wait to meet you in the comments!
The Storyletter is a great place to connect with writers - even if you’re a bit of a lurker like me. I love reading and commenting on short stories and helpful posts. If you’re a writer, you gotta check them out.
If you don’t know, Realms of Roush sends you monthly short stories that take you to new worlds. These stories are actually short AND come with an audio version, so you can do dishes or drive and simply escape.
Today’s post is a caveat to the “actually short” short story. This is a previously-published short story on my newsletter. But I wanted to revise and add the podcast version so more reader could enjoy this story. It’s one of my favorites.
The Daughter in the Desert
The young girl 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, among the dunes she is free.
Everyone has their own idea of who 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. Her father doesn’t want anything to do with her, which is sometimes worse than having no idea for her at all. And let’s not get started on what the other young girls want for her. That is a wound too often refreshed.
The girl and her little town’s only freshwater spring are very alike. They started out with so much beauty and energy, only to be covered up by grime and inattention. The people she tries to escape, the same people who have known her forever, say she’s too in love with the world outside the walls.
They say she doesn’t realize her highest station in life will be child-bearer.
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 often as she can, the girl explores the towering cliffs and mysterious desert. She’s gone farther than most people go in their lifetimes. But only the merchants can surmount the cliffs with their secret roads, or navigate the desert by starlight.
The girl looks at her village from atop a mountainous dune, watching the sun tease the land with its early light.
She says, “It’s so small.”
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. A thankless one, in her eyes. Marriage means even more chores, childbearing and rearing, 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.
She imagines life beyond the sands. Cities beside an ocean of water, immaculate and white. Ships that carry her to distant docks, markets full of colorful spices, foods, and treasures. The fantasy washes over her like she’s actually there, an oasis inside her mind.
She notices how high the sun is and clicks her tongue.
“Better get home soon, or I’ll get a lecture.”
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. When those bodies were recovered, sand spilled out of their ears and eyes and mouths, drowned.
The desert is always hungry, they say.
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. The desert has snuck up on her while she’s been engorged in her fantasies. A storm is nearly upon her like an open talon.
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. Sand is in her mouth, ears, and nose, but she isn’t drowning. Yet. Her robes are disheveled, their folds carrying dirt 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. 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.
It is not in her nature to give up when the odds are against her. Not when the girls tug at her hair and call her nasty names. Nor when Papa throws the bottle at her head, possessed by his drink.
The girl fights the desert’s irresistible pull but 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. Her fighting means nothing.
She presses her hands to the ground, twists her body to no avail. She screams and cries. The tears run tracks in her dusty cheeks and the desert drinks them up. She’s sinking, fast, 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 hates that her adventurous spirit has ended her young life, that she will never see her joyful brother or her rigid mother ever again. 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 a complete darkness greets her, she thinks she might be in hell. But, if she is in hell, and in fact dead, then surely she wouldn’t feel anything. What she does feel is relief and gratefulness to be alive. Even in this total night.
With a groan, she rolls to her stomach and touches cold, ancient stones. Their coolness and the musty air betray a hint of moisture. There is water here, somewhere, in the dark.
“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.
To calm herself, she thinks, Better to be eaten by darkness than sand.
It is not in her nature to give up. Moving forward, she tests every surface before putting weight on it. She crawls in two directions and runs into walls. On her third attempt, she hits no wall and continues crawling through the looming, terrifying darkness.
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.
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 a 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, her fingers tap hard 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 removing 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. It whispers, “Beware the serpent,” before it exhales a long-held breath. She lets out a scream and runs, forgetting caution. The sword swings dangerously in her hand until she hears the sound of moving water.
The side of her head cracks on a slab of collapsed ceiling and she stumbles. The sword drops and clangs to the ground, narrowly missing her sandaled feet. Her momentum carries her over the precipice.
The underground river bashes her body into 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. 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 stands and makes to pull the sword out. But in the water is a dark shape, an angular head, and menacing, bright eyes. It’s not in the water, though. It’s a reflection.
Her head rises slowly as if seeing the thing piece by piece will dissipate her shock. 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.” The serpent’s ‘esses’ are long and chilling, its words echoing in the air, conjured without moving its mouth.
It’s a devil, she realizes.
It slithers 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 shrank.
“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,” she says.
“But you have the same blade as that soldier of fortune.”
“I didn’t choose to be here,” she says. “I was pulled down into the sands by fate.”
“Truly?”
“And what do you call yourself?”
It opens its mouth slightly, shifts its eyes to a distant time and place. “I once had 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.”
“Was this your temple?”
“Yes! I ruled here for a thousand years, before the angels 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.”
“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.”
“That’s not true. You fear getting stuck, don’t you?” It says, dropping that giant head down to her level. “You want out.” The serpent shares an ugly smile that stretches all the way to the back of its head. “There is only one way out.”
The girl takes a moment to master herself and says, “What choice do I have?”
The serpent speaks sweetly, “None. You will help me, or you will die. And 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.”
“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.”
She tries to see the exit, beyond that 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. Her only way out.
The girl imagines herself at the market, bargaining. 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.
The serpent hisses long and deep, the stench blood-curdling. “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. That unholy mouth draws back, hisses, and shoots forward to swallow her whole.
The girl blinks and finds herself peering down its moist gullet.
“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.” The serpent is sweet-tongued again. “I offered God everything to let me out. All my riches. My perfect wings. But it was never enough. He always wants more. Besides the path, the only other way out is fire. That’s the only reason God gave me this light. Eternal death or eternal suffering. He loves his absolutes. But what do you desire? I could give you my treasure.”
Behind the devil 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.
She tilts her head thoughtfully, sure that this is test. “How would I carry the treasure?”
“How then, my wisdom? It would 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 just can’t buy.
She waits for another offer, knowing that she has bargaining power still.
“My wings? To take you wherever you wish?”
This one catches her breath. She holds out, but barely. The serpent notices.
“No? Well. Let’s see.” That tongue flicks out again. “You’re 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 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 extends her hand and fingers warily. 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 around 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.
“My true name is Lucifer.”
“And mine is Hava.”
“Oh. 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, shaking the room and making the treasure trickle to the floor. Hava covers her ears and turns away, disgusted.
“Take me,” Lucifer says. She opens her eyes. Lucifer’s head is right in front of her, mouth open, and something is inside. A lump of moving flesh. 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 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. She tugs and groans until the tissue rips like meat and she falls on her backside. Lucifer groans, his giant head rearing, falling, and crashing.
Hava looks down at the thing in her arms. It’s a child. The near-human baby has scales around 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.
All were born children of God, devil or no.
Hava considers how 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. She will die if she breaks the oath. On her way through the door, she scoops some treasure into her robe’s pockets, feeling entitled to it.
Hava carries him through the narrow tunnel and onto a cliff 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 path sloping upward. She starts her trek, eyes focused on her feet, 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 inspects him. He’s much larger than before. 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. The girl curses her foolishness, 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 the light. Hava smiles, hunger and hope in her face when the doorway comes into view. She’s dragging Lucifer now, his body long and heavy.
Both of them barely fit through the tunnel. Hava has to crouch and shuffle sideways, pulling Lucifer’s dead weight with all her strength. His wings 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 tugs and pulls. Twists and yanks. She fights harder than ever. And squeezes out of the thin passageway with hardly any room to spare.
Dropping Lucifer, Hava falls to her knees and offers a prayer of thanksgiving.
But whose hands are these? 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?”
“Our oath is eternal, daughter. I might call upon you in the future.”
Hava, the woman, hisses, “People will see this and know I’ve made a deal with you.”
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, reminds her of a serpent’s pupil. Hava absently rubs the oath mark on her hand, unable to escape the thought that she’s made a mistake. She had to do what she did to escape, to get out and get back.
But back to what?
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? Hava arrives at the shabby village gate with no decisions made, besides going home one last time.
The old guard starts, “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 I am dead. She doesn’t 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.
But she doesn’t rush to comfort them, for there’s nothing in there that she wants to go back to. This, the only life she’s ever known, is no longer the one she wants to live. But for all her toughness, a few tears creep down her sharp cheekbones.
There is no going back, she thinks.
Hava leaves her home behind. She embraces her new path, without fear or the shackles of duty. After all, she’s never faced anything that can keep her down.
Not the endless desert, nor the Devil himself.
Thank you for reading and listening to The Daughter in the Desert!
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Until next time, Realm Walkers.
-Zach
The Daughter and the Desert