Sand Dragons

I looked behind myself and shielded my eyes from the piercing rays. The community compound was becoming more like a distant shiny object than a facility where hundreds of people lived and protected themselves from the dangers of the sands. When they forced me to leave, they had told me that I was lucky that today was the longest day of the year, a day that would give me 17 hours before the night would come and the sand dragons would eat me whole. I did not think I was very lucky. I did not need 17 hours, now 11 hours since I was forced out, to think about how I was going to be consumed.

    I did think that it was lucky that they had at least let me keep my clothes. They were good quality and I had spent weeks working in the fields to gain enough money to get them. My outfit consisted of a light shirt, long baggy pants, and a shawl that covered my head and upper body enough so that the potent sun didn’t burn me. The fabric was good because it was sewn tightly, but was still light and it was the color of the sands around me, with small golden threads spun throughout so that from above I might look like a piece of fool's gold. 

    I remember the look on my older brother’s face when I brought home the outfit. He was a serious man that did not like to reveal his emotions, but I could tell by the way his mouth tightened that he was jealous, and I reveled in it. However, when I was kicked out of the compound, I couldn’t read him. He only stared at me with dark eyes and scrunched up eyebrows, my mom next to him with a look of horror. I could tell by the way she had begun to place one foot forward that there was a part of her that wanted to come with me, to maybe try to protect me, but she didn’t. I couldn’t blame her. Being sent out of the community was a death sentence. My only hope was that by the time the darkness fell I would be far away enough so that the gentle hum of crickets would just be loud enough to distract my family from my screams.

    I had to admit to myself that I wanted to feel a little startled by my composure in this situation. When a slight breeze kicked up and lifted my shawl, I looked down at where my right arm was supposed to be, and then to my left arm that had a purple rash crawling up from the fingers and mottled all the way to my elbow. Nobody knew how someone got desert rash, but at least it was well known that it wasn’t contagious. Some suspected that certain people are genetically predisposed and others thought that it was a kind of curse. I knew that when it first appeared, when I was 10, almost 11 years ago, that I began living on borrowed time. People with desert rash needed more care than most to slow the spread and save their limbs, care that some communities did not have the resources for. My spread had been slow and I was told that there was a good chance that I might only lose a few more fingers, but I was still seen as a detriment to the community, especially since I couldn’t harvest the fields like I used to. With the latest drought and minimal crops, it was decided that someone who took more resources than they could provide needed to be sent out. I had been thinking about this situation every day since the purple began blossoming on my skin. Maybe that was why I was so determined to get fine desert clothes that would save me from the sun. 

I kept walking, unable to prevent myself from looking at my sundial every few minutes. My footsteps became the minute hand to the clock inside my head, their rhythm hypnotizing me as the sun rose and then began to dip back down toward the horizon. I checked the sundial again. I had five more hours. I turned around, the compound still visible, barely, on the flat terrain of the desert. I took the last sip of the water I was given and felt my throat begin to tighten from dryness and thirst. I continued. 

I had three hours left. I passed by some chuckle birds and threw my empty water bottle at them. They flew up into the air, but then landed back down and began again, the red pouch on their throats inflating with every hearty laugh. 

“You’re so dead!” one of the birds said and I flinched at their words. 

I knew that chuckle birds sometimes repeated phrases and other noises, but laughing was usually their preferred method of mockery. I could feel a shiver run down my neck and along my arms. It was the first time that day my demise fully registered in my head. I did not know how that chuckle bird knew that phrase. People despised the birds at my compound and I didn’t know anyone who talked to them. I also knew that there were no compounds anywhere near ours. 

But the chuckle birds were right. I was “so dead”. No one really knew exactly what a sand dragon looked like because most people spent their entire lives in compounds. However, it was well known that they burrowed in the sand, came out at night, were about the size of a horse, and had a serpentine body. I wondered how sharp their teeth were. If they swallowed their prey whole or toyed with it like a cat. 

I had one hour left. My condition was becoming more aggravated with each minute. It was usually this time of day when the sun hung low and the air was cool that I would apply salve to my skin and I would watch as the desert rash became inflamed at first, but then calm and almost turn the same color as the rest of my skin. Without it though, I watched as the splotches began to swell and become a deep maroon. It hurt. Even at its best there was always a tightness I felt in the infected skin, but now it burned and ached. Part of me hoped that the sand dragons would see my affliction and refuse to eat me, but maybe they just killed things for fun. Even if I wasn’t killed, I knew that I would freeze to death when the night came. 

I watched as the sun began to kiss the horizon, so large that I felt it would consume me. It burned a deep orange that wasn’t painful to look at and I watched as the sands transitioned from golden to candied. 

Then I felt it.

It was subtle. If I had been walking with someone else I would have assumed the vibrations I felt were from them, but my solitude made me confront the reality that the movement came from underground. Out of the corner of my eye I thought I saw two eyes peek up from beneath the sand, but by the time I looked, they were gone. 

Then I felt it again.

This time it was stronger, like a muscle flexing beneath the sand. I felt my jaw tighten and tears begin to burn my dry eyes. I wiped them away to clear my vision. I had no plan of attack. No weapons. I was fully clothed, but had never felt so naked in my life. 

One came at me from my right. I dove and rolled to my left, able to use my hand to steady myself and land back on my feet. It had come so quickly that I wasn’t able to get a good look at it. Then another one, or the same one, came again and I was able to avoid it by falling onto my back and then scrambling to pick myself up again.

I had a feeling they were playing with their food, trying to exhaust me because even though I wanted to think that my reaction time was that good, I knew that my condition inhibited my movement. I watched as the sun dipped below the horizon. It wouldn’t be long before it was completely dark and I wouldn’t be able to see anything and they got serious with their hunting. 

I was hit from behind and fell hard onto my arm. Sand got into my eyes and hurt. Before I could get back up, another one hit me from the side and bit a little into my shoulder, its teeth ripping away my shawl and exposing my torso. I fell onto my back and saw the peach to plum gradient of the sky be consumed with the heads of three sand dragons, their heads cocked in cruel fascination. Through bleary eyes, I could see that dozens of small horns shot out from their heads and lay almost flat against dark leathery skin. Their noses were surprisingly rounded and could almost be called cute despite the circumstances. Forked tongues flicked out of their mouths, framed by hundreds of small sharp teeth that were meant to grab onto prey and not let go. One lowered its head down to me. I closed my eyes and waited, feeling its breath against the stump of my right shoulder. It bit at my shirt and I could feel myself being lifted away from the sand so that my feet dangled. I opened my eyes and saw that we were moving, the now cobalt tinted sand gliding beneath me. 

I did not know where I was going, but I was tired and felt that it was time to accept my fate. I had fought long enough, hard enough, and that maybe this ending was deserved. I had been too much work, too much time, too much of a burden to those back home. So I hung there, swinging uncomfortably in my vest, the seams digging into my skin, the collar up to my neck and making it a little hard to breathe. The sunlight was almost gone, but in the distance I could see something like a small cave peeking out from the flat of the desert. After a few minutes, we entered it and I was devoured by darkness. 

The sand dragon laid me down on the ground and I could hear it slither away, but I could not see anything. I felt around, but could only feel cool sand against my hand and get trapped under my fingernails. I got up and took a few hesitant steps forward, but fell back again when I ran into an earthy wall. A part of me knew that I should keep going, that I should fight harder to stay alive, but I did not care. I was done. 

“Hello? Is there someone there?” a voice called out. 

I couldn’t believe it. What was a person doing here? I hesitated to respond, but before my mind could agree to anything, I heard my voice say, “Over here!”

A bright light soon blinded me. I lifted my hand to block it and when my eyes adjusted, I saw an older man holding a lamp and walking over to me.

“Oh, there you are,” he said with a laugh, as if we had been playing a fun game of hide and seek. “Here, let me help you up”, he said as he bent down, had me sling my arm around his shoulder, and lifted me up.

I groaned at the pain of the desert rash, more aggravated and painful than it had ever been, probably from being irritated from the sand. The man shined a light on it and sucked in his teeth.

“Oh, that’s gotten pretty bad. Come on, we have enough salve to get that under control. Just hold on a little bit more.”

We walked through what seemed to be a system of tunnels and I had been left in a small nook. We slowly made our way through until we turned a corner and my jaw dropped. At the end of the tunnel was an underground plaza filled with little shops and the humming of music and chatter. People sat around laughing with each other, eating steaming food, and grooming sand dragons. 

“What is all of this?” I asked.

The man helped set me down at a nearby table and chairs made from sand-smoothed branches. “This is the summer solstice festival. I have to say, you’re pretty lucky. Usually, we keep the sand dragons in for solstice for things like racing, but three of them escaped and brought you back. They tend to bring people who are lost right to the main square, but I think Darla took a real liking to you because she hid you pretty well.”

He pointed to a sand dragon whose head whipped around at the sound of her name. The creature slithered over. It was then that I could see that Darla was missing an arm just like me. 

“The sand dragons are pretty susceptible to desert rash, just like people. They learned a while ago that we knew how to make a salve to help with it. In return, they help get us food and other items that we need since they’re better built to travel over and through the sand than we are.”

Darla flicked out her tongue at me and then rested her heavy head onto my lap.

“Well, that is just darn cute”, the man said. “Hey! Matt! Letta! Get over here and look at this!”

They came over to look. I noticed that Matt was missing a leg and Letta didn't speak except for a few excited noises when she saw me and Darla. It did not take long for me to begin to suspect that the people in this community had been kicked out of others, just like me. 

“Hey! Jax! Come look!” the man said to another passerby. 

It was an old woman being followed by chuckle birds. “You’re so dead!” she said, trying to scare them away. When she came over she said, “Ugh, I know that they keep the pests at bay, but those damn birds won’t leave me the hell alone!”

Jax looked at me and smiled, leathery wrinkles framing her mouth and scrunching at the corners of her eyes.

“Is this someone new you’ve found, Gus?” Jax asked the man. “Welcome! What’s your name?”

I hesitated for a moment. I had been given a name in the compound and it was a name that I had let go of once I entered the desert. It was a name that was tied too much with what I had been seen as in the compound and I intended on leaving it to burn in the sun. 

“Emma, my name is Emma.”