The King of Bones

The heat. 

It’s like a dream. I think I’m asleep, a walker dragging herself through the heavy weight of sand flooding around her ankles, almost soft clouds that tempted her to sink into and sleep. But then the hot sun beats down on my back like a sharp whip, reminding me that this is, in fact, real. If I genuinely decide to lie down and close my eyes, my sleep may turn eternal. 

It’s tempting. 

How long has it been? Days? Weeks perhaps?

I shouldn’t have escaped. 

The high walls of bones sound like a luxury now, a sanctum away from the wild monsters that leak this wretched place in the night. Even the dreadful charred meat I was offered sounded much more pleasant than fasting for days. The cooling water, oh, the water! I miss the soothing relief it brought. My skin bottle has lost its life long ago, not a drop except when it turns into sweat. 

No food. No water. No Shelter. 

I rubbed at my brow, huffing away under the high sun. Walking through the sand was exhausting, its added weight feeling more like boulders strapped to my feet as time passed. I stopped when my pounding heart needed a break, hiding more of my drenched face under my cloth hood. 

Through the beams of yellow light, I was reminded of his eyes. 

Eyes of yellow flames that can penetrate your soul with careful work. His gaze was either calculating his next move or suppressing it. 

He wasn’t a terrible fiancee, Dale the Pale. 

His white face, those yellow Phoenix Stone eyes, strapping chest, and long white hair.

No. No matter how rare of a beauty he was, his place wasn’t my home, never could be. I left the evening before our midnight ritual, before I had to give myself to him. 

I shivered as though, miraculously, a cold wind crossed through my cloak. 

Going barefoot was dangerous. My toes were cracked, the skin dark and dry, with many bites from termites and creepy crawlers. I stared at them, wincing at their horrible state. 

A little black scorpion appeared. Like it knew where to go, it made its many legs towards my foot. When I felt its tiny legs crawl across my ankle, I screamed and kicked it off. 

That had me stumble back until I fell on my rear, legs and arms sprawled in the orange sand. 

I wept. 

Who knew I still had enough water to do such a thing? 

No, don’t cry. You need those tears, you stupid girl. Don’t cry here in the hottest part of the day with creepy scorpions still out there, bandits, monsters, and sand storms. 

I screamed at all of it, my mouth parched and throat too dry to get out much of a wail. My voice belonged to an old hag instead of a princess. 

I shouldn’t have left. 

My palms were saturated with the salty tears until I licked them clean, not wanting to lose any of the water. The sand, the salt, and the wetness all stayed on my tongue too briefly. 

I should’ve married King Dale, but now it was too late.

”I can’t have you sleep alone. Not under my roof. It’s…” He sighed, broad shoulders dropped as the calm North winds slipped into his chambers to toss his long hair aside to show me his back of many scars. “It’s best that way.”

I’ll never forget the many chandeliers of long bones clattering around in his castle, as though giving a far warning of what was to creep through his empty halls. 

Dale seemed to have been holding many hidden meanings behind his words. Was his firm belief in sharing a bed because of his inner male dominance, or something more? I didn’t give him enough time to answer that truthfully. Maybe I was afraid to know. 

No. 

I shook my head to get out of it. 

I’ve made my decision. Best to keep moving. 

I rubbed the last of my tears with a dab of my long sleeve. With wobbly legs, I rose, coughing and sniffling. 

No. I have to get back home. To Mum and Pa. I know they will be disappointed, but it’s my home. They will learn not to marry me off again. 

Again, as I’ve done since leaving Dale’s palace and his walled city, I crawled out of the sand and dragged myself along the many hills of dead earth and mounds of nothing but more sand. 

Sand, sand, sand. 

It’s easy to hallucinate it as nothing but gold. I let the stuff slip through my fingers, waiting to see the sparkles of riches, but instead, it was as dull and fragile as bone dust. Once in a while, scattered bones unraveled from the winds, the worst of all, the skulls exposed from fallen soldiers of old wars that occurred through this Death Valley. I quickened my step whenever I saw one, for it seems without a proper spine, the skull would turn itself and bore its soulless black cavern eyes onto me. The dehydration was getting to me, creating hallucinations. 

Bones. 

I shivered again like I was being watched, and yet, during the day, I appeared to be the only soul wandering towards the West through this terrible place. It was crucial to travel by day because the monsters and bandits moved at night, and that’s the best time for me to hide.

Unfortunately, the heat….

I fell on my face. Exhaustion finally caught up with me. I pictured my veins shriveling up to dust. My hands shook as they tried to claw their way through the sand, but each pull only brought in more of it, an infinite supply. 

It was an endless loop, digging my way out only to have more climb over me until I was half buried, doing more work than before. I may as well be stuck in quicksand. 

I gave up. 

Half of me laid buried in the awful stuff, my face hot from being pressed into the millions of grains of rock, bone, dirt, and decay. 

I couldn’t go on. My quick breathing turned into gasps. 

I’m going to die. 

With little energy to go on, my hands became limp. 

In my blurry vision, the hot, orange sand glimmered as one giant mass of sunset. I hallucinated I was sinking into the late sun’s surface, its heat melting my skin, muscle, bones, and soul into its ferocious beauty. Shadows appeared, long, black shapes against the orange land. 

I blinked and hallucinated more oddities. Skeletal creatures, boney hands, and empty skulls came in to reach for me, to eat my flesh, perhaps? I could’ve sworn I felt their hard grips on my arms and legs, the sharp protrusion of a cold shoulder blade rubbing against my cheek when I was slumped over—the clanking of bones to each awkward step. I blinked to catch the sight of feet as nothing more than bones, not even carcass to hide their chilling display. 

It was no matter. It’s all a hallucination anyway. I closed my eyes and drifted until I was sure I would fall asleep and never wake up again. 

The cold. 

It slapped my face until it slithered through my cracked lips and tapped the edge of my tongue. 

Water. 

I gasped and suddenly started to cough when I mistakenly inhaled water into my lungs. My hands were ready to push me up, but they smacked into the water, more of it splashing on my face. I brought wet fingers up to my eyes and rubbed hard. 

More water dribbled down my cheeks, and I tasted heaven.

I blinked my eyes and saw it, liquid aqua gems rippling to the drops falling off my face. 

Instinct took over. I became a hungry beast and rammed claws into the stash of the desert’s blessing. No time to even marvel at the coolness pooling in my palms; many drops spilled as I shoved my filled hands over my lips and slurped madly.

I swallowed until my belly felt full, and my mouth no longer felt like face powder. 

“You almost died back there.”

I froze, hands stuck in mud air with free water falling back to its pool. 

His voice came from behind me. 

Slowly, with my hood down, I turned my head. Hot winds brushed my dark hair over my face as I looked over my shoulder; like a mirage, he was there. 

A beautiful man of white. He was able to hold such unique beauty hiding under a thick black cloak, only loose ends of his white hair slipping free under his narrow chin when I saw his sharp profile. His eyes hid under a shadow, his back leaning against a palm of a tree. He had his protected arms crossed, his attention out to the horizon of the sinking sun. Its red beams struck him softly, turning his chin and cheeks into blood. 

My lips moved, ready to say his name. 

Dale.

But like I had no water to restore my voice, nothing came out. 

He sighed, a tired one that told me he thought this was all a game I was playing, and he was done with it. 

“Enough of this, Mia. Let’s go back home.”

Home. He meant his home. 

I sat up and scanned the oasis I was brought to. 

Was I dreaming? 

If not, then how did I get here? How did he find me? How long have I been away? How did he get here in one piece without camels nor servants? And most importantly, why? Why did he help me? He can have another girl to please him, to bear his children. We don’t know each other. There’s no special bond here. 

My lips trembled before they opened. 

“How….” I swallowed, feeling disoriented from all of that water I drank. 

“How did you find me?” I dared ask. 

Dale remained quiet for a long time. It was simple to think he forgot about me, his eyes still on that hot red sun like he was waiting for it to go down and drag me back to his palace to have his way with me. 

But then he sighed and dropped his head, his arms unraveled. 

“My kingdom may seem barren and empty to you, but it is filled with many for me to use. I have many eyes out here watching for me,” he replied, his dry voice almost like a loud whisper. 

I blinked, his outline dark against the background of red. 

So, he had spies? 

My thoughts swerved, but I splashed my face to try and get more sense of what was happening. Some of my hair got wet and stayed stuck to my freckled cheeks. 

“So what now? You expect me to return with you just because you led me to an oasis?” My voice returned, heavy with my old Lucrean accent.

“No. Because I saved your life,” Dale pointed out firmly with a turn of his body until he faced me. Half hid in shadow and cloak, I could be talking to a hooded stranger, but I knew it was him; I just felt it. Dale carried an aura that was difficult to mimic, heavy at times, and gentle when he could be. Now, it was rich with purpose, his patience wearing thin and buried strength teasing the surface.

He curled a gloved fist. 

“Because I didn’t write to your father and told him how you embarrassed me. Because I came out here, leaving my castle defenseless. Because I am to be your husband, and you are my responsibility!”

His dark finger pointed at me like a knife, and I gasped at it as though it stabbed between my ribs. My hand smacked where I thought he would jab, my face slowly sweating. 

I was ready to argue, standing up with little strength. 

But looking behind Dale, my green eyes grew, jaw left open. 

Hundreds came out of the sand, beastly men that arose during dusk to hunt. I wasn’t sure what they were, zombie folk or half bandit half monster, but either way, they carried about an animal instinct to hunt and tear at flesh with their sharp teeth to get at the blood and suck bodies dry to stay hydrated and fed. I stumbled back a step. 

Dale closed his eyes. 

“Great.”

He turned around with another tiring sigh like this was just another chore he had to do before returning to his royal life. 

“Just what I need,” he dragged, rolling up his sleeves to reveal a gap of pale arms between gloves and cloak. 

He pulled down his black hood, and his long, white hair unraveled, blowing back towards me. 

He looked slightly over his shoulder to show off his lips when he told me, “Stay back, Mia. I’ll take care of this. You were going to find out sooner or later.”

My chest quivered with my frantic heart, dry hands clutching to where it pounded as I shook my head. Many words jumbled in my throat, my stomach sore with water sloshing around. 

Find out about what? What did he mean by that?

Dale has no army, no guards. A foolish king without men. 

What would he do with a large gang of wild men sprouting from the sand? 

Their hoards charged towards the oasis, hundreds of leathery hands reaching for nourishment. 

I stepped back until my feet plunged into the cool water, making me gasp as I stared helplessly at the monstrous sand clouds behind the incoming mob. Their yellow nails lengthened threateningly, heads covered with tethered turbans and sun-blistered skin behind worn cloaks. Their cries echoed like a choir of growls, growing louder as the earth trembled under their stampede of busy feet. 

Dale pulled back his long leather glove and dropped it by his boots. 

In his left hand, something glimmered emerald. 

I squinted, finding it to be from his ring. That large, green gem on his middle finger. It touched the sun’s red light, and the gem came to life, glimmering across the decaying skin along Dale’s arm. 

The world shook. 

The pool of water awoke in waves. 

Winds picked up, blowing my hood off my head and my long hair back. Sand began to drift and follow the winds, getting in my eyes. I lifted a hand to shield my face from the sharp stabs of sand and squinted to watch the true powers of Dale the Pale. 

On why he never carried an army. 

The reason his walls are made up of bones. 

The many eyes he’s able to use all through the desert. 

I took another step back, the mob of creatures running on their two legs with fierce determination and dry mouths open to bare their long, chipped dagger-like teeth. 

Dale moved his hand with purposeful dance, a wave. 

Behind the army, the sands lifted into one gigantic mound like an anthill. 

It burst. 

And what came out was horrific. 

I rubbed my eyes and had another look to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. 

Skeletal hands reached for the red sky—thousands of them. What followed were long arm bones and then skulls. The dead rose from the sands in waves, hurdling towards the mob of monsters like a tsunami of death. 

Dale made his hand curve like a wave as it hurried in. Those in the back of the herd turned around and screamed before being swallowed whole. 

It blocked the sun, darkening the sky briefly until I was swallowed in its shadow.

I tightened my cloak around myself, unable to stop shaking as I watched hundreds of monsters get swept under. One second they were there, and the next, it was like they never existed. They must be buried hundreds of feet deep in sand, suffocating or crushed. 

The sands cleared, peeling away from the red sun, and the earth stilled. 

Dale turned around and smirked at me. He opened his eyes, and they blazed like the sun at its peak.

That was the day I learned how Dale got his proper name.

The King of Bones. 

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