Oasis

The boy walked on. The sand rained down, a fine powder that coated his skin and turned it from black to gray. Behind the dingy sandclouds, he could feel the sun’s heat as it climbed its invisible ladder. Sweat trickled down the boy’s forehead in ebony streaks that were quickly covered again with the sand-mist. As he walked, he examined his gray arms and legs, his bare feet tipped with gray nails. My name is Gray, he thought, watching his feet alternate, left, right, left, right. Had he ever had another name? He tried but couldn’t remember.

He walked on. There was nothing else to do except curl up in the shrinking shade of an outcropping of rock and wait for the sand-mist to scrape his skin off his bones. He didn’t want that, so he walked on, holding in his mind a memory, or a dream, or a fantasy of what might lie ahead. Whenever his steps faltered he asked himself, How could I imagine something that doesn’t exist? He had no name for what he imagined, but he could see it in his mind: sometimes blue and sometimes transparent, sometimes flat and tranquil, sometimes rushing in white-capped torrents. He imagined tasting it: cool and slippery and satisfying. He could even smell it, and suddenly he realized that he was actually smelling something, in his nostrils and not his imagination.

He walked faster, then broke into a stumbling run. Running uphill was difficult—the sand shifted beneath him, and he scrambled for a handhold but there was none. Forcing himself to slow down, he carefully pushed his feet into the dune, inching upward until he could see over the top. His eyes widened and he raised a hand to shield them from the sand-mist that stung.

He was looking into a bowl, a sand-bowl like he’d seen a hundred thousand times before, but at the bottom was a neat group of dwellings. Not huts or shanties, but substantial buildings, at least fifty of them. Had he ever seen buildings like these? He thought he had, but long ago. In the Before, he thought. There were roads between the buildings, laid out in orderly grids, and he thought he might have seen roads too—in the Before. 

But what had never seen, what had made his eyes go wide, was a rectangle in the middle of the fifty-something houses. It was wide, and long, and full of something shimmery. It was also full of happy, playing, shrieking people. They tossed the shimmery substance over their heads and into each other’s faces and squealed with laughter. Amazingly, there was a clear path to the rectangle, free of sand-mist. And over the rectangle was a patch of sand-free air stretching to the sky.

The boy struggled to the top of the dune. On the other side, he tried to walk down, but his feet scooted out from under him and he went sliding. Down, down, getting gritty sand up the legs of his shorts but not caring because he was getting closer to what he had walked so far to find. His throat burned in anticipation. At the bottom of the dune, he stood and brushed himself off, then approached the road, the clear road, and began to run along it.

The scent of...water! Yes, that was its name! The fresh aroma of water caught hold of him, dragging him on to the center of the town, and at last the rectangle was in sight. It was enormous, but since he was on ground level with it now instead of above, he couldn’t see down into it anymore. He could see the heads bobbing up and down, though, and he could hear the sound of water striking itself…splashing, he thought. More words were coming to him. He didn’t know if they were memories or revelations, but he really didn’t care.

A chain-link fence surrounded the long rectangle, and a woman met him at the gate. She was tall, with pink skin and light brown hair curling around her face in wisps. He tried not to stare at her navy blue tank top and shorts, and her magenta sandals with cream-colored stars on the straps. A halo of sand-free sunlight surrounded her, and he could see the same halo hovering above the…the pool, he thought. 

Was the woman going to tell him to go away? Desperately he tried to think of something to say, something that would convince her to let him in. He heard someone calling, “Marco,” and several others answer, “Polo,” and over the sound of their laughter he heard more splashing, and he tried to speak but only croaked.

The woman smiled, and her eyes crinkled at the corners as she opened the gate. “Welcome,” she said, and he thought his chest would burst. “Come in, come in. You must be thirsty.” Taking his hand, she drew him through the gate. “You’re certainly very dusty. Wouldn’t you like to wash off?” She gestured toward a bright green hose attached to a silver spigot. “Here, you can use this before getting into the pool,” she told him, leading him to the spigot and picking up the hose. He closed his eyes, enjoying the sand-free sun on his skin, waiting for the cool clear torrent that would wash away the grayness and turn him shiny black again.

Nothing happened. But when he opened his eyes, the woman was smiling at him, still pointing the hose in his direction. “There,” she said brightly, dropping the hose to the concrete, “Isn’t that better?” Afraid she might take him back outside the fence and lock the gate against him if he disagreed, he nodded. “Good,” she said approvingly, and he felt he had passed a test. 

“Now,” she continued, motioning toward the rectangular pool, “why don’t you join the others? When you’ve had enough play, I’ve got some nice fresh lemonade for you, right over there.” She pointed to a long table set with aluminum pitchers and tall glasses. His tongue shriveled with longing, but she had said for him to play in the pool first. Maybe it was another test. And anyway, the pool was full of…water. Surely some of it would slip down his throat as he…swam.

Eagerly he padded toward the pool. As he got closer, he saw people’s shoulders, and then their chests and stomachs. The water must be lower than he’d thought, but that was all right. Even knee deep would be heavenly. The people leaped and caroused, and he saw their hips and thighs. 

Now he was at the edge of the pool, and he looked down and saw their knees and ankles. And the tops of their feet. And their toes, their gray toes and their gray, dust-covered feet and ankles and knees, dust turning them gray all the way to the tops of their heads. Underneath the common grayness, he detected different shades: black like he was under his grayness, pink like the woman who’d let him in, ivory and caramel and chocolate and bronze. But all coated with gray, and all of them cavorting on a bone-dry slab of concrete.

Bewildered, he looked back at the pink woman, and saw that she was no longer pink. Had she ever been? Fine sand-dust curled around her. The woman waved a gray hand at him, urging him toward the pool. “Go on,” she commanded firmly. “Hop in. Have fun.” She grimaced, possibly meaning to smile. Heart pounding, he turned back to the pool.

A girl about his age looked up at him. “Come on in,” she urged, laughing. Stretching out a hand to him, she wiggled her gray fingers. Her eyes were a startling green, piercing the sand-dust that swirled in front of them. “The water’s fine,” she said, and laughed again. 

Maybe it’s another test, he thought. Maybe I have to jump in, and the water will be there. Anyway, I’ve got nothing to lose.

He took the girl’s hand. Their fingers locked, and she tugged gently. He could have pulled away if he had wanted.

Closing his eyes, he jumped.