The Desert Takes

You shake the waterskin. Only a sip or two left. You pass it to Mel. She shakes it, passes it back to you. Your mouth is sandpaper, your throat like you’ve swallowed shards of glass. You shake the waterskin, pass it back to her.

You make a game of it, sisters stumbling through the desert. Heat boils your insides. Sand billows up to form mini-tornadoes over dunes far and close, a prelude to a storm. Mirages speckle the horizon with pockets of oases. You know better than to trust them.

As you keep passing the waterskin between you, there is galloping, first in your feet, then against your eardrums. You turn. Dark dots approach. They hold rifles poised. The black duffel bag dangles from your arm like a dislodged bone, weighty with hundred-dollar bills tucked snug in their elastic bands. It’s for one of your uncle’s ‘clients’. You should never have taken the job.

The rifles grow larger. The horses jig their heads up and down with anticipation. Their riders wear masks over their pale faces.

You stop, drop the duffel bag, and take the waterskin. You hold it to the sky. This is what is most valuable to you in this moment, you whisper. You pray for protection.

The first shot is fired. It blasts up some sand from the ground a meter away. You hold yourself from flinching, and close your eyes. Something whispers back through the heat. You open them, give the waterskin a shake. It’s empty.

Your offering has been accepted. As the assailants draw closer, the sand before them stabs up in jagged branches. It pierces the horses’ chests and skewers the gunmen bum to scalp. Shots go flying up and down and everywhere, booming over the empty desert. But they are dead. Impaled where they sit. Blood drips like glasses of wine overpoured.

You smile.

Mel grunts.

You turn, and look down. She is clutching her side. Her ragged shirt pools crimson. You drop the smile, and rush to catch her as she falls.

She says she’s fine. You insist she sit anyway, as you rummage through her backpack, and yank out the roll of plaster cloth bandage. You cut off a sliver, bundle it up, and press it to the wound. Already it is red. She hisses, spittle flying from her teeth. You take her hand, soft and warm, and place it to the bundle. Keep applying pressure.

You take the bandage roll and wrap multiple rings around her midsection, more than is necessary, to keep the bundle secure. Mel takes her hand from the wound. Just our luck, she says, and laughs. You don’t find it in yourself to laugh alongside her. You snip the plaster, and knot the loose ends.

You look around, past the skewered assailants. There is no one else. You propose you set up camp here tonight. She points out that would mean not making it to your uncle on time. He can get chowed to death by his rotten little pitbull, you say.

Mel doesn’t argue anymore. That means she’s already lost too much blood.

The sun settles into the horizon, merging with the mirages to form a kaleidoscope of deep orange blurs. You prepare the tent, against a nearby dune so it is at least protected from the wind in one direction. You secure the grounding pegs deep in the earth. Your sister is lying down. You tug her inside, carefully. She grunts at you. That’s good. It’s a sign of life.

The wind is picking up, making the polyester of the cramped tent flap, slapping your head. You bring your things inside, including the duffel bag that sits like an overweight pug, and zip the entrance shut.

You set up the electric heater in one corner. Once the sun fully submerges, the world will turn cold. The heat that the desert pushes on you freely in the day, it takes in its entirety once it realises you are ungrateful.

You sit, and you dig your dirty nails into your palms, and you stare.

There’s no point in offering anything so soon. She could heal. But look at her. You’re kidding yourself. You need to think of what your next most valuable thing is.

But that was the last of your water; it’ll be time to start glugging down piss soon. Your rations have run out. The tent you need to survive, the bandages you need in case of further injury. This is the heart of balancing offerings: they must be valuable, but not essential to your immediate future. Your mother knew this well. She gave the wedding ring of her deceased first husband in exchange for your life once. She gave her own life for your uncle’s. (And what has your uncle gifted you? A crumbling roof under which to scrape out an existence, as if you were mould permitted one strawberry in the back corner of the fridge, so long as you do his dirty work.)

But your mother was more skilled than you are. If she had asked for protection in exchange for the last of her water, all stray bullets would only hit other assailants. The three of you would walk free.

You wipe the wet heat from your cheek, and blink your eyes clear; there’s no use in crying.

You glance at the duffel bag.

No, this is what it’s all for. You’d be an idiot to have come all this way to show up empty-handed.

Is it so idiotic to save a life?

You turn to Mel. She muttered something. You ask that she repeat herself. She mumbles it again. You catch a few words here and there, about your childhood, about the swing she fell off because you pushed too hard. She titters, then. You don’t fully understand, but you force a laugh.

Darkness descends, and the cold follows. You switch on the heater. It thrums to life, giving off a sickly orange glow through its rusted visor. You could always offer that, but it doesn’t strike the balance either. You’d freeze to death. These powers weren’t meant for live-or-die scenarios. But here you are, because you’re thick in the head.

Sand buffets the tent, a sound like polystyrene against polystyrene, and you hear a grounding peg shift in the earth. Your uncle bought this. You don’t trust its structural integrity.

You hold your hands to the heater. You shiver.

When the peg dislodges it yanks up the one next to it, and sand floods into the gap between wall and floor. It’s like grated ice slams into your face. It tastes dry and gets lodged in your teeth. You lunge over Mel, and grab at the pegs. Your fingers find grip, and you plunge them back in the earth. Yellow grains settle on you and your sister, unmoving. You pant.

The storm isn’t finished.

It yanks up two more behind you. By the time you’ve secured those, the original pair are flying again. You ground them. Mel laughs under you. She’s delirious. This needs to stop.

So what about your uncle’s money?

You look to the duffel bag, and close your eyes, and pause, and open them again. Perhaps for that much cash, you could ask for teleportation, to a hospital maybe. It’s worth a try.

You close your eyes and whisper your prayers. Only the howling wind answers, however. Two more tent pegs come loose. You bolt them back in the ground. The duffel bag is still present. The heater is spluttering, struggling.

Whatever. If Mel becomes healthy again, this task will be much more manageable.

You offer the duffel bag again, for stitching her wounds, replenishing her blood. Yet it remains, and your sister continues to giggle. Her bandages are no less crimson.

You barely have time to think as you dash back and forth in the tent. Of course. Of course money wouldn’t work. Your uncle could buy back an orphan’s parents for it, if he cared to nurture the ability you have, but you don’t care about it.

What are you to do? What would your mother do? She’d tune out that the tent was about to be ripped clean off her head, keep her cool. Okay, now you’re chill, you’re a relaxed breeze, baby. What do you do?

What else could get you a teleportation. The tent, the bandages, and the heater can’t be offered for the opposite reasons to before; being out of this desert would nullify their value, so you wouldn’t care enough for their loss. A limb perhaps?

Which one? Arm is easiest. You close your eyes, offer it up. But you offer it too easily. They smell your desperation. Nothing happens.

Have a break, Mel mutters. I want a KitKat, she says.

The storm yanks away all six pegs at once, and the tent hurtles away. You clutch your sister instinctively as sand batters you, getting caught in your hair, ripping into your trousers. You close your eyes. Take all my limbs, you think. It’s not as graceful a prayer as your mother, as your teachers, were capable of, but you give it anyway. Take as many as you need, as you desire. Just get us to that hospital.

And then someone screams. The air is still. The only sand is the grains trapped in the crevices of your person. The floor is cold and smooth, and smells of cleaning fluid. You blink open your eyes. A nurse is running away.

Mel splutters under you. You clamber off her, and you fall on your back, spine aching. You grunt. You get your hands under you, and try to stand. But you can’t. Your legs are gone. You look down. They’re not bleeding, at least

You smile, in spite of everything. It makes some sick poetic sense. One last journey made without your legs, in return you never have another journey on them again.

You look around. That bulging duffel bag sits a meter away. It looks at you like a pet that’s never moved a day in its life. You crawl over to it, and clutch it.

The doctors arrive, and they lift you two on a stretcher. One doctor comments that you have no wounds, another says the legs must predate what’s happened here. They give you a room together, but take her away to surgery, leaving one half of it barren.

You keep a hold of the duffel bag until they’ve left. You’re alone. You stare at it. The legs you’re missing itch, but you’re still too pumped on adrenaline to care for the moment. You open the bag. The cash sits inside in heaped rolls.

A KitKat, your sister mentioned.

A couple million could buy you a KitKat, right? Maybe more.

When Mel returns she’s on life support. It’s a few days before her eyes blink open. Your uncle hasn’t visited yet; it took ages for the doctors to ID you both, as you’ve been purposely uncooperative. You hand her one of the two KitKats, but she’s staring at your legs.

What happened? she says.

I made the trade I needed to, you say.

I- How are you going to—

Just say thank you, you say.

She absently opens the KitKat, takes a bite out of it. Thank you, she says. Her skin glows in the morning’s sunlight. You’re alive, you think. You’re alive.

And where’s the money? she asks.

This time it’s your turn to laugh, and hers to be too confused and dazed to ask why.