Desert Jewels & Rising Stars

by Sharon Kendrick

  He reached the edge of the desert within minutes and stepped on the gas, following the makeshift road, having no idea where it led. Away from the fire and the men with guns was good enough for him.

  For a while it looked like things were working, that they had successfully left their pursuers behind. Then dark spots dotted the sand behind them, and he realized that they were still being followed. Four vehicles, faster than his ancient pickup, were closing the distance.

  When they got close enough, he could see that they were all jam-packed with armed men, at least two dozen of them.

  He was outnumbered, outgunned and outsped.

  He put all that from his mind and pressed the gas pedal to the floor. He knew what would happen when the men got within shooting range. They were out in the middle of the desert without cover. And those guys probably had fifty bullets to every one he had.

  He took Julia’s hand, sharing his attention between her and the barely visible road. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this. I should have let you go that first day.”

  She simply squeezed his fingers.

  He would have felt better if she screamed at him.

  “We don’t have long, do we?” Her gold-brown eyes were filled not with fear, but with acceptance.

  He couldn’t say the word.

  “I’m glad I met you,” she said.

  “I wanted you from the moment I first saw you. I told you that I kept you close to protect you, but deep down, I kept you for myself. I was selfish, and—”

  “Last night at the cave was the best night of my life.”

  That shut him up for a few moments. He didn’t deserve her.

  “If things were different, I would have asked you to stay. Of your own free will. For me.”

  Her fine eyes misted a little. “If things were different, I would have.”

  Joy mixed with pain inside his chest until it felt like bursting, then anger at not being able to do anything about this.

  He checked the rearview mirror and for a moment thought they had gained some ground, then realized that the reason he couldn’t see the enemy’s cars as good as before wasn’t because they were farther back, but because the sky was darkening behind them.

  “Roll up your window,” he told Julia, and did the same.

  “What is it?”

  “Sandstorm.” He wished he could give more gas, but the pickup was going at maximum speed already.

  The storm was upon them in minutes, fast as a tornado and just as violent. He stopped the pickup and hung on to Julia while the wind rocked the car as if it were a toy. The sound of tons of sand hurling through the air was unbearably loud. They could see nothing beyond the windshield, had no idea how much sand had piled on top of them, whether they had been buried alive.

  “The goats?” Julia attempted to go for the door.

  He held her back. “They’re animals. They have good instincts.” Not that a severe sandstorm had never decimated a herd, but for the most, the animals were better equipped for inclement weather than humans.

  He pulled her over to his side, into his arms. He didn’t know how long they had, but every minute was a gift. The storm that stopped them would also stop their enemies, of that he was sure.

  “I wish it would last forever.” She snuggled against his chest.

  The pain that still raked his body from Mustafa’s torture disappeared as soon as they touched, but a new one was now building behind his breastbone. He was supposed to be able to protect the woman he loved. He pressed a kiss to her forehead, then to her lips when she lifted her head.

  Her lips parted, and he tasted her, and felt the full grief of knowing he would be tasting her for the last time. Her breasts pressed against his chest. He locked his arms around her, not wanting to let her go, not ever.

  They broke apart only for a moment, only to refill their lungs with air before coming together again. She pressed kisses along his right eyebrow. When he closed his eyes, she kissed his eyelid, then trailed her lips down his scar.

  “I want to kiss all your scars,” she said.

  Not long ago, he would have been happy if a woman could just look at his scars without flinching. But those scars no longer mattered. The darkness of the past no longer bound him. And he knew without doubt that, somehow, Julia had done that to him.

  “Forget the scars. I have no feeling in them anyway.”

  “Where should I kiss you then?” she teased.

  “Anywhere you’d like,” he said. “But I was hoping we weren’t done yet with the lips.” He could have kissed those lips of hers forever.

  “Make love to me,” she whispered into his ear a while later.

  That, he could hear even over the storm that sounded like it was never going to stop. And when she reached down to pull her dress over her head, he helped her.

  He slid over to the passenger side and she straddled him, her glorious breasts in line with his lips. He drank from them as if drinking life itself, and in a way, he was. She was his life, for as long as he had her.

  Each caress, each kiss gained special meaning, was a bittersweet greeting and saying goodbye at the same time. His heart was filled to the brim with love he felt for her, with need that he had never felt for any other woman.

  She set his body on fire, and he shoved off his clothes, wanting more than anything to be skin to skin. She lifted up, and he grabbed her hips, sheathed himself inside her tight heat, felt like he’d reached heaven and wanted to stay there forever.

  They took it slow. The storm showed no signs of abating, and they both knew that this was all they were ever going to have. Their hearts melted together along with their bodies. He could feel all the darkness that had weighed his life down drift away. There was nothing and no one but Julia.

  When the pressure built to the point of being beyond his control, his movements sped on their own, and Julia matched them, her head thrown back, her hair spilling down the sweet arch of her naked back, her breasts thrust upward. And they went over the edge together, then held on to each other for an eternity, until he could hear the storm quiet.

  When the wind died altogether, he kissed her one last time, then put his clothes back on and gave his door a good shove. A few more were needed before it gave. He got out and looked for their pursuers. He couldn’t see as far as before; there were still trillions of small particles of sand in the air, dimming the sun, making visibility worse. But he could see the men who’d followed them from the lawless bandit town of Yanadar.

  They were down to three cars. One had been completely buried in the sand. And when he looked more carefully, he realized another one was at least half-buried. They would have trouble getting that out in a hurry.

  He checked on the goats. They were shaking sand off their fur, looking nervous but unharmed. He walked up front and cleared off the windshield, pushing several buckets worth of sand off with his bare hands. Then he got back behind the wheel and gave thanks to Allah when the motor turned over on the first try.

  The sandstorm completely covered what little road there had been, so he set out blindly. He couldn’t even navigate by the stars as he couldn’t see them. But they were definitely in better shape than they had been half an hour ago, he confirmed as he looked into his rearview mirror and saw that only two vehicles followed, overflowing with men, Mustafa in the passenger seat of the first car. Everyone from the buried cars had piled into and onto the remaining ones, adding considerable weight and slowing them down. The good news was that now they were matched for speed with Karim. The bad news was that they still outnumbered him a dozen to one.

  It would all come down to who had more gas in the tank. He felt the first touch of optimism when he noted that his was three-quarters full. Then a pang of dismay when the first fat raindrop hit the windshield.

  “Rain?” Julia sounded as surprised as he felt.

  It wasn’t the season for rain. The windstorm must have blown some clouds in from someplace far away. “It does rain, even in the desert. Just not a
lot.”

  Another fat drop followed the first. And within minutes, they were in the middle of a downpour.

  He headed toward the tall dunes to his right, not wanting to get caught in a low-lying area. An hour passed before he reached them, navigating by his headlights. The visibility in the dark night with the rain coming down like that was about the same as it had been in the sandstorm. When he reached the top, he shut off the truck. They were going to have to wait this out, too.

  “Water,” Julia said in a weird voice.

  “Yes. Lots of it.” He turned toward her and drank in her beauty, wondering how long the rain might last, ready to pull her into his arms again.

  “The market was on fire,” she said, apparently focused on something else entirely.

  He shrugged. “I kicked over an oil lamp.”

  “The sandstorm. It’s wind. Air.”

  He couldn’t really focus on the sandstorm. His mind was filled to the brim with images of what they had done while waiting it out.

  “Fire. Air. And now water.” Gingerly, she held up the sack that hid the god statues. “Do you think—”

  “Coincidence,” he said, despite the unease that sent a small shiver down his spine.

  “What would earth be? Quicksand?”

  “Don’t say that.” He looked through the windshield, feeling decidedly uncomfortable now.

  They waited out the rain in tense silence, each contemplating the impossible. They didn’t have to wait too long. When the sky cleared and the stars came out, the rain having washed all the sand out of the air, he got out once again to survey the damage.

  He could see nothing where the two cars had been, half a mile behind him in the low passage. Not the top of a car, not a radio antenna, not a single man. But some of the sand dunes on the other side were gone, the landscape rearranged. And suddenly he knew what had happened. Too much rain had come down all at once, the sand unable to absorb it that quickly. The wet sand had run like a mudslide, had buried the two vehicles and all the men inside them.

  Not all. He swore as gnarled hands grabbed onto his ankles and yanked him off balance. Mustafa rolled from under the pickup. He must have crawled up to them in the storm unseen.

  A curved dagger sliced the air in the direction of Karim’s throat. He jerked out of the way. He understood now that Mustafa would never stop until he was dead. In Mustafa’s mind, Karim was connected to evil just as Aziz had been, because of the idols.

  “You have offended the One God. You must die.” Mustafa got to his feet at the same time as Karim. He was between him and the truck, the rifle on the front seat.

  Mustafa hadn’t brought his. Could be the sand had jammed it when they’d gotten caught in the sandstorm.

  Karim could see from the corner of his eye Julia lifting the weapon. He didn’t dare to fully look at her, wanted Mustafa to forget all about her and focus on him. He feinted to the left, then lunged forward on the right side, caught the man in the middle and they went down.

  Down, down, down. All the way to the bottom of the dune where muddy sand pulled at them. The side of the dune could still cave in and bury the both of them as it had buried Mustafa’s last two cars.

  He grabbed the man’s right wrist, but the old man’s zealous hate doubled his strength. Karim got on the bottom somehow as they rolled, the tip of the dagger less than an inch from his good eye.

  Careful now.

  He rolled Mustafa and they broke apart, then stood again.

  Karim could feel every one of his broken ribs, every knife wound they had inflicted on him during his torture. He hadn’t had food or water in nearly twenty-four hours. He was unarmed against a fanatic whose sole purpose in life was to kill him.

  To the ball of pain that was his body, death might have been a relief.

  Except that Julia was waiting for him on top of the dune. Doing more than waiting.

  The next second, a bullet slammed into the sand between him and Mustafa. Karim stepped back. Would have been good to know just how good a shot she was.

  It didn’t matter at the end. Mustafa looked up at her, and the momentary distraction was enough to take the man down. This time, when they rolled, luck seemed to desert the old bastard as his dagger pierced through his clothes and skin, straight into his heart.

  When Karim got back to the truck and took the rifle from a trembling Julia, he had her sit back in the cab while he checked around the tires and made sure the soil was stable. He had brushed off what Julia had said about fire, air, water and earth, but he couldn’t shake his sense of unease. He’d seen quicksand up close and personal before, and he didn’t care for seeing it again.

  Looked like they’d run out of human enemies. He didn’t want to have to face more of nature’s peril on this trip. They’d had plenty enough adventures already.

  He got back in and drove slowly, in the direction where the sand looked the most stable. He didn’t dare breathe easily until he reached the edge of where rain had fallen and he was back on dry sand again, then on a rocky plateau he recognized. They had somehow gotten back to the area that hid his grandfather’s cave.

  In a few minutes, when the distinct shape of the rock above the cave came into view, Julia figured out where they were, too.

  “Why did we come here? Shouldn’t we ride straight to Tihrin?”

  “We are putting the statues back,” he said.

  She offered no objections.

  In five minutes they were at the cave, in another fifteen down at the pool in the first cavern.

  “I’d like to go with you,” she said.

  And this time, he didn’t argue.

  They made it through the underwater passage without trouble—his rope was still stretched in place—and entered the second cavern. They were in complete darkness, had to go by feel.

  “Stay right behind me,” he said, and felt Julia’s slim hand on his back. “The granite was straight ahead.”

  He walked that way until he hit the cave wall, groped around until he found the first niche. The rest was easier after that. He wasn’t sure if he put the right statue in the right place and wasn’t too concerned about it. He wanted to be out of there.

  “Okay, now the skull.” He reached up but couldn’t feel the hole the last artifact belonged in. And the granite was a sheer vertical wall, no purchase for his feet anywhere to climb. “I’m going to have to lift you up.”

  She moved closer immediately. “What do you think the skull is about?” She’d already examined it up in the first cave.

  “The skull of a tribal ancestor. Could be of some mythical hero.” He handed her the golden piece, a shiver running down his back as the skull rattled inside, then lifted her up.

  “I got it. It’s in there,” she said after a moment. “You can put me down.”

  He did so gently, passing up the opportunity to pause and hold her in his arms.

  The first time they had come here, the cavern was a place of wonder. He had felt comfortable spending the night. Now the air pressed down on him, goose bumps rose on his skin and his only thought was to get out of there as fast as possible.

  They stumbled toward the sound of the waterfall and that led them back to the pool. He slipped in first, caught Julia as she came after him, groped around for the rope.

  “I got it,” she said next to him and held his hand as they submerged.

  They went back as quickly as they could. The journey home was always easier.

  They didn’t hang around in the first cavern, but went up the rope.

  “I will talk to the queen and make sure she has the cave locked up and off-limits,” he said.

  Julia simply nodded thoughtfully. She didn’t speak until they were in the car and he was pulling away from the cave.

  “How do you know which way to go?”

  He understood her question. The sandstorm and the rain had done a good job of obliterating the road. But he had the knowledge of his Bedu ancestors, the knowledge of the desert. “I can navigate by the st
ars.”

  They were about half a mile from the cave when the earth began to shake. And they watched in the light of the full moon, stunned, as dunes rose up and others sank, the landscape undulating before them like waves on the sea. He’d been through earthquakes, but never one in the desert.

  He grabbed on to her when their car lifted, moving gently up, then down as the earth shifted beneath them. The whole thing lasted less than two minutes, leaving them both more shaken than the sandstorm and the rain put together.

  “Are you all right?”

  She didn’t respond. Instead she was staring over his shoulder.

  He turned, reaching for his gun at the same time. But it wasn’t their enemies miraculously catching up with them again. It seemed they had been stopped for good, stopped forever, had stayed where they’d been, buried in the sand.

  He blinked when he realized at last what Julia was looking at. The giant rock that had marked the cave was gone. Nothing but flat desert as far as the eye could see. He could hear Julia swallow behind him.

  “I think that was the earth part,” she said.

  Epilogue

  Five years later

  Julia took another handful of postcards from the maid just as Karim strode through the door. As always, he took her breath away. And when he opened his arms to her, she walked into them.

  He kissed her thoroughly, then bent to kiss her belly. “How is my little princess doing in there?”

  “Impatient to come out. These are for you.” Each summer, they received dozens of postcards from the Sibling Link Camp. Karim had donated Aziz’s Star Island home to the charity. They, of course, immediately offered Julia her job back, but her hands were busy at the moment with other kid-related projects. She was, however, thinking about setting up a similar program here in Beharrain, had already talked about it to Queen Dara, who had pledged her support.