The Scorpions of Zahir

by Christine Brodien-Jones

  “He remembered your address after all that time?” Zagora wondered how her dad’s friend could vanish into the desert for eleven years and then suddenly turn up. It didn’t make a lot of sense.

  “That doesn’t surprise me. Pitblade always did have a fantastic memory.” Her father looked around. “There should be a letter and a map—Ah, yes.” He plucked the map from her hand and began examining it.

  Zagora sidled around his desk, eyeing Pitblade’s letter, tilting her head to read the scrappy writing.

  Dear Charlie, it began.

  I am not dead (I am pleased to say!). Within reach of Zahir, standing guard against deathstalkers, but fear situation getting out of hand. Please come, or I may not make it out of here. Follow the map exactly. Bring the stone. Trust no one. Your friend, Pitblade Yegen.

  Zagora’s jaw dropped. The blue stone really was the Oryx Stone! Tears welled up in her eyes at the thought of relinquishing her beautiful stone. She pictured the dark fire smoldering inside, the oryx etched into its chilly surface. It was her most prized possession in all the world, and now she was going to have to give it up. Talk about having your life wrecked.

  “Dad, what does he mean, ‘standing guard against deathstalkers’?” she asked. “Is your friend in some kind of trouble?”

  He thought a moment. “Well, Pitblade often communicated using codes, so I’m guessing that’s what this is,” he said, although Zagora detected worry in his eyes. “Deathstalkers are a type of scorpion, but Pitblade might not be referring to scorpions at all.” He squeezed the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger, a habit he had when he was at loose ends. “Guess I’ll be checking out flights to Morocco.”

  “You’re going to Zahir?” Something caught in her chest and she found it hard to breathe. Zahir was at the top of another list, Lost Desert Ruins to Discover. She knew about it from years of dinner-table conversations, and even now she could picture its red walls and golden domes, its wise astronomers and sacred oryxes. She’d give anything to go to Zahir.

  “No. Yes. I don’t know.” Her father stuffed the map and the letter back into the envelope, tossed it onto his desk and stepped away, as if the contents might blow up.

  “But Zahir’s buried under the sand,” said Zagora. “Right, Dad?”

  “Four-fifths of Zahir is under sand, it’s true, but we managed to excavate the city’s casbah, including the Palace of Xuloc. There is much more work to be done, obviously.” He ruffled through the papers. “Zagora, I need some time alone, if you don’t mind.”

  “What about the stamps?” she asked. “Can I have them?”

  “Sure.” He leaned across the desk and ripped off the corner of the envelope. “By all means, take them.”

  She grabbed the stamps, thinking how awesome they were—especially the 3-D one—and dashed up to her room, where she pulled out her Super Duper Magnifier and carefully arranged them on her desk. The 3-D stamp stood out from the others: on it was a shriveled insect with a tail curled like a tiny fiddlehead. How had they made it look so realistic?

  When she zoomed in with the Super Duper Magnifier, her mouth went dry. It wasn’t a stamp at all. The insect was squashed flat, and it was real—scarily real. Heart thudding, she peeled it off.

  That was when she realized it wasn’t any ordinary insect. It was a scorpion.

  Luckily for her, it was dead.

  Zagora pressed her face to a window smudged with dust and finger marks as the train clickety-clacked, mile after mile, through the warm Moroccan evening. Villages and towns hurtled past; black edgy shapes loomed up from the land. To the south lay the Sahara, shimmering and off-kilter, an expanse of burning sand—vast, desolate, steeped in myth—and she was heading straight for it.

  This was the night train to Marrakech, a ride of eleven hours. She’d been excited to read in Edgar Yegen’s journal that he’d taken the night train, too, leaving Tangier in the evening and arriving in Marrakech the next morning.

  She caught her reflection in the glass: sunburned cheeks, pale blue eyes, wild black hair tangled down her back. Her father had instructed her to wear modest clothes, in keeping with Morocco’s customs and culture, so she was dressed in a white blouse and baggy pants. The train compartment she shared with her dad and brother was cramped and narrow, with bunk beds on one side and a fold-down cot on the other. Overhead were racks crammed with backpacks, blankets and water bottles.

  Duncan sat on the top bunk, surrounded by Fruit Roll-Ups, star charts, a Night Star Traveler blow-up globe, his planisphere and two dog-eared paperbacks on astronomy. Her brother was two years older than she, a chubby computer geek who adored astrophysics and space science. Duncan liked his life to be staid and orderly, claiming that any change in routine set off his allergies. He and Zagora had never been anywhere foreign, unless you counted the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, where their Aunt Claire had taken them the past summer. Duncan hated traveling; he was leery of trains, ferries, airplanes, taxis.… In fact, Duncan was leery of most forms of transportation.

  “What happened to you?” she asked, gaping at the rashes up and down his legs.

  “I’m breaking out in hives. My legs are on fire.” When it came to health issues, Duncan tended toward melodrama. “The hives are spreading: my whole body’s being attacked!”

  “It’s just a rash,” said Zagora. Contagious diseases and health hazards were high on her brother’s mental list of things to worry about, but she didn’t give them much thought.

  “Yeah, but this place is germy. And in case you didn’t know, this train is a perfect breeding ground for death worms.” Duncan was trying to sound authoritative, she knew, while at the same time trying to scare her. “Death worms are five feet long and kill their victims by electric shock.” He turned to their father. “Isn’t that right, Dad?”

  Dr. Pym gazed up from a well-thumbed copy of Morocco on the Run, his favorite travel guide. “Wrong desert,” he said. “You’re talking about the Mongolian death worm, a cryptid that supposedly exists in the Gobi. Czech explorer Ivan Mackerle mounted at least two expeditions in search of it.”

  Zagora grinned, impressed by her father’s knowledge of obscure desert facts.

  “What about malaria?” persisted Duncan. “Shouldn’t we have gotten shots for that?”

  “Malaria is rife in countries south of the Sahara,” murmured their dad, eyes fixed on his book. “But there’s a very limited risk of malaria where we’re going.”

  Duncan flopped onto his back, staring at the ceiling with a blank expression.

  “No need to hyperventilate,” said Zagora, who knew her brother hated being wrong about anything. Duncan was a brainy kid, plodding and methodical, arming himself with facts gleaned from the Internet and their dad’s science journals, but unfortunately he had zero imagination—in her opinion, at least. Unexpected situations threw him off balance: he just wasn’t wired for change.

  “You should get a plastic bubble suit.” She bit her lip, trying to keep a straight face. “Then you wouldn’t be so paranoid about everything.” She liked the sound of paranoid; it had a 1950s science fiction ring to it. Android, trapezoid, meteoroid, all cool words.

  “Don’t be obtuse,” he huffed. “If you watched the science channel, you’d see how disgusting those parasites look under a microscope. Hey, listen to this.” He held up Scorpions Alive!, a booklet he’d picked up at the airport in Tangier, and began to read aloud. “ ‘Scorpions feed on insects and spiders, grasping their prey with large clawlike pincers and tearing it apart. They will either crush the prey or inject it with venom, killing or paralyzing the prey so the scorpion can eat it.’ How disgusting is that? And there are gazillions of scorpions in Morocco.”

  “I’m not worried,” said Zagora, pretending she didn’t care. She was determined not to be frightened. “Anyway, scorpions only come out at night.” She’d read the booklet, too. “Guess you should’ve gone to astronomy camp.”

  Duncan turned accusingly to his father. “That’s ri
ght, Dad, I’m missing astronomy camp because you said this would be a golden opportunity! You said we’d track Nar Azrak and do lots of fun things in Morocco.”

  The rogue planet Nar Azrak—which translated to “blue fire” in English—had been a hot topic in astronomical circles. Zagora’s teacher had told her class that two generations earlier, the planet had been barely observable, and now it was brighter than Venus or Mars and several times larger than Mercury. It was thought to be moving nearer to Earth. Because the planet orbited the Earth near the equator, it was highly visible in places like Morocco.

  Duncan, who checked the website narazrak.com daily, had said he’d go to Morocco only if he could bring his astronomy instruments to track the planet.

  “We will do fun things,” said their father, doodling in the margins of his book. He’d been out of sorts since the day before, when they had nearly missed their plane because at the last minute he had gone looking for Edgar Yegen’s journal, turning the house upside down. Zagora had been too scared to admit she’d taken the book and had hidden it away in her backpack: she worried that her dad might get angry and not let her go to Morocco after all.

  Their dad was notorious for making promises he didn’t keep, something he referred to as a Personality Flaw. It was just one of many flaws, but Zagora didn’t mind. Despite his quirks and shortcomings, she thought him brilliant. In addition to being an academic luminary, he was the only parent they had left. She and Duncan had no memory of their mother, who had died when they were young, and their father had never remarried.

  She took another look at her brother’s legs and wrinkled her nose. “Eeew, Dunkie, you’re bleeding! No way I’m sleeping under your bunk.” That kid better not use up all the bandages our second day here, she thought. Their father had packed only a limited number, and Zagora might need them once they started exploring the excavated ruins of Zahir.

  “See you guys,” she said, grabbing her backpack and a bottle of water. “I’ll be in the corridor staying up all night to see Nar Azrak and watch the sunrise. It’s called fajr in Arabic, right, Dad? ‘The first light of dawn.’ ” She remembered the expression from her father’s Arabic phrase book—or had she read it in Edgar Yegen’s journal?

  Her father nodded. “Fajr, yes. Such a lovely word.”

  “Want to come with me, Dunkie?” she asked as she headed for the door.

  “Sorry, but I’m wrecked,” said Duncan, scratching his legs. “I’ll set up my telescope when we get to Marrakech. I even packed my new lightweight tripod.”

  “Stay in the corridor where I can keep an eye on you, okay?” said her father. “Don’t wander off.”

  Zagora laughed. Sometimes her dad really didn’t make much sense. Then, before leaving, she said, “How can I get lost on a train?”

  Zagora could think of nothing more thrilling than hanging out in the corridor, where the air smelled of peanuts and she was the only kid around. A handful of elderly Arab men in sandals and dusty robes, turbans wrapped around their heads, stood conversing in low voices. One of them opened a window and a fine dust blew in. Probably desert dust, she thought, watching the scrubby flat-lands go by. She was impatient to get to the desert, but that was a few days off yet.

  An old man, his cinnamon-brown face creased by the sun, passed around a basket of figs. Offering her the basket, he smiled, showing off a front tooth rimmed in gold. Zagora took a fig, devouring it greedily. It tasted fresh and sweet and stuck to the top of her mouth. If only she’d spent more time studying her dad’s phrase book, she could have impressed him by telling him in Arabic that she was named for Zagora, a town south of Marrakech, in the Drâa Valley near the desert.

  She sank to the floor of the train, inched up against the wall, leaned back and crossed her legs—her favorite position for reading. Reaching into her backpack, she pulled out Edgar Yegen’s journal and turned to the first page, drawn once again to his quaint style of writing.

  I made my reputation as an archaeologist by discovering some of the first cave paintings in North Africa. My next solo expedition will take me to the ancient city of Zahir, lost decades ago to the dry winds and blowing sands of the desert.

  Zahir, home to the Azimuth tribe, was by all accounts a prosperous crossroads city and trading center, known for its great minds in astronomy, its seers and healers, its musicians, poets and architects. Scimitar oryxes, considered sacred by the Azimuth, thrived in the nearby oases. At the city’s peak, its wealth and influence had no match: Zahir’s universities and libraries lured scholars from all over the world.

  Zahir began its downhill slide in the late seventeenth century, when the legendary Oryx Stone, embedded in the Pyramid of Xuloc, was stolen. The Azimuth elders believed that the loss of this stone would precipitate the destruction of a mystical barrier that had protected the city from scorpions for centuries. Indeed, soon after the theft, the rise of the scorpions of Zahir began, as did the slow, painful decline of the Azimuth. Today few descendants of the tribe remain. Sociologists predict that within three decades they will vanish forever.

  What was a mystical barrier, Zagora wondered, and how would it protect a city like Zahir? It sounded complicated. She read on.

  I intend to uncover the remains of the Pyramid of Xuloc. Xuloc was the first king of Zahir. Under his direction the Azimuth constructed a pyramid of blue stones thought to be meteorites. The pyramid was destroyed in a cataclysmic upheaval, according to archaeologists. I am eager to explore this ancient site, as I sense there are hidden truths waiting to be found within the ruins.

  Zagora wondered what sort of hidden truths he was talking about. She had a burning ambition to become a desert explorer like Edgar Yegen. Her plan was simple: she’d pitch a tent in the Sahara and survive on figs and prickly pears, traveling at night by camel, making friends with nomads. Luckily she knew a thing or two about nomads. First, they were minimalists. All they needed were goods to barter with, stars to navigate by and a few sturdy camels. Nomads were fierce and super-smart. They kept daggers tied to their wrists and knew spells that gave you bad luck for the rest of your life.

  Yawning, Zagora closed the journal and dropped it into her backpack, the Oryx Stone floating dreamily through her mind, brimming with Azimuth charms and desert spells. Yet she felt a deep sadness, knowing it wasn’t hers anymore. Two days earlier she’d followed her dad up to the attic, where he’d retrieved the stone from the steamer trunk; then she’d watched him pack it away. The stone, she’d realized then, was lost to her forever.

  She stood up, leaning out the open window, listening to the clickety-clacking of the train. One day, she told herself, I’ll have a tooth all shiny gold, just like the man with the figs. And I’ll get a tattoo, a tiny one—well, maybe two of them: interlinked magical Arabic symbols. That was what you’d expect an explorer to have, along with a backpack filled with hand-drawn maps of uncharted deserts, an electromagnetic compass and a tiny headlamp for exploring tunnels.

  A fierce wind struck her face, whipping her hair into knots. She breathed deeply, hoping she wasn’t sucking in any bugs. Maybe that night she’d see omens. A shooting star would be good, a moon eclipse bad; comets could go either way, depending. She felt a delicious shiver run through her, thinking how she was following in the footsteps of Edgar Q. Yegen, intrepid explorer.

  Through the window she saw a sun dipped in bronze, sinking behind the trees in a blaze of crimson and orange. For a moment Zagora heard a different kind of wind, low and haunting—she sensed it was coming from the desert—and a shimmer of what looked like sparkling sand fell before her eyes. Her breath caught as she glimpsed a line of reddish-gold shapes poised on the distant horizon and silhouetted against the sky.

  In the light of the dying sun, she could just make out the long-legged gazelle-like creatures: scimitar oryxes, standing motionless, with elegant curved horns.

  She told herself she was imagining them, because oryxes had died out a long time ago. Her dad said that the scimitar oryx was now classified as EW
—Extinct in the Wild—and the only ones left were in captivity. Yet she had the oddest sensation, as if the oryxes had stepped out of time and were actually standing there in the Moroccan dusk, waiting.

  Heart pounding, Zagora stepped away from the window, unsure of what she’d just seen. She glanced over at the men opening suitcases and sharing olives, cold meats and bread, talking quietly among themselves, and felt calmed by the sight of such ordinary gestures.

  When she looked out the window again, the oryxes had vanished. All she saw were the darkening sky and a moon shaped like a half-melted coin, rising over the flat empty landscape.

  The train suddenly screeched to a halt, jarring Zagora awake. She had been dreaming about fantastical creatures with curved horns and the lost city of Zahir. Bleary-eyed, she sat up and looked around: she’d fallen asleep on the floor of the train. The men with their suitcases had vanished, leaving dusty footprints and the remnants of their figs.

  Scrambling to her feet, she realized she’d missed Nar Azrak—and the sunrise, as well. Disappointed, she looked out the window to see where they had stopped. Outside, people were spilling off the train, shouting and laughing, lugging suitcases and parcels tied with string.

  With a sigh she wiped her hands down the front of her white blouse. Almost every article of clothing she’d packed was white, because her dad said white would reflect the desert sun and keep her cooler. But she knew she’d never blend in, because nobody in Morocco was dressed like her.

  The crisp whites of her clothes had already faded to dingy grays, and she’d ripped a hole in the knee of her pants. Her hair stuck out like a comic-book scribble. She looked a real mess, but suddenly it didn’t matter. She was in Marrakech!