by Donald Tyson
“Tonight it saved my life.”
I told him how the djinn had distracted the second hill ghoul long enough for me to kill it. He gazed at it more seriously.
“I have never known a spirit of this kind to help a creature of flesh.”
As though aware that it was the subject of conversation, the djinn danced nearer.
“Talk to it,” Gor said. “I will leave you two alone.”
He ambled off, choking with laughter, to direct the preparation of his dead clan members for removal. Their gaping wounds were being sewn up with thread so that they could be carried without dripping blood across the desert.
The djinn approached with caution. As it drew nearer, its face emerged from the glow of light that masked its body. The fine details of its features could only be distinguished when it stood near enough to touch. I allowed it to grasp my head in its hands and thrust its tooth-filled mouth through my face.
“I thank you for my life,” I told it.
You are a fierce warrior.
“Without your help I would surely have died.”
Grant me a wish.
I paused before answering. This spirit had saved me from certain death. Whatever it desired, I could not in good honor refuse it. The djinn sensed my unspoken thoughts.
Let me accompany you on your wandering.
“You have already been doing so,” I pointed out.
Let me unite with you.
An image of what the djinn wanted entered my thoughts. It sought to reside within my flesh, where it would be enabled to draw upon my life energies for its continuing nourishment. This it could not do without my explicit consent.
“You will drain me of vitality and kill me.”
No. Only I will take a little of your fire. Leave you all the rest.
The prospect of having a djinn of the desert dwelling within my body as a kind of parasite did not appeal to me, but the debt I owed the creature could not be denied.
“I will consent, but only for the present. If at some future time I demand that you leave my flesh, you must obey.”
Agreed.
I drew a deep breath as the spirit surrounded my upper body, hugging me with its long limbs, and seemed to squeeze itself through the barrier of my skin. Its movements in my muscles and along my nerves were clearly to be felt, and resembled the caresses of invisible hands. They fluttered over my heart, which stumbled in its regular beats, then regained its rhythm.
“Where is your companion?” Gor asked when he returned.
I explained the pact I had made with the djinn. He pressed a hand flat on the bald top of his skull and blinked, as though unable to contain his amazement.
“Never have I heard of such a thing, and all the secrets of the world are known to my clan.”
“It has not told me why it is so interested in me,” I said.
Gor writhed his lips in a grin and licked them, coughing with laughter.
“That should be obvious.”
“How so?”
He realized that my puzzlement was genuine.
“Surely you noticed that the djinn is female?”
Still laughing softly to himself, Gor left me to ponder his words.
Chapter 6
We were greeted as heroes by the clan when we returned to Black Spring. There was much hooting and shouting as Gor told the battle to the assembled throng of ghouls. What he said in their language was obscure, but by his gesturing and intonations he might have been describing the fall of Troy to the armies of the Greeks. I felt no cynicism, but only satisfaction that turned to pride when I heard my own name spoken, and the females and young of the clan looked at me with wide eyes. After consulting with the elders, Gor gave me a dwelling place that had belonged to one of the slain, a hole dug beneath a sheltering ledge of stone that guarded the opening from the sun.
“What will you do with the dead?” I asked him, as we watched the four corpses carried into the entrance to a larger cave near the spring.
“Tomorrow you will see for yourself.”
With these enigmatic words he left me. The sun glowed just beneath the eastern horizon and the stars had all but vanished when the members of the clan began to steal noiselessly into their dens. Soon the bottom of the pit was deserted. The exertions of the night made themselves felt in my body, now that the excitement had died, and I discovered that my neck throbbed where the claws of the hill ghoul had slashed it. With weary limbs I crawled headfirst into the hole that was my new home and found myself in an arched chamber the length and breadth of my extended body, with a floor of soft sand. It was empty save for a few twists of rope, an empty leather pouch, a stone tool probably used to crack bones for marrow, and a skull that did not look quite human.
Perhaps the skull had served its owner as a drinking vessel, I reflected, as I prepared myself to sleep in the dimness of the cave. Only enough morning light found its way through the elongated entrance tunnel to enable me to see the shapes of my limbs as I stripped off my sandals, leather stockings, and thawb. The influence of the white spiders had faded, leaving me with a slight headache. The robe I arranged on the sand for a bed, beside my water skin that served as a pillow. I lay upon them and put my arm across my face to block the gloom from my closed eyelids.
Something soft touched me on the side, near my armpit. I jerked to wakefulness and stared around with sleep-dry eyes, thinking to find that some small desert creature had sought refuge from the sun in my den. I was alone. Lying back, I rearranged my body and let myself drift toward sleep once again. This time the touch came more gently on my belly. I raised my arm and peered down the length of my chest but saw nothing, even though the sensation of a hand pressing on my skin was unmistakable. It began to move slowly down toward my groin.
“What are you doing?” I murmured.
The response came whispering into my mind.
Do not be frightened.
Where the invisible hand of the djinn touched my skin, it excited a tingling in my muscles and a sweetness that ran along my nerves. I felt the pressure of a body stretch itself along my chest and thighs with a palpable weight. Had I not seen with my own eyes that nothing pressed against me, I would have sworn that a woman lay atop me. The erect nipples of her firm small breasts brushed my chest, and her soft thigh found its way between my parted legs. Hands pressed against my back, as though this unseen lover reached through the sand to embrace me.
Close your eyes.
Hesitantly, I did as the voice in my thoughts instructed. At once I saw the face of a beautiful woman leaning over me. Her widely spaced eyes glowed like the finest dark amber. They turned up slightly at the corners, reminding me of the eyes of a desert fox. Scarlet henna tinted moist, full lips above a rounded chin. Egyptian kohl darkened her eyebrows and eyelashes, and lined her eyes, making them seem even larger. The unblemished skin of her domed forehead and cheeks possessed the delicate tan of desert sand.
She positioned herself on top of me, rocking gently on the bones of my hips. I drew a gasp of breath.
“This cannot be.”
She touched cool fingers to my lips, smiling, and bent to kiss me. As desire built in my loins, I clearly felt my erect prick within her, sliding gently as she moved her hips with a swaying undulation akin to that of a dancing serpent. Pleasure built within my flesh, causing me to arch my back and raise my hips. I spread my arms, eyes still tightly shut, and clenched the sand between my fingers. The sensations came in waves that rolled from my groin to the extremities of my limbs. My toes curled and the taste of honey came to my tongue as my lover kissed my open mouth with hungry desire. The pleasure intensified with each succeeding wave yet seemed to have no peak. My head became dizzy with intoxication and my body floated on the sand as though on a gently flowing river.
“Enough!” I gasped. “I cannot be
ar any more.”
Ecstasy erupted in my loins and overwhelmed my senses. For a time I ceased to exist. A shuddering inhalation made me aware that I had stopped breathing. My heart pounded with the slow, deep strokes of a blacksmith’s hammer, and my entire body trickled with sweat. The soft weight of my invisible lover still nestled against my right side, as though resting with me, and I felt her arm across my chest.
“This cannot be,” I repeated more calmly. “I am no longer a man.”
Your mind remembers the ways of love.
I closed my eyes and saw her, smiling gently.
“What is your name?”
I have no name.
“You are a chaklah’i?”
Chaklah’i is the word for all my kind. I am a chaklah, yes.
“I will give you a name,” I said with sudden determination.
An expression of delight illuminated her features.
No one has ever given me a name.
“You will be Sashi to me,” I said as the name sprang into my thoughts without meditation.
Sashi, she repeated with pleasure. It is good.
“Can all of your kind give pleasure to men, as you gave to me?”
She shook her head, gazing down at me within the darkness of my closed eyelids.
When a man is damaged as you are, only one of my kind welcomed within your skin can do this.
“It cannot be done from outside?”
It cannot.
“Is that why you wished to be within my body?”
She lowered her gaze as though with modesty.
It is one reason.
A great weariness swept over me, yet it was not unpleasant. I allowed it to send me deep into the gentle vortex that opened beneath my mind.
Sleep, Alhazred.
When I awoke it was late afternoon, and the worst heat of the sun had passed. I dressed and crawled from my hole to relieve myself. None of the ghouls stirred in the great pit that surrounded the spring. I explored it with curiosity. The ground had fallen in upon itself in a large circle, leaving here and there irregular rocky ledges and hills. It was not deep, no more than the height of a tall palm tree below the desert, yet it was so broad that several minutes were required to walk from one side to the other. The spring occupied the center of the depression, bubbling slowly upward within an irregular circle of large rocks and overflowing to spread upon the sand for a short distance before being absorbed once again into the ground. Its waters looked foul but its taste was not unpleasant. By some trick of nature it was as cold as ice, numbing the tongue when drunk too quickly.
I occupied the end of the day washing my thawb and stockings, which had accumulated much dust and filth. First I saturated them in the spring, then took them to a flat rock and beat them against it until they were almost dry. This process I repeated several times. Leaving them spread in the slanting rays of the sun, I returned to the spring and slid my body into it to wash. To my surprise, I discovered that it had no bottom. Treading water, I rubbed my limbs and chest with my hands until I could no longer stand the freezing chill and crawled out on the rocks that surrounded its margin. The injuries to my body were healing well, without swelling or pus. I probed them gently with my fingertips. Soon they would be only scars.
As twilight fell, I dressed and sat upon a stone to await the coming of night. There was nothing to reveal that the pit was more than a vacant fault in the surface of the desert. The ghouls kept all their possessions below ground. No traveler who happened upon the pit while the sun was above the horizon would suspect their existence. As night came, they began to silently appear, emerging from their holes and making their way to the spring to drink and talk together in hushed voices. A curious peace lay over my heart, and I felt little impulse to stir from my place.
Gor emerged from the entrance to the larger cave and approached me.
“How did you sleep, Alhazred?”
“Well enough.”
His eyes sparkled and he laughed his choking laugh, but whatever thought was in his mind he kept to himself.
“Where do we hunt tonight?” I asked him. The prospect of the hunt appealed to me. His amusement vanished away.
“No hunt tonight,” he said solemnly. “Tonight we honor the dead of the clan.”
“I did not know ghouls honored their dead.”
“No man has ever seen it, so how should you know?”
The members of the clan began to make their way into the entrance to the large cave, which I gathered from Gor’s remarks served them as a kind of mosque or holy place. Gor seemed in no hurry to join them, but remained beside me and talked.
I learned that he had been leader of the clan for three years, having claimed that place after the death of his father, who had been caught on the open desert during a sandstorm and killed. His father had been a great leader who ruled the clan for more than twenty years. No one had challenged Gor’s claim to lead, even though it was the custom for those seeking to lead the clan to defend their claim in combat. Everyone had recognized his fitness to replace his father. He explained this with a quiet pride. In three years no other male had challenged him.
He listened without comment while I told him the story of my life. When I said I was a singer, he asked me to sing, and I found myself voicing the melody of a frivolous love ballad that was filled with vanity and deceit. The words, so cleverly adapted to the cynical listeners at the royal court, sounded alien as they echoed from the rocks in the night. The insects fell silent while I sang, as though they also listened. When I described how King Huban had forced me to consume the corpse of my own unborn son, Gor’s eyes danced with interest.
“It was fated. He made you one of us, so you could come here and share our meat.”
“Yes, he made me a ghoul,” I agreed. Strangely, I said it without bitterness in my heart.
Gor pushed himself from the rock where he had sat beside me.
“Come. It is time to honor the dead.”
We went together to the large cave, where all the clan had assembled. Its entrance was narrow enough to be touched with outstretched hands, but four times the tallness of a man, tapering to a pointed arch. The roof fell for the first dozen paces inside, then rose and widened into a great cavern with a floor broken into several rock ledges of different elevations, so that it formed a kind of natural amphitheater. Enough moonlight shone through the entrance to show the four corpses of the fallen warriors, arranged side by side on the bare rock at the center of the cavern. I noted a large pile of bones at the back of the cave near an opening, and judged them to be the bones of ghouls by their color and shape, but saw no skulls. Nothing in the cave resembled an altar or idol, nor was there anything to reveal why it served as a sacred space.
Gor left my side and went between the bodies, which were spaced apart so that it was possible to walk around each of them. In resonant tones he addressed the clan in his own guttural language. They sat and squatted on the ledges, listening to his words with solemn expressions. He moved to stand at the feet of the first corpse and spoke for several minutes, then did the same for the three others in turn. When he finished, he spoke a name, and one of the male ghouls came forward and took his place between the corpses. I recognized him as a member of the war party. He moved to the foot of the first corpse and spoke a few words, then did the same for the others. He called by name another male ghoul who had fought the raiders from the northern hills, and the ritual repeated itself.
When all the warriors who had fought beside the dead had spoken, I assumed the eulogy was ended, but Gor approached me.
“It is fitting that you praise the dead. I will translate your words into the language of the clan.”
We stood between the corpses. As has been true from my earliest childhood, I found no need to struggle for words. It is a blessing of my divine gift that w
ords always come easily to me. My heart swelled with a storm of feelings, and I knew that mere spoken praise would be insufficient to express my sense of kinship with these fallen creatures who lay at my feet. I sang and composed the verses of my song simultaneously, pausing at the end of each line for Gor to call out the meaning of my words. When I was done, there was silence. At first I thought I had offended some custom of the clan, but then a roar went up, and I realized that my song had stirred fierce pride in the ghouls. Their eyes flashed in the dim light and their tongues licked across their writhing lips as they stomped their naked feet against the stone ledges, filling the cave with a sound like thunder.
“You spoke well,” Gor told me over the roar.
His approval moved me more than any I had received from the king or his courtiers for similar extemporaneous songs.
A female and a young male ghoul who was nearly grown to maturity came down from the ledges and knelt at the side of the first corpse. Several more ghouls knelt beside the second, two beside the third, and only a lone female beside the fourth. They looked at Gor expectantly. He spoke a word, and they began to feed.
“It is always my place to feed first,” he murmured to me as we stood side by side and watched. “When the dead are honored, I give that place to the near-blood kin of the corpse.”
“Do you always eat your dead?”
“What else should we do? Bury them in the ground and waste the meat, as men do?” He made a sound of disgust in his throat.
After the close kin of the dead had eaten their fill, Gor approached and drew me with him. I saw the other survivors of our war party gathering around. He ate a bit of flesh from each body and moved on to the next, and I emulated him. When we were done, the other males who had fought did the same. Then the rest of the clan fed until only bones remained. Ghouls discard no part of the dead—even the intestines are consumed. Indeed, they seem to relish the bowels more than any other part of the corpse.
“The bones will not be broken, but piled with the others,” Gor explained.