Thousands of refugees dotted the rolling sands of West Maeve. Subconscious clusters had formed among them where small likenesses could be found. Sya, however, sat alone. It was a miracle she had survived this long on the journey from Dorne to West Maeve. The Eversands were ruthless—no place for a ten-year-old girl like herself. A horn sounded, deep and bellowing. One. Two distinctive calls—the Horn of Caraev. She lifted her eyes upward, irises bright and rich like lapis lazuli with gold flecks, but some unspoken age reflected within them—an undeserved tiredness. Long blonde lashes flickered as they met the gaze of the sun. A small, sun-kissed hand instinctively rose to block out the harsh rays, bony and delicate.
She lifted herself from the sand in tandem with the other refugees. They were, at this point in their journey, a hive mind. One step after another, she trudged forward, thoughtless and flat-faced. After ten minutes had passed, she glanced back, silently praying to those who had been lost to the Sands of Time. Their bodies, bless them, would be fed to the fisher wyrms, keeping them from following the remaining living across the desert. Snow dusted the sands—the beautiful waves of sugar cinnamon that the Maeve deserts were so known for. Whatever magic kept it from melting taunted her.
Water. She needed water. And shade. And hope. One could not freely take from the Eversands and it had taken more lives than one could count among it’s grains of sand.
West Maeve was surrounded by these sand. It was, perhaps, the only safe haven left standing. It was a necessary trek given that the Scabs had overtaken the Spog and now the haven city of Dorne. It was no longer safe there, but everyone knew the Scabs couldn’t cross the desert. They relied on the forests to lure, rest, and reproduce and so the Eversands acted as a barrier for the living—if one could make it across.
“I’m surprised you’re still standing, little one.”
Sya turned, platinum blonde curls falling from her face like snapped harp strings. She tucked them away behind her ear as she faced the man she knew as Paci. He had given her water the first night of their journey. It was all gone now.
His gruff voice reminded her of her father, if not for the heavy Baeren accent. It was slow, careful, and purposefully and lingered on the vowels. Silently, she thought of her father’s many sacrifices to give her a better life. Silently, she wondered how far back her mother’s body lay. She did not need to reply to Paci—her eyes blurred and told him quite simply, “Barely.”
Paci’s eyes strayed as he found the sudden need to work at the leather wraps on his wrist. He gave the string on his left a final tug until he was satisfied with its tightness. He had kept a close eye on Sya after her mother passed, but Sya was slow to open up to others. She had seen far too many refugees stabbed in the night for whatever was left of their belongings that did not come from the desert.
His eyes were colored with guilt. “There’s a small group of us traveling together.” Paci threw his thumb over his shoulder, to which Sya’s gaze followed. A five fully robed individuals were huddled together, their pained shuffles drawing lines in the sand behind them. Sya had noticed them before. They usually walked in single file with a large, burly man in the front, shielding the others from the stinging sand that blew against them.
“We can offer company, but not much else.” Paci showed no further pity, but was he could tell that weeks of watching over Sya silently had him growing fond of her. Perhaps it was the hair—his daughter had golden hair. She too, was lost to the desert.
Sya peered back, glancing at the bodies slowly sinking, the wyrms circling underneath to draw them deeper into the sand to feed. Their hardened black scales shimmer in the sunlight. She would often see the fisher wyrm’s scorpion-like tail stick up from the sand as if to dowse for prey, though where there was one there were dozens hiding just beneath the surface.
Sher lip began to tremble, and with a shift in her ankle, she angled herself to follow Paci towards his group.
Paci hadn’t lied. They did not have much to offer outside of company, but their company was an energy all on its own. How they had the strength to laugh and hum and sing was beyond Sya; it was a beautiful sound she thought she would never hear again. The colors of solitude were stripped from her face, and Sya found comfort in holding the hand of Maria who was perhaps only a year or two younger than herself.
Maria told her stories of the Scabs and how they had chased her and her father, Miles, through the Spog. The Spog, as the girl explained, was a giant forest far to the west, a labyrinth of fog and trees with bleeding bark—the nest and birthplace of the Scabs.
Maria’s aunt, Neha, had been Made there. They had seen her face resting in the bark of a tree, eternally plastered in an expression of horror and grief. Sya had never been that far to the West, but she had grown to fear them.
As the group trekked onward, the sky slowly changed to a deepening shade of periwinkle, two full moons extinguishing the coming night. The horn bellowed again, once this time, to signal the group to halt and rest. Sya felt her knees buckle beneath her. With a huff, they both giggled—just happy to have survived another day.
Paci and Miles created sleeping pads for the two girls out of their linen cloaks. Sya curled up next to Maria, their small hands intertwined as if it might save them from nightmares. They lay there for several moments in silence, their bodies slowly loosening with sleep until Maria drew a breath into a yawn.
“Did you get to see the Time Keeper?” Maria asked with her mouth still open. Her voice was soft and small, like butter and baby’s breath in early spring. She had an innocence about her that Sya had not had the pleasure of knowing.
Sya shifted to face her.
“Don’t know what that is.”
Maria gawked but then crinkled her face to think. She wasn’t too sure how to explain the odd creatures.
“Well, Paci said they look like Chimeras, but—”
“Chimeras no longer exist. The Hand killed the last one off centuries ago,” Sya interrupted with an arched brow.
“—but they are not. They are beasts of Eden,” Maria finished, certainty in her voice.
“…Go on.” Sya inched forward, further intrigued by the mention of Eden, their deity’s eternal city.
“They have the teeth of a hound, the talons of a bird, the horns of a goat, the tail of a lizard, and the wings of a bat.”
“You’re a blasphemer,” Sya scoffed and rolled onto her back.
Maria jolted up. “I swear it! Paci said there’s one that watches over the Eversands, that it leads those who have died out of the desert to be free of the cycle.” She crinkled her nose and eyes into another yawn. “He also said that if a Time Keeper leads you out of the sands before your time, it is only because it owes a life debt and will appear to you as the one they owe.”
“An old wives’ tale,” Sya mumbled. Though, in truth, she believed every bit of it. “Why would they watch over Sackers like you and me?”
She had heard of creatures with similar origins, but their descriptions seemed to change based on a bard’s mood for the day. It fit the legends she already knew quite well. The deserts surrounding West Maeve were not named the Eversands without reason. It was common knowledge not to take anything born of the desert. It was tainted, bewitched. Those who took from the desert were bound to it, unable to leave. They would find themselves immortal and without thirst or hunger but their minds would twist and their skin would turn to white and crack painfully—Drykas, they were called. The Desert gives, and the Desert takes, and no one apart from the Time Keepers and the Siltkin seemed immune. Legends also said that grain of sand was added to the desert for each year of life the consumed had lived. Perhaps that was why it was tainted. To take from the Eversands was to take Anima from the dead.
After several hours, Sya awoke. She rubbed at her eyes carefully to rid the corners of sand and then stood. She glanced over at Maria whose breath whistled softly in the still air. The refugees all slept soundly. Stars hung overhead, winking at her charismatically. The two moons, Bharil and Ka’an, smiled bright and full, illuminating the rolling sands. A small, beautiful cloud floated lazily to the East. Sya didn’t allow it to give her any hope.
She rolled back onto her side to steal a few more moments of rest before dawn, but within minutes the Horn of Caraev sounded again. One—two—
Three.
Sya’s heart pounded in her chest, and she found herself on her feet before the last bellow of the horn ended. The thousands of other refugees rose with her in a burst of panic, their sleeping faces drawn back in fear and confusion.
The sand beneath Sya’s feet rumbled and the grains to shift and tremble. Black tails jutted from the surface of the sand, white specks of snow dotting them like the stars overhead. The quiet night now boiled over with chaos as refugees scrambled to flee. Sya struggled to stand as she took the knee of stranger to her gut.
Looking up, she watched as Maria was grabbed up by her father, her feet dangling at his back as she screamed. Sya sat helpless as a fisher wyrm lept from the sands, wrapping it’s scaled body around them both and dragging them under. The hole in the sand sputtered, and refilled itself, spilling over like an erupted volcano. They were gone, and their lives had amounted to nothing but the small mound of added sand left behind
Sya reached for the mound, but Paci grab her arm. Her blue eyes could not leave the stain on the sand as she was pulled to her feet.
“Come on, girl!” Paci cursed, lifting Sya up and cradled her. She felt the thud of each of his steps, his strong arms holding her tightly to his chest. The beat of his heart outpaced the numbness of her own. With each step Paci took, his feet sank lower and lower into the desert until his knees were covered and locked into place. L
He threw Sya from his arms, and she rolled to a stop before scrambling backward. She spun around, watching helplessly as Paci sank lower and lower. His brown eyes met her blues as he clawed helplessly at the sand before being dragged under by another wyrm. The dips from his fingers scraping the surface were not visible for long as the grains filled in.
Sya crawled over to the mound in the sand, frantically digging to find a hand, a shoulder, anything. Her breath was stolen from her. Her parents were gone. Maria was gone. Paci was gone. Her eyes lowered, thoughtless and numb.
She frowned as it continued to fill itself itself despite her digging and misplacing the grains. Paci had looked no older than 40 and yet his mound was well over triple the size of any other around her.
She didn’t have time to think. Two more wyrms jutted up from the sand, the bulbous tails rotating until they pointed towards Sya. The sand parted as they raced towards her.
Sya tried desperately to crawl away, but when the wyrms did not drag her under she turned around, cowering.
She could hear the steady beat of wings overhead, strong and fierce. She could feel the wind stirring and whirling, her golden hair splaying in the breeze. A large figure stole the air above her, casting a cold shadow atop the sand before she felt herself being swooped up by large talons.
The girl screamed, raw and desperate, as she watched her feet lift from the ground. A large, scaled beast had preyed on her and was stealing her away. The talons easily wrapped around her tiny body, long and sharp and deadly, and yet they carried her firmly and gently. She was being handled with the same care her father had as he carried her to bed.
She could hear the breath of the beast and an earth-shattering cry erupt from its belly. The entirety of the desert was visible below, the sun finally rising in the east turned the dark of the early morning aflame with gold and pumpkin hues. The white patches of snow mixed with the glassy sand glistened against the rays and blinded her.
It carried her for several hours before pulling back its wings and setting the Sya down gently atop a plateau of hard, red rock. She scrambled, desperate to find footing and gain distance from the talons.
The beast was large with iridescent scales and green eyes and white with gold flecks fluttering like sunlight on a lush forest floor. Honeysuckle, she realized.
Its breath was hot and loud, in sync with its rising chest. Sya noted its mismatched parts—hound, bird, goat, lizard, bat. Not a Chimera, indeed. It was a Time Keeper.
Its wings flared with a final huff and launched itself into the air. Sya swore something like pain reflected in its eyes. She watched as it disappeared behind the jagged rocks in the distance, its screech echoing through the peaks.
The girl sat in silence for a moment, still in shock. The sound of flowing water made her heart skip. She lifted her head, staring at the sparkling ripples just inches from her face. Her sun-kissed hand reached out to it, playing with the ripples as if she assumed they were fake.
She recalled the stories she had heard: do not take from the desert. But as she looked around, she was quickly reminded that the desert was far, far behind her. Her suffering was far, far behind her.
Green shrubs took the place of cactuses and dunes. Clouds formed to the west, hovering merrily over a muddy watering hole. Sya drank her fill, and to her relief, she remained hungry. There was little more than apple moss in the immediate area to hold her over, but she was thankful for each bite.
After several days, the beast returned. Hesitant, at first, keeping its distance in the skies. Sya felt as though she had a protector. She had learned there was nothing to fear from the beast. If it had wanted to harm her, it already would have. If anything, it seemed to look at her with a familiarity, a strange mix of pride and longing. The bond grew slowly, but Sya could feel its presence. It was as if something inside of them was healing—something that had been there long before.
Sya gathered the last handful of apple moss she could find, washing it carefully.
“I had wondered how long it would take your Anima to mend you,” a voice called from behind her—a familiar and beautiful hush. “You’ve always been a stubborn thing.”
Startled, Sya turned, now facing not the beast but her father, who stood eagerly a mere breath away. She felt her lungs empty. He did not give her time to recover before crashing into her, his arms wrapping around her in a warm embrace.
He pulled away from her, his arms clasping her shoulders to get a better look at her emaciated features. His unmistakable eyes stared back at her—green, not honeysuckle.
“How…” she managed to stutter through her tears
His hand clasped the side of her face as he rubbed his thumb over her cheek.
“The Desert takes, and the Desert gives. My debt has been repaid.”
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