Rebel of the Sands

Isra raised her hand, threatening a slap from the other side of the fire. The caravan princess pulled a face but shut up for good, letting Old Daud lapse into the story.

Everybody knew the story of the First Mortal. But Yasmin wasn’t wrong; Old Daud did seem to be giving me and Jin pointed looks as he told it. So I listened close as he told of a golden age when only First Beings roamed the earth. How, after time beyond counting had passed, the Destroyer of Worlds came from deep within the earth. She brought with her a huge black snake who swallowed the sun and turned the sky to endless night, and a thousand new creatures—the monsters she called children, but that First Beings named ghouls. And when the Destroyer of Worlds killed the first First Being, he exploded into the first star in the newly black sky. God had made the First Beings with endless life, so when they learned of death they were afraid. That was the dawn of the first war, and as First Beings fell, the night sky filled. The Djinn, the brightest of God’s First Beings, feared death so much, they came together and gathered earth and water and used the wind to mold a being and set it alive with a spark of fire. They made the First Mortal. To do what they feared most, but what needed to be done in any war: die.

So the First Mortal took up steel, and with it he beheaded the huge snake who had swallowed God in his sun form. The sun was released from the monster’s throat and the endless night ended.

The First Beings looked upon this mortal thing they had made and saw with awe that he wasn’t afraid of death. He dared to fight because his destiny was to die. And where the Destroyer of Worlds had created fear, the First Mortal had bravery to meet it. The immortals had never had a need for it before. But mortals did.

So the First Beings made another mortal and another. They fashioned each in a duller image of an immortal thing—men instead of Djinn, horses instead of Buraqi, birds instead of Rocs. They worked until they had an army. And against the might of mortality, the Destroyer of Worlds finally fell. Her rule over the earth broke and the creatures she brought with her were left alone, stalking the desert night.

The story ended, the air full of the silent spell Old Daud’s words had woven. Then the world rushed back in, the one the First Mortal had fought and died for, filled with idle camp chatter and the flicker of pipe smoke and Isra calling Yasmin away to scold her over the luridly bright khalat she’d just found among her other clothes.

“I’ll take your watch,” I offered as Yasmin joined her grandmother with a roll of her eyes and the camp settled around us. I felt alive. Filled up by the desert. Lit on fire. “I don’t think I could sleep anyway.”

“I’d rather stay up after that.” Jin offered me a drink across the empty space between us. “He’s got me half terrified I’m going to get eaten by a ghoul in my sleep.”

“In Dustwalk they say that only happens to sinners.” I took a swig from the flask and passed it back.

“And nonbelievers,” Jin said. “Like me.”

“You don’t believe in God?”

“I’ve been a lot of places,” Jin said. “And I’ve heard a lot of what people think is true. When everyone seems so very sure, it’s hard to figure anyone is right.”

I’d never thought about whether I believed in God. I believed in the stories in the Holy Books the same way I believed in the stories of the First Mortal or Rebel Prince Ahmed. It never mattered to me if they were true. They had enough truth of greater ideas, of heroes and sacrifice and the things everybody wanted to be.

“In Miraji you claim that God created the immortals, your Djinn, from fire, and they made the first mortals. In the Ionian Peninsula they say the immortals themselves are gods and they created us humans for their amusement. The Albish say that all things sprang straight from the river and from the trees, created by the heart of the world, immortal and mortal alike. The Gallan believe that First Beings and ghouls are no different—that they’re both tools of the Destroyer of Worlds—and that some different god than yours created mankind to destroy them and purify the earth.”

Immortals could be killed by iron. Same as ghouls. But the notion of murdering a Djinni made everything in me rebel. The relationship between humans and immortals was complicated. There were a thousand stories about mortals tricking Djinn, finding their true names and using the names to trap them. But immortals were forces of nature. Creatures of God. As ancient as the world itself. And our short lives were nothing compared to their endless ones. Killing immortals was what the Destroyer of Worlds did. Humanity was created to save them.

“Is that what the Gallan are using our guns for?”

“Mostly they use them against other humans these days,” he said. “They wiped out the First Beings in their country long ago. They’re working on everywhere else now.”

“Like Xicha.” My eyes drifted to the open shirt collar where his tattoo was. I didn’t realize until then that there’d been a part of me that was still angry at him for blowing up the factory in Dustwalk. Whether or not it hurt the Gallan, it crippled the whole of the Last County, too. And, sure, there were plenty of folks there who didn’t deserve any better than starving to death. But there were also folks like Tamid who’d never learned to hate that place the way he should’ve. And my cousin Olia, who every once in a while caught my gaze behind Farrah’s back and rolled her eyes with me. And my little cousin Nasima, who still hadn’t caught on that she was supposed to be ashamed to be born a girl. Those people didn’t deserve to starve.