This might be the shortest original
story I've ever written.
I could be pretentious about it, and
say it's a song about earth and fire and water and wind, and say it's
about the kind of love that hurts.
But I always thought that kind of talk
was ridiculous.
SENTINEL
The spell that held me was made of
blood and clay and salt, and there was no fighting the words once
they were lost on the wind. They swirled, broke apart, and
disappeared like waves, and just as quickly.
Instead, I settled into a madman's
sleep, the kind that burned with pictures that made me ache and cling
to the few dreams that made it through the darkness. The feel of the
waves, sea stars caught in the tide, the cliff with the lighthouse
where I'd asked Carina to marry me. Where she had said yes. Those
dreams reminded me who I was, where I'd come from.
I think the others, those long rows of
shadows that stretched past me on both sides, forgot.
We never heard the call that roused us.
I'm sure it was a dramatic affair, all wiggling fingers and deep
voices, but all I knew was one moment I dreamed of Carina in my arms,
and the next I opened my sand-gritted eyes and the world spread
beneath me in splashes of red and silver rock that glinted in the
sunset. My hands clenched and unclenched, rough skin grinding against
itself and sending tiny dust devils swirling into the wind.
Then I heard the priestess's voice in
my head, just like all the others did. It whispered, so soft it was
almost lost in the sound of the sand at our feet.
“They are coming. Protect us.”
The others shook themselves awake like
birds rustling their feathers. Their smooth sandstone bodies, pittied
from years of wind and sun and rain, rustled as they shambled, one by
one, down the plateau that had been our holding pen. I watched them
file past and peered at their identical, expressionless faces. I knew
I was supposed to join them, march past the rocks and on to the
valley and lay waste to whatever stood before me.
But the heart they had stuffed inside
my sandstone chest said no. I waited for last one to pass. Took one
long, last look at the plume of dust, parting like a wave, that
followed them as they went.
Then I turned around and walked the
other way.
*
When the priestess first took me, she
threw a sack over my head and kept me tied, face up, in the back of a
wooden wagon that bumped and jostled and wore my skin raw. I lost
track of the days, measured only by the amount of the light agains
the burlap. When the wagon stopped and they hauled me to my feet, all
I knew was I was far, too far, from the lighthouse and Carina and the
world I'd known.
There were at least a hundred of us. I
never knew how they rounded the others up, if they volunteered or,
like me, were press-ganged and toted lifetimes away from the people
they loved. No one talked much – instead, we sat in groups of twos
and threes, backs against the bars of the cage they'd thrown us in,
craving company and terrified of each other at the same time.
At dawn, the priestess returned, her
face as lined as the dry riverbeds that snaked around us. Her dress
hung in multi-colored tatters, threaded with beeds and bits of glass
and sparkling rocks.
“You will be sentinels,” she said,
her voice rattling like dead leaves. “You will protect us, when
they come.”
Heavy iron collars were snapped around
our necks, then, and we were led to the plateau that would become our
resting place. I caught one glimpse of the sandstone men, standing in
rows of five, before our handlers turned us toward the sunrise.
And the priestess cut out our hearts,
said the words that bound us to our sandstone tombs, and watched as
her army took shape.
*
I kept to the shadows, always aware of
the tugging, nagging feeling in the back of my mind that called me
back to the sand and the sun and the wind. Days passed, then weeks,
and slowly the landscape shifted into the low trees and long grass
and dark-bellied clouds I knew so well. My shuddering steps
quickened, and my heart pounded in my sandstone chest.
The lighthouse waited for me, and I
drew to it like a moth to a flame. My jointless legs and heavy feet
made climbing the cliff almost impossible, but I pulled myself along,
leaving yellow-tan scrapes along the rocks. Below me, the sea spit
froth, churning and dark and endless.
She waited there for me, just like I
knew she would. Her red hair swirled around her like phoenix fire,
and her dress hung stiff with salt.
Sand filled my mouth. I spread my arms,
tried to speak, but the words wouldn't come.
She heard me anyway. Turned. Widened
her eyes.
And screamed.
I let her run past me, hair streaming
behind her like a song, with the waves below keeping I didn't
follow. I didn't try to stop her.
Instead, I kept walking, until I stood
at the edge of the cliff. The lighthouse towered behind me, a beacon
that spun my shadow like the hand of a sundial.. I looked down, into
the churning water, and was glad for the waves, because they meant I
couldn't see my own reflection.
She'd said yes here, however long ago.
A few grains of sand crept down my
cheeks.
I took another step.
