Kiini Salaam - Ancient, Ancient

I scramble over benches and climb through an open window. As soon as my feet touch the ground, I take off running. I hear sounds behind me: explosions and shouts. I feel tiny fires shooting past me. The Royale pants behind me, low and fierce. Every pant is like a heartbeat. I dare not still my feet.

Out the corner of my eye I see feathers flying next to me. They rush, creating a wind that pushes me faster and faster. I run beyond my pursuers. I run beyond the trees. I run beyond the Royale. Then I hear the gritty sound of time grinding into a different gear, or year. My limbs go liquid and lose their speed.

Intense heat is the first thing I feel, then exhaustion. I feel it down to my bones. Muscles like mush, as if I’ve been walking for miles. To the right and left of me are sand dunes, notched with hypnotizing ridges where the wind has kissed them. Before me is a woman’s back, her head hangs low as she plods along a footpath. I look behind me. More women, a long line of them snaking back further than I can see. They all wear dingy white robes and tattered headwraps. I hold up my arms. The same dingy cloth covers me.

My eyes swing back up to the woman’s neck. Foreign memories flash in my mind. Men with black-lined eyes breaking into a family camp. A man—who must be this new body’s father—bloodied but fighting. A woman—who must be this new body’s mother—lying with her throat ripped open, a bloom of blood haloing her head. The bite of sand on palms and knees as this body crawls to safety, crawls like a dog, choking on fear. I shake the scene from my head and stare at the back of the woman’s neck again.

“You must forget there was ever anything called home,” a voice whispers. Your voice. I feel a gasp of panic explode in my head. You can’t ask me to forget home. I won’t forget home; I won’t forget you. Anger chases away the panic. Grandfather, with his reckless lessons and self-righteous speeches. Doesn’t he know what everyone whispers behind his back? That one , they say, pointing their chins at me, that one gets his wildness from his grandfather . Is he punishing me for being like him?

My arm swings up in an arc, muscles twitching with memory. It’s the block I should have thrown in my last Royale, the arm flick I could have used to knock away the razor and avoid getting cut. The repeated sway of my arm is numbing, like a narcotic. For a few blissful seconds, I’m not on a long desert walk to enslavement—I’m nowhere.

After my arm grows tired, I let it fall limp by my side. I notice two small mounds rising from my chest. Breasts. I touch them with the back of my hand. My sleeve rolls back to reveal the ridges of a scar on my forearm. I push the sleeve up further, there’s a crude X burned into my arm. When I look up at the woman in front of me again, I understand why I’ve been staring at her. It’s not her neck I’m looking at, I’m staring at the scar burned on her back—the top edges of an X visible above the scoop of her robe.

I peer ahead. An indigo-draped figure rides a camel. The set of his shoulders tells me that he decides my next breaths. Whip gripped in hand, lazily swatting air with a motion that cools him and flaunts his power all at once.

What has Grandfather done?

I step out of the snaking line, and look back. My gaze is darting around, looking for more guards when, thwack , something hard cracks against my jaw.

I don’t fight the fall. I don’t even feel the impact when my body crashes against the hot sand. I lay there, motionless, aware of nothing except the sun’s searing heat and the parade of feet stepping over me as the women plod on to their terrible destiny.

I can smell death rising with the heat around my body. It smells like decay, a tinge of sticky sweetness mixed in with a rank earthy scent. I feel a blow to my side, then another. I allow my body to rock with each kick. A thought rips through my mind: If I die here, will my life end? I would rise and fight, but why? Whether I lay here until death claims me, or I stand and walk toward my own slaughter, I will die anonymous and unloved. No one among these trillions of grains of sand can see my true face, and no one knows my name.

“I know,” your voice says. “I know your name. Come home.”

At first I feel a flush of pleasure: you want me. Then that bitter rage flares again and extinguishes my pleasure. You want me, and I am powerless to join you. Coming home is not up to me. This is Grandfather’s game.

The army of feet trod on, kicking up tufts of dust, coating my face with grime. The sun is so merciless that the blazing heat begins to feel physical. The idea of releasing my grip on life is seductively sweet.

“But we have not yet tasted each other,” you whisper.

A small sound that doesn’t know if it wants to be a laugh or a sob pops in my throat. Not even your voice—with its melodies and catches—can stop me from thinking about committing my body to the earth. I want you, but I also want to break into a million pieces and melt into the sand. I want to stop the procession of roughened heels and downtrodden women. I want to die.

“Dance,” you say. Your voice has taken on a depth I have never heard before. You have pushed beyond laughter and flirtation, scattered gravel and broken glass in your voice. Then I understand. You mean not to entice me, but to compel me. You are trying to awaken the warrior in me.

Another kick catches me. Pain implodes in my side. My body lifts up from the ground, then falls limp. A captor yells something over me—something rumbling and fast. More of them come. They turn me over. I don’t blink. I’m not even sure that I’m breathing. I lay face up, eyes glassy and blank, limbs splayed crucifixion wide.

You want me to rise, but I don’t know how. I don’t know how to rise from a bed of my own blood, from a stretch of earth made soft by the pummeling of my limbs. I don’t know how to stand and dance, not even for the Royale. Not to join a caravan of the enslaved, not to travel toward a tomorrow of torture and death. No, not even for you.

“You will dance,” you say, and suddenly violent retching tugs at my throat. Grandfather’s magic must be stuck or broken, or else it’s incredibly cruel. Something is pummeling me, piercing my skin with pinpricks. I don’t know if it’s another time shift, abuse from my attackers, or you trying to rouse me.

I lift a weak wrist and for a brief second there is relief. Then the pain returns—like a million tiny axes chopping at my organs. I throw open a thigh to ward off the trembling. There is no faith or courage here, just feverish desperation as I move through the Royale.

I imagine Grandfather’s unsteady fingers working to bring me back. A gritty moan rustles in my ears. At first I think it’s my voice winding out over the sand flats, but then I realize it is you, reaching down deep to pull out a wailing too gutbucket for your small frame. It is the straining in your voice that hooks me. I tilt my head back and gulp down deep raggedy breaths. I open my mouth; nothing but dry rasping comes out. I work at it anyway. I search for a part of me that is unbruised and untouched by pain. I open my mouth again, struggling to thrust out a mangled yell that can match your wailing. Then the sands of time grind at my bones, and everything goes dark.

“You have the things?”

I blink and look around. My body lurches forward. For a few brief seconds, it feels like I’m hurtling through space. I grab onto a pole overhead, than drag myself back to standing.