The salt flats hummed with the sizzle and snap of cicadas. Crickets cowered in sparse patches of limp, yellowed grass, hiding from the heat of the day, chirping weak notes while waiting for the stars to come out. Prairie weeds and dead wildflowers had dried to paper-thin strips that tore underfoot and ripped off in sun-ripe breezes—tumbling, disintegrating, becoming white dust.
It was so hot and dry we might as well be walking the bricks of a kiln. The back of my dress was soaked in sweat. I felt my skin blister, peeling off in layers, floating away from me like spider silk. There were burns on my hands and along my hairline, even shaded beneath my bonnet. I itched like I was covered in fire ants.
Not a river for one hundred miles. Not a rain cloud, not a puddle. I’d convinced myself that there must be an oasis in the center of this desert—rising like the great tree of Eden—tall, lush, and green, dripping with recent rain showers, its deep roots twisting out like a spiral mosaic in white sands. But this was just wishful thinking. And if we ever found that tree, there’d be a nest of snakes infesting its knotty branches, I was sure of it.
It didn’t matter. There were no trees on the hardpan. No brush, no scrub. There was nothing at all but miles and miles of dust. And us.
The sad and tattered remains of the wagon train that left Thompson’s Harbor trudged through the desert at a crawling pace. Calling it a train was laughable now, so many of the others gone, lost, or dead. Only three of us were left, with two horses, a pair of oxen, and one rambling, near empty wagon—fraying at the canvas edges. The arid salt flats swallowed the prairie from horizon to horizon. Our last barrel of water had been dry for hours. Maybe days? Or even weeks, which shouldn’t be possible. However long it had been, I couldn’t remember my last sip, and my throat burned when I tried to think on it.
We were going to die, all of us.
As the hot wind whipped my calico skirt around my ankles, I stood by the lone wagon and those thirsty oxen, their mouths white with foam. My knuckles were white too, clutched around a braided lead rope that I was holding like a lifeline. My husband, Josiah, was beside me and the Colonel rode near us, both likewise dusted and salted. Josiah was lifting his free hand up slowly, as a visor against the glare of that relentless sun. The red-bearded, hot-tempered Colonel was sitting straight in his saddle and had his finger on the trigger of his rifle.
We had faced thirst and despair, in-fighting that drove us mad enough to break off from the main stem too many miles back, abandoning the known roads, following a sun that never set. With each mile forward, we left more of our belongings behind on the trail—Josiah’s books, his father’s clock, a cedar trunk with all of my linens, kitchen pots, and iron skillets—too heavy to cart any farther after things turned dire. But now we faced something else.
A Stranger was standing not more than thirty feet ahead.
The horses smelled the man before they saw him and pulled back against their reins, spooked. Taking their cue from the horses, the pair of oxen stopped their plodding, painful progress, and snorted wearily. I watched the Colonel look around wildly, raising his rifle on impulse, too willing to shoot first and ask questions later.
Josiah stroked his gray mare’s neck, “Whoa, girl,” calming her down in that same low voice that had always worked wonders on me.
Through a whirl of desert wind, I saw the Stranger standing on the cracked earth ahead, bare-footed, bare-breasted, gaze on the dust swirling across the flats like tumbleweed.
He looked human. They always lookhuman, don’t they? But he’d stolen his skin from old bones in the ground, sewing it on in patches. His face was sun-bronzed, his hair as black as ink, wearing breechclout over buckskin leggings and little else. I saw great wings folded on his broad back and irises so milky and pale that he might be mistaken for a blind man. Not an angel…no, not that. Instinctively, I knew he wasn’t there to save us. The thoughts in my frantic mind were all loose things, falling like stones into a pit, but they caught on the ancient name of Nephilim, and soon fixated on the image of Cain bashing his brother’s head in with a rock.
In the orphanage I grew up in, the sisters favored stories of wrath and retribution. For as many times as I heard their names spoken, Cain and Abel might have been my older brothers, ever fighting, ever seething, locked in a wrestle of spit, sweat and muscle, a desperate struggle in the fraught moments before one pinned the other down. At night, I smelled the smoke of burnt herbs and felt the slick blood of Abel’s little lamb on my hands.
I knew we’d taken the wrong road. I told Josiah that, sitting up in our shared tent the night before, unable to sleep. We whispered together by lantern light, sharing misgivings, dancing around our darkest fears while failing to touch, putting distance between us that was never there before. He couldn’t argue with me. He’d had his own reservations from the beginning. I saw the glower carved in his rugged features before we set off from Thompson’s Harbor.
But he hadn’t smiled since we fled our home, leaving behind the sound of gunfire in the fields and the charred and smoldering remains of our little house. Refugees and runaways don’t have the same choices as those who still have a home.
He hated the Colonel from the very first meeting. He hated his grandstanding and tall tales, the way he combed back his thick mane of red hair. But we were desperate and the weather turned quickly in this part of the country. I told Josiah we could stay by the river, that we could make it on our own. He said that was foolish talk and that these were the deadlands. The ghosts of those who failed to make it would reach inside us and pull our souls out by the roots if we lingered too long. The only way out was to go straight through.
But why did you trust him to do it? You knew he couldn’t be trusted.
We were lost, Annabelle. We needed a guide or we wouldn’t make it out of the desert alive. We would have died.
Would that have been the worst thing?
Now I watched the cords in the Stranger’s powerful arms tighten as he clenched his fists. He didn’t look up, his milk-white eyes searching the dust. Another snort of the oxen or a sideways step from one of the horses might have frightened him away. But none of us took a step.
I kept myself still through stubbornness, though my bones ached from days of walking and worry, and I was sure I’d crumple to the ground if I took in one breath too deep. I allowed myself to slowly lick my dry, parched lips but my tongue snagged on the fissures and cracks. I tasted the iron flavor of blood in my mouth and did my best not to cringe.
The Stranger bent down slowly, so slowly, and feather-brushed at the dust, as if cleaning off the face of a mirror. Then, he went deeper, penetrating the surface. He dug into the hard earth with two fingers. Out of crusty sand, he picked a ripe, red cherry. Not a drop of water for miles…and yet he brushed off that scarlet fruit and popped it in his mouth like it was the most natural thing in the world.
Juice, wet and red, stained his teeth and lips. And it was this bizarre sight that finally shook us from the spell we found ourselves trapped in.
“Which way to water, boy?” the Colonel demanded, his tone overtly threatening and the barrel of his gun now leveled at the Stranger’s head. He showed his worst self by breaking the silence. He had as much grace as the gold bricks he crisscrossed the country for, or the bawdy jokes he cracked over our campfire. He was blunt and unapologetic, by his own admission. He said God made men and women to balance out the universe, but apparently forgot to even up the scales.
“But at least he made you pretty, Missus…”
He tried to kiss me at the last river crossing and I bruised the heel of my hand while striking his strong jaw and forcing him back with a cry, pushing at his solid weight and finding a wall that wouldn’t budge.
Josiah watched me hit the Colonel and said nothing. He watched what came next and did nothing. Because we were lost, and because he wanted us to escape the desert alive. We were at the other man’s mercy and there was nothing to be done about it.
I loved Josiah. I still love Josiah. But I could never forgive him for that.
The Stranger looked at me. Not at Josiah, nor at the scowling Colonel. His pale eyes held mine for the span of a few seconds, no more. With our gaze locked, I saw crayfish wriggling over themselves in the riverbed. Spiders in the bread bowl, scorpions in the baby’s cradle. All that stoicism I’d practiced my whole life, put on layer by layer since I was a child, started coming loose. It was like the rapid unraveling of a lace tablecloth, falling into a pile of string on the floor. I was completely exposed.
I couldn’t stop him.
I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
All my secrets seemed to rise up, summoned at his command. Even ones I forgot I was keeping. I saw my cruelest fears laid bare and naked: that we would never find water, that we had wandered too far into the desert and into a wasteland that wasn’t on any surveyor’s map, that we would die out here and our bodies would never be found, our souls too, lost forever in a place without trees or roots, or night and stars, where the God I knew by name might not even exist. Or perhaps exist, but in a wilder and stranger form than the priests and sisters that boxed him into gold statutes and stone cathedrals might ever expect.
After Cain murdered his brother with a rock, he fled into a wilderness like this…didn’t he?
I gave a strangled cry and, with much effort, managed to shut my eyes, if only for a moment.
It was enough.
The Stranger ran, his massive wings unfurling. He took flight in the haze but struggled to gain altitude, skimming the flatlands beneath an oppressive thermal.
With a loud, “Haw!” the Colonel urged his horse after it, laughing manically into the chase, heedless of how strange this all was, or how his hunt might end.
He’d kill the Stranger, scalp him for the sport of it, or die trying.
With grimness, Josiah swung up on his own horse, unwilling to stand by and do nothing this time.
“Josiah!” I cried out, taking a few frantic steps forward, abandoning my post and dropping the oxen’s lead rope into the sand. Despite it all, I didn’t want us to be separated. I didn’t want to be left alone here.
Please don’t leave me…
“Stay here,” he said, turning his horse towards the swirling tunnel of dust the Colonel left in his wake.
“Josiah, please!” I managed, dread-worn and half-knowing I’d never see him again.
With vehemence in his gravelly voice, he promised, “I’ll be back!”
He’ll come back, I told myself. Josiah would come back. If I made that promise, I’d come back. No matter the danger, no matter the cost. And we were cut from the same cloth, him and I. Didn’t I know it from the first time he spoke?
Do you trust me?
I don’t trust anyone.
Smart girl.
But I wanted to. I would swear it to whatever lesser kings ruled this desolate place. The Stranger must know it. While rifling through my thoughts, he must have seen that one too. A cherry in the dust that said Annabelle loved and trusted Josiah—always. But would the Stranger care? Would he understand why it mattered?
If they tracked the creature down, I hoped he would tell Josiah that. Or else tear out his spine before telling him anything at all. Before telling him that…the longer we trudged through this desert, the less I remembered about anything that came before.
I couldn’t remember why we’d left the main stem. I couldn’t remember where we’d come from or where we were going, or if we’d had friends on this trail—or children? Beside that cedar trunk, did I leave behind a basket with swaddling clothes inside? And was the Colonel the villain in our story? Or was that…
…me?
I couldn’t remember anything but picking up a sharp-edged rock from the riverbed and turning it over and over in my hand. The silver moon was high and the men were sleeping. I lifted the hem of my skirt and waded out of the river, trudging up the short distance to our camp. I tightened my grip on the rock in my hand and decided on vengeance. Because I was lost. Because, no matter what, I could no longer make it out of this desert alive.
It’s just…I thought I’d know better when I was already dead. I thought I’d find forgiveness or a reckoning.
What did Cain find in his wilderness? The sisters never told us. And I never thought to ask.
The salty white wind nibbled at my ankles, circling them like snakes as I watched the men ride off, digging my fingers into the skirt of my dusty, calico dress.
