Vessel

“What is?”

“You can laugh.”

“Of course I can laugh,” she said. “Life simply hasn’t been very amusing lately, with the exception of the lizard in my aunt’s hair.”

“Your aunt wears lizards in her hair?”

She told him about the lizard that had graced Aunt Sabisa’s hair on the morning of the summoning ceremony and how she had stomped around like a human sandstorm. To her surprise, he laughed, filling the tent with untamed joy. They continued to trade stories and laugh until both of them sank into sleep.

* * *

Liyana snapped awake. She blinked once to prove to herself that her eyes were open. She was enveloped by darkness. She felt a warm body pressed against her side. Her cheek lay against the cool tarp of a tent wall. Usually she slept between her cousins, and for an instant she could not comprehend how she had rolled across them to reach the wall. But then she realized that the deep, steady breathing beside her was from a male.

Korbyn.

Like a sandstorm, memory swept through her, and she felt as choked as if she had swallowed sand. She forced herself to breathe evenly as she focused on a sliver of moonlight that gleamed through the door flap. She was aware of how close the man . . . boy . . . god . . . next to her was. She felt his warmth beside her, a sharp contrast to the chill of the tarp. She listened to him breathe. So close, she could smell his skin. He smelled of spices, like an expensive tea.

Still asleep, Korbyn cried out. She felt his body stiffen. His arm, splayed across her, tensed. She flattened against her side of the tent as he made a sound like an animal’s cry. He flailed again, and his arm hit the opposite side of the tent. “Korbyn?” she whispered in the darkness. Louder: “Korbyn!”

The whimpered cry ceased. His voice was soft in the darkness. “You woke me.”

“Forgive me,” she said. “But you were dreaming.”

“I am unused to dreams. In the Dreaming, there is no need for sleep, and therefore there are no dreams.” His voice was conversational, even loud. Outside, the desert was silent except for the wind. “I suppose that is ironic, given the name. Tell me of your dreams, Liyana.”

She thought of the jumble of images that cluttered her dreams. Often she saw Jidali shimmying up a date palm tree. Sometimes he fell. She dreamed about dancing, and she’d wake with her blankets tangled around her legs. Once, she dreamed of a sea of hip-high wheat that bowed in the breeze. “I dream about my family,” Liyana said. “But if you mean bad dreams . . . in those, I dream I’m alone.”

He didn’t reply with details of his own dream. She wished she dared to ask. She wished she could see his face. If he were family, she would have comforted him. She listened to him breathe. Tentatively she said, “Stories say that sand wolves were born from bad dreams.”

She heard him chuckle.

Emboldened, she continued, “Long ago, the rains didn’t come to the hunting grounds of the Jackal Clan. Days were filled with thirst and hunger, and nights were filled with dreams of death. When the jackal god came to them, he filled the wells with water and brought the gazelle to the hunters. Days were filled with water and food, but nights were still filled with dreams of death—the memories of the time with no rain.” She hesitated. She used to tell this story to Jidali when he woke from a nightmare, but Korbyn wasn’t a child. He didn’t stop her, though, and the silence expanded until she wanted to fill it. “One night, the jackal god bade his people to fall asleep, and then he gathered up their dreams and threw them into a storm. There, stirred by the wind, they mixed with the sand and became the sand wolves. And that is why we fear the sand wolves and why they continue to plague us—they are our nightmares and they want to return to us. But they cannot leave their wind to hurt us, just as your dreams cannot leave your mind to hurt you.”

She fell silent. He didn’t speak.

Searching for something to say, Liyana said, “My little brother loves that story.”

“In the absence of truth, a story will do,” Korbyn said.

“What is the truth?” she asked. She wished she could suck the words back in. It wasn’t her place to ask to hear divine truths. She wondered what sort of secrets were in his mind—and what kind of horrors. He had seen generations of humans with their flaws and their failures. She wondered how she measured up against the thousands of lives that he had seen come and go.

“Once, there was a lizard who was obsessed with the truth . . . ,” he said.

She knew this one, about a lizard who learned the value of a delicate lie and thus mastered the art of camouflage, but she let him tell it anyway. If he did not want to share his thoughts and secrets with her, that was his right.

But if he had a nightmare again, then god or not, she would wake him.

* * *

At dawn Liyana rolled up the tent. She didn’t speak of dreams or wolves, but she watched Korbyn as he stretched on top of a dune. He folded his body over, laid his palms in the sand, and balanced himself in a handstand. She checked over their supplies.

“Our food won’t last more than two days,” she commented. She shook the waterskins. Some water sloshed in one, but the other was empty. “Water won’t last the day. That has to be the priority.”

He flipped upright and executed a bow. “Your wish is my command.”

She blinked. She hadn’t meant that as an order. Oh, goddess, have I offended him? She thought of how familiar she’d acted with him last night, waking him from his sleep and swapping stories in the darkness. Had she overstepped then, too? Liyana dropped to her knees. “My continued lapses in discretion would be a source of vast embarrassment to my family and clan if they knew. Please pardon my behavior.” She bowed her head and hoped that had been enough to cover the myriad of offenses she was certain she’d caused over the last day.

When he didn’t answer, she raised her head. He looked amused. “There is a fine line between deference and sarcasm,” he said. “You leaped over it.”

Liyana winced. “I was never supposed to meet a deity! I don’t know how you want me to behave.” She noticed that he had packed the tent and was hefting the pack onto his shoulders. “At least let me carry that.”

He refused, skipping backward as she reached toward the pack. “This body is as strong and healthy as yours.”

“But you’re a god!”

“I never asked for your deference, Liyana. So long as you do nothing to hinder our goal, you may behave however you wish. If you want to howl like a wolf, I won’t stop you. If you want to cross the desert on all fours, please be my guest. If you want to pass the journey by telling bawdy stories . . .” He paused. “Do you know any bawdy stories?”

She couldn’t help smiling. “I don’t know you nearly well enough for those.”

“Aha! So that means you do know some!” Carrying the pack, he began to walk across the sands. She scooped up the waterskins and followed. “So, what will it take to get to know me well enough? Do you want to hear about the first time I inhabited a vessel and how I failed to take into account the urgency of certain bodily needs?”

Liyana laughed. “Oh no.”

“Oh yes. Almost all deities pee themselves at least once in the middle of performing a miracle.” He strode across the dunes, and she matched his pace.

“Even Bayla?” she asked.

“She was summoning water from deep underground to create a new well. It is a difficult task. It’s far easier to fill an existing well because the water is already present. Far more difficult to coax water into the bedrock of an area without it. At any rate, the task required fierce concentration over an extended length of time.” He paused. “It is a blessing that you won’t be able to tell Bayla that I told you this. She is far more concerned about her dignity than I am.”

Her smile faded. “What is Bayla like?”

“Glorious! Also punctual.”

Liyana nearly smiled again, but it was difficult when she couldn’t help thinking of how Bayla should have come the night before last. She had not been punctual then.

“She values order and cultivates precision. Her section of the Dreaming has smooth, unblemished sand, and