I awoke during the night to the desert incantation. Little Brother slept peacefully. I dressed and left our quarters to search for the source of the drone. At the end of the hall, a door stood ajar, its entrance illuminated by torches. Inside, lifeless bodies lay on slabs. The veiled women, such beautiful creatures of a strange world, stood at the center of the room, chanting as they carved open one of the men. Blood flowed down sluices and collected in vats. With great precision, they removed bilious green and blue entrails—a rainbow of innards—then dropped them into buckets. They drove prongs into his eyes, then pulled sideways, tearing apart a face once recognizable and likely loved. The sound of cracking bone sickened me as the skull split like a soft-shelled nut. Broad knives slathered brain onto metal plates as if it were a delicacy of this moonstruck land. I gasped in horror, then shouted, “No, this cannot be!” The women paused and glanced in my direction, then resumed their atrocities as if I didn’t exist. They stuffed the empty body with sawdust and pungent oils and sewed it together, then hung it on suspended hooks. These were the cruel women of the desert—the terrible society of which Augur spoke.
I hurried to our room to wake Brother and tell him of the abominations witnessed, and that we should quickly leave. He was gone. I sat thinking what to do when amorous moans and laughter penetrated the walls. I recognized my brother’s voice. He was safe, romancing one of the women. Shortly thereafter came a knock on the door and our attendant entered. I told her what horrors I saw.
“They are the visions of weary desert wanderers,” she said.
“’Tis not true. I saw clearly.”
She offered a potion to soothe my nerves. I feared it to be poison and refused. She lifted her veil and drank from the cup, then placed it in my hands.
“No harm shall come to you.”
I awoke the next morning to the sound of sickly groans. Little Brother lay salivating in his bed. His condition rapidly deteriorated—lips parched by fever and limbs rendered useless by some sudden and terrible malady. Our attendant knelt beside his body.
Well written fable. Thoughtful ideas about man search for things of lesser value that hide more important issues. Do we suffer little deaths while searching for the unattainable? What should we be doing instead? What is living all about? Thoroughly enjoyable and thoughtful read.
Beautifully written