Month 2020 Volume 10 No 5
Desert Locks
by
Katherine Quevedo
Through the fine mesh of my mask, I studied the woman strolling through the marketplace and wondered if she knew where I could find one of my people. Her bald head reminded me of a brown hen’s egg. Her face resembled those of the gleaners all around us, eyes lost in an expanse of forehead without eyebrows to anchor them. But she wasn’t a gleaner; she lacked their paranoia, as if she had no hair roots left to worry about anyone stealing one of her strands for a spell. Her loose robe bared her arms, and she handled the flutes, rugs, and other wares in each tent with ease.
I envied her for a moment. Then I reminded myself how weak those who resorted to unnatural hair removal were. They dared separate something sacred from the body, rendering it lifeless and impure. Nail trimmings, shed hairs, and flakes of dead skin were inevitable, of course. Cutting was one thing, as I did with my beard, but to pull out the very roots? Shameful.
As the woman drew closer, she tried to ignore me like all the others did, although I stood out in this town like a kiwifruit among figs, a fuzzy import among all that smoothness. They’d rather disregard me than risk vexing me so I’d cast a spell with my own hair. Never mind that using one’s own hair, especially while still connected to the body, ached more than any other way of casting.
“Excuse me,” I said to the woman, just loudly enough that she could hear me above the hagglers and sellers.
Her lashless eyes narrowed. “Do I know you, sir?” We both knew she didn’t. But at least she acknowledged me.
“My name is Salim,” I said. “I couldn’t help but notice you’re not a gleaner.”
She eyed my clingy garb, my gloves, my skullcap. “And I can see that you are a shrouder. So you can see what I am not, and I can see what you are. Which do you think is more useful?” She started to move away.
“Forgive me,” I said—which halted her—“but I must know. How are you not afraid that some stray hair will grow back and fall into another’s hands?”
“Why? Are you thinking of freeing yourself of the burden of your hair at last?” Her sarcasm indicated she believed I’d sooner protest outside of whatever place had made her so confident, so unnatural. “If you’re looking to steal a stray hair or two, Salim, you won’t find one on me. You’ll have to find another source for your magic.” She gestured toward a shady row crawling with urchins hocking camels’ hair—which could only help spur another camel faster—and charlatans trying to pass off the useless hair of the dead as magical strands of the living.
“Please,” I said, “I’m only after answers. I know you don’t get many shrouders around here, and I hear that the ones who do come have gone missing.”
She waved as she might swat at a fly. “I don’t concern myself with such things.” She moved to leave, then stopped and glanced at me with a spark of curiosity. “If you think your kind is being targeted, why are you out here in such a public place? Do you feel safer in a crowd?”
“I’m not so sure we’re being targeted. I wonder if, maybe, those other shrouders ended up converting and are too ashamed to return to us. So they begin a new life.” It was common, expected, for a shrouder to seek out into the world, to explore and share our ways, but we always returned to our hometowns, at least to visit. We always kept our roots. But fewer and fewer seemed to come back these days.
“Is that what you’re looking for, Salim? A new life?”
“No. I’m just looking for my people out here. Even one. I have to know.” Had they turned to the same magic as her? I doubted she used to be one of us. No onetime shrouder could walk so carefree; they’d always slightly hunch their shoulders, faintly furrow the emptiness between former eyebrows, or bear some other trace of guilt. I’d seen it many times in new gleaners.
The woman rubbed her scalp and eyed the crowded stalls around us. She sighed and lowered her voice. “There’s a procedure, but I won’t talk about it in such a public place. Come with me.”
Was this the first step that had led other shrouders astray? I didn’t fear temptation, and certainly not abduction, not by someone so dismissive of me. I craved answers, so I followed her.
#
After a short, silent walk from the marketplace, we reached her eggplant-colored tent. We shrouders mostly lived in rocky abodes carved into cliffsides, homes so different from the blatantly impermanent dwellings of gleaners, who cared so little about rootedness. She held the entry flap open for me, followed me in, and laced it shut behind us to block out the late morning sun.
“It must be mercilessly hot under all that cloth,” she said, eyeing my clothing. “Are you able to drink in the presence of another?” She gestured in front of her face to denote my mask.
“Yes.” I unfastened the slit over my mouth.
“Very well.” She bade me sit down on a cushion while she grabbed a carafe of pink liquid. She kept an eye on me while pouring the drink into two short glasses with silver rims. I inhaled the sweet scent. Rose sharbat. The fragrance of sugar cane and flower petals delighted me, especially after the over-spiced, sweaty air of the marketplace.
While she stood, I reached under my mask and skullcap and raked out a few loose hairs that had itched my forehead. She watched me glance around for an Izeera box so I could dispose of them. None. Not tucked under perfume bottles or between cushions. None stashed behind the wooden bowl of dates. Every other home I’d been in, whether a shrouder’s or a gleaner’s, kept at least one Izeera box in each room. I had my own travel version. I pulled it out, stuffed the hairs into it, and pressed the amber-colored circle of horn on top to destroy them.
Before the invention of Izeera boxes some years ago, we had no quick, easy way to destroy our hairs. I recalled when puberty had caused new hair to sprout all over me, my face, armpits, all the way down, front and back. Fear had brimmed in my mother’s eyes for her only child growing more vulnerable to magic, while my father’s eyes welled with sorrow at having gone through a similar change. My own body had betrayed me.
Then later on, the first time I’d held an Izeera box, my head had spun with the thrill of safely disposing of my sheddings, the simple press of horn against my fingertip.
Now, the woman plopped herself onto a cushion across from me while I tucked the box away. “I’m no longer a slave to those things,” she said. She handed me a glass of sharbat. I longed to ask what she expected guests to do if they ever forgot their personal boxes, but I dared not criticize her hospitality. “I suppose,” she said, “it’s harmless enough for me to speak in generalities about the procedure.”
“If you please.”
She sipped from her glass and nodded. “It’s new. It’s permanent. I won’t have to pluck ever again.” As relieved as her words sounded, she gulped the rest of her sharbat down far too quickly.
“What was it like?” I asked gently.
She squirmed on the cushion. “It wasn’t an easy decision. They interviewed me and had me come back a week later. Then they led me into a back room.” She shook her head.
I sipped the sharbat nervously while she described the procedure, only in generalities, focusing mostly on the pain. Worse, she said, than the time her cousin had grabbed a fistful of her head hairs to make her eyes burn and tear up so that she’d look guilty for something he’d done.
When she was finished, I leaned forward, set my glass aside, and said, “Please, I must go there. I must know if they’ve seen any other shrouders.”
“They wouldn’t let a shrouder anywhere near there. They’d think you were up to no good.”
“Not if you, a trusted customer, took me there.”
“You think they’d trust me, Salim, but how do I know I can trust you?” Even witho
ut eyebrows to lower, she looked guarded.
“I came away with you, didn’t I, even when I know my kind is disappearing in these parts? And I have taken your drink. Clear gestures of trust.”
“More like signs of foolishness.”
“Only the malicious would consider trust a folly,” I countered. “You’ve shared a fair amount about your experience in the procedure with me. Am I foolish enough to learn your name at least, too?”
Her face relaxed into a small smile. “Alia.”
“Alia.” I thought for a moment. “Have you ever seen a shrouder’s face?”
She smirked. “Of course not.” Then she realized my intention and grew serious.
First I peeled off my gloves and flexed my fingers to ease myself into such vulnerability. Then I pulled off my mask and skullcap and unrolled my hair. With the sharbat’s aroma long faded, I saw her inhale tentatively, as though she didn’t believe the common knowledge that we shrouders perfumed our hair whenever we combed out loose strands in privacy. Realization crossed her face, and she leaned forward to breathe in the long-forgotten scent of thriving, growing hair.
She reached a quivering hand toward my face. I flinched, but then I saw her eyes filled with such wonder, begging me for trust, that I held still and allowed her fingertip to brush the skin below my right eye. She pulled her hand back, index finger pointing up. A small black eyelash lay upon it.
“I remember,” she said, “seeing my niece the day she was born, her tiny head covered in fuzz.” Tears filled her eyes. “She had faint little eyebrows.” She sniffled. “Eyelashes.” She covered her face with her free hand and cried. Her other hand offered me the eyelash. When I took it, my bare fingertips touched hers just long enough for me to remember how soft—how joyously natural and soft—another’s hand could be.
With my eyelash, I cast a spell to stop her tears. My upper right eyelid twinged. Before she could look up, I wiped the residue of my pulverized eyelash off my finger.
“I’ll take you to their headquarters,” she said, “but I cannot get you in. Not even if you were a gleaner. There’s only one way they’ll talk to you.”
My heart sank as she spoke dreaded words.
“You’ll have to volunteer for their procedure.”
I took a deep breath. Perhaps this was the dreaded first step that had doomed other shrouders. But doomed them to what? My cheeks burned with shame that my first thought had jumped to betrayal. By Alia. Or by me, inviting the temptation of this procedure.
“What are you thinking about?” she asked.
I sighed. “The misery of a world without trust. One where you have to wear masks, or alter your appearance day after day, where you can never let your guard down and every stranger is more a threat than a potential friend.” I couldn’t meet her eyes with that last word, for fear of reading rejection in them. She’d given me a lead to follow, and finally curiosity overpowered me. “Very well. Please take me to them.”
#
We bobbed atop camels on our way to the hidden complex, moving farther from the city’s domed buildings and jewel-colored tents and deeper into desert sands shuffling in the hot wind. With no hair or mask to hide her face, Alia had to watch me outright through the corner of her eye, knowing full well I could keep a more covert eye on her. She’d seemed trustworthy enough from the start, but now, with each swaying camel’s step pulling us farther from civilization, doubt eroded my tender dune of confidence.
She turned to me, attempting to shield her eyes from the blowing sand with her arm. “You mustn’t tell anyone about this place,” she said. “And certainly don’t tell anyone I brought you there. Especially not the worker who interviews you.”
“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what sorts of questions they ask?”
She shook her head. Just then, a gust made her blink furiously and cough. She squeezed her eyes shut and pressed the heels of her hands over them. She lowered her arms, still blinking fast and often.
I used a strand on the back of my neck to cast a spell to clear her eyes. Since the hair was still in me when it disintegrated, unlike the eyelash, it fired a sharp pang into my nape. I stifled a cry. I’d forgotten the excruciation of casting on an unshed hair. Through the corner of my mesh-masked eye, I saw Alia blink again, this time in surprise, and glance at me, wondering, no doubt, whether I’d helped cleanse the invasive sand from her vision.
Yes, this woman had freed herself of hair and its accompanying paranoia, upkeep, and disposal, but she’d also lost her ability to gift a spell to someone without harming another person. My mother always foreswore using magic, saying we all had enough other ways to hurt others and ourselves. I’d never quite understood why she took that stance, not when it could be a gift in the right circumstances. Now Alia’s face became a blend of tension in the upper half, slackness in the lower. She looked deep in thought, perhaps reflecting on the permanence of what she’d done to herself. The things we put our bodies through.
“Salim.”
“Yes?”
“You won’t actually go through with the procedure, will you?” Concern crept into her voice, and for once I felt the recipient, not the cause.
“No, no,” I assured her. “I’m just going to take advantage of the interview. I’ll let them ask me a couple of their standard questions, then I’ll start interviewing them.”
“You won’t get the answers you’re looking for. These people hold their tongues tighter than purses. They won’t like the fact you know their location. After I passed their interview, when I came back for my appointment, they covered my head with a heavy cloth while bringing me in and out of the procedure room. And there was a door in the back corner with the biggest lock I’ve ever seen.” She pressed her lips together as though she’d said too much.
When a large, flat-topped rock appeared on the horizon, she exhaled in relief and pointed at it. “There.”
“Inside the rock?”
“Yes. There’s a date tree not too far from it where we can tie our camels.”
We? Our camels? I hadn’t expected her to be willing to stick around.
“You don’t have to come,” I said. “I can’t miss it from here. And the main road isn’t too far back. I’ll find my way just fine.”
She looked skeptical. “I’ll at least feed your camel while you go in.”
I considered insisting that she needn’t bother, but I was too grateful for her company. I nodded.
We reached the lone date tree in the shadow of a dune. Alia dismounted and tied the reins to the trunk. I followed suit. The top of the rock seemed to leer with disapproval at me over the sand. I wondered how it would look to a shrouder who came here to forsake our beliefs, our way of life. I shuddered.
“You’re on your own from here,” Alia said, eying the rock. “I dare not let them see I brought you.” She pulled out a goatskin sack and reached toward my camel.
“I can’t thank you enough, Alia. For everything.”
She swatted the air, shooing me onward. “Go, before either of us changes our mind.”
As I scaled the dune, layers of my confidence and curiosity slipped away like the sand beneath my feet. Yet my quest for the shrouders—yes, even former shrouders—spurred me on. At the top I saw the entire rock, including, if I squinted into the shadow, a tall door tucked between two ridges. If I hadn’t known to look for an entrance, I’d never have noticed it.
Just before I disappeared over the dune, I heard Alia cry, “Good luck!” I turned and waved, then made my way through the shadow toward the entrance.
Up close, my head came about halfway up the door. I knocked, and a moment later a tiny window opened and a pair of lashless eyes scrutinized me. They disappeared, and right before the window swung shut, I caught the word “shrouder.” Then the door opened. A woman in a dark yellow cloak like honey ushered me in. Her whole body was bald, except for a prominent circular patch on the right side of her head from which sprouted a mass of long, thick hairs. She led me to an unado
rned room with two stools in the middle and two doors at the far end, one marked “Procedure.” We sat facing each other.
“Did you come here alone?” she asked. Her gaze, intense and cold, easily penetrated the mesh of my mask. I got the feeling that she, like me, prided herself on reading people.
“No,” I answered truthfully.
Her eyes widened in stern alarm. Her fists clenched, and I could sense strong musculature under her robe.
“The camel I came on is outside,” I said. Technically not a lie.
She looked relieved. And unamused. “How did you find this place?”
“How do any of your clients find this place?” I countered.
She smiled. My answer seemed to satisfy her. “And have you told anyone about your intention in coming here today?”
I thought of Alia. Technically, she didn’t fully understand what had driven me here. Her kind was poised to increase as news of this procedure spread. My kind was dwindling. “No.”
She raised the area where her eyebrows used to be. “Really? You’re not worried about anyone shunning you back home?”
I shook my head.
“Very well. We’ll take you.”
It was that easy? Now it was my turn to raise my eyebrows. Perhaps if I set up an appointment, they’d cooperate more in answering my questions now. “Well,” I stammered, “I suppose I should be free next week.”
She smiled as though I’d unintentionally said something funny. “No, we’ll take you now.” She signaled toward a curtain, and two bald, emerald-clad women emerged, each as tall and solid as the first one. They’d obviously undergone the procedure. Their skin was as bald as Alia’s, no sign of stubble. They held a sack between them—a sack big enough for a head.
My heart raced. “You don’t even know if I can pay for this,” I blurted.
“You’ll pay,” the interviewer replied, and her smile widened.
I stood and raised my palms. “No, no, I still have some questions before…”
“My attendants will walk you through everything.”
I took a step back toward the door—the exit.
Desert Locks Page 1
