The Scorpions of Zahir

by Christine Brodien-Jones

  She looked around quickly, making certain that no one was watching, and dropped the dead scorpion into the tea. It landed with a soft ker-plunk and sank to the bottom of the glass.

  Duncan suddenly gave an earsplitting shriek. Mouth quivering, he pointed to Olivia’s glass. “Sc-scorpion!” he stuttered.

  Zagora watched the scorpion paddle in circles, candlelight bouncing off its shiny black carapace, and her heart started to thump. It was alive! To Zagora’s surprise, Olivia didn’t bat an eye. She looked more disdainful than terrified by finding a scorpion in her tea.

  Leaning over, Olivia hissed into Zagora’s ear: “You’ll pay for this little prank, my dear, don’t think you won’t.”

  Feeling a shiver go through her, Zagora pulled away.

  “It’s getting bigger!” shrilled Duncan. “Look!”

  Zagora looked back at the table and nearly choked. Pincers waving, the scorpion was very much alive—and at least four times its original size, its angular body filling the entire glass.

  In her dream, Zagora was Freya Stark, spirited adventuress and desert navigator, perched high on a camel, swaying to the rhythm of a snake charmer’s flute, plodding across burning sands. A line of camels trailed behind her, followed by Duncan on his bicycle, tires popping. Overhead sailed Nar Azrak, turning the stars an icy blue. The constellations were shaped like oryxes. No need for a map: the Oryx Stone was guiding them straight to Zahir.

  In the distance stood a shadowy figure, face hidden under a brimmed hat: Edgar Yegen. Time was running out, and Zahir was in mortal danger. Galloping across the dunes, Zagora grew frantic as the dream dissolved around her. Edgar looked ghostly, fading into the sand, taking his journal with him. The stone around her neck turned to dust.

  She awoke, startled, finding herself in a bed with white pillows and a thin white blanket. She had no idea where she was—until she heard the whickety-whick rhythm of the ceiling fan, pushing around the dusty air. Marrakech!

  Switching on the bedside lamp, she opened Edgar Yegen’s journal, carefully turning the fragile pages to find the place where she’d left off.

  The Tower of the Enigmas is magnificent, with inscriptions and glyphs and finely detailed reliefs portraying the history of Zahir. Some reliefs are cleverly hidden in the stone architecture of the tower, making them difficult to find. Yesterday I discovered a foretelling I recognized as the Circle of Four, set inside a niche within the tower wall, hidden in the shadows where no light fell. Extraordinary.

  As we leave the tower, the sun beats down upon us, violently bright. From beneath the hood of my burnoose I see the red-walled city of Zahir rising up at the end of a small, narrow valley, even though the city has been gone for centuries. Mohammed and I stop to drink warm goat’s milk, thick with fat, and chew crushed dates mixed with bitter desert herbs. We plan to set up camp near the Palace of Xuloc, which is still buried beneath the sand.

  Zagora couldn’t bear to read any more. It was too painful, knowing that by the end of the journal, Edgar Yegen would be dead.

  Her thoughts turned to Café Meknes and an icy shudder ran through her. She had no idea how the scorpion had come alive or had suddenly grown so large. Duncan said he’d never seen anything so abnormal in his life; their father had quickly paid and hustled them out of the restaurant. Sneaking the scorpion into Olivia Romanesçu’s tea hadn’t been such a clever idea after all. Still, Zagora wasn’t sorry she’d done it.

  She checked her glow-in-the-dark Indiana Jones travel clock: four-thirty a.m.—the perfect time to return the Oryx Stone. Hopping out of bed, she grabbed Duncan’s super-small titanium Teknik-mini flashlight, which she’d borrowed without asking, and opened the door connecting the two rooms. Predictably, her brother lay snoring under the covers. Her father’s bed was empty, but that wasn’t surprising: he often had trouble sleeping and wandered around the house during the night.

  She found her dad’s backpack under his bed and fished out the drawstring pouch. With a pang of regret, she dropped the stone inside. If only she could keep it a little longer.

  As she zipped up the bag, her father’s leather wallet tumbled out. Like many of his possessions, it had a forlorn, ready-to-fall-apart look to it. Opening it up, Zagora rummaged through the credit cards, documents and dirham notes, until she found two interesting items: a photo and a newspaper clipping.

  Curious, she unfolded the clipping and read:

  Pitblade Yegen, a resident of Malta, has been reported missing in the Sahara. Mr. Yegen was last seen in a Piper Cub plane south of Marrakech, where he was carrying out excavations of the buried city of Zahir. Following a three-week search, he remains missing, presumed dead. Mr. Yegen is the grandson of renowned archaeologist Edgar Quince Yegen, who perished in the desert in 1939 after

  The rest of the article was torn off. Edgar Yegen died in the desert after … what? Being attacked by hyenas? Trampled by wild camels? Her father had said Yegen’s demise was untimely, but what did that mean? She had a creepy feeling that Edgar hadn’t met a peaceful death.

  She beamed her light on the photograph: a man on a dune, dressed in white trousers and a flowing shirt, stood with arms outstretched, as if embracing the sky. He had a short beard and wild curly hair. A huge sun loomed up behind him. There was, she thought, something Zenlike about his gaze, the way he looked straight into the lens of the camera. Some cool Batman type of guy. Pitblade Yegen: missing, presumed dead.

  Quickly Zagora put everything away, worried that her dad might show up. Leaving Duncan’s flashlight on his bed stand, she hurried back to her room, where pale gray light filtered in through the open blinds. It was almost dawn! Throwing a shirt over her nightgown, she raced upstairs to the rooftop terrace, hoping to catch the sunrise.

  As she reached the top step, she heard her father’s voice, sounding angry and frustrated. Puzzled, she crouched down to listen.

  “I don’t understand,” he was saying. “You’re a desert guide; this is what you do. So why exactly can’t you take me to Zahir?”

  “It is regrettable,” replied a man with a thick accent. In the muted light Zagora saw a shaggy-haired figure cloaked in brown robes. “Monsieur, Zahir is far too dangerous. Scorpions, dust storms, sinkholes—there is a long history of unpleasant things. You will not find anyone to take you to Zahir, for the reasons I am telling you.”

  “Look, I’ll pay you double.” Her father paced back and forth. “I’ve come all the way from the United States and I don’t intend to turn back now. I’m returning an artifact to a friend, and it is essential that I see him.”

  “I understand what you are saying,” the man replied, but Zagora could tell by the tone of his voice that he didn’t understand at all. “Artifacts fetch excellent price in the casbah.”

  “It’s actually a meteorite. Not quite the same thing.”

  “Very popular, meteorites.” The man pulled up his hood. “I can find a buyer for you.”

  Zagora thought she remembered Duncan saying something about a black market trade in meteorites, but she knew her dad would never get mixed up in anything illegal. He was too honest a guy.

  “It’s not for sale,” snapped her father. Placing his hands on the back of a chair, he said in a weary voice, “All I need is a guide, a desert guide. It’s that simple.”

  The stranger bowed his tousled head and said, “I regret I cannot be of more help. Good day, monsieur.”

  His rough cloak brushed Zagora’s arm as he hurried past her and down the stairs.

  “Hi, Dad,” she said, standing up. “I wasn’t listening in, I was just—”

  “Zagora!” Her father looked surprised. “What are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to see the sun come up.” She walked over and leaned against him, gazing out over the rooftops and terraces, to the kerosene glow of the Djemâa el Fna. The smell of Moroccan soap wafted through the folds of his shirt.

  “Why was that guide here so early?” she asked.

  “Because I want to leave Marrakech. Quick
ly.” She could hear the tension in his voice. “But that’s how things are in Morocco: everything takes longer than you think.”

  “We’re on a quest,” she said with certainty. “And quests take time.”

  “The problem is that Olivia Romanesçu is determined to get her hands on the Oryx Stone. I’m afraid that any minute now her henchmen will turn up here at the hotel.”

  Henchmen. That sounded scary. “We can’t let them take it, Dad,” she said fiercely. “We have to keep the stone safe.” She wondered how much Olivia actually knew about the stone. “Is Olivia Romanesçu dangerous?”

  Her father shook his head. “I have no idea. She talked about saving the world with her medicines, but her experiments sound rather questionable to me.”

  Zagora realized she hadn’t quite grasped all of that conversation. Not surprising, since Olivia had turned out to be a nonstop talker. “Nothing bad is going to happen, Dad, don’t worry,” she said, noticing new wrinkles around his eyes. “Remember Mrs. Bixby?”

  “White hair, round glasses? ‘Reimagine the world,’ she told you kids. Introduced you to Byron and Yeats and had you reading poems in haiku, is that the one?”

  “That’s her.” Zagora smiled, enveloped by a warm feeling. Mrs. Bixby had been, during the school year, a sort of motherly type, advising her on what clothes to wear, encouraging her to be kind and brave and to take on the world—all the things her real mother would have taught her, she was sure.

  “Mrs. Bixby’s motto was ‘Dream big and dare to fail.’ Sometimes you have to take leaps in the dark, even if they’re scary or hard.” For once, Zagora realized, her father was actually listening to her. “Your friend Pitblade was a risk taker, right?”

  Dr. Pym chuckled. “Hmm, I guess Mrs. Bixby had it right.” His voice turned serious. “ ‘From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back.’ Kafka, of course.”

  Zagora nodded. She was determined not to be frightened of anything, not even the elegant, unsettling Olivia Romanesçu.

  The two stood, silent as stone carvings, faces to the wind, watching the red-gold rim of the sun—fajr, the first light of dawn—as it rose over the slumbering streets of Marrakech, over the squares and gardens, the mosques and palaces, over the rose-colored walls. Hearing the muezzin’s haunting call to prayer floating upward across the city, Zagora secretly thanked all the invisible forces at work around her for bringing them there.

  Keeping pace with their father, Zagora and Duncan pushed through the frenetic crowds of the Djemâa el Fna, past vendors selling pottery, peanuts and slippers woven with tiny beads. Stalls were crammed with leather and iron goods, silks and textiles worked by hand. They couldn’t stop to buy anything, though, because their father had to find the car rental agency, and judging by his speed and the way he kept glancing over his shoulder, Zagora was beginning to think he really was frightened of Olivia.

  It seemed to her that her dad was becoming more anxious by the hour. At breakfast he had noticed two men outside the hotel and told her and Duncan to pack up at once. After paying the bill, he had ushered them out the back door, James Bond–style—a thrilling getaway, in Zagora’s opinion, though she hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye to the turtles.

  She was keeping a close eye on the crowd, as well. So far they’d been followed by a water seller wearing crimson pantaloons and ankle bells and holding out a brass cup, and two little boys asking for coins. She fervently hoped she wouldn’t encounter Mina again.

  “See Olivia’s goons anywhere?” asked her brother, blinking at her with pink-rimmed eyes. A small boy with dreadlocks tugged at his sleeve and Duncan handed him a stick of gum.

  “Don’t worry,” she said, not wanting to admit that her nerves were jangled, too. “Once Dad gets the car sorted out, we’re on our way to the desert.”

  “I wish we were going to Essaouira instead.” Duncan kicked an empty soda bottle. “It’s an ancient fortress city by the sea. We’d be safe there. And, oh yeah, there are goats along the roads that climb the argan trees.”

  “Goats in trees?” said Zagora, intrigued. Still, there was no question that Zahir won over tree-climbing goats. The Pyms had an important mission to carry out in the desert.

  “Here we are,” said their father, pointing to a squat pink building at the edge of the marketplace. Over the door she could see a blinking AUTO RENTALS sign in English and Arabic.

  “I’ll wait outside,” she said. “Someone has to stand guard.”

  “Fine, Zagora,” said her father, “but please, don’t wander off.”

  “Copy that,” she replied, using one of Duncan’s expressions. She would never go off and leave them, not when Olivia’s henchmen might burst on the scene at any moment.

  This city sure looks unreal, she thought, hearing the door bang shut. She lapsed into a dreaming silence, watching people and buildings shimmer in the heat, looking as if they might float off into the air. A voice drifted up over the crowd, shouting her name. Spinning around, she saw a skinny figure in blue robes carrying a wooden cage.

  “Mina?” she called out, squinting into the light.

  It was Mina, all right. There was no mistaking her pretzel-thin body, zingy tattoos and fiery hair. Behind her, a troop of kids slapped barefoot through the dust, snickering and tripping one another. One boy was swinging a lizard by its tail.

  “If you’re looking for the stone, I don’t have it!” yelled Zagora, shrinking against the wall, watching Mina’s cage bob up and down.

  At least the Oryx Stone was safe with her dad—well, sort of. When she had returned it early that morning, she’d placed the stone at the bottom of his backpack, where it wouldn’t fall out. Hopefully he hadn’t moved it. Anyway, these kids wouldn’t dare attack her father … would they?

  Mina ran to the window of the car rental office and peered inside. Zagora could smell mint in the air. Inside the cage a bird with a pointed tail was making tseep, tseep, tseep sounds.

  “Why are you renting a car? You are going south?” Mina asked, flicking an insect from her hair. Zagora’s stomach did a little flip when she saw that it was a locust.

  “My dad’s taking us to the desert,” she said excitedly.

  Mina’s face brightened. “My grandmother will be pleased to know this.” Then she added, “I don’t want to be your enemy, Zagora. We can be friends, yes?”

  Zagora frowned. Mina just wants the Oryx Stone, she thought. On the other hand, she’d already made an enemy of Olivia Romanesçu. Mina was volatile, maybe even dangerous, but it might not hurt to have Mina on her side.

  “I’ll think about it, Mina.” She glanced at the gang of urchins, scuffling next to a fruit stand. “But first tell those kids to go away. If you do, I won’t tell my dad they jumped me.”

  Whirling around, Mina shouted to her gang in Arabic. They froze, looking at one another with bewildered expressions; then they scattered. Zagora wondered what Mina had said to them but decided not to ask. It was a relief just to have those kids gone.

  “Look around this city,” said Mina. “Traders, nomads, warlords, thieves, bringing every kind of spice and camel and silken robe.” With one arm she made a sweeping gesture. “Marrakech is the center of the Arab world,” she said proudly. “Centuries ago sultans rode camels out of this city and fought battles in the desert—terrible battles. Sometimes they buried their enemies alive.”

  Zagora nodded, eager to hear more history, though she hoped Mina was mistaken about that last part.

  “Come,” said Mina, pulling her into the crowd.

  “Mina, I can’t,” protested Zagora, “I have to get back—”

  “You must come,” said Mina. “This is very important.”

  With a shrug Zagora followed her. The lure of the marketplace was too irresistible. They threaded past women with kohl-rimmed eyes carrying baskets of medicinal herbs, merchants hawking ostrich eggs and pomegranates, a blacksmith forging pots. As they hurried along, Zagora could hear the tinkling of Mina’s copper ankle bra
celets.

  “You see the Tuareg?” whispered Mina, nodding toward a group of men. Each one wore an indigo-blue cloth, resembling both a veil and a turban, wrapped around the head and face. “These are desert nomad warriors: blue men. They wear the cheche, to protect them from sand—and to keep away evil spirits.” She pronounced the word “shesh.”

  Enthralled, Zagora stared at the Tuaregs’ fierce eyes and dark skin, their long thin legs. Their children had blue-tinted hair worked into fine braids. They all looked dignified, straight-backed and desert-savvy.

  “Here is my grandmother!” said Mina, pulling her past a row of stalls.

  A slight, spare figure in veils and blue robes was crouched beside a small burning fire surrounded by birdcages stacked one on top of the other. The figure turned its head and all Zagora could see was a pair of scorching black eyes.

  Mina embraced her grandmother and handed over her wooden cage. That’s some cool granny, thought Zagora, noticing the scorpion tattoos on her hands. The old woman unhooked the door to one of the cages, setting free a burst of silvery birds. Watching them swirl around their heads, Zagora thought how at last she was seeing good omens.

  “Grandmother’s name is Noor. It means ‘light’ in Arabic,” said Mina. “I do not know her age, but she is terribly old. Her bones crack when she moves.”

  Noor sounded kind of mysterious, like Zagora’s own name. “Hello, nice to meet you,” she said politely, wishing she could recall the words in Arabic. “I’m Zagora.”

  From behind the shadowy veils, Noor glared at her. The woman’s eyes held a mix of something ruthless, wild and powerful—and maybe something not quite human. Noor pushed aside her veil, revealing a gaunt, weather-lined face the color of burnt copper, as creased as one of Zagora’s father’s maps, and a nose pierced with a gold ring. Zagora saw with surprise a tattoo above the woman’s eyes: it was an exact replica of the scorpion on Mina’s forehead.