by Vi Grim
Saleem carefully opened the envelope and read the beautifully scripted letter. He suddenly looked old, frown lines furrowing his brow. He called a meeting of his key camel herders and the Desert Riders. They sat in a tight circle, arguing under a cloud of cigarette smoke. Many cups of mint tea later they finally reached agreement and Saleem hitched a ride back into the town of Fada with the old truck, arriving back a few hours later with two scruffy, rough looking men. Introducing them to the caravan, he said, ‘These are our guides, they’ll take us to Gweni-Fada.’
The camp was packed up immediately and the guides led the caravan through the stunning landscape. They walked in silence, everyone nervous and on edge. Emily had heard of Gweni-Fada before but couldn’t remember what was so special about it.
‘Gweni-Fada?’ she asked.
‘The legend of the desert,’ Ijju reminded her. ‘The Book of Light.’
‘No one who has tried to get it has survived.’ said Emily.
‘Exactly,’ replied Ijju, biting her lip.
Winding their way up an old streambed, they entered the meteorite crater and set up camp on the edge of the sandy floor. The place had an eerie feel about it.
‘Nobody ever comes here,’ said Ijju, ‘It’s a sacred place. They say the pyramid is buried in the sands. Those that have come in search for it have been taken by the quicksand or the whirlwinds.’
As if on cue, a dust devil swirled around the crater.
‘That’s why the guides are so expensive,’ continued Ijju. ‘Their families demanded payment up front, just in case!’
They collected all the firewood they could find and built a big fire to keep the spirits away. Late in the evening in the light of the glowing embers, the oldest lady in the caravan recounted the Legend of the Desert. It was all the more real for being in Gweni-Fada.
In the morning Emily was up early and walked out onto the sand. There were fresh cat and dog paw prints in the sand that came from nowhere, went round in circles and disappeared again. She carefully sketched then in her diary and wrote Suez dog and cagoon underneath. Maybe the legend was true. While everyone else seemed nervous, she liked the place; it was spooky and exciting.
After several cups of tea and a slug of something stronger from Saleem’s silver flask, the guides ventured out to where the paw prints disappeared into the sand. They started digging, and dug and dug, shovelling away like mad things. By midmorning the triangular top of a pyramid showed through the sand. The Tuareg sat and watched silently, drinking cup after cup of mint tea.
‘Why don’t we help them?’ asked Emily.
‘No, we’re paying them to do this. Let’s just watch,’ replied Saleem.
Moments later there was a deep grumbling noise and the crater shook. The guides screamed as the sand became fluid and swallowed them up. A couple of rocks dislodged from the crater wall and rolled out onto the sand. Tying a rope around his middle, Zam ran out to where the men had disappeared, but there was nothing to be done, they’d gone, the surface of the sand as flat as it had been in the morning.
The ground shook again and there was a heavy silence, then a faint whistling noise came from the crater.
Saleem looked worried. ‘Round up the camels! Everyone! Quick! Quick!’ he yelled.
The animals were sat down in a circle with the Tuareg sheltering inside. The whistling increased and dust devils played around the crater, slowly converging on the pyramid where they joined forces to make a huge tornado. The air was full of sand and the noise was deafening. Then silence, Emily poked her head up.
‘Saleem,’ she called. ‘The gods are helping us.’
The tornado had blown the sand out of the middle of the crater uncovering a perfect little pyramid about fifty feet tall. On the side facing them, steps led up to a door guarded by a lion on one side and an owl on the other. Saleem’s hawk flew down and perched on the owl’s head and eyed it suspiciously.
Saleem surveyed the scene then yelled, ‘Let’s go see!’ and slid down the steep slope, beckoning for the girls to follow.
They stood at the bottom of the steps looking up at the pyramid. The stone owl and lion stared back from their plinths. They didn’t look very scary.
‘They’re hardly ferocious,’ said Emily.
Saleem gestured for her to go first.
She climbed the steps and stood in front of the door. There was no handle, just lots of hieroglyphics. ‘What do they say?’ asked Emily.
‘Maybe it says how we open the door,’ answered Saleem, scratching his head. ‘While we’re thinking, let’s take a photo, I’ve figured out how the self-timer works.’
The whole caravan posed in front of the pyramid, but they didn’t need the self-timer, Gamel, camera shy as usual, volunteered to take the shot. While the Tuareg set about cooking lunch, Ijju and Emily sat on the plinth with the owl and sketched the hieroglyphics.
Zula came up and stood in front of the door. He stood there and looked at it for ages. ‘Let’s knock,’ he suggested.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
The heavy door creaked open in a cloud of dust. It was dark inside but once her eyes got used to it, Emily could just make out a small box sitting on a stone plinth.
Saleem arrived with his lighter, illuminating the interior with its flickering light. Seeing the box he said, ‘That’s what we are here for.’ He picked it up, stuck it inside his tent and they descend the steps and scrambled back up the slippery slope to their camp.
‘Must be lunchtime,’ he said, stirring the bubbling pot of goat stew and having a taste.
‘Aren’t you going to open it?’ asked Zula.
‘No, that’s for those that want power. I just want to earn a future for our people. The box contains the Book of Light, enormous power; power to rule the world. Let’s have lunch and get moving.’
‘It’s mine,’ said the hippo, grabbing Saleem’s arm. ‘Give it to me.’
‘It is,’ said Saleem, brushing him aside. ‘You can have it as soon as we’re safely across the desert. In the meantime, I’ll look after it. We don’t want it falling into the wrong hands.’
‘Are you saying that it’s not safe in my hands?’ yelled Gamel angrily.
‘Not at all,’ said Saleem calmly. ‘I just prefer to keep an eye on it myself.’
Gamel stomped off leaving a trail of hippo prints in the sand.
27.
Lunch eaten, they packed up and headed out of the crater, winding their way through columns of rock as they followed a dry stream bed that cut through the north wall.
‘This is a place of the gods,’ said Ijju, awed by the rugged beauty.
By nightfall they were clear of the gorge and camped under some giant boulders in a place where the hills met the dunes of the desert.
In the morning Saleem held a meeting. ‘We need to travel carefully and very discreetly,’ he said. ‘Our caravan is carrying the most valuable cargo ever. We have one thousand kilometres of desert to cross. Three weeks will see us all dead or set up for life. No fooling, no games, be vigilant, be alert. If we get attacked, half of the caravan will form a protective cordon around my camel, but don’t stop, keep moving. Those with guns will scatter in different directions. We’ll do a drill as soon as we get moving. We’ll start at dawn each day and stop at ten p.m. No picking up poo, no fires, no stopping! Not even for photos!’
Everyone laughed as he pulled out his camera and snapped a shot of their smiling faces. ‘Now, let’s get going!’
They headed out into the sea of dunes.
The caravan travelled faster than ever before and by the time Emily lay down at midnight; she was exhausted and went straight to sleep. She dreamed that she was snuggled up in her bed at home with a fluffy hot water bottle. She awoke to find a warm patch on her belly. At first she thought it was a rat or a desert fox then she heard purring. It was a cat.
She gave it a stroke.
Hiss, spit, scratch!
Ouch!
‘You do have
sharp claws,’ she said, as she batted it away.
It picked itself up and came back and rubbed up against Emily, purring and snarling at the same time.
‘Aren’t you cute!’ she said and put her hand out to stroke it.
Hiss, hiss, spit, flicker!
It spat out sparks.
‘Cute but prickly,’ she said and putting her head down again, they made themselves comfortable and went back to sleep.
When she awoke, Emily looked up to see smiling faces looking down at her. ‘What?’ she asked.
‘It’s the cagoon,’ said Saleem, ‘and at your feet is the Suez dog.’
‘She’s prickly!’ said Emily, having a good look at the cagoon, who had been nothing but a shadow during the night. About the size of a big kitten, she had long jet-black fur, a pink tongue sticking out between sharp teeth, and a mean look in her yellow eyes.
‘She is. You don’t trifle with a cagoon, but Suez dog is an old softy,’ said Saleem.
Jumping up, the dog barked at the cagoon who hissed and breathed fire back, singeing his whiskers. He reminded Emily of a dilapidated, worn-out carpet. His blackish-brown coat was threadbare and patchy with flecks of grey showing through. Short stubby legs held his belly just clear of the ground and his tongue dangled down to touch the sand. His ears stuck out like the Flying Nun’s habit and scars from a thousand scratches crisscrossed his snout. A wisp of smoke rose from his shrivelled whiskers. Old and worn as he was, there was a good-natured twinkle in his eye.
He barked, at the cagoon.
Woof! Woof!
Everyone laughed.
‘They’re called Molly and Spot,’ said Emily.
‘Why Spot?’ asked Zula, ‘He’s not spotty.’
‘Why not?’ replied Emily. ‘Have you ever heard of a dog called Spotless?’
Molly stuck with Emily, perched on her shoulder if she was walking, or sitting behind her when she was riding, while Spot trotted along trying not to get under the camel’s hot water bottle feet. Emily’s dad said that her mum was prickly, but her mum was nothing compared to Molly. With Molly on her shoulder, if she so much as thought about her in the wrong tone of voice there was a low snarling noise, and swipe, a trickle of warm blood dripped down from Emily’s ear, or angry flicks of flame set her hair alight. She couldn’t help liking her though; she was so feisty!
Molly went out hunting in the evening, catching scorpions and small snakes, which she brought back alive and toyed with before biting their heads off and crunching them up still wriggling.
Spot seemed to run on the smell of an oily rag, he hardly ate anything. If Molly caught a bird or desert rat, he cleaned up what she left, gulping it down in one bite. Apart from that, he ate nothing. He just needed a small bowl of water in the morning and lots of love and attention. If you scratched him behind the ear, his eyes roll back in ecstasy and his hind leg scratched at imaginary fleas. When Emily sat down, he rested his chin on her foot, looked at her with soft brown eyes and nodded off to sleep.
Emily got that uneasy feeling that she was being watched, familiar but stronger than usual. Ijju spotted it first. She pointed up into the sky, but it was up so high that Emily could see nothing but hazy blueness. Eventually she saw it. It looked like a hawk to her but Ijju said it was an owl. When they stopped and waited while the Desert Riders found a route across some rocky ground, they lay on the hard ground and watched it fly, round and round, tracing circles in the sky. Like the Riders, it was watching over them, keeping an eye out for danger.
The hippo was drawn to The Book, as if by magnetic force. By day, he rode right behind Saleem and when they stopped, was never more than a camel’s length from him. Enough to drive you crazy but Saleem took it in his stride; maybe The Book had given him superpowers of patience.
After he caught Gamel in his tent trying to steal the precious book, the hippo was banished to the back of the caravan and put on a diet.
They say that hippos are the most dangerous creatures on Earth and Emily began to appreciate why. She had never seen such a foul tempered beast. If looks could kill, they’d all be dead. You could almost see the storm cloud hovering over him!
The caravan was putting all its energy into traveling as fast and as far as it could and there was little time left over except to prepare some basic food and sleep. If Emily could sleep, that is, for scorpions being munched up next to her ear!
Khartoum was getting close; it was less than a week away.
Emily thought of slavery and what might happen to her. Maybe she’d be sold to an Arab Prince and become part of his harem, his forty-third wife. She’d live in a palace and wear fine silk clothes and go on shopping trips to Harrods in London in his private jumbo, all squished in with the other forty-two wives. She’d have baths in goats’ milk with a servant to scrub her back and pass her little triangles of perfectly toasted bread with pink salmon and caviar spread right to the edges.
Probably not, more likely she would end up as a slave for a weirdo. He’d keep her chained in a damp dingy basement and make her eat sauerkraut and sausages, and watch The Sound of Music in German twice a day.
Emily didn’t like sauerkraut, not a bit. When they’d crossed the desert, she’d run away.
Saleem and Zula liked her, maybe they’d let her stay and she could go back across the desert with them. They’d miss her too much if they sold her, she knew they would, even if they did get enough money to eat lunch at McDos every day and buy a new TV and a dishwasher to put on their land in Algeria.
28.
Emily’s nightmare returned, Charlene and her gang were chasing her. They were just behind her; she could hear them and feel their presence. She was running through banana trees with big green leaves. She was fast, much faster than ever before, she ran like the wind. They were close behind. She jumped over a stone wall and ran across a paddock. It was weird, like it was day and night at the same time. The sun was shining but overhead the sky was dark indigo blue with large bright stars.
Dong, dong, ding, dong!
Sheep like the ones in Spain ran in front of her, their bells clanging. She heard terrified bleating and blue slime flew over her shoulder and splatted on the ground. Looking around she saw a big blue ball of slime, like the size of bus, munching sheep. It didn’t even stop to eat them; it just vacuumed them up and kept coming after her.
She sprinted her fastest across the paddock and jumped over another wall. She was trying to reach her house; she’d be safe there. It wasn’t far.
She was running down a path between tall reeds. The slimeball was right behind her, blowing slime all over her. It was too close, it was going to get her; she knew it was. She dodged to the right and jumped over a fence but her foot caught and she tripped and sprawled to the ground. The slimeball was upon her, sucking her in between its fangs.
She awoke with Ijju shaking her, ‘Are you okay?’
Emily was soaked with sweat and shaking all over. It took her a moment to get her bearings. ‘Just fine,’ she said once she had gathered her wits. ‘I was just being munched by a giant blue slimeball.’
‘That’s alright then,’ said Ijju smiling. ‘I was worried about you.’
Gamel was edgy and kept scanning the horizon as if he expected something to pop up. Emily kept an eye on him. She always keep an eye on him because he didn’t like her and wasn’t to be trusted, not an inch.
She climbed up a sand dune and sat there feeling sad in the starlight. It wasn’t like her to be sad; she was a happy person.
She was worried about what would happen when she’d crossed this last stretch of desert. How was she going to die? When she was like this, she needed her mum and dad, but they were so far, far away. It was time for her dad to stop messy about and come and rescue her.
A movement in the dark caught her eye. Something very large, moving slowly and stealthily, like a hippo sneaking through the night, tippy-toeing away to get up to no good. Emily, Molly and Spot snuck after him. Once out of
earshot of the camp, he pulled out his sat-phone and tapped on the keys, the screen illuminating his face with a devilish red glow.
‘Position 16 55.3 North, 29 37.9 East, sixty-three men, four Desert Riders, thirty-eight guns. No direct attack as the merchandise could be damaged. Pick them off one by one,’ he said.
‘Stop!’ yelled Emily, trying to sound as scary and bossy as she could.
He looked around and laughed. Emily threw a dung ball and hit him between the eyes making him drop his phone. He ran at her, charging like a mad hippo. He knocked her to the ground then straddled her, his massive weight pinning her down. She couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move an inch. He unsheathed his dagger and held it menacingly in the air.
This is it, my death that scared the fortune teller’s lizards away.
Hissss!
Molly snarled at the hippo and pounced. He batted her away like a fly, sending her somersaulting into the darkness.
Woof, woof, woof!
Spot barked at Gamel then picked up Molly in his mouth and trotted off into the darkness.
Gamel was too mean to kill Emily straight away. He put his dagger to her throat. She felt the tip of the blade cut into her flesh. He pulled it out and let the warm blood drip onto her face.
There was a whoosh of air and a squawk, as the owl swooped down and clawed at Gamel’s face with its claws, pulling his scarf over his eyes and making him slash around madly with his knife.
Bam, bam, bam!
A burst of gunfire ripped through the darkness, lighting up Gamel with the muzzle flash. He jerked about like a puppet as bullets tore through him, then collapsed on top of Emily, more elephant than hippo, his stubbly face pushing against her chin. A gun pushed against Gamel’s temple. Emily could just make out Yuba in the darkness.
‘Help!’ she gasped.
Yuba threw the gun aside and pulled at the hippo, trying to shift him off Emily.
She couldn’t breathe. He was crushing her.
A horse galloped up and a Desert Rider jumped down and dragged the dead weight off Emily. He flicked on a torch and checked her over; pushing a cloth against her neck to stop the bleeding then carried her back to camp.
