Sandstorm

15
Mountain Trek

SAFIA WOKEfrom slumber, falling. She threw her arms out, panic racking her body, as familiar as her own breath. Agony speared her shoulder.

“Calm yourself, sister,” someone said near her ear. “I have you.”

The world swirled into focus, midnight dark. She was propped against a couched camel, who chewed its cud with indifference. A woman loomed at her side, an arm under her good shoulder, holding her up.

“Where…?” she mumbled, but her lips seemed glued together. She tried to find her legs, but failed. Memory slowly returned. The fight at the tomb. Gunfire filled her head. Flashes of images. One face. Painter. She shuddered in the woman’s arms. What had happened? Where was she?

She finally found enough strength to stand, leaning heavily on the camel. Safia noted that her wounded shoulder had been crudely bandaged, wrapped to slow the bleeding. It ached with every movement.

The woman at her side, shadowy in the gloom, appeared to be the one who had rescued her; only now she wore a desert cloak.

“Help comes,” the other whispered.

“Who are you?” she forced out, suddenly noting the cold of the night. She was in some jungle grotto. The rain had stopped, but drops still wept from the canopy overhead. Palm and tamarind trees rose all around her. Tangles of lianas and hanging gardens of jasmine draped everywhere, perfuming the air.

The woman remained silent. She pointed an arm.

A bit of fiery light pierced the jungle ahead, glowing brightly through the ropy vines. Someone was coming, bearing aloft a torch or lamp.

Safia had an urge to flee, but her body was too weak to obey.

The arm around her shoulder squeezed as if the woman had heard her heart, but it didn’t feel like she was attempting to hold Safia captive, only to reassure her.

In moments, Safia’s eyes acclimated to the gloom enough to recognize that the jungle immediately before her hid a rocky limestone cliff, thick with vines, creepers, and small bushes. The approaching light came from a tunnel in the face of the cliff. Such caverns and passages riddled the Dhofar Mountains, formed from the trickles of monsoon flows melting through the limestone.

As the light reached the tunnel entrance, Safia spotted three figures: an old woman, a child of perhaps twelve, and a second young woman who could’ve been the twin of the one beside her. All were identically dressed in desert cloaks, hoods thrown back.

Additionally, each bore an identical bit of decoration: a ruby tattoo at the outer corner of the left eye. A single teardrop.

Even the child who carried the glass oil lantern.

“She who was lost,” the woman at her side intoned.

“Has come home,” the elder said, leaning on a cane. Her hair was gray, tied in a braid, but her face, though lined, looked vital.

Safia found it hard to meet those eyes, but also impossible to turn away.

“Be welcome,” the elder said, speaking English, stepping aside.

Safia was assisted through the entrance, supported by the woman. Once she was through, the child led the way, lantern held high. The elderly woman kept behind them, thudding with a walking stick. The third woman left the tunnel and strode to the couched camel.

Safia was led onward.

No one spoke for several steps.

Safia, edgy with questions, could not hold her tongue. “Who are you? What do you want with me?” Her voice sounded petulant even to her own ears.

“Be at peace,” the elderly woman whispered behind her. “You are safe.”

For now, Safai added silently. She had noted the long dagger carried in the belt of the woman who had left the tunnel behind them.

“All answers will be given by our hodja. ”

Safia startled. A hodja was a tribal shaman, always female. They were the keepers of knowledge, healers, oracles. Who were these people? As she continued, she noted a continual wisp of jasmine in the air. The scent calmed her, reminding her of home, of mother, of security.

Still, the pain in her wounded shoulder kept her focused. Blood had begun to flow anew, through the bandage and down her arm.

She heard a scuffing sound behind her. She glanced over her shoulder. The third woman had returned. She bore two burdens, collected from the camel. In one hand, she carried the silver suitcase, battered now, that held the iron heart. And on her shoulder leaned the iron spear with its bust of the Queen of Sheba.

They had stolen the two artifacts from Cassandra.

Safia’s heart thudded louder, vision tightening.

Were they thieves? Had she been rescued or been kidnapped again?

The tunnel stretched ahead, continuing deep under the mountain. They had passed side tunnels and caves, angling this way and that. She was quickly lost. Where were they taking her?

Finally the air seemed to freshen, growing stronger, the scent of jasmine richer. The passage lightened ahead. She was led forward. A wind flowed down the throat of the tunnel, coming from up ahead.

As they rounded a bend, the tunnel dumped into a large cavern.

Safia stepped into it.

No, not a cavern, but a great bowl of an amphitheater, the roof of which, high overhead, bore a small opening to the sky. Water flowed through the hole in a long, trickling waterfall, draining into a small pond below. Five tiny campfires circled the pool, like the points of a star, illuminating the flowering vines that wreathed the room and hung in long tangles from the roof, some reaching the shallow bowl of the floor.

Safia recognized the geology. It was one of the countless sinkholes that peppered the region. Some of the deepest were found in Oman.

Safia gaped.

More cloaked figures moved or sat about the chamber. Some thirty or so. Faces turned toward her as the party entered. The illuminated cavern reminded Safia of the thieves’ cave from the story of Ali Baba.

Only these forty thieves were all women.

All ages.

Safia stumbled into the room, suddenly weak from the trek, blood running hot down one arm, the rest of her body shivering.

A figure rose by one of the fires. “Safia?”

She focused on the speaker. The woman was not dressed like the others. Safia could make no sense of her presence here. “Kara?”