The Incarnations

13. Arise, Slaves, Arise!

Jin Dynasty, 1213

ATURNIP IN THE gutter. Purplish white and wrinkled, with dirt clinging to the furrows and roots. A miracle in our famine-stricken city, that a vegetable could survive this long, even interred in the ground. I think I am hallucinating. But you have seen the turnip too, and stare at me rivalrously. Hunger gnawing in our guts, we size each other up. Two Jurchen boys with starved-mutt ribcages, and eyes bulging in our gaunt skulls. Your face has been mutilated by a branding iron, with three wide scars burnt on each cheek. The brandings are tribal and deliberate, and a warning that you are much tougher than I am.

You stiffen and clench your fists. If we fight I will lose, so I pretend that I am deranged. I growl and gnash my teeth (wobbly teeth in bleeding gums, too loose to break your skin). I claw the air, as though ready to rip your throat into geysers of blood. I toss my head this way and that and howl, shuffling wolfishly towards the turnip. Are you afraid? Or could that be a smile on your lips? A smile in this city of hunger-deadened wretches; that would be the second miracle of the day. Now or never, I think, and pounce at the turnip. And there is no mistaking that you are smiling now. You swing your fist, and the battle over the turnip has ended before it has begun.

I come round on a hard wooden floor. You are standing over me, gnawing the turnip raw. ‘Here,’ you say, and toss what remains to where I lie. I devour the vegetable, dirty tangled roots and all. Maggots have burrowed inside. Wriggling maggots. I devour those too.

We are in a glassblower’s workshop, with a workbench of crucibles, scales and long glass-blowing horns. Vases, elliptical bottles and paperweights glint on the shelves. A wind chime of glass pendants tinkles above. The beauty of the glassware does not move me, however. Glass cannot feed a man, after all. Breathing ragged and shallow, you collapse beside me like a sack of bones. The branded scars on your cheeks are like barren riverbeds. How sickening it must have been to smell your own flesh, sizzling under the metal of a branding iron.

‘Who are you?’ I ask.

‘Tiger.’

Your brandings are like tiger stripes. Your name is apt.

‘I was Glassblower Hua’s apprentice,’ you lie, ‘but he’s dead now. We were fishing in the river, when he fell in and drowned.’

You stare at me, challenging me to challenge you. You were never apprentice to Glassblower Hua. Those hands of yours have never painstakingly crafted glass. You are savage as a stray cat. Clever in the way of rogues and thieves and those who live by their wits.

‘Who are you?’ you ask me.

When I was a child, they called me Boy. After my mother died, and I came to live in the Craftsmen’s District with Uncle Lu, they called me Carpenter Lu’s Boy. ‘Turnip,’ I decide. ‘I worked for Carpenter Lu. Though he is dead now too.’

In his sixth decade, Uncle Lu suffered greatly when the famine began. A filial child would have sliced off and cooked a piece of his own flesh for his starving master, but I was too cowardly. I went out scavenging for Uncle Lu instead, and last week I came back to find him glassy-eyed on the workshop floor. I lay beside him until nightfall. Then I took him by wheelbarrow to a nearby field, dug a hole as deep as I stood and buried him there. Afterwards I lay on the mound, protecting the unmarked grave for a night and a day. Over my dead body would cannibals dig him up. Uncle Lu had been like a father to me.

‘Why have you brought me here?’ I ask you.

‘Better here than the gutter, Turnip,’ you say. ‘Better here than where the corpse-snatchers can get you.’

My head throbs from where your knuckles flew at me. My buttocks and back are grazed from where you dragged me through the streets. I murmur, ‘Do you mind if I sleep now, Tiger?’

But your eyes are shut. You are already sleeping.

For many moons the city of Zhongdu has been under siege. The Mongol hordes came from the north, and our city walls are now surrounded by ox-skin yurts and cattle-dung fires, and tens of thousands of Mongol warriors, patrolling on horseback so no one can flee. They watch politely as famished Jurchens abseil down the city walls on ropes, before impaling the escapees with a cloud of arrows. They are breaking down our defences, starving the million citizens of Zhongdu to death. Beyond the city walls, camel-mounted kettledrums beat day and night, as within the city hunger-weakened Jurchens keel over. Every beat, another dead, another dead.

Before the Mongols came, the markets of Zhongdu were thriving and bustling, selling every beast and fowl and grain. But now our stores of millet, barley and rice are gone. Every animal was eaten long ago and not one remains. Not a cat or a dog, nor a sparrow or a rat. Not even a pet cricket chirruping in a cage.

The famine-stricken citizens of Zhongdu think only of food. Staggering about the streets, their hollow stomachs rattle with stones, twigs and bark. Mouths chew at nothing, masticating empty air, or chew grass to an indigestible cud. The famine has made insectivores of us, gobblers of grasshoppers and ants. And now a moral quandary has descended like a dark cloud upon the citizens of Zhongdu.

Do we eat or bury our dead?

We spend two days and nights on the workshop floor. We are delirious. We drift in and out of consciousness. We don’t talk. We barely move. The glass beads of the wind chime tinkle as they sway gently above. Sometimes I creak my eyelids apart. Through the light and dark coming through the window I track the passage of time. I shiver with cold. I swallow the air, hoping there is sustenance in the emptiness. My stomach gurgles with it. The air burbles through my intestines and splutters back out as flatulence. I swear to take revenge on the Mongols as a ghost after I am dead. But, to be honest, my heart’s not in it. Apathy’s all I feel as my life slips away.

On the second day you speak: ‘Turnip, I am going out to find some food.’

I hear footsteps. I hear the door slam. I try to lift my head. Or perhaps I dream I do. I can’t find my head anyway.

Night. The smell of cooking meat summons me back from the brink of death. I open my eyes. You are squatting by the fireplace, holding two metal skewers of meat over the flames. A groan escapes my lips. My saliva glands are a bursting dam. Hearing I am awake, you hand me a skewer by the wooden handle.

‘Tiger. . what meat is this?’ I ask.

‘Cat.’

‘Cat? But there are no cats left in the city.’

‘I know where they live. I know where to hunt for them.’

I stare at the skewered pieces of semi-raw meat. The edges are charred. The meat trickles blood on to my wrist and hand.

‘If you don’t eat it,’ you say, ‘I will.’

For twenty minutes there is no sound but our chewing and swallowing. You sink your teeth into your cat-kebab, your eyes slitted, your tiger scars smeared with grease. After the meat is eaten we pick at the fibres caught between our teeth. We lick the juices from our palms. My stomach is convulsing with joy.

Thereafter our days are like this. During daylight we rest. We watch the sunbeams drifting through the window and shifting in golden bars across the workshop floor. We watch the rise and fall of our chests and swat at the flies buzzing around our ulcerated legs. We listen to the Mongol drums beating beyond the fortress of city walls. We think our thoughts, hunger-weak thoughts that crawl feebly through our minds. Then, after dusk, you vanish into the night to go cat-hunting. Tiger by name, tiger by nature. Hunter-gatherer, you stalk one down and return with a skinned flank of meat.

‘Where is the cat’s head, Tiger?’ I ask. ‘Where’s the fur and limbs? The tail and paws?’

‘I tossed them to some starving orphans,’ you reply.

Petals of blood spill from the meat as you carry it to the workbench. On hands and knees I lick them up with my thirsty tongue. You slam a cleaver into the cat, portioning it up. Then we each hold a skewer over the fire, salivating as the flames lick the rawness away. I can hardly wait for the meat to be cooked before gobbling it down.

Before grilling the meat we lock the door and windows, for the smell of roasting flesh brings interlopers. They knock politely, begging to be let in. They scrabble like rats and whine, ‘Let us have some meat. We are starving out here. We have children to feed. Out of the goodness of your hearts. .’

You snatch up the cleaver and go to the door. How terrifying you are, with your scarred cheeks and wild, lice-ridden mane. The blade of the cleaver and your eyes glint as one.

‘Come on in,’ you smile, opening the door wider. ‘Here I am, waiting with my cleaver to chop your children up. I will scoop out their livers and kidneys and boil them for soup.’

And the starving beggars slither back into the shadows. Though your threats are horrifying, I admire your bravery. Man eat man, this is what our city has become. And you are brutal in our defence.

When I regain strength, I wander around our city and see how Zhongdu has descended into depravity. The good people have starved to death and the moral conscience of the city has died with them. Cannibalism is now the norm, the wicked feeding on the corpses of the good. They don’t even wait for cover of darkness before shamelessly dragging the dead away. The kitchens of the body-snatchers are fragrant with roasting meat. The maddening aroma wafts about the streets, diminishing willpower in the few places where willpower remains.

At night we are woken by shrieking in the Craftsmen’s District: ‘Fiend! You ate our boy. You ought to rot in Hell.’

‘Who had a bite when they thought I weren’t looking? Who deserves to rot in Hell as much as I do?’

‘Liar! Liar!’

I recognize their voices.

‘That’s Swordmaker Fu and his wife,’ I whisper. ‘They had a young son, but from the sounds of it he is now dead.’

You sneer in the dark, ‘Cannibals. Too lazy to go out and hunt a cat.’

I shut my eyes, but I am too haunted by Swordmaker Fu’s macabre words to sleep. I lie awake instead, and count my blessings that I am with a fellow-believer in the sanctity of human flesh.

Every day the Mongol battering rams strike the city gates and the citizens of Zhongdu hold their breath as the beast pounds. Ah, this time we are done for, we Jurchens think. This time they will break our defences. But the Jurchen army, armed with arrows and bows, somehow keep the wolves at bay for one more day.

One afternoon, as the battering rams pound, you ask, ‘Turnip, have you seen a devil’s horseman before?’

I confess I haven’t.

‘You’ve never climbed the city wall?’

‘Not since the Mongols came. It’s too dangerous.’

‘Come with me, Turnip,’ you say. ‘I know a place we can watch them.’

We stagger through the empty streets, two young men with gargantuan heads on spindle-limbs. The few Jurchens we encounter scurry by with a hunted look in their eyes. We go to the east of the city, to a crumbling stone stairwell in the rear of a weed-choked temple garden. We go up to the stone battlements of the city wall and peer out. I am stunned when I see the enemy camp. Thousands of ox-skin yurts and cattle-dung fires and helmeted Mongol warriors on armoured horses, as far as the eye can see. The Mongols have devoted a city to their siegecraft. You are enraged. Your eyes narrow to vengeful slits beneath your gnarled and tangled hair.

‘Barbarians!’ you spit. ‘One day I’ll rip off their heads and piss down their throats. I’ll fuck their mothers and daughters to a bloody squealing pulp. .’

Way down below, a devil’s horseman trots towards us on his mare. His skin looks as though it has been flayed off, lime-cured in a tannery then sewn back on as human leather. His nose is flattened between his cheekbones and his yellow eyes glare up from beneath his helmet. Hearts hammering and legs shaking, we crouch down. ‘Has he seen us?’ I whisper.

An arrow soars whistling over our heads in answer to my question. We flee down the stone stairs back into the accursed city of Zhongdu.

That night you go out cat-hunting. When you get back we cook and feast on your kill. After supper we laze on the floor and I watch you in the flickering firelight. I watch you pick fibrous strands of cat-meat out of your teeth. Sprawled by the fire, your eyes are lazy and slitted as a tiger basking in the sun. I reach and stroke the iron-scorched markings on your cheeks. The scar tissue is hard and shiny under my touch. ‘Who branded you?’ I ask. You do not open your eyes. ‘Where do you come from?’ I ask. ‘Who are your people?’ Your robe is open and I move my hand over your famished chest. Your rib bones and tautening nipples. The jut of shadows in your skeletal frame. My stomach tightens. Now or never, I think, and move my mouth to yours. A jerk of your chin warns me this is not what you want. Your hand pushes on the back of my head, pushing down. Down past your sternum, down past your sunken stomach, to the rags about your groin. I loosen the rags and bury my face in the thatch of hair and what lies beneath. I take you in my mouth and feel you come to life. Swelling, growing engorged inside me, against my tongue. The smell of you, unwashed for months, is musty and intoxicating. I glance up. Your eyes are still closed. I move over you, my rhythm quickening until you spurt your bitter seed. Swallowing, I pull my wet and glistening mouth away. Sprawled on your back, your eyes are shut, and you look peaceful, as though having a pleasant dream. As much of a stranger as you were before.

The Fall

The hooves wake me at dawn. The stampeding hooves of tens of thousands of Mongols galloping into Zhongdu on horseback. I shake you awake: ‘Tiger! Tiger! Listen!’ You sit up and listen to the kettledrums out in the streets. The yodellings of war cries and the bloodcurdling screams of Jurchens dragged from their homes.

‘Hide, we must hide!’

Shaking, we hurry up on to the roof. I am shuddering hard, pale with fright. ‘O Lord Buddha, have mercy on our souls,’ I plead, over and over, though the mantra brings no peace of mind. You are silent, keeping your wits about you as you watch the Mongols rampaging through Zhongdu. Narrowing your eyes and thinking of how to save our skins.

The Mongols are orderly and systematic. They plunder our city, ward by ward, street by street, house by house. From the roof, we watch them haul a wealthy merchant’s family out of hiding in the next alley, thrusting spears to their throats and commanding them to bring out their valuables. The family obey. They scurry back and forth, fetching porcelain vases, wooden puppets, silk gowns, paintings, ostrich-feather fans and other family heirlooms. They plead for mercy as they lay the offerings at the Mongols’ feet. But our conquerors have no mercy. They rape the screaming wife and daughters, penetrating and ejaculating in a few thrusts. Then they execute. For many moons the Jurchens have been wasting away slowly from starvation. But now death strikes the city like lightning as throats are slashed and hearts impaled by arrows at close range. The Mongols then set the houses of the slaughtered Jurchens ablaze; smoke darkening the sky as Zhongdu goes up in flames.

The devil’s horsemen gallop into our alley and we flatten ourselves against the roof as screams rise up from below. You curse as an axe smashes through the bolted door of Glassblower Hua’s workshop, and I shake and beg the Lord Buddha for mercy. I shut my eyes, awaiting death by suffocating smoke (should fate be lenient), or by burning (should fate be cruel). You shake my shoulder.

‘Look, Turnip, look. They are letting the craftsmen live!’

In the alley the Mongols are rounding up the craftsmen of Zhongdu: stonemasons and carpenters and glassblowers and metalworkers, a group of miserable old men with black and swollen eyes being trussed up with ropes.

‘We must surrender,’ you say. ‘Stay up here and we will burn.’

‘Tiger, no! They will kill us!’

‘Stay then. Burn in the flames.’

Though I am terrified, I go where you go. So, on shaking legs, I follow you down. In the alley you crash to your knees before a Mongol with flaring nostrils and yellow skin.

‘I am Glassblower Hua and this is Carpenter Lu! We offer our skills as craftsmen to our conquerors and rulers, the Mongols!’

A traitorous Jurchen in Mongol robes translates our surrender into Mongolian, as you kowtow, knocking your forehead to the ground. The Mongols seize us. They smite us with their fists, but they do not kill us. They bind our wrists with rope and march us and the other craftsmen down the central avenue of Zhongdu. Massacred victims of the fall are everywhere. Corpses young and old, flung in the dust. And stunned and bereaved and frightened as we are, we know that we are better off than them.

The Mongol Juggernaut

The wagers of war ride on horseback and the slave-drivers lash their whips, driving us Jurchens forth like herds of cattle, away from Zhongdu. Oxen drag the yurts where the high-ranking Mongols reside on wheeled platforms. Sixteen war-horses pull Genghis Khan in his magnificent palace yurt, surrounded by a battalion of ten thousand warriors, defending the ‘Lord of Mankind’.

The Mongols want to civilize their barbarous lands and have herded up Jurchens with knowledge and skills: bone-setters and physicians; artisans and engineers. They have gathered labourers too: young boys to tend to the animals and put up the Mongols’ yurts; young girls to milk the cows, gather dung for fires, cook meals and serve the Mongols’ voracious physical needs. After months of starvation, many Jurchens fall in the dust, too weak to march. The Mongols whip them and, when they don’t stand and walk, slash their throats. Throughout the day we stagger on and the Mongol juggernaut sheds corpses like a balding man sheds hairs.

At night we slaves sleep on the bare earth under the sky. When light rains fall we shiver and curve our spines against the drizzle, hugging ourselves in the cold. When there are thunderstorms and heavy rain beats the earth beneath us to mud, we abandon hope of sleep. Lightning illuminates our writhing sea of slaves, mud-drenched and with chattering teeth.

At daybreak the Mongols lash their whips and we drag our weary bones from the earth. Slave girls ladle rice gruel into our bare hands, and a leather flask of water is passed amongst the herd. The Mongols lash their whips once more and our dark swarm of humanity moves on, the sun beating down and dragging our shadows out from under our feet.

The Mongol caravan journeys north by hoof and wheel and blistered foot, kicking up a storm of dust. I walk by your side, stride for limping stride. The nearness of you, the rhythm of your breath, and your stoic, determined face is a comfort to me.

‘I can’t go on, Tiger. .’ I say, as my skull throbs and the weals from Ogre’s thrashing whip ache on my back. ‘I am at the end of my strength. .’

‘No,’ you say, ‘there’s strength in you yet. Keep going and there will come a time when we are free. Surrender now and you will die a slave.’

I would have fallen down long ago and let the ground drink the blood of my slit throat, were it not for you. So long as you are by my side, I can endure. You ease the stoned-to-death feeling in my soul.

Though the Jin Dynasty has fallen and they stagger in rags, the craftsmen of Zhongdu brag of their former renown.

‘My swords were so sharp they sliced human bone as though it were tofu,’ boasts Swordmaker Fu. ‘Warlords came from thousands of li away for my weapons.’

‘My Lady Mu dolls fetched a hundred silvers each,’ says Doll-maker Wan, whose dolls once lived in the bedchambers of the princesses. ‘Lady Mu Flies a Kite. Lady Mu Plays with a Little Dog. I have crafted thousands over the years. .’

The craftsmen are distinguished indeed. Gem-cutter Hu’s necklaces were worn on the lily-white necks of the Emperor’s concubines. Stone-carver Peng’s fearsome tomb gargoyles protect the dead in the imperial mausoleums. There is a saying, ‘He who stands upright, does not fear a crooked shadow.’ Well, Tiger and Turnip have much to fear. For we are not who we say we are and our shadows are crooked as bent nails. But the craftsmen of Zhongdu don’t tell on us. The Mongols don’t know our language, and to speak to them is to risk aggravating their tempers and fists. So long as we don’t antagonize them, the craftsmen leave us be.

The Mongol in charge of our herd has a name that’s some guttural sound in the throat. We do not call our slave-driver by his name, though. Ogre is what we call him. Ogre rides with his leather boots in stirrups and a coat of dog-skins over his shoulders, and his mare is equipped with a hook-ended lance and a horsehair lasso. Your iron-branded scars are nothing compared to Ogre’s battle scars. One fault line cleaves Ogre’s face in two, from forehead to chin, as though someone once pickaxed his head. His nose has been fractured so many times, it’s hardly worth calling a nose. The only word he knows in our Jurchen dialect is ‘Go!’, which he shouts often, as he is impatient with stragglers. When the elderly Fan-maker Zu fainted in the heat, Ogre reached down from his mare and stuck Fan-maker Zu’s chest with the hook-ended lance. Ogre gurgled with laughter and dragged him through the dirt until he was quite dead. He has a gallows sense of humour, it can be said.

At dusk the Mongols stop and rest. They drink fermented yak’s milk by firelight as captured Jurchen jugglers and acrobats perform for them. The Mongols laugh and jeer, but never applaud.

‘I can’t walk another step. My knees are aching. My heels are weeping blisters. I am dying of thirst. I’ve not had a sip of water all day. .’

Gem-cutter Hu is at the age when humans start to shrink, when the spine buckles and the skin wrinkles and grows slack. He bends over his staff as he grumbles, his hair white and his eyes nearsighted from a lifetime of squinting at precious gems through a magnifying lens. Someone tells the gem-cutter that water-drinking time is near. Master Hu scoffs, ‘Ha! There’s just spittle in that flask by the time it gets to me. I’ll drop dead of thirst in no time, just you wait and see. .’

It’s drizzling and the thousands of hooves and wheels ahead of us have trampled the grasslands to mud that squelches through our shoes and splatters our legs. Staggering by my side, you look daggers at Master Hu. The old man brays on: ‘The Mongols ought not to treat us this way. Don’t these ignorant barbarians know who we are? They are marching us to our deaths. Won’t be long until I fall down and they cut my throat. .’

‘Good,’ you mutter. ‘Fall down dead and spare our ears your whinging.’

Master Hu spins round, squinting accusingly. ‘Who said that? The Tiger Boy? The boy with the branded face? You donkey’s afterbirth! How dare you speak to me like that? You are not one of us. You should have been killed in Zhongdu.’

Shut up now, Tiger, I think. But you laugh in Master Hu’s face.

‘I heard you kept slaves in Zhongdu,’ you say. ‘I heard you beat them, and when they ran away, you caught them and cut off their ears. I heard you imprisoned your slaves in your cellar during the famine. Then you cooked and ate them, one by one.’

Master Hu wheezes as though his heart has seized up.

‘If the Mongols slash your throat, Master Hu,’ you say calmly, ‘then that will be less than what you deserve.’

Gem-cutter Hu shakes his crooked staff at you. ‘You are a liar and imposter! You are not Glassblower Hua! I knew Master Hua, and you are not him. I will tell the Mongols about you!’

‘Tell, and I’ll wring your neck.’

‘Not if I beat you to death with a rock first!’ hisses Swordmaker Fu.

You laugh at the swordmaker. ‘And then will you eat me? Like you ate your own son?’

The herd of old men turns on you. ‘Shut that evil Tiger mouth!’ they curse. ‘Imposter!’ ‘Lowbreed mongrel!’

You open your mouth, to lash your tongue once more, but I grab you and say, ‘Tiger. Shut up.’

You shut your mouth, but your eyes are amused. You won’t be civil to men for whom you have nothing but contempt. You let that be known.

Every slave dreams of escape. Some daring souls flee into the northern wilderness, only to be shot down by Mongol arrows. Two Jurchen princes gallop away one night on stolen mares, only to be recaptured, rolled up in blankets and kicked to death (for the Mongols are superstitious about spilling the blood of royalty on the ground). Suicide is the means of escape for some. They weigh their tunic pockets down with stones and hurl themselves into fast-flowing rivers. Or they goad the Mongols into losing their tempers and beating them to death, and die smiling and satisfied.

Puppetmaker Xia, whose beloved Concubine Sparrow is now a girl slave, is the most suicidal of our herd: ‘After the famine stole my wife and sons away, I prayed to the Lord Buddha to spare Concubine Sparrow. But now I regret that Concubine Sparrow did not die in the famine too, for death would have spared her the yoke of the Mongols.’

The puppetmaker calls for Concubine Sparrow in his sleep, ordering her to bring his slippers and draw his bath, then wakes distraught because she isn’t there. One evening, when the Mongols are setting up camp, he sees Concubine Sparrow crouched behind the hindquarters of a cow, shovelling dung into a bucket. He stumbles over to her.

‘Sparrow,’ he calls. ‘Come here, my love. .’

But before the concubine hears Master Xia, a Mongol warrior strolls up behind her and drags her up by the hair. The bucket rolls sideways and the look on Concubine Sparrow’s face is one of weary resignation as the Mongol throws her over his shoulder like a rolled-up Persian rug and saunters into a yurt. Puppetmaker Xia turns pale as his own ghost.

‘How can she betray me like this?’ he cries. ‘I should’ve carved up her pretty face whilst I had the chance. .’

The puppetmaker reaches for the nearest rock and dashes the sharp, jagged edge across his wrist, over and over, drawing blood. Other slaves rush over to restrain him, grappling the wrist-cutting stone from his suicidal grip. It is a pitiful and tragic sight, but when I look at you, you are shaking with laughter, your eyes creased up.

It’s just like you, Tiger, to find the humour in the bleakest of scenes.

When the night is clear and starry constellations are scattered across the sky, the slaves sleep deeply as a battlefield of slain men. I lay behind you in the dark and breathe in your rankness, my heart thudding against your spine. My fingers count your ribs. They explore your bones, protruding under your stretched-taut skin. Your hip bones, your sacrum, your shoulder blades like wings. I reach down to your groin and stroke you to life. Slowly. Cautiously. One ear listening out. I clench my fist around your stiffness, and your breathing quickens as I draw it back and forth. After your warm, sticky release, I lick my hand clean. Then I bury my face in your wild, stinking hair and hold you. To hold you is to be at one with you. To be at one with the starry cosmos of ancient Gods above. As I hold you I will the night never to end. For our oneness fades with the disappearing stars. And by daylight you are other again.

As the Mongol juggernaut moves north the grasslands become sparse and wither away. The earth becomes bone dry and rocks burn under our bare feet. The Mongols raid and lay waste to nearby villages. They steal two hundred head of camel and thousands of leak-proof barrels and leather casks. At the lake at Dolon Nor every barrel and cask is filled to the brim. The Mongol juggernaut splits up. Most of the caravan, Genghis Khan and the seventy thousand horseback warriors, journey to the west, to battle and conquer other lands. One hundred slave-drivers and a thousand Jurchen slaves trudge with the camels up to the north. You and I are amongst those bound for Karakarhoum.

‘Are we in Mongolia yet?’ I ask you.

‘After we cross the desert we will be in Mongolia,’ you say.

‘What desert?’

‘The Gobi, you fool.’

The Wilderness of Stone

The Gobi is a furnace of burning rocks, dry and monotonous and flat. We journey for a day without seeing a plant or a tree. We journey for a day and encounter nothing more than the scattered, sun-bleached bones of perished animals. The sun above the Gobi is swollen, brighter and fiercer than the ordinary sun. The Gobi sun blazes as though it wants to incinerate every living creature from the earth.

The scorching winds are strong enough to knock you from your feet and make walking near impossible. But walk is all we do. We shroud our faces against the sand gusting from the western dunes with strips torn from our robes, and our eyes are gritty and red. The horseback Mongols are as stupefied by the heat as those on foot. The creaking of axles and wheels, snorting camels and our dragging feet are the only sounds. At dawn and noon and dusk we are allowed a few swallows of water from a leather flask. Ossified inside and out, we dream of water. We dream of an overcast sky. We dream of the shade of a single tree.

At night in the Gobi the temperature plummets and we shudder with cold. We Jurchens don’t have slave girls and coats of animal skins to keep us warm like the Mongols do, so we huddle together on the scorpion-scuttling earth, skin against parchment-dry skin. Our tusk-like collar bones and hips knock together as we sleep, and we wake in the morning aching and bruised.

The Puppetmaker

On the second day of staggering through the Gobi, many slaves keel over, and even after Mongol whips have criss-crossed their backs with deep, bleeding welts, don’t stand up. They are left for the razor-sharp beaks and claws of the carrion-eating birds.

Our herd limps on, our robes the colour of dust, our bloodshot eyes dull and wretched with suffering. The one exception is Puppetmaker Xia, who has turned strange in the heat. As we drag our feet as though in heavy iron shackles, Master Xia swings his limbs like one of his own puppets, jerked by strings. His eyes are shining, aberrant and rapt. His rag has slipped loose from a wide grin that looks carved upon his face. The puppetmaker laughs, then says in a spirited voice, ‘My friends, I have an announcement to make!’

We ignore him. Our shadows stretch out behind us, as though longing to break free of us and go back the way we came.

‘Concubine Sparrow is with child!’ Master Xia cries. ‘I saw her this morning. Her belly was swollen and she waddled as expectant women do. I am going to be a father!’

The puppetmaker and bleak reality have parted company, and no one squanders breath on speaking to him. Most of the herd stopped speaking days ago anyway.

‘My sons died in the famine,’ Master Xia continues, ‘and I feared that there would be no heir to continue the Xia family line. But now another Xia is on the way. .’

Puppetmaker Xia witters on and on about his ‘son and heir’ and the herd ignore him. But you grind your teeth in irritation. You can’t suffer fools. You can’t stand delusions and lies. You tug the shroud from your mouth and iron-branded scars, and spit, ‘If you had even half your wits about you, Master Xia, you’d stab Concubine Sparrow’s belly with a knife. For that’s a bastard Mongol child she’s carrying. Not yours.’

The puppetmaker laughs. ‘The child is mine! I know it in my bones. The child’s a Jurchen and mine!’

‘Tiger, shut up. .’ I warn.

But you won’t shut up until you have cured Master Xia of his delusions.

‘Whose seed do you think is planted in her belly?’ you continue. ‘Your impotent old man’s seed? Or the seed of one of the hundreds of Mongols who raped her? Open your eyes, Master Xia!’

The puppetmaker shakes his head. ‘No,’ he moans. ‘No no no no. .’

The herd turns on you. They curse you with their elderly, creaking turtle-mouths. ‘Donkey’s afterbirth!’ ‘Evil mongrel!’ ‘Should have died in Zhongdu!’ You laugh at them. You laugh as though their hatred invigorates you. You spit defiantly, ‘Master Xia must accept the child isn’t his. The child’s a bastard Mongol’s and—’

Puppetmaker Xia leaps at you and his knuckles thud against your skull. You stumble from the blow, and I rush to Master Xia, holding him back as he flails his old man’s arms to attack you again.

‘The child is yours, Master Xia,’ I say anxiously. ‘We believe you! The child is yours! Tiger here was just making trouble. Ignore him.’

Blasting sour breath in my face, the puppetmaker shouts, ‘I’ll kill you, Tiger Boy! I swear to God, I’ll kill you dead!’

His words strike fear into my heart. But you laugh and say, ‘Go on then, Master Xia. Kill me. It won’t make that child yours.’

Puppetmaker Xia roars and lunges for you again, and Ogre, who had been dozing in the saddle, snoring out of his axe-battered nose as his mare plods at the herd’s rear, wakes up. He lashes his whip and we all move apart. Not even the puppetmaker is mad enough to defy Ogre and his hook-ended lance.

Our herd staggers on through the furnace of burning rocks. You shroud your face again, your remorseless eyes staring out over the rags. You don’t care about making enemies. You care only about dragging out the truth, consequences be damned.

Night. Descent of darkness and bitter cold. Slaves huddle against the winds howling across the Gobi’s barrenness. Outcasts from the herd, you and I sleep apart from them. And as weak and thirsty as I am, I lie in your arms and go to sleep a contented man.

Daybreak, and you are gone. Disappeared into thin air. I look around and see you a few paces away, rubbing at some overnight bruises from the hard, stony ground. Hungry, we go to a slave girl ladling gruel out of a pot, holding out our cupped hands. Soon every slave is up and slurping gruel. Except for one. A lazybones who won’t rise and shine. The slave shudders as Stone-carver Peng kicks his backside. ‘C’mon, wake up, or Ogre will whip you.’ But the man does not stir. Stone-carver Peng bends over for a closer look.

‘Oh, the Lord Buddha have mercy on his soul!’ he cries.

Stone-carver Peng has some tragic news. The slave is Puppetmaker Xia, and he is not sleeping. He has been strangled and he is dead.

The Singing Dunes

Around noon we enter an ocean of sand, the waves not lapping at a distant shore but frozen into luminous peaks and shadowy troughs. No scorpions scuttle in the dunes, and the carrion-eating birds that stalked us all the way from Zhongdu are no longer circling and swooping overhead. Here and there rocks jut out of the sand, like the tombstones of mass graves.

The dunes slow the Mongol caravan down. The wheels of the ox-carts get trapped in the sand and the Mongols put us slaves to work pushing the carts from the rear, as the oxen, hooves slipping, pull with ropes in front. We slaves are not very strong. Wasted by starvation and charred by the sun, we are hardly worth calling men. We are gristle and bone. We are the parts the Mongol juggernaut has spat out, the parts not good to eat.

Onwards the Mongols and Jurchen slaves creep. The sand dunes are long and narrow, stretching for a journey of many days to the west and one day to the north. But as we toil, knee-deep in the ever-shifting sands, I fear that there’s no end in sight.

The landscape fades in the gathering dusk, and our weary bones creak and sigh as we sink down upon the supple bed of sand. We keep apart from the herd, who glare at you, their breath fouling the air as they mutter, ‘Murderer!’ ‘Strangled the puppetmaker!’ ‘Better watch no one throttles him in the night!’ The threats make me nervous, but you aren’t scared. You turn your back on them and drift off to sleep.

The stars are brighter in the Singing Dunes. The silvery glow of the moon is iridescent upon the waves of sand. As you sleep you become a young boy again, and your iron-branded scars no longer seem menacing, but the marks of brutality and suffering. As you sleep, I vow to protect you, and I watch the craftsmen until every last one of them is out cold. During the famine of Zhongdu they slaughtered and ate their servants. They are cannibals. They are evil through and through.

I am drifting off to sleep when the spectral lullaby begins, nudging me back to consciousness. I sit up in the moonlight and stare about me. The singing is eerie and ethereal, and not in any language of humans but that of some other species of being. Where is the singing coming from? I listen and listen until it becomes apparent. The singing is coming from within the sand. I shake you awake.

‘What is it, Turnip?’ you say groggily.

‘Listen, Tiger! The sand is singing!’

You listen.

‘I don’t hear a thing,’ you say, and go back to sleep.

I look around the dunes. The herds of Jurchen slaves are dead to the world, starved limbs as white as bones under the pale moonlight. The Mongols watching over the herds, huddled under the skins of wolves and swigging koumiss from leather flasks, show no sign of hearing the strange, otherworldly song.

I shiver in the cold night. I lie down and shut my eyes to sleep. But sleep is impossible. I can no more sleep on the dunes than on a bed of knives. I lie awake and listen to the spectral singing. I watch the sand.

On the second day in the dunes our progress is once more sabotaged by sand, as the wheels of the ox-carts and wagons are brought to a staggering halt and the Mongols force us to toil under the broiling sun, pushing the carts up slopes and lowering them with ropes down the other side. Around noon we pass some tall and craggy rocks called the Three Wise Men. A landmark we passed the day before. Orienteers consult maps and compass needles in dismay. We are straggling in circles. Lost in the foreverness of sand.

Tempers are frayed in the blistering heat. At water-drinking time Stone-carver Peng drops the flask as he passes it to you, spilling precious water. You curse him for dropping it. He curses you for murdering Puppetmaker Xia. He shoves you, and you shove him back. Master Peng glares at you, his nostrils spurting rage.

Master Peng is old and wizened and would lose if he fought you on his own. But Master Peng is not on his own. The herd of shuffling, elderly slaves surrounds you. ‘Shame on you!’ they cry. ‘Shame on you for murdering Puppetmaker Xia!’ Ogre is standing with his brethren by a snorting camel, swigging water from a leather flask. Whip them, Ogre! I think. But Ogre watches with a lazy smirk as his herd turns on one of their own. Though the craftsmen are weak from marching to the brink of death, mob outrage lends them strength. They close in on you, stabbing you with their gnarled old men’s fingers. ‘Shame on you!’ ‘Brute!’ ‘We’ll beat you till there’s nothing left to bury!’ You laugh at first, at the stabbing fingers and threats of the white-haired old men. Then your face darkens as they begin to strike you. Thud. Thud. Thud. You struggle to fend off their blows

My heart beating wildly, I run into the fray. ‘Leave him be!’ I shout, as I am beaten by their fists. ‘Leave him be!’ I drag you out of the scrum of old men. I drag you away with all my strength, and we tumble on to the sand. Your teeth are clenched and bared, and you are glaring, keen to go back and fight. I heave myself on top of you, holding you down.

‘Sixteen against one,’ I say. ‘You will lose. They will beat you to death, and the Mongols won’t stop them.’

The will to fight drains out of you, but you glower at the old men.

‘I’d rather die fighting,’ you hiss, ‘than let those fiends push me around.’

Sunset. The sky is blood-coloured, as though bleeding from the Death by a Thousand Cuts. We stare at the massacre in the sky and you say, ‘The sun needs a tourniquet.’

The Mongols are spooked. The haemorrhaging of the sky is a portent of something bad. At dusk, they gather around fires of camel dung, praying to their animistic gods for protection and tossing in handfuls of sacred dust. When the shamanistic rituals are over and the fires die out, they go into their yurts.

The moon hangs low in the sky, casting its phosphorescence upon the dunes. I lie down, but I can’t sleep. When the spectral song of the sand begins, I am desolate. Though surrounded by a thousand men, loneliness wells up in me and spills out as tears. A sob, primal and deep, shudders in my chest as I suddenly understand why the souls under the sand are singing, and what they want me to do. Sobbing, I dig at the dunes with my hands. I dig and dig, like a dog burrowing for a bone, until you are shaking my shoulders and saying, ‘Turnip. Stop. This is madness.’

You pull me down. You hold me tight, binding my arms against my sides.

‘Shut your eyes,’ you command. ‘Go to sleep.’

But how can I sleep? I listen to the spectral melody. I watch the sand.

In the morning Stone-carver Peng is dead. Strangled. A choking gasp is his death mask, and his tongue is thrust out from the root. Ogre wrinkles his axe-battered nose at the corpse, as though it’s a dead cockroach or rat. He kicks sand into Master Peng’s staring eyes, before the Mongol caravan moves on, through the Singing Dunes.

Around midday the camels start behaving strangely. They gaze to the sky and moan. They bellow and snarl their lips back over their teeth. They sink to their knees and refuse to walk another step. One camel, possessed by terror, overturns a cart as he breaks out of his leather harness and gallops wildly across the dunes.

At first we are mystified. Then we see it, the dark and ominous cloud on the horizon, like a plague of insects swarming towards us. There is a roaring in our ears, growing louder and louder, as though the dark cloud is wrenching the heavens apart as it approaches. The Mongols have no time to put up yurts. They shelter behind the kneeling camels or under rugs of animal skins. The slaves huddle in groups. Outcasts from the herd, you and I crouch together, staring with foreboding as the turbulence draws near.

Everything turns dark when the storm is upon us. Tempests of sand, swept up by cyclonic forces, howl and shriek about us. The wind is deafening and the sand is everywhere, choking us and grazing our skin and robbing us of sight. I can no longer see the Mongols and ox-carts and slaves. All I see is you, who I cling to for my life. The Singing Dunes are attacking the Mongol caravan for trespassing. They are throwing a tantrum and hurling rocks to punish us, of this I am convinced. As the wind spins around us and a rock smashes against my temple, I shout in your ear, ‘We are done for. This storm will kill us!’

‘No!’ you yell back. ‘The storm is on our side. Now is our chance to escape.’ Though the choking dust has blinded us, and the howling wind blown all sense of direction away, you drag me to my feet. ‘Run!’ you shout. ‘Run!’

We run into the storm, and the sand and rocks, the teeth of the vengeful wind, rip our robes and lacerate our skin. I don’t know where we are going. I don’t know if we will survive. All I know is wherever you go, I go. Even if you are leading us to a certain death.

We run and run until the howling wind dies down, the thickness of sand thins out and the sun reappears through the yellow haze. Storm-bludgeoned and concussed, we gaze at the empty dunes stretching around us, smooth and unmarred by a single hoof or footprint. The caravan is nowhere in sight. The thousand Jurchen slaves and hundred Mongol slave-drivers are gone.

‘At last,’ you say, ‘we are no longer slaves. We are free.’

But there’s no joy in your eyes, for we are still lost in the Singing Dunes, under the man-slaying sun. Your head is bleeding and gashed, as though you fought the storm and lost. I touch the soreness of my cheeks and my fingers come away bloody, and I know I look as battered as you.

We stagger on. We don’t speak, because there is nothing to say. There is not a bird in the sky, nor any other sign of life. Only the sun, blasting like a furnace in a crematorium, determined to reduce us to ash and bone. The sun knocks the breath out of us, our strength and will to go on, and my heart is breaking with the presentiment that we will perish here in this silent, godless place. In my grief my only consolation is that at least I will die by your side.

When the lake appears in the distance, shimmering in the dunes, I think I am hallucinating. But you are staring at the apparition too. My throat a cracked, aching pipe, I croak, ‘Let’s go there, Tiger.’

You look at me with deadened eyes, which life is slowly departing from. Your voice husky and low, you say, ‘The lake does not exist. Why waste our time chasing a mirage?’

‘But the lake is due north,’ I say, ‘on the way to the end of the dunes. So why not head there? What do we lose?’

As we stagger nearer and nearer, the lake of shimmering blue does not evaporate into the sky as expected. The illusion gains in substance and reality, separating into objects of the natural world. Trees. Plants. Rocks. Grasses. A lake in the shape of a crescent moon. We can’t believe our eyes. The miracle restores our strength and we start to run. We run and trip over, sprawling on to the sand. We laugh and stagger to our feet, and run again.

The Lake of the Crescent Moon

We drink the cool, clear water and our bodies rejoice. We drink and drink as though the lake could at any moment disappear. We drink until we can drink no more, then fall on our backs and laugh at the vast blue sky. The sun is no longer our mortal enemy now we have water and shade.

The lake is curved as a sickle and surrounded by trees. We strip out of our ragged robes and round our shoulders over our pitiful nakedness. We have been starved to mere shadows of our former selves — our skin so taut over starkly jutting bones we are painful to look at. But as we slide into the lake, the water laps forgivingly at our wasted bodies. The water caresses our sores and ulcers and festering wounds, and tears of gratitude well in my eyes. Though our limbs are weak we thrash them about in joy. The filth of slavedom dissolves, and we reclaim our bodies from Mongol chattels. We swim for a while, then emerge from the waters, purified and reborn, and go to sleep naked under a tree.

We wake up hungry at dusk and rummage through the vegetation around the lake. After the monotony of the yellow and rust-coloured Gobi sand, our eyes feast on the leafy greens of the foliage. We pick and eat the bitter-tasting leaves from a low plant, and though our empty stomachs can’t digest them, they cry out for more.

‘Look!’ you cry, pointing up at a tree.

Small brown birds are hopping about in the branches. The tree is not very tall, and you reach for a low bough and climb up, your legs dangling from the crotch of the tree as your head disappears into the leaves. You come down again with a bird’s nest of speckled eggs, and one newly hatched pink and featherless baby bird. The eggshells crunch between our teeth as we chew the slimy bird foetuses and swallow them down. The baby bird opens its tiny beak, chirping with fright as you lift him from the nest. You tear into the bird’s naked, defenceless body with your teeth, detaching the head, and handing the half with the feet to me. I chew up the raw and tender meat and newly formed bones, and swallow them down. I wish there was more.

‘The other trees will have nests too,’ you say, spitting out the bird’s tiny beak. ‘And tomorrow we can trap the bigger birds.’

The onset of darkness chases us back to the shore of the lake. The moon is silver and bright above, and its paler, terrestrial imitation sways upon the waters. You are half in shadow, half in moonlight as you lean back against a tree. Your handsome eyes drift over the rocks, plants and trees as you think your thoughts. Who are you, Tiger? I wonder. Where do you come from? Who mutilated your cheeks? Though we have survived so much together, you are still a mystery to me. I reach and stroke the iron-branded scars. I stroke the wildness of your hair, snagging my fingers in knots only a knife could get rid of.

‘Stop it, Turnip,’ you growl.

But I don’t, and you lunge for me. You knock me over and we wrestle each other on the ground. As we play-fight, exchanging cuffs and blows, I feel your stiffening against my thigh and my heart swells in anticipation of what is to come.

Beyond the Lake of the Crescent Moon and our fortress of trees, the sorrowful dirge of the sands has started up again. But it is not so loud and is easy to ignore.

At daybreak we go to the lake and drink and bathe. You are quiet and subdued, but your mood improves as we plot to capture the brown birds.

‘Right now we are too weak for the journey ahead,’ you say. ‘We need the meat to regain our strength.’

I nod, though I am dubious of this ‘journey ahead’. Here by our lake we have everything we need. Food, water, each other. Returning to the Singing Dunes is suicidal folly. But you will come round.

We gather reeds and weave them into bird-trapping cages. Then we lie on our stomachs under some bushes and wait for the birds to wander into the rigged, grub-baited traps. Though the birds are not used to predators, they are deft and quick. But we are patient and, after some hours, trap and kill six.

We return to the water’s edge and I pluck the feathered corpses as you make a fire out of wood. We skewer the birds by thrusting sticks down their throats, and roast them slowly over the flames. The meat is tender and satisfying. We strip the carcasses then lick the bones clean. You are silent as you eat. Moody and withdrawn. When you finally speak, you say, ‘I don’t like it here. The sooner we leave, the better. Something’s not right.’

I laugh at this. What a joker you are.

‘Yesterday we were dying in the dunes. Today we have water and shade and food. What’s not right, Tiger? This is paradise.’

You shake your head, but are unable to express your misgivings in words.

‘Think of all we have suffered,’ I continue. ‘First the famine and fall of Zhongdu. Then the Mongols lashing us with whips and forcing us to march. Then the mob of old men, baying for your blood. .’

You nod, turning your skewer of charred, sizzling bird over the flames.

‘Those old bastards would’ve murdered you,’ I say, ‘had I not stopped them. You should be happy, Tiger. You have much to be thankful for. .’

You stiffen and look up from your skewer. A strange look comes into your eyes as you say, ‘It was you, wasn’t it, Turnip? It was you who strangled Puppetmaker Xia and Stone-carver Peng.’

Did you know that our senses have a memory, separate from the memory of the mind? My hands twitch with the memory of squeezing their necks. My nose wrinkles at the spoiled meat of their breath and the whiff of elderly incontinent bowels. I shudder all over with the memory of their flailing, death-resisting limbs.

‘I did it to protect you,’ I say.

They were evil men through and through, and deserved to die. So why are your eyes so harsh and unforgiving, as though strangling them was somehow wrong? You drop the skewered bird in the fire and the greedy flames gobble it up. You stand up and back away from me.

‘Tiger, where are you going?’

‘Stay away from me,’ you warn.

You disappear into the trees.

You go up into the branches. The soles of your feet, dirty and pale, dangle from a bough as the rest of you is obscured by leaves. You are in a filthy temper, so I stay out of your way. I hunt for birds’ nests in the trees furthest from you. I go and swim on my own in the lake but, lonely without you, thrash my limbs with none of the joyousness of the day before. I am worried about you. Should I take you some water? You must be very hot and thirsty up in that tree.

The sunset is a lake of fire in the sky when you at last climb down. I leap up in relief as you come over to the water’s edge.

‘Tiger,’ I say, ‘come and eat. I fetched you supper.’

You ignore the bird’s nest of speckled eggs and pink baby-bird corpses I am holding out to you. You go to the lake and drink long and deep from its waters. Then you gather up the ragged robes you shed the day before, pulling them over your nakedness as though they are the last shreds of your dignity.

‘I am leaving,’ you say.

‘Leaving?’

You nod and I take a deep breath. I must dissuade you from this foolishness.

‘We can’t leave now. We are not strong enough yet. Why don’t we stay here longer? Rest more, eat more. . We will die out there in the Singing Dunes. .’

‘I am leaving,’ you say. ‘Without you. The time has come for us to part.’

I shake my head. Every part of me feels as though it is sinking in dismay.

‘Why don’t you want to stay with me?’ I ask.

‘You are a murderer.’

‘But aren’t you a murderer too? You fed us dead men in Zhongdu.’

‘Taking flesh from the dead is not the same as taking life from the living.’

The descending sun is an inferno in the sky. You stare out at the dunes, casting your mind to the journey ahead, and I am in agony, because I can no more make you to stay than spear your shadow to the ground.

‘Don’t go,’ I beg. ‘You can’t go. You will die out there.’

You gaze back to me and say, ‘Do you want to know how I got these scars, Turnip?’

I nod. Since the day we met, I have wanted to know.

‘When I was a child,’ you say, ‘I was sold into slavery. I ran away when I was twelve, but had only a few days of freedom before my master caught me and brought me back. He branded my face as punishment. He warned me the second time I ran away he would slit my throat. But the threat of death didn’t stop me from escaping again. .’

You stare at me, your eyes blazing. ‘Because I would rather die than be a slave. I am a slave to no one. Not to the Mongols. Not to the Lake of the Crescent Moon. And not to you.’

‘You are not my slave!’ I protest. ‘I am your slave and you are my master. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for you!’

You shake your head, as though I have failed to understand. Then, without even a farewell, you stroll out to the dunes. Sand gusts to the sky in the blustery winds, and you walk into the distance. You can’t go. We are brothers. I will die without you.

‘You are not leaving!’ I shout after you. ‘Over my dead body are you leaving!’

The sand is singing now, histrionic and shrill. My heart is thudding, valves slamming as blood surges within, and my chest heaves with the fight yet to come. For I won’t let you go without a fight.

‘Wait!’

You don’t wait. So I run and leap on your back, and we crash to the sand. Over and over we roll, and you fight me off with your fists. Your skull butts my skull. Your knee thuds my groin. And though I am in pain, I cling to you. I won’t let you go.

Other than our grunts and the dull thud of knuckles, we fight in silence. Over and over we roll, until I am straddling your chest as you are bucking beneath me, panic in your eyes as my hands close around your throat with a strength that is not my own but lent to me by the Singing Dunes. Kill him! Kill him! shrills the sand. Blood vessels bulge in your temples, and you flush with blood as I throttle you. Tears shine in your eyes, and I am stricken, for it’s the first time I have ever seen you cry. But they won’t let me stop. I wring and wring your neck, until there is nothing left to wring out.

The sun descends beneath the Singing Dunes. The flaming sky above fades to darkness and stars. The moon rises and scatters its lunar beams upon the sand. I cradle your limp body in my arms. I speak to you gently and reproachfully. What madness possessed you to make you want to leave, Tiger? We had everything we needed here at the Lake of the Crescent Moon. Why did you have to spoil everything? I admonish you, weeping tears on your branded cheeks. Then I dig a shallow grave in the sand and bury you there.

Away from the Lake of the Crescent Moon I go. I stagger through the night, the stars pulsing brightly overhead and the demons that possess the sand serenading me with their song. I walk until daybreak and I have reached the end of my strength. Then I collapse upon the Singing Dunes and spread my arms wide to embrace the sand.

‘Very well,’ I say. ‘Take me away.’