“I beg to differ. This is definitely a man’s job. And in your case”—he moves my hair to the side and finds my throat, telling me of his hunger—“only mine.”
“I missed you.”
“I know. I felt it.”
Jessica opened her eyes. I felt it. To be so close to another that such yearning emotion could be felt, even at a distance. It was the last entry, poignant and ironic at once. Ten days after that, just short of their leaving the Sahara to return to his family home, where they might have been safe for the duration of their lives, he was captured by the tribe, for they’d convinced the prince to help them with his resources. Farida disguised herself as a man and rode Lord Mason’s stallion proudly into her father’s camp. Then she pushed off her turban and requested the right to die with her husband.
She’d drifted off. Jess blinked. The moon was full and bright now, the stars sparkling, diamonds in a vast darkness, a promise of light in so much unexplained void.
During the day she’d managed to mostly re-cover the obelisk, pushing sand in with her feet, pacing herself. The desert winds would take care of the rest, as well as her shelter. She began to walk west. She had to stop several times, not only to check her direction, but to collapse, her bones quivering in the nighttime chill. Once she even slept, despite her best efforts to stay awake, but when she was roused by her own panic, it had been only a few minutes. Struggling back to her feet, she continued. Then she stopped to throw up bile and blood, and found she couldn’t regain her feet.
“No,” she rasped. Then, a harsher snarl. “No.” She kept going, on her hands and knees. Since the moon and stars were bright, she didn’t use her flashlight, but she was tempted. She might not fear meeting God alone, but darkness was an entirely different matter.
The last part of her journey took her up the back side of that tall dune. While less steep than the other side, it was still a challenge for her. Pushing back despair at her failing energy, she went, one struggling pace at a time, like a religious supplicant on a holy quest.
Seventy-five shuffling feet up, she stopped, gasping. Felt around. Sand would have shifted so much over this time, but she had to believe he’d allowed for that, figured out something. Please let it be here. Please. It was here. She knew it. She’d prayed for it, would have sacrificed her soul to find it, if the devil wouldn’t have laughed at such a pathetic, battered offering. But maybe there was someone who could still find value in it.
Exhausted, she rolled onto her back to look at the position of the stars. Stared at Persephone and struggled to remain conscious.
Farida, name your price. Anything you want, anything in my power to give, is yours. Just let me find you. Let me know there was something that makes everything that’s happened to me worth it. Dearest Jack . . .
She stretched her arms out to either side. From the sight of the heavens she hoped it was obvious she was offering herself up to whatever spirits were listening. The only fear she had left was of finding out darkness was all there was.
As she lay there for several minutes, she fought growing despair with a soft murmur, a vague lullaby of no words. She moved her twitching hands, passing them through the sand like the dip of a ladle, sifting in a soothing rhythm. She would find it. She would. In her frustration, she dug deeper, clutching the sand in a tighter fist . . . and her knuckles scraped something solid.
Struggling to her side, she found the tiny marker, no bigger than her palm. Pushed up by the movement of another stone a quarter mile away, just as she’d researched, though if she hadn’t fallen in this exact spot, she never would have found it. While the top of the obelisk had been decorative, this one was unadorned, made to look like the sand itself, blending in unless one was on hands and knees like this, going by touch alone. A day’s worth of sand had buried it a handful of inches back under the ground.
Digging down around it, she found it had a spring trigger that released easily, surprising and heartening her. She’d hidden a prybar from the men in her belongings in case, though she hadn’t known if she’d have the strength to use it properly. The marker slipped from her grasp as the door beneath it ground open, letting sand tumble down into the narrow opening.