Tundra

Four days later, with no shelter and his water canister empty, the thing emerged. At first, it might have been a hallucination, a blotting on the skyline as the young man’s vision gave out. The closer it got, the more he was convinced it was merely a mirage. The shape was low and flat, like the puddles he had been taught to expect from the heat’s trickery. A rushing sound picked up to echo it. Was this just the wind?

It was the surprising coolness of the air that told him, no. This was the Leviathan. He sank knees first into the packed grit, trying to crouch in his own shadow so that his feet didn’t burn so much through their inadequate, reed soles. He remembered, as though it had happened in a dream, or to somebody else, what the campers on the edge of the sand banks had said–

‘A caravan comes across the desert. Follow the rocks and you may find it. Stray from that path and your bones will surely become part of the sand.’

Erasmus had asked, ‘How often does the caravan come?’

The campfire men, all harpoonists of sandworms and sand skates who would not disclose what it was that they hunted so close to the desolate equator, only laughed.

Finally, one, a younger hunter close to Erasmus’ own age, with a disfiguring scar across one cheek and blinded eye, spoke. ‘There is no time here.’ Hopelessly, Erasmus had tried to barter, to swap the rest of his unnecessary clothing and implements for food and drink. ‘There is no trade here either.’ The young man shook his head. ‘Men and women come hence when they are done with the world. We have no purpose other than to become one with the emptiest of places. Few are born here.’

A glance was enough to tell Erasmus that this man was born by the desert’s edge. Thus, he was sympathetic enough to a stranger. Neither young man nor newcomer had come to linger by the desert’s edge by choice. It was strange, Erasmus thought, to be in a land so hostile that its own natives were the closest thing it had to victims.

When the others’ backs were turned, Erasmus had succeeded in wheedling some bread and precious fruit from his unexpected ally. Then, he was on his way. He never even learned the giver’s name. He supposed it didn’t matter.

Now, the shape that loomed in front of him proved that the rumours of nomads were true. Whether or not he had been right to place such trust in strangers, and whether he had even had a choice but to rely on them, he had hopefully not come to a sorry end, or at least not to the sorriest available. Alone in the sand with his long shadow stretching behind him, Erasmus was impossible to miss, but the shape was still moving quickly. It seemed that it would run him over. He cried out hoarsely.

The shadow kept speeding. Where it went, it left clouds of dust and banks of sand behind it. As though it were a chariot with many wheels, jets of sand spurted out from underneath its sides. Above the sand, as a silhouette cut out from the surrounding glare, it appeared to be a moving city. As it grew even closer, however, something else rose out of the desert. Part of the contraption that had been buried came to light, and Erasmus saw a thousand crab-like legs supporting a familiar shape. The base of the city appeared to be manta ray, complete with lashing tail, but that couldn’t have been true. He recognised rays from long, salty days spent in a dingy, hauling up nets. That was months away from here, and there could be no water to support marine life out here. Even back near Claw Isle, from whence he had originated, rays never grew this huge. Indeed, this Leviathan would have equaled in size the island itself.

Something like a city clustered on the mechanical creature’s back. It appeared to be built of clay, so that it matched the natural mottling on the artificial animal’s sides. There was at least enough space to house five hundred people. Erasmus wondered what sustained them all. Did their steed also draw up water from deep underground, or were there oases in this unlikeliest of landscapes?

While he stood dumbfounded, one of the nomads, swathed against the grainy winds, stepped down the caravan’s head. Several others followed, keeping their distance. It was impossible to tell what they looked like under their coverings. Erasmus had heard tales about inhuman creatures, some nobler than men, some not, still living in outlying places. Supposedly, elves stalked the dense, tangled glades of the Evergreen. The seas to the far south held stranger beings than mermaids– the shape-shifters who claimed the expansive continental shelf arguably ruled a more vibrant domain than the Emperor in Tyrian City. And at the very bottom of the world, the icy outcropping the held the Rookery was populated by talking crows. Who knew what else was sentient in the corners of the mapped universe?

‘Who are you, and why are you in our city?’

Erasmus let his eyes roll quickly over the sands, to search for any subtle shapes that might be disguised, but he found nothing. ‘City?’ he repeated.

The foremost nomad shook his head. ‘All of this is our city.’ With a gloved hand, he drew a sweeping gesture across the horizon. Through maroon wrappings that appeared to be stained by the blood of something like a crayfish, only his eyes were visible as palest grey. Erasmus knew the practice of cracking sea urchins to create dye in clothing. As he studied his confronter, he wondered what armored thing might supply such colour here. Scorpions?

With time and the wind at his back, they sailed dehydrated oceans, cleaving waves as a stowaway where the hull sat low in the dunes. Erasmus rode in the veins that feed the open sands, hushed with guardian outcroppings of rock along either side. Finally, the desert stooped down to pay reverence to a great expanse of lake. This was the gateway to the tundra, the vast expanse of grasses that lay on its opposite shore. The sand skate crept effortlessly out of the parting dunes and glided into the water.

On the other side of the lake was the tundra. The tundra was a site of magic profound enough to make mages shudder, let alone fishermen’s boys self-taught in the ways of sorcery. There were wolf winds with teeth to strip the flesh from bones, and wandering mammoths unlike anything seen in the rest of the word. On the one side of the lake was power for moving stones, bending time and shaping elements. Sands shifted, covering and uncovering secrets. Their tides were cryptic, just like the pictograms they covered. The lake itself was fathomless, a land-locked chunk of sea.

Of course, Erasmus did not know all of this just yet.

The news broke with the morning, when waves turned choppily and passengers restlessly in their beds. The caravan was knifing up the longest limb of the lake, parting reeds and navigating swamps. The river itself gave the travelers wide berth, but the way remained fraught with peril. Each night the caravan squatted amongst crocodiles, the fearsome kind from whose swimming visions gods have spawned. The water turned from lens to mirror, first beneath a bloody sunset, and then as a reflection of the inky night. Stars winked slyly behind cloudlet shrouds.

In the morning, strange birds chorused. The sands ignited, instantly hot as grit in a fireplace, and the water bubbled in a satisfied way. Erasmus woke, too. It was the first time he had seen himself in his new body. Though, he thought, it could not have been new. It was still his body, and so a part of it must have existed all along. It felt righter than he could describe– a vessel the exact shape and size of his soul.

Nevertheless, it looked very different. It was a young body, with skin as white as milk, not pale as ash or parchment. Sinew tensed beneath its tautness, where the muscle once atrophied was restored. Erasmus felt his hair with unwrinkled fingers and discovered a spill of charcoal curls, tight and black as goats' wool. He knew that his eyes were bright only because the things they saw were brighter than he remembered. He was not yet everything he had ever wanted to be, for he was still weak and a mortal. He still needed to find the mythical temple. Yet, he was enervated. That electric sensation made it all worthwhile.

He felt for the crushed halves of the tablet on the grubby floor, and quickly tossed them through the portal, where the river swallowed them with a splash.

It had worked! He reveled in the miracle. He was real!

He wanted to cry out in joy, until he realised that others were already crying for him. He scrambled to compose himself, dragging a tunic shirt across his chest. His clothes had formerly fitted, and seemed to suit him. Only in his renewed youth, with the dust no longer a part of him, could he see how shabby they were. Once ready, he listened. Shouts went up above the deck. A boy, it seemed, had disappeared. The crew feared he had gone overboard.

I say feared, though it was his usefulness, and not his wellbeing, that was feared missing. Eisheen had been a cabin boy, or some kind of scullery lad. He was a youth seldom seen, but harassed enough to be missed for the labour he provided. His was a name often shouted, when the officers wanted something done. Who or what else Eisheen was, Erasmus never learned. Nobody knew him, but everybody was always shouting for him. On that morning, the shouting went unanswered.

He was crouching on the floor, peering from his porthole, when the crash came. The door to his hideaway burst open on its hinges. A red-faced man, breathless with contained bellows, appeared– also fit to erupt. His whiskers bristled, and his eyes shone when he laid sight on Erasmus. His stomach and chest heaved where the buttons of his wilted uniform struggled to contain them. His voice was a tight-wire strung between anger and relief.

It didn't take Erasmus long to make a decision. He still needed to get to port, but now that he had changed shape, his old identity was more dangerous than ever.

‘Eisheen?' the officer said. ‘Eisheen Ameira?'

Erasmus stood up.