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"I DON'T BELIEVE IN the lisan al gaib, but I give you this in a symbol of honour." Chani says, outstretching her palm, granting the boy access to the weapon in her priority. He still speaks no words.
"It was passed to me by my great aunt. The blade is carved from the tooth of the great Shai Hulud. It would be an honour, for you to die holding it."
He looks down at the blade as she unsheathes it from the leather. It's a firm spike, sanded down to an even firmer point. A gradient of brown to beige runs through it, lacing up the sides of it seamlessly - darker where the handle starts, and lightest at the tip. It's beautiful.
He takes it from her gently, grazing the blade with one hand.
"Careful. It's sharp. You wouldn't want to cut sacred hand, now would you?" She adds, sarcastically.
"Thank you." He simply replies, before glancing back to where I sit, talking with Stilgar. I can't hear anything of their conversation, but my eyes are trained on the two of them intently. Taken, this boy had to be less intelligent than I'd garnered. In my dreams, he seemed he knew something no one else did. Now, today in the sands of our own time, he looked like a frail desert mouse - scouring the grains below him for scraps.
But as I look to him further, I can see his face, in my head. I can see his outstretched palm, sapping with blood - and I can feel the tooth in my hand, resting so calmly as if it had always meant to be there. This was not one of my dreams. I was seeing his.
"Don't look at her." Chani snaps protectively, and he whips his head back to her full attention. I blink, and go back to meet Stilgar's admiring gaze, though both me and the boy are still lingering on the forefront of our own paired thoughts.
"He's been challenged, there's nothing we can do."
"He'll die." I say so confidently. Stilgar shakes his head, to my surprise.
"He may not. I know what they name him." Stilgar tells me.
"Stop it with that." I snap. A silence grows between us as we sit and part with my words.
"He's mousy. Scrawny. He cannot fight like us, I won't believe it."
"He does not need skill, maqbara. He needs time."
I am not known to be the lonely fedykin that might go against Stilgar's word. I trust him, I have trusted him, and I know I shall continue to. So how is it, that I have come to doubt his truths?
"Well, he does not have it." I state faithfully.
Jammis is strong and unbelievably fast. I couldn't say anything about his intelligence - he's often imminent and impatient - but we need him. I know it. Not that I believe the boy might win, or that I want him to, but in some ways, I think I already know what's to happen.
"Zahid," comes a voice from the left. It's him, the boy. I watch carefully as his feet lift from the sand to make his way up to me.
I stand to face him as Stilgar takes a few steps back, giving us privacy. I wondered for a second how the boy knew my name, but soon related the issue to Chani, whom of which had probably spoken of me when she had pried his attention strictly from my face.
"I wanted to say," he breathes deeply, looking into my eyes as a slight breeze carries my hair an angle to the side. His sandy looking curls look like they'd be soft if he hadn't spent three straight days in the desert, with no one but his mother to converse with. I couldn't deny how beautiful he was, and I found myself thinking: what a waste. This boy was to die, and his pretty face would soon belong to the sand.
"I respect you." He tells me, so clearly I can't pretend that he had muttered an insult. I stare back at him blankly, as he does the same. I can see in his eyes that he knows he will perish, and I curse myself silently for almost feeling remorseful. He is nothing but a lamb to the slaughter, and that is just the way it has to be.
He turns around to face his suitor as I clamber up on the rocks to perch soundly beside Chani. Jammis lumbers toward the boy, knife at the ready, with the horizon peaking behind him.
"He asked to know your name." Chani whispers, her eyes trained to their figures as they bare their weapons.
"What?"
"He said he wanted to die knowing it."
Before I can strain my mind to think about Chani's words, Jammis takes the first swing.
"May thy knife, chip and shatter." He says, gritting his teeth together, his blade resting faithfully by his side.
"Don't you know his?" I ask, regarding the boy's name.
"Paul." She tells me.
They start to brawl, and efficiently at that - there is no hesitation and there is no scarcity. Either one of them is hungry for the victory, and when Paul actually starts to fight, I feel confused and astonished that he might yield such power. The boy is swindling past and through Jammis, swiping his knife atleast twenty times a minute. He's shielding himself whilst still trying to hurt the man before him, thinking carefully - but quick.
It seemed I had underestimated him. I still did not believe him to win, but I applauded him silently for going out in such an honoured way.
My mind suddenly migrates to the south, left wondering where I'm to go afterwards. Would standing before the south's temple feel like the great Arakeen homecoming I never had? Would the magnitude of the sculptures take the place of the warm embrace that I never got? Would holding his body, emptying his waters grant me freedom? I think about what's behind me, a path of destruction, or faith? I couldn't tell. My eyes were just too blurry, and my voice too strong - and with so many unanswered questions, this was just no use.
Or, should I just be here now, watching two men tear themselves apart to live amongst us? To love and eat and die with us?
I find his mothers eyes, and recognise a slight glint in her gaze. She's like me, The voice inside me says. Her eyebrows furrow together as her pupils meet mine, and I wonder if she can tell what I am, too. Whatever I might be. Her face is pale and wrought as she watches the fight, and I find myself drawing similarities between the two of them. Their dark toned hair, their piercing eyes - even their hands: the bone so prominent that the skin looked as if it had been merely placed upon it like a shawl.
Before I know it, Paul has the upper hand against Jammis as we all clutch our hearts to our lungs. He places Chani's knife between the man's throat, holding his other hand as he tries to struggle out of it. He does eventually, but Paul just checks him again, his knife at Jammis's throat once more.
"Do you yeild?!" Paul screeches. I shake my head.
"He cannot yeild, this is a fight to the death only." Stilgar shouts back.
A singular breath leaves my lips, creeping past my body to meet with the wind as I watch Paul toy with Jammis. Chani's hand meets my shoulder though no distraught is visible in her eyes. We're good at that, her and I - hiding it from our faces, whatever we're feeling.
And then suddenly, there's checkmate.
Paul's blade makes unforgivable contact with Jammis's lower back, and he crumbles forward into it, like the blade is all he'd been waiting for. Chani's grip tightens on me as she furrows her brows together, careful not to move her mouth an inch.
Suddenly, my feet bring my legs to rise and I'm standing - towering over the remnants of Jammis's life, as paul grasps tightly to the tooth that's lodged between both the man's rib cage and the teen's white knuckles. It seems he doesn't quite know what to do with himself, neither does anyone around him as he pulls the sharp edge from Jammis's body, leaving only blood red sand behind.
His eyelashes flutter up in my direction, and I feel a pit forming deep inside my stomach when he stares up at me. It's only for a split second, but it feels as if I've stared into his soul one too many times as we meet subconsciously. It's not long before the crowd of us watching closes in on him, touching his shoulder in turn as to initiate him.
He's one of us.
WE TRAVELED AS SO from there, and the few of us that wanted to were taking Jammis's weight in turns. The two of us hadn't spoken since the fight - in result of my avoidance of him. I practically stuck myself to Chani's side, afraid that he might approach me to say something unneeded. Something daring; the only descriptor I'd really attached to his name that he hadn't proved wrong yet.
I hated that I had been wrong, and I hated the fact that he had been the one to confirm it. I wanted to converse more with Chani but I wasn't sure if Paul knew our tongues. He was obviously from another planet, but our ancestry was not study proof. So, we did not take that chance. Instead, we carried on through the silence, as we scoured the sand and scaled dunes. Some of us grieved, some mourned, but not a soul dared to cry.
When the night comes, he falls back to watch the sun as it goes down. He's gaining eyebags, slumping behind everyone else, and I know it's because of the foreign desert nature he's not quite attuned to. His mother keeps on, letting him be alone, which I do respect; yet I find myself wondering about the two of them again. They'd come from Caladan, I knew because of their Atriedes name - so they'd been accustomed to luxury before all of this. To silk gowns and warm baths and rain.
"You're doing it too slow," I say, startling him, and I realise so far I'm the only one able to do so. I might not care so much for him, but it would be stupid to survive a fight with a fedykin and then die from a mere worm.
I move my foot to mark the sand as I count the steps in my head: turn, slide up, tap, twist.
"Not in the books I've studied." He remarks, only quieting down when I send him a piercing stare.
"Do you want to learn from text or fedykin?"
He clears his throat.
"Just do what I do." I tell him, and I practice the sand walk in sight of his very eyes - both of which are still a deep, Caladonian brown. It seemed the spice hadn't gotten to him completely yet.
"I learned everything from text."
"That's because you were sheltered with the luxury of knowledge. We don't have books, or scriptures. We have language and movement. Only so much can be spoken from your mouth."
He nods slowly, still watching what I do as I demonstrate the swivelling motions with my feet.
"How is it that I've heard your name before?" He asks, and my heart drops a little. People know, people have heard of me, spoken of me even. No doubt the bene gesserit have been spreading rumours of a fremen girl like me, who knows their ways. He twists his mouth to the side, and I can tell he's thinking intently about what he's to say next - trying to be smart about this.
Avoiding the question, I point out our group ahead: laying themselves in the sand, and setting up for the night.
"Looks like it's lights out, Paul."
"I didn't know you knew my name."
"I know many things."
We sleep on our sides tonight, instead of in our nest-like-tents. I lay beside Chani, with Paul beside me and his mother next to him. The night is slightly cold, and I know so only because I hardly sleep. I drift in and out, but find myself watching over Chani instead of closing my eyes. I wonder how she looks so ethereal, even in sleep.
When morning comes, my two hours of shut eye betray me and I wake before anyone else. Not unusual, but irritating. Then, I hear it: faint clicking in the distance. I know immediately. Harkonnens.
Their soldiers often come out to catch us when we're travelling in the open, but I did not expect them to venture so deep into the sand. We are only a few miles from the south base, they should not be out here farming spice in this territory. No. They were here for us.
I shake Chani awake, and soon, the others are sprouting up aswell. The sound isn't close yet, but I can hear it creeping up on us every nearing second. I turn to my right, and see Paul, fast asleep still. I roll my eyes and tap him. He doesn't wake.
Fuck this. I think, as a reach two fingers to his cheek to nip at it. His eyes fly open to see me, and when he starts to open his mouth to speak I press my finger to my lips frantically. He quietens, thankfully, and looks up - noticing the faint noise just as I had twenty minutes ago.
The boy follows my instruction carefully as I tell him quietly to stay put, before crawling quickly away. I don't quite know if he'll keep his promise, but I know I have to try to keep him alive. That's what a good person would do, right?
When I manage to find a hiding place in a segment of rock, I watch three of them advance over the higher cliff side. My gun is already latched to my hand as I point it up towards the Harkonnen closest to me. The trigger clicks, like it always does and the bullet goes through the soldier's chest in a clean cut manner. I wait for him to fall back, and when he does, the others start to go down too.
More appear - I see them approaching out of the corner of my eye, making their way towards Paul and his mother. Shit. I point my gun over to them, but they're too far and too hidden for any of my bullets to hit. Fuck. It was me who told them to stay put. That blood would be on my hands.
I quickly scramble off the rocks and sift through miles of sand. It takes me a few minutes to get over to them, and I suddenly wonder why I'm risking so much for two foreigners - but no matter the doubt, it doesn't stop me.
One of the soldiers is stood upright ontop of a dune, and I manage to lightly step behind it, piercing a knife to its throat, the weight of the soldier going limp against me. I let him fall, tumbling down the dune to land at Paul's feet. He has killed one of them, but he was about to be massacred because of his foolishness.
"Don't ever turn your back in combat!" I yell out, as he wipes a thin layer of sweat from his brow.
"That's how you are killed, Mahdi."
"Stop calling me that." He demands, and I just roll my eyes once again. Why should I care what he wants to be named, when others do not do the same for me? When they ring out for the Mahdi, do they mean me or him? I didn't know which was worse.
Boy or girl, him or me, I was not willing to believe an ounce of bene gesserit gatherings. Whispers are almost words. Almost does not make a religion.
It should not.
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𝟑𝟖𝟗𝟕 𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐬
Thank you for
reading! Has anyone
listened to TTPD yet?
What's ur fav song??
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