The air was hot and damp and the ocean breeze offered little comfort. Jennah hauled her motorcycle saddlebags down the narrow staircase of the little hotel where she stayed. She swayed left and right trying to secure her footing, barely succeeding at not falling her way to the hospital.
By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, she was out of breath and damp with sweat. “This heat is impossible!” She pulled the damp t-shirt sticking to her skin.
She did not want to take another shower this late in the day. She liked to keep her rides slow and she wanted to reach Tarfaya before nightfall. Securing her heavy load in place, Jennah headed to the bathroom. She ran her t-shirt under the faucet, squeezed the excess water out, and then put it on under her riding jacket. The feel of the wet fabric on her skin was a little mercy in the hell that was a Saharian May afternoon.
Jennah said her goodbyes to the lovely lady in charge of the place. The old woman was so nice and welcoming that the young woman did not mind how she made fun of the handful of broken words Jennah knew in Darija or how dull and uneventful the city of Akhfenir was.
She mounted her bike, turned the ignition, and let the beast roar to life. Soon, the wheels took the rider out of the jungle of short buildings and cars to a road of concrete, pebbles, and sand. It made for a magical sight, the golden sand obscuring the borders of the road, dancing like a gleaming snake on the dead concrete. The road ran in a blanket of sand, parallel to the ocean in a marriage of Saharian dunes and Atlantic waves.
I never thought blue and orange could go this well together, she pondered, smiling.
They were comfortable and safe, those thoughts of water and stone... Exceedingly more comfortable than the ones who drove her here on her journey around the world, and the ever-exceeding doubt now that her tour neared its end.
The setting sun drew Jennah’s attention to the sky and away from her shadows of doubt. It was still early, and Tarfaya was only 40 minutes ahead. The ground around her was stiffer than before. She had returned to driving alongside the coast after circling the Khnifiss National Park, but the sand was no more, instead, the side of the road was ornate with pebbles and dry earth.
The weary rider slowed down, too troubled by the heat and her thoughts. She pulled to a stop atop a cliff within sight of the road, yet secluded enough for sufficient privacy.
What was she to do now? This break she had put her life on hold for was soon to be over, and she did not have a clue where to go moving forward.
She sat on the edge of the cliff and looked down. She could hear the waves crashing against the side of the cliff but could not see them. Some sort of platform was obscuring the way. A dozen layers or so of rock were budding from the cliff at a 90-degree angle under her feet in a sharp triangle.
Jennah paid it no mind and focused on the setting sun instead. It was not kissing the sea as of yet, but it would soon, she figured.
The minutes passed while Jennah gazed at the horizon until the sky turned pink and the water turquoise. She sat, listening to the waves, the wind, and the pennies rustling in the emptiness of her wallet.
You are supposed to find yourself on the journey. I journeyed around the world, yet I am still as lost as ever, thought Jennah tiredly.
She got her phone out and looked at all the pictures of her travels… all four years worth of travels. Memories flooded her brain. Memories of all the people she had met. All the places she had visited. Her phone slipped from her grip.
“Damn it!”
She looked down. The phone was still working, thank goodness, its screen’s light reaching upward for her. It has not fallen deep either, the platform that saved it being but two meters deep.
Jennah got up. Shit, it’s gotten late. She looked around. The moonlight offered little help as a cloud curtained the full moon. She searched her bags for a portable flashlight in practical blindness but managed to find it and shone it on the side of the cliff. Her mind’s gears turned trying to reason out the footings of a safe descent.
She had to get it. Getting a new one would be too bothersome, and she doubted she could make her way back to this cliff tomorrow when she had glimpsed a dozen like it along the coast.
She bound and gagged her fear and climbed down cursing under her breath.
The cliff was layer upon layer of crackedcacked dirt, each a million years old. It made for an easy climb, especially with the slightly obtuse angle. In no time, Jennah reached the ledge and picked her phone up.
“Well that was easy,” she proclaimed proud and triumphant, and inspected the little thing for any damage.
It survived the fall thankfully. The plastic casing had shielded it from the toll of the fall. She put it safely back in her pocket and turned to look down the edge of the platform. This time she could see the waves crashing against the face of the cliff. The water shone faintly under the now unobscured moon. She doubted she could survive such a fall. Her skin prickled at the thought. “Now that will not make for an easy climb.”
Anxiously, Jennah stepped back and turned her attention to the impending climb. She had jumped the last steps down as the wall was smooth and offered no footing, but that would not do going up.
There was, however, another way. A big stone stood to her right. It was as high as her knee and sufficiently close to the wall. It would make do as a stool to the most layered part of the cliff just above. With her flashlight in her mouth, she climbed the lithic stool and braced the wall. The moon shone brightly enough, this time around, and she soon secured both hands on the cliff and her right foot on the stone. She readied herself to start the climb, but the small boulder gave way under her weight before she could.
A scream escaped her as she fell hard on her bottom where the stool should have been, but was not.
The ground creaked under her; she stilled then fell.
Jennah plunged feet first into a slide of pebbles and sand. Her arms came up around her head to protect herself from what she was sure would be her doom.
While the tunnel was soft under her from years of erosion, ridges razor-sharp lined the upper part and cut her arms. Her frantic screams echoed around her, embracing her in a fog of fear and pain.
She reached the bottom of the slide in a resounding splash that did little to break her fall. Her legs folded against the stone stool, and her head and torso dove into the water, driving the very breath out of her chest.
Getting up on one leg, she coughed out salt water in an adrenaline-induced frenzy and prayed her eyes open, not that it helped. She stood in complete darkness. Her throat and eyes stung and her body ached terribly. The riding jacket she wore had taken much of the damage to her upper body, but she could feel bruises forming all over her flesh with blood trickling down her arms.
And her leg! It throbbed so horribly where it collided with the stone that she feared the bone fractured or worse. She reached out to touch it under the chin-high water and winced in pain.
Feeling her way around in blinding darkness, she found the edge of the pool. The water reached her chin at the deepest part of it by the mouth of the tunnel, but she could feel it getting shallower the farther she followed the rim.
As the edge went lower and lower, Jennah went down on her hands and knees, keeping the shin of her left leg raised.
She crawled on pebbles and stones that dug uncomfortably into her palms until she could not feel the water anymore. She dropped down on her side, breathing hard from fear, pain, and cold. Her clothes had been tailored for riding in hot weather, not this, and her wet state did not improve her pending risk of hypothermia.
She lay in a ball on the cold hard stone, eyes closed, arms bleeding, shivering for a while. Both will and strength slowly deserting her.
This is bad.
This is so bad.
*****
A while later- how long? Jennah did not know- the girl gathered enough power of body and mind to move. She rolled to her side and painfully blinked, only to be greeted by complete darkness.
Minutes passed, and her spirit re-depleted.
Jennah rolled on her back and stretched her arms on the cold ground.
She gasped and bolted up.
On her knees, Jennah frantically looked around. The sudden light that had illuminated the air around her not a second ago was gone, and it was dark again. I must be losing it, what the fuck was that?
Could it be… Jennah slowly crawled forward until she could feel the ground under her palms change textures… and glow. Slowly, the complete darkness she fell into was no more. The place was gleaming in golden light.
The walls were high, so very high, she could now see, and the room was large. Save for the pool and the tunnel she fell through, everything was covered in symbols. From the ground under her feet to the walls and ceiling above her head, carvings were bathing the place in light.
Jennah got up on her right foot, her pain almost forgotten. She limped her way in circles, making sure to stay on the glowing part of the cave. Her neck strained in whiplash as she tried to take in the details of the place.
Not an inch of the room, be it the walls, the ground, or the ceiling, was devoid of the symbols that Jennah supposed must be writings. She limped closer to a wall and touched the gleaming letters.
“This is unbelievable!” Her fingers traced the warm outline of the carvings.
“This must be thousands of years old. How can it have heating and lighting?” She looked into the opposite side of the circular room. It was as wide as a football field, and the ceiling was so far up that the carvings were indistinguishable.
She took a broken step away from the wall and looked up its mighty height. The carvings were organized in a vertical order. Each symbol was the size of her palm in width, but they varied in length. They were constrained between two lines that ran vertically on each side of the letters. The lines acted like some sort of divider between the multiple groups of bands that covered the entire place.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Not being able to distinguish any detail in the lofty ceilings, she looked down. The bands of symbols seeped into the floor in a spiral of light connecting the numerous levels of the place. The spiral rolled in lazy waves around the floor and flowed like waterfalls a meter deep and more than fifteen meters wide. There were five such steps, or levels, in the place, well-spaced, and all leading down to the heart of the circular structure.
Jennah sat at the edge of the first floor. Her legs dangled down the short wall, not touching the ground. “Just why would they make the steps so high? Were they giants or something?” She angled herself right, extended her right foot, and stepped gently down to accommodate her aching limb.
The second level was much like the first, several meters wide, with a spiral of symbols flowing down its ground. A limping Jennah continued her exploration deeper into the place. She climbed down the remaining steps till she finally reached the center of the marvel.
She was surprised to see that the center of the room was devoid of any kind of ornamentation. It was a bit small in size compared to the levels above, and duller. The spiraling symbols rolled tighter on its floor. The letters and words shrunk around the core of the place, which, to Jennah ‘s disappointment, was gray and dull without a glow.
“That’s quite the letdown. Did they forget to carve it or was it deliberately left blank?”
The young woman shook her disappointment and edged forward over the blank space to continue her exploration of the other side of the structure, but as soon as she was within the borders of the round heart, she froze where she stood.
Oh, God, oh God, oh God! Jennah froze in place. She tried yanking her limps free from the invisible hold, but it was as if her feet had a mind of their own. Her eyes stung, as she could not even will her eyelids to blink. Her chest ached from the lack of breath. She could hear the fast drumming of her heart in her ears, and that brought her incredible comfort.
In a minute, her chest heaved in gentle breaths, and her eyelids blinked moisture back into her burning eyes. Her arms and back straightened into a comfortable posture, all against her will.
The gray circle shone ablaze in a tunnel of light that crept its way up Jennah’s body. The warmth of the golden halo swaddled her in a gentle heat. The tunnel of light passed her body and made its way to the ceiling, dragging her in the air.
“Paw’bakho yi gheferare,” someone said in a voice as smooth and sweet as honey.
“Paw’bakho yi gheferareye,” the soft voice lulled her to sleep.
“Paw’bakho pa mikidahe mavakhe-d’he, vakereza, kedemeza.”
Slowly, her mind and body stilled alike, heeding the gentle call. Her chest heaved in the rhythm of sleep, and her heart slowed to a gentler beat. How could she not? She had not felt this calm, this safe, since she was in her mother’s womb.
So Jennah slept in a gaze of golden warmth and humming peace in a world of her own, deaf to the blasting call. Like a deep blow into a heavy horn that sounded from the bowels of the earth, it echoed for a few seconds, in every corner of the universe, alerting every conscious being in existence that the time has come.
*****
“Wake up, Child,” the same sweet voice that lulled Jennah to sleep pulled her out of it. Although this time, she could understand what it was saying.
Jennah was lowered slowly. The invisible hold engulfed her throughout her short descent until her feet steadied, and the golden halo faded.
“There you go,” said She.
“Wha-... who are you?” but no answer came. She was still in that room with the warm air and the sandy light, but it felt different somehow.
The girl looked around. This can’t be. She could read the symbols. It was as if in her sleep, someone engraved the whole language- written and spoken- in her mind. Do Mavaye, this said. Zo yebeko kebejo-d’he kon’se yam’baghohe, that one read.
“What do you want from me?”
“Follow,” the command seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. A wave of light a few shades lighter danced by her feet, painting a path over the carvings. She hesitantly stepped over it, and it grew like a snake wiggling forward. She followed, climbing over several small stairs that connected the levels of The Temple instead of the too-high steps from before.
That’s what this is. It’s a Temple.
The path led her to the edge of the circular room where, on the wall, a doorway opened into darkness. The wave stilled, so Jennah stopped a few feet from the opening. It was pitch black on the other side, a stark contrast to the thousands of little lights illuminating The Temple.
“Wow!”
The onlooker was startled when an angry red ball came spinning closer and closer from the right of the doorway’s depth while a ball roughly half its size came into view from the left. A canvas of whites, blues, and a hundred other hues marked the backstage of the act.
The two celestial objects collided in an impact so violent that a chuck of the first orb was ripped off its surface in a cloud of debris while the small assailant went on its way, not even sparing a glance at the mayhem it caused.
Jennah watched the broken planet roll and round up while the cloud of its hurt condensed into a little ball itself. The angry red of its surface cooled down. The scarlet planet was now a marriage of rock and liquid.
“That’s when you came in,” said the voice, light as a whisper, strong as a promise. A small body of movement followed on its wind.
A little bundle as big as Jennah’s fist swam by her head and stopped between her and the doorway. She could not make out what it was, only that it was alive and moving. It shrunk infinitely small until her eyes could not perceive it anymore, and from its place, erupted what neared an infinity of threads of light, shooting through the screen-door at the canvas beyond.
The tails of the threads gradually faded as they traveled farther and farther into the cosmos. One thread journeyed to the sad beige planet, where it fell into a womb of liquid darkness. Jennah watched the planet take color by the second, as it became, little by little, blue.
“That’s Earth,” she realized.
The blue and brown globe grew a green mark by a shore. The green spot spread to cover lands that were far one moment and near another. She watched the continents dance around each other to the beats of a seismic rhythm, kiss, and retreat.
“Now that you know how it started, let me show you how it ends,” said Nothing and Everything.
The gateway zoomed at that little planet and settled on one part of the land where, from a sea of green, gray walls came forth in a spiral. A disk of gray stone covered the green earth, and the walls closed in a flat ceiling. The view moved to one side of the building where a doorway stood. The gate came closer and closer into view until Jennah stood before herself. The once window was now a mirror.
“Read,” She said.
*****
The sun kissed her skin as she sat cross-legged on the ground. Jennah ran her hand across a carpet of green sphenophytes. She played with the short horsehair-like plant enjoying a peace she did not know she missed. Small bugs were buzzing overhead, complimenting the soft chiming of the wind.
It was her fifth and last beak since she started taking in the context of The Temple. Each word she read branded itself into her memory until her head throbbed and ached. She would then come out and sit under the sun or the moon and let the breeze cool her overheating brain.
The Temple stood behind her in its former glory, proud, beautiful, and unbroken. Jennah laid on her back and stretched her arms and legs like a snow angel. She laid there for what seemed to last forever when something nudged her side. She turned her head slowly so as not to disturb her little guest.
“Aren’t you a cute one?” She caressed its sandy, rough-leather-like skin and rubbed its back. She turned on her side and faced the cynodont. “You look like a salamander and a dog had a baby,” she giggled at the insulted air of the little animal. “I meant that as a compliment. I love dogs.”
They would come out and greet her from time to time… queer yet familiar-looking animals and insects an ancient part of herself recognized.
She was crying the first time one of them approached her. It was an ancient dragonfly as big as her torso. She would have been terrified had it flown at her a day earlier, but its presence was a comfort in the light of what she now knew.
“How unlucky are we?” she had asked the dragonfly, “and nothing that I can do.” She then dried her tears and went back to The Temple. There has to be something I can do.
This time, as she sat with the cynodont, her sense of hope was dead. She had read it all.
“I’m sorry,” she apologized to the clueless animal.
“What did they say?" She heard someone say.
“They said to keep guard here and watch for any developments. Buch, you climb up this time around and keep watch. Big Duck and I will keep an eye on her.”
“Yes, Chief. Did they start the negotiations?”
“Yeah, some higher-ups are already on their way here.”
Jennah sat up in a panic. “Anyone there?” She could not see anyone. Past the sea of sphenophytes stood a forest, but the voices she heard sounded too close to have come from there. Something is wrong.
“Hello?” she tried again.
“Something is happening.” The voices said.
“Buch, circle around her. Big Duck, with me.”
They were coming from The Temple, she realized. She walked through the doorway. Warm golden light greeted her, but she could not see anyone. “ Is someone in here?” she tried again.
This does not make any sense. No one is supposed to be able to access the backlogs without my say-so.
“She’s coming down!”
Jennah climbed down the first step and then the second. From here, she could see the heart of The Temple. It was glowing like the rest of the carvings instead of its dull gray from before. She frantically looked around but could not see a soul.
My body is still there, she realized in horror. Only her mind could access the backlogs of The Temple, but the experience was so vivid that Jennah forgot that it was not real. She hurried to the circle. It was calling to her with every breath she took, her body terrorized at being frozen and unattended at the mercy of strangers. What do I do?
The minutes ticked as Jennah thought about what to do. Are they gone?
She could stay here and wait for them to leave, but what if they do not?
“Okay.” She cannot leave her body unattended at the mercy of the whims of strange men, she decided.
“Okay, Jennah, on the count of three. One. Two. Three.” She closed her eyes and slammed her foot down on the circle of gold when everything in her told her not to.
Jennah’s eyes were forced shut by the intensity of the light surrounding her. They stung and burned. She raised her hands, shielding her face.
“Don’t make another move! Hands above your head!”
Jennah jumped at the clarity of the once-distant voice. She opened her eyes slowly and blinked the burning away. Two men were standing a few feet away from her. They were holding big machine guns aimed at her head. Really? They had to be armed? They were dressed like soldiers. One was white with black wavy hair and a clean shaved face. He was big, they both were. The other guy was black with a short-trimmed beard and a buzzcut. He was even bigger than the first guy. They did not sound or look local. She did not know whether that was good or bad.
“Don’t make any sudden moves,” said the first guy in a calm tone. She raised her arms by her head. She looked down. Her clothes were dry, and her leg did not hurt anymore. The cuts on her forearms seemed to have disappeared under her shredded sleeves. Zi teta im'ahe, Mavareye, Jennah thought in silent gratitude.
What’s- The girl’s heart jumped when she saw the red laser dot on her body. She followed it to the guns pointed at her head. The two men were getting closer.
This is absurd! How did they even get in here?
They advanced even closer. A little more than a meter separated her from their guns.
“Stay back, I don’t want to hurt you!” she yelled in a shaky voice that failed to convince even herself. She was panicking. Her lungs worked faster. They were almost at her. She took a few steps back.
“Get on your knees, and don’t make any sudden moves,” coldly repeated the white soldier. You know how to do this. Just like you did back in the logs. Keep it calm and controlled, but the two men kept coming at her. In a forward motion of her hands, the earth between her and the two strangers rose in a tide, hiding them beyond her sight. The newly fashioned wall pushed forward like a lump under a snug blanket, moving while the carvings over it stayed still. It came at the two soldiers like a train, pushing them back until they collided with the walls. Shit, I overdid it.
The impact pushed the air out of their lungs, and the guns out of their hands, yet it was not hard enough to push the life out of their bodies, or so she hoped.
A sharp pain erupted in the back of Jennah’s head, turning off the lights of her consciousness. She collapsed onto warm and wet ground, and the shield she erected crumpled with her.