The Debt

By Abigail Falanga

The shadows of rocky outcroppings stretched across my path as the sun lowered toward evening. It was dangerous to be alone this late—I knew it well. But my feet drew me onward, until the caravan was lost to the hills behind and even their voices and the noise of the camp faded.

Yet I had a companion. Grief, silent and insistent, walked at my elbow. We’re not far, it said. Yet a little longer, no more than three miles, and you will be near him again.

Grief was louder than prudence.

Already, as the sun reddened the horizon to my right, the towers of Albira rose against the sky ahead, glinting in the dusk.

“I’ll be back before the second watch,” I promised myself. “But I must see his grave. This near, it would be improper for brother not to visit brother in death.”

He had fallen to raiders, defending the small city of Albira. The sultan himself had laid him with highest honor among their slain heroes. We received word of his death a few days before the caravan departed, and grief was still fresh and sharp.

Yet the masters of the caravan chose not to stop at Albira’s once-famed souk, now too devastated by wars to be worth the merchants’ while. I entreated for a day or two’s leave that I might make the journey myself, yet was denied, for it was dangerous for a youth to travel on his own in those wastes. But grief goaded me onward, despite respect for my superiors.

I barely felt the rough rock under my sandals as I followed the faint path down a ravine. Barely felt the wind rising. I was too occupied with grief, too busy muttering half-formed prayers as I searched the horizon for any sign of a graveyard.

It’s too far, prudence whispered.

“Too late to turn back,” I murmured.

A rumble of shifting stone came from the ravine up ahead, and a cry of pain and fear split the air.

I rushed forward and found dust settling where a boulder had toppled. Underneath—a jackal.

Its eyes were wide with panic. Yammering, it struggled to free itself from the stone wedged against its hindquarters. Something kept me from turning away. It was a fellow creature, trapped and frightened, for all the threat it posed if free. Its death would be slow and painful, trapped as it was.

Keeping clear of the snapping jaws, I jumped up to the boulder, set my back against it, and heaved. It took some time and sweat slid down my face despite the growing twilight, but at last the jackal freed itself with a skittering of gravel.

I let the boulder rest and watched as the jackal hobbled off on an injured leg. Once, it turned to look back at me, its expression so uncanny it seemed about to speak, but then it was gone.

Shivering, I turned and went on my way.

Dusk had fallen and a star or two twinkled in the darkening sky by the time I came out of the ravine. Albira rose above me, and the path soon led among the stones, mounds, and monuments of the graveyard.

I slowed, though grief pressed me onward, for it was growing hard to make out the markings. There! New graves clustered around a simple monument. And there, my brother’s name chiseled into stone—into my heart.

Here lay his bones. Here was the place I must leave him forever. I dropped beside his grave, and let grief overwhelm me.

Darkness silently unfolded until it filled the valley and shrouded the tombs.

A sudden wind wailing like the mourning of souls rose and swept through the tombs, chill and clammy as if hands searched my tear-marked face and knifed through my garments.

I scrambled to my feet and searched for the source of the moaning echoes.

“Is someone there?” I called, only to have my voice snatched away.

Was that laughter?

Something more than wind touched my shoulder. I swung around—yet saw nothing but a faint wisp of iridescent blue twisting through the darkness.

Moonlight. Surely only moonlight. Yet old tales told of things that roamed graves at night, devouring the dead, haunting the living. Spirits or monsters.

“Ghouls.”

The moment I whispered the word, something formed in the starlit darkness near me—man-shaped, yet losing substance and reforming into darkness and mist an instant later. What remained were eyes, glowing blue and wider than eyes should be. And beneath them, a mouth, stretching wider and wider in laughter, mockery, hunger.

I staggered backward, stumbled over a grave, fell. My brother’s grave. Had the ghoul devoured him? No! And I would not let it, even if it devoured me instead.

The ghoul shifted in the wind—only now there were two of them, three, five? Their open mouths chattered ravenously, sweeping nearer and nearer and—

Something bounded between them and me and snarled. The jackal. Only not the jackal. Its shape blurred and from it rose a creature, huge, human-like, and shot through with faint red.

“Begone!” it bellowed, even as the jackal it was still affixed to snapped, crouching. “Leave the youth and his kin, and never return!”

The ghouls howled as the wind seized them and they dissolved into screaming mouths and clawing hands. Then a raging whirlwind carried them away. And all was still.

“You’re a djinn,” I stammered.

The creature shrank back within the jackal and turned toward me, eyes shining red. Then it spoke from the beast’s mouth, though with the voice of a man. “You saved me even when there was no reason for you to do so. I was in your debt. That debt is now paid. Go on your way, and peace be with you.”

Even as I responded, the jackal loped away into the night. A lonely stillness settled around me among the tombs, but the stars burned constant above. Something like peace crept into my heart.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Abigail Falanga may be found in New Mexico creating magic in many ways—with fabric, food, paper, music, and especially with words! She’s loved fantasy ever since playing out epic adventures of swords, fairies, and monsters with her siblings, and loved sci-fi since her dad’s stories around the dinner table. Besides sharing mad little stories on Havok, she is busily trying to launch approximately five hundred novels into the world. Some of them are even finished!

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