Move and breathe. That was a thought.
The Poet willed himself to move. But a will alone is impotent without ability. This thought he saw clearly too. A will is nothing without freedom and the power to do. He was being squeezed by the sand with such force that he couldn’t even draw a breath from his tank. He focused his mind, tried to loosen the hardpack around his chest—but the stonesand had him and there was no moving it.
That was that.
This is the problem with most of the religious folk.
That was another thought tumbling around in his mind. Those who worshipped the gods of the world of sand; those who prayed to the old gods who walked the earth from the time of Danvar and built towers to the sky; even those few who still worshipped the One True. Always telling people to believe in this or believe in that, as if man has the power to believe in whatever he likes. Believe in unicorns if you don’t, or don’t believe in ’em if you do. Just try that. Just choose to believe something. You can’t. Unless you lie to yourself. Tell a blind man to just will to see, and let me know how far that gets you.
He heard a moan escape his body, a primal craving for air made audible in his ears or in his mind—he couldn’t tell which. And another thought: he imagined that primal breath from long ago, that first breath, when he’d wiggled free of the womb—and his father, or maybe some whore (who knows who it was?) cleared his mouth and nose, and by instinct or by a smack he’d sucked in air for the first time. He didn’t remember that, but he knew it must have happened—and now he could see it like he was there watching it. But then his mind cleared again and what he was seeing wasn’t his own birth. It was something else.
He could see the orange form of another diver, shimmering through the yellows of the stonesand, and the diver was beating against the Poet’s silica prison with his hands, but the walls didn’t move. The old man’s brain screamed for oxygen, but even that screaming began to fade as the seconds ticked by like hours—like in a timeglass he’d seen once in Springston back when his daddy had gone up to talk coin with the people who decided things one way or another.
The orange form pushed away from the stonesand and floated in the middle distance, staring at him, and then he heard a voice in his head. It was Peary, he was sure of it, and the vibrations that made up the voice trembled into his ear in a mixture of anger and fear.
“I won’t let you die!”
The Poet wanted to answer. Sincerely wanted to tell Peary to save himself and to get to the surface, but he couldn’t even manage to move his jaw. The only thing that escaped him was a ghostly moan that carried no force. Another embryonic yelp. A barely audible wince, it was, and more impotent than his will to move anything.
“I don’t know if this will work, Poet,” Peary said, “and if it doesn’t, I might just kill you doing it.”
Better off quick-dead, the Poet thought, than slow-dead. He wanted to close his eyes, but he couldn’t, because he knew that what he was seeing now would likely be the last image to ever process in his mind. He nodded his head. Not that his head moved, because it didn’t. But he hoped that his acquiescence to his fate might be transmitted some other way. Then he saw the impotence of his will again, and wanted to entertain that thought further, but the notion faded into grays and disappeared into smoke.
“Hold tight, old man,” Peary said.
I don’t have any other choice, do I? the Poet thought.
The orange figure moved slightly. “Not like you have any other choice.”
Then the old man saw Peary move. Mostly with his hands thrusting forward like he was shoving a wagon or a sarfer down a dune. That motion was followed by a split-second of nothing, and then there was an impact, like a bomb going off nearby, and the sand gave way and—like the womb had done so long ago—it lost its hold. The Poet was shoved backward and his consciousness struggled to hold on, but it gave way too, and there was only blackness and no pain—like sleep, but deeper, and dreamless.
When he opened his eyes again, it seemed like hours—or maybe days—had passed, but immediately he realized that the truth was even stranger. He was lying on the sand, and he looked over and saw that Peary was talking with Marisa in the shallow valley between the dunes. The young diver was comforting his woman, and took the pistol from her hand and rubbed her back to calm her as she sobbed. With the thumb of his free hand, he flicked the safety on the gun to make sure it didn’t accidentally fire. The Poet saw that the sandal hop named Reggie was lying prone on top of the sand, and there were other men there too, obviously dead, obviously pirates, trapped in stonesand with only their heads sticking up above the surface. Necks broken. Life gone out of their eyes. Temporary monuments to lives lived in violence.
Reggie groaned and rolled over onto his side, and when Peary heard the sound of the sandal hop moving, he walked over to him and pointed the pistol at the moaning man’s head. His finger tightened on the trigger and his thumb released the safety.
“No!” Marisa shouted, climbing to her feet. “Don’t do it, Peary!”
The Poet watched the drama unfold, trying to piece together from the evidence what had happened after the wall of sand knocked him unconscious. Peary had saved his life. Again. Not much to think or say about that. It was the way the boy lived, and Peary was a young man who didn’t think of himself first in every situation. The old man still couldn’t put a finger on the why of what made the diver tick. Self-sacrifice was as foreign to the Poet as an ocean of water, or the tears of the gods falling from the sky. The old man knew only that for the first time in a very long time, he was really glad to be alive. All of these things made his own ways harder to figure. Like his life was a sand globe, shaken hard and slammed down, with particles of stories and lies floating in the viscous liquid, obscuring some seminal truth he was meant to understand.
“He tried to kill you,” Peary shouted at Marisa. He pushed the pistol firmly against Reggie’s head, and the sandal hop grimaced, unable to determine if he should speak on his own behalf or not.
“He hit me and knocked me to the ground,” Marisa said. “That much is true. But I think he was trying to save me.”
Peary turned to Marisa and threw his free hand into the air, as if to clear awy some imaginary smoke. “Save you? By knocking you down and trying to take away your gun?”
“She’s right,” Reggie said through a wince. “The lady is right. Although I can see where it looks bad from your point of view.”
“Shut up!” Peary snarled.
“Trigger discipline, sir,” Reggie sputtered. “If you haven’t made up your mind, don’t let your finger make it for you.”
“Shut up, I said!” Peary shouted. “I’ll deal with you in a minute, but shut up or I’ll shoot you right now just to be safe.”
“Right!” Reggie said. He waved his hands in surrender. “Don’t need to be shot again, I tell you.”
“Shut up!” Peary snapped.
“Shutting up now,” Reggie said.
The Poet rolled to his side, pushed himself against the sand until he was seated. “What’s all this about?” he said, just loud enough to be heard. The air was sweet to his lungs, but it was playing hard to get, and the strain made him weak all over.
“Sit there and recover, old man,” Peary said. “We’re just getting some things sorted.”
The Poet smiled. Maybe it was the first time he’d ever smiled. He couldn’t recall. He wasn’t a man given to levity. “From where I sit, it looks like the sandal hop saved her, Peary.”