Daniel had never thought that an oncoming sand storm would be the least of his fears. The Abydonian people were in a controlled chaos of movement – breaking down tents, gathering loose belongings and children – as the violent red swirl on the horizon gathered force and moved towards them.
In the midst of this he could hear Sha're screaming. Without telling him she had left the edge of their city in search of a missing child. Daniel and Skaara and Aamil were looking for them when Skaara saw the storm first appear on the horizon. His brother-in-law had barely pointed out the danger when they had first heard Sha're scream.
After that everything happened at once. Daniel had ordered Skaara back to the settlement to help with the evacuation to the pyramid. He was in the midst of arguing with him when the two women who had accompanied Sha're on the search came running from over a dune, pointing behind them and talking at once. Fighting panic Daniel had tried to focus on the jumble of words in a language he still only spoke on the most basic level.
Then two words had jumped out at him. Khumussiru khinnaus…. Devil beetle…. One of the few dangers that lived in the desert.
A coat of ice froze Daniel's soul. Then his heart leapt into his throat. He looked at Skaara and Aamil and saw the same terror in their eyes.
Then they were running, fighting shifting sand and rising wind. Daniel shrieked his wife's name so that his entire body shook.
"SSHHHHHA'REEEEEE!"
His only answer was another scream.
He found her curled in a tight ball near a nest of devil beetle. They were swarming her, and the small child she was protecting. She was screaming and trying to crawl away on her side.
It never occurred to him to hesitate. He was slipping down the side of the dune towards his wife with Skaara hollering for him to stop before he could even think.
He didn't stop to think before ripping away her outer robes and tossing it – and the vermin on it – as far away as possible. He pulled his sleeve down over his hand and batted away the beetles still clinging to her and then dragged her away from the nest. By that time Skaara and Aamil, against their judgment and everything they had ever been told about devil beetles, had joined him. Daniel stomped the remaining beetles into bloody pulp beneath his Air Force issue boots.
He dropped to his knees beside his sobbing wife.
"Sha're, Sha're, let go of Safia," Daniel begged.
"Sha're give her to me," Skaara said.
Shivering, in shock, Sha're reacted to the sound of the voices she knew. She let go of the little girl she had protected with her own body and turned towards her husband.
"Danielle," she whimpered.
Skaara picked up Safia and began running. Daniel stared for only a second into the glazed eyes of his wife. He ignored the smears of blood, the swelling of bites on her neck and jaw and shoulders. She was trembling violently when he picked her up and began running after Skaara.
The wind was starting to howl but he could hear Aamil's voice pleading as he ran beside him.
"Yyyyyou help, Daniel? You mmmmmake her well?"
Daniel didn't answer. His newfound people had spent too many nights around a fire hammering home to him that even one bite from a devil beetle was fatal. The nest had been mostly juveniles. He hadn't seen a full grown adult, but, Sha're was covered in bites.
The settlement was in an uproar as Daniel carried Sha're into the adobe house he shared with her. Carefully he laid her on the pile of blankets that served as their bed. Skaara had gotten there ahead of him with Safia and the child's parents came piling through the door right after Daniel.
Sha're was convulsing and Daniel was fighting panic. He still had a basket full of supplies left by the Air Force stashed under the table and he dragged it out now. He grabbed the epi pen without really looking for it, bit the cap off with his teeth and jammed the needle into his wife's thigh. His tormented heart beat out the number of seconds required to hold it there.
The result was instantaneous. The convulsions stopped and Sha're collapsed back on the blankets. Her breathing became less labored and her eyes closed. She looked almost as if she had fallen into a peaceful sleep.
"Do you still claim you are not a god?"
Daniel turned to the doorway to find his father-in-law watching him. Kasuf's eyes were haunted and his face was gray.
"Yes," Daniel said, impatiently, "Is Safia hurt?"
Skaara and Safia's parents had stripped her and inspected every inch of her without finding so much as a scratch. Daniel exhaled in relief and tried to get his thoughts in some kind of order. Kasuf ordered Skaara to go help with the evacuation, though he had to do it twice. Skaara stared in reluctant defiance at his father for a moment and then gathered Safia and her parents and disappeared into the wind.
Hands shaking, Daniel prepared a shot of antibiotics, cleaned a small spot on Sha're's arm and gave it to her. She cried out and he winced, hating having to hurt her even that much more.
"Will she live now?" Kasuf asked.
"I don't know," Daniel admitted.
He sank down beside her and wrapped his hand around hers wearily.
"Good father," he said, quietly, "I need water and soap and…and….and the poultices the women made for Halah when she cut her hand last week."
Kasuf didn't move from his place beside the door. He appeared frozen, by terror and hopelessness.
"Kasuf!" Daniel snapped. "Do you know how to make those or do we need some of the women?"
"I will go, Daniel," Aamil said.
Daniel was startled. He had forgotten Aamil was even in the room. It always seemed like that with the dark-haired little man. Aamil just always seemed to be hanging around, waiting to be needed. He ran past Kasuf and it seemed to shake the old man out of his fear-induced stupor.
"Whatever you need, son," he said and then vanished after Aamil.
Daniel wasn't sure his legs would hold him so he crawled to the basket and found the bottle of peroxide and a bag of cotton balls. He'd rather slice into his own hand than cause her any further pain but there was nothing he could do about it. All bites were automatically infected. He remembered that from basic first aid. They had to be cleaned.
Daniel swore the bites had swollen to twice the size since he had brought her in the room. In the center where their teeth had broken her lovely almond skin they were yellow with angry red and purple filled streaks.
The peroxide fizzed and hissed over each wound and Sha're whimpered. Daniel kept up a series of whispers and soothing sounds and comforting nonsense long after she lost consciousness. He called her his angel and his treasure and begged her not to leave him, not to leave him ever.
By the time Kasuf and Aamil returned with hot water and soap and palms leaves wrapped around something warm and aromatic, Daniel had stripped his wife of her bloody robes and had her lying under a clean linen sheet.
Wind and sand blew through the door along with them and they struggled to get it shut. Aamil had a basket of herbs and leaves and they both had jugs of water.
"Thank you, good father," he murmured absently.
"What do we need to do, Daniel?" Aamil asked.
"The bites have to be opened and drained," Daniel answered, "and the infection drawn out with the poultices."
He speared Aamil with the blue eyes the Abydonian people found so extraordinary.
"If you don't have a strong stomach you've got about one minute to acquire one," he said, surprised at his own voice and the command he heard in it, "If not then you're no use in here and you should seek shelter with your family."
Aamil got considerably paler. His teeth clenched but he nodded.
"Good father," Daniel said, "If you need to go be with the People, I understand."
Kasuf shook his head. "I will stay with my daughter. Skaara is with the People," he answered.
Daniel braced himself for what he had to do. He accepted the skin of water Kasuf forced on him, took off his glasses and rinsed the sand off them. Settling them back on his face he said,
"Okay, let's get started."
(0)
They worked for hours and had done all they could. But had they done enough? Aamil was curled up in a ball in the corner, fast asleep. Kasuf was slumped against a wall. Daniel had his arms braced on the nest of blankets beside Sha're's shoulder. His head rested on them in exhaustion.
They had gone through three cycles of applying poultices to draw the venom, draining fluid and washing the wounds with soap and water. In between cycles Daniel had laid cool rags on Sha're's forehead and stroked her face and given her another injection of antibiotic.
She was feverish, but not too much. As least he didn't think so. By the end of the third cycle the howling wind outside had abated, all the swelling was gone from the bites and they had faded to the color of bad bruises.
"Will she live?" Kasuf asked again.
Daniel looked up at him and the room swayed. God he was so tired.
"I think so," Daniel answered and dropped his head back onto his arms. His hair brushed Sha're's arm.
A long silence followed and then Kasuf said,
"No one has ever survived so many bites from devil beetles."
His voice was filled with wonder and gratitude and awe. Daniel didn't even attempt to lift his head again. He made do with opening his eyes.
"It's just medicine, father. Your people have been making medicines for thousands of years."
"Not like yours," Kasuf insisted.
Daniel gave a self-deprecating little smile.
"Are you trying to tell me the People are going to be even more convinced that I'm a god?" he asked. "Can't you talk to them?"
"I can hardly convince them of something I don't believe myself."
"Kasuf," Daniel's voice went up but Sha're moved and whimpered in her sleep so he dropped it to a whisper again while he soothed her back to sleep.
When she had calmed again he sat up and leaned against the wall.
"I didn't do anything special," he said, "I couldn't have done any of it without you and Aamil."
He paused and shot an affectionate glance at the small, dark man snoring in the corner on a pile of pillows.
"He always seems to be around just when I need him to do something, or when Sha're does."
"She was to have been his," Kasuf said.
Shock woke Daniel with a rush of adrenaline.
"What?" he asked.
"Before you came, Sha're was promised to Aamil," Kasuf said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world.
Daniel started to shake a little. His mind whirled like a tornado and his body felt ice cold suddenly. The words squeezed his heart until it ached. Over the last few months Sha're seemed to have fallen in love with him, completely. He hadn't doubted it even for a moment; and he knew exactly how he felt about her. She was his entire life.
But what if her earlier reluctance had been the result of loving someone else?
"Did…Did," he stopped and swallowed and looked around for the water skin. "Did she want him?"
He was too busy drinking to see the puzzled look that past over his father-in-law's face.
"I do not know," Kasuf shrugged.
Daniel pulled his knees up to his chest, dropped his head forward and spent a long time muttering under his breath in Dutch. Kasuf probably thought he was speaking some kind of incantation to his fellow gods, but at the moment he didn't care.
"Daniel," Kasuf said, after he thought the muttering had gone on long enough, "She is yours now. Aamil accepts this and so does Sha're."
There was nothing he was going to be able to say to convince Kasuf that Sha're should have had some say in the matter. His father-in-law was a good man with a kind heart and Daniel had become very fond of him. But the cultural differences between them were just too great a divide. In Kasuf's mind he had made the best possible choice for his daughter and she seemed happy. Mission accomplished, next problem please.
This now lay between Daniel and Sha're and to a certain extent between Aamil and Daniel. There was nothing he was going to be able to do about that right at the moment either.
The next few hours would tell him if his wife would live or die. That was far more important than whether he would have been her first choice as a husband.
If he hadn't been, and she lived, he swore on his own love for her that he'd let her go. He wasn't sure what the rules were for that, but he'd make one up if he had to.
Kasuf stood and brushed at his disheveled robes.
"I will check on the People now," he said, "You should eat."
"I'll try," Daniel promised.
Kasuf woke Aamil and herded the yawning man out the door. It was dark by this time Daniel realized just before the door closed.
He got up, ignoring his complaining muscles, warmed some water over the fire Aamil had started and used the last of the soap and water to achieve some small form of cleanliness. Clean robes and a comb through his hair and he felt marginally human again. He started to reach for his glasses.
Then Sha're moaned and whimpered his name. He couldn't get to her side fast enough tripping over the hem of his robe and knocking over the basket of first aid supplies.
"I'm here," he said.
"Stay," her hand flailed until it found his and clung tight.
"Not going anywhere," he answered. It was all he could say because of the ache in his throat.
She tried to pull him closer.
"Hold me," she asked.
He started to argue and didn't have the strength. He lay down beside her and wrapped himself around her. He had done it because she asked but now he felt reassured by each breath he could feel her taking, each rise and fall of her body telling him she lived.
Sha're cuddled close, linking her fingers tightly with his. It was all he could do not to rock her. He made do with stroking the cloud of dark hair that surrounded her like a halo. His wife…. His brave, beautiful, unselfish, resourceful wife…. She had called his name and asked him to stay.
"I love you," he whispered.
Sha're's only answer was to sigh heavily and squeeze his hand.
It was enough.
(0)