The Blood Grows Thin

      The land is weathered, beaten down by centuries of wind, rain, and the vast, uncompromising movements of long swaths of sand. My feet are rapidly callusing over, while the rest of me is slowly being rubbed raw by the stinging wind; carrying sand and the occasional scent of civilization. It comes, tempting me, before drawing itself up like a shawl and whisking itself past me in indifference. In the far distance, I believe, stands a small hill. A grey-black hill hovers in the edges of my vision: a recurring mirage, taunting me. ‘Almost home,’ it whispers, ‘keep going.’ If I force my eyes to focus on the image of it; shaky and ill-defined amidst the rolling hillsides of wind-tossed Lebanon, I can just make out the negative outline of a cave at the top of the hill, mouth open, ready to receive.

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*

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      I grew up hearing stories of my family’s greatness, which began with the rise of my great grandfather: the Djinn to end all Djinn. His name was Saad, and he was not only a Sheikh but a legendary Djinn, having earned his position as Protector of Byblos after successfully warding off a pack of ravenous wild dogs intent on destroying the city’s livestock. It is said that his magic was so strong, the aftershocks of its usage tore apart and formed these very mountains. Before his final dissipation, my grandfather carefully instructed his daughter–my grandmother–in the way of illusions, knowing she was not, and could never be, as strong as he was, and would not be able to defend the town in the same ferocious manner that he once had. My grandmother was a powerful Djinn, I’m told, and yet her magic was somehow less than that of her father’s. When my mother was born, she was even lesser than my grandmother, and now, only one generation later, the family has almost no magic remaining. It is the result of several generations of inter-mixing with humans. With each mistake made, we grew weaker, and the mythology of djinn faded further and further into oblivion as humans progressively forgot about us.

 

      My grandfather's skin, which was once the color of the setting sun as it strikes the dunes, burned brightly before fading into the visage of his daughter. She was the flicker to his flame, and my mother the spark to their flicker.

 

      I am only a dying ember.

 

      As such, I live to see the image of my mother when she appears to me in the mornings, like the milky gold of the dawn. Her skin is warm and has no boundaries against the tender, newborn sky. Her eyes are green, holding chips of gold in them. She appears more like a carving of a Djinn on a cave wall; embedded and outlined in gold–rather than a living one, perhaps one of the last.

 

      Most of my skin has never known the sun: I may be pale; white, or gray, who knows?

 

      When I was young, my mother told me something I would never forget, not being able to turn to look upon myself. She said, in that offhanded yet somehow still meaningful way of a mother, that I had “blue eyes, like the statues of the old Sumerian gods.” Blue eyes. Evil eyes. The implication was clear: I was, somehow, different.

 

      Perhaps responsible for this; my father, when he was young, was not a Djinn but, in fact, a sailor. A human. He was not the captain of the ship he knew to be home, but he still managed to maintain a respected place in its tiered, wooden bowels. A simple man, he was a fisherman-cum-pirate-cum-seaman, who made his living trading in fish, gold, and whatever else he and his fellow crewmates could dredge up from the bottom of the Mediterranean sea. My mother told me that my father absolutely poured himself over any story with even a hint of magic in it. The Thousand and One Arabian Nights were all his favorites. One night, as he groped blindly about the belly of the ship for an oil lamp, his hand accidentally brushed against my mothers confines, freeing her into the belly of his ship, the SS Blue Cedar.

 

      When my mother told the story of how she met my father, she always stressed to me the following: Djinn are meant to be contained. Usually, we are tied to the land on which we were born–but because I was born over the sea, there was no land for me to adhere to immediately after birth. I would have drowned beneath the waves, had my mother not moved me swiftly to shore, where I was promptly sealed by an invisible, crushing force, between the rocks of Byblos. From then on, my mother regarded this place as my cradle. I was forbidden by the land to ever leave it, and, myself being too weak to ever grow out of it; too shameful to show the world what we have become, I resigned myself to remain there, sandwiched between the smoothed rocks in slow collision, cradled–perhaps forever–in their taut, muscle-like embrace.

 

      I can remember my mother telling me when I was young, a mere face poking out of the craggy rock surface, unable to look upon myself, that I came from greatness. But that did not mean that I was great, oh no. “You see,” she had said, “your blood is thin. Weak.” She looked upon me sympathetically. "There is a place for our family, a cave of treasures to rival Ali Baba’s–It has been curated by Djinn over many lifetimes. It holds the treasures of our heritage, and is still unbothered by human hands or eyes. I have tried to find this place many times, but I cannot locate it. And you–I worry you may not even be able to enter it. It has been too long,” she fretted, “it may not recognize you.”

 

      When I pressed my mother further: Why had she not been able to find the cave? What was inside, specifically? Why didn’t she try harder? she said with finality “I do not think that I need to find the cave, exactly, jinni.”

 

      “Why?”

 

      She puffed out her chest. “I know I am Djinn. My inheritance is within me. I am tied to nothing and no one.” She snapped her fingers and was gone, uncharacteristically quickly, leaving me in the rock-face, squirming against the tectonic plates of my back, wondering where on earth my father was.

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*

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      Day after day, hour after hour. A great deal of time must have passed in the eyes of humanity, but, for me, time moves slowly and always returns to its original spot, as do the stars that move across the sky. A good sense of the passing of time is, fortunately, not an ability that a majority of Djinn possess–and for very good reasons. I have heard stories about Djinn who

woke up after generations-long confinements only to find that the country they previously hailed from no longer exists. Ancient Sumeria becomes Ancient Akkadia becomes Babylon becomes, oh, what are we now? I hardly know my country, so, I suppose, in my case, it wouldn’t hardly matter. There is no need for me to contemplate the “events” of the passing days. Countries shuffle amongst each other, alternatively dying and birthing like stars in the night sky.

 

      For many years, I remained in that rock face, trying my magic against its hard innards to no success. My magic had always been but a fizzle at my fingertips, and every time I used it, I could feel a tiny part of myself waving goodbye to me forever. The rocks crushed me in their embrace, and I thought that my back might break, though it never did. It held strong. I took comfort in knowing that some parts of me still carried the hardiness my bloodline was known for; that I hadn’t succumbed to human weakness.

      Not yet.

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*

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      One day, surprising even me, my mother came running to the rock face at high noon, in the wind-throes of a budding stormy day. Her hands were free and open at her sides, and her face was set to a look of hard determination. I squirmed in my confinement, the edges of hard basalt biting my face where rock met skin.

 

      My mother raised her hands, and lightning fell from the open sky, cracking the Earth like an egg. The rock face split open and I tumbled out in a muscleless heap, like a baby bird, like an infant falling out of the womb. I was free.

 

      Assembling my limbs in a frenzy, I scrambled to my mother’s feet.

 

      “It is not hopeless,” my mother breathed, her chest expanding and contracting against the effort of breaking me out of my prison. “There is a way after all. Your magic is weak in and of itself, yes, but, if you can combine it with the blood of another–you–you may be able to–to find the cave.”

 

      “How?”

 

      Embracing me, her taut arms holding steady my limp ones, my mother relayed to me what she’d learned on her last trip into the realm of the humans. My magic, as a quarter-blood Djinn, is not strong enough on its own, and never will be strong enough for anything save a simple hex. In collecting the life’s tales of others like me, she learned that, without intervention, my magic would never be more than a tingling in my body, a vague sense of destiny without an outline.

 

      –But, she had also heard, that if I were to combine my cold blood with another, richer, hotter spring, then maybe, I would be made pure again; revived. She told me that I must produce from myself and a man of the blood a key, a key that would grant me access to a bejeweled inheritance, long hidden from our family. “The key,” my mother instilled in me, then and there, was “...Everything. It is your salvation, your way out, your freedom. “But,” I was also told, “you don’t have much time. Djinn must be contained somewhere, be it in the hearts of men or the land itself. There are only two places you, my daughter, may belong, and one of them is here, trapped, in the rocks of Byblos. I fear, if you do not reach the cave before your blood runs thin–and before my magic leaves you–here is where you must return, and here is where you must stay. For all eternity.”

 

      As she concluded her tale, my mother tapped both of my shoulders, igniting a flame of energy in the center of my chest. Suddenly, I felt that I could move. I opened my mouth to ask my mother what it meant–blood growing thin, and when it would happen, but she gave me an unreceptive look that said she was unwilling to speak further. Knowing the habits of Djinn folk, it is probable she may not have spoken for a century afterwards.

 

      Reluctantly, I turned from my mother and fled.

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*

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      The countryside, I discovered, was made largely of scrub brush and thistle. I had thought that this land was all desert, but it unscrolled the further I pushed into it, revealing rolling hillsides, jagged mountain ranges, and the dim outlines of striped hyenas, whose bodies moved silently through the land like grains of sand tipping through an hourglass. For a while, I kept track of them on the horizon, gauging from their positions how far I had come. I watched them squeeze themselves between the worn paths of the mountains before being released out to the other side, where the land must continue into kingdoms I’ve never even heard of; the ruins of which will probably dissolve before I reach middle-age.

 

      Sweat beads formed at the lip of my armpits and traveled the length of my body, moving downwards until they hit the parched soil. Overhead, it appeared as though it might rain–but I knew this to be deceiving. My fingers fizzled with the dregs of my magic. Something was bothering me, and it was the knowledge that, at the snap of his fingers, my great grandfather could have traveled around the world and back again, and never’ve needed to take so much as a single step. I knew but one spell–as did my mother–and it did little other than place a light hex on the person or object of offense. I could envision my great grandfather looking down on us both in pity and disgust. He would have considered our waning skills a triviality; like we were braggarts claiming to know a whole language yet knowing only a single word. And we called ourselves Djinn!

 

      A hyena peeled itself from the shadows of the hillside and stared me down from its ledge. Hyenas are seldom bold, but this one must’ve sensed my weakness. I tried to wave it along. It stared back at me, its marbled eyes not moving about the mask of its face. “Go away!” I yelled. It cocked its head; listening but not comprehending. “Go!” I snapped my fingers, feeling a light ‘zing’ as the magic flowed in an instant from my brain to my fingertips. Snap! A spark appeared at the wild dog’s hind legs, and it yelped in surprise. Grimacing, it reluctantly started down the trail. Before disappearing, it turned back around to look at me, this time not with the blank look of a wild animal, but with a hard, scrutinizing look–a look, perhaps, of recognition.

 

      It should’ve been a look of fear.

 

      I pushed past the hills. The hams of my legs had begun to ache, and I could feel an oxygen-starved headache blooming at my temples. Muscle fibers, one by one, began telling me to rest, but I understood I couldn’t afford to. While I did not know how many days I had remaining to get the key and find the cave, I did know that a magical being at rest was just a

lamp waiting to be picked up and wielded–probably carelessly–by a more powerful force.

 

      I was about to collapse from effort when I noticed a small hill, not far from where I was standing, holding a single speck of light on its side. I squinted at it. The light was undoubtedly coming from a dwelling place. Drawing closer, I could see that there was a small hutch on the side of that hill, thatch and brick, held together by clay. A soft light emitted from inside; warm and liquid-y in the way that it spilled out of the tiny stained-glass windows and leaked down the hillside and into the pen where three goats lay, half-asleep, over a patch of prickly grass.

 

      Something tickled my hearing. There was a sound coming from the hutch. The sound was music, all tin and no strings. Its clinking was quiet, like a whisper, or a lullaby. I wondered who was occupying that hut. I wondered if there was already a family inside, or if I might make one.

I was not but ten feet away from the hutch’s entrance when the door fell ajar, and a man poked his head out from behind it. He was young, my age, with brass skin and flowing dark hair like mine. Our hair may have been the same, but our eyes were different. His were deep mahogany brown and, I could feel, instilled with more magic than I could ever hope to obtain. I could feel my magic, weak as it is, rise to the surface of my skin and act against his, two circular, invisible fields of gravity fending and bending off of one another.

 

      Him. He was the one I had been looking for.

 

      “You have blue eyes,” he said. “Are you not from here?”

 

      “I am,” I said. “There are no Djinn from ‘lands far away.’”

 

      “Hmm,” he said, shifting his weight from foot to foot. “Well, don’t just stand there staring at me,” he said quickly, “please, come inside.”

 

      His hospitality was confusing–I could not tell if it came from a place of custom, or chivalry, or concern, or even fear. But I followed him inside anyway.

 

      He had a pale fire glowing on the hearth. With a flick of his wrist he made it flare suddenly, the resulting light engulfing the entirety of the hutch, revealing every nook and cranny of the grooved walls. His dwelling was lined with fat, clumsily woven rugs. Rotund balls of glass made to resemble Evil Eyes hung from the ceiling. Freshly made rounds of bread rested near the fireplace and, I found, the thing responsible for the music was in fact a strange tangle of metal sat in the corner of the hutch, which periodically plucked itself with no prompting, emitting sweet notes, and, occasionally, raw metal sounds that reminded me of an agitated woman.

 

      The man turned to me. “Do you like it?” He asked.

 

      “It’s more than I’ve ever seen.”

 

      Without a word he lay flat on a rug. He splayed his legs and stretched to feel the proximity of the fire on his skin, which shone like silver. For a moment, I wanted to smile. He was almost like a wild dog, rolling against the ground, showing me his gleaming fur.

 

      Slowly, I lowered myself onto my knees, then laid down beside him. His breath was warm and the rise and fall of his chest felt familiar, like he was an avatar of my own body; a little piece of me existing outside of myself. Except it was more like I was the piece, and he was the real me, moving here and there without a need to ask for my say-so. I wanted to run my hand along his back and marvel at his making. Soundlessly, my hand raised itself and pulled back the hair from his face, dragging his head away from the face of the fire and towards my own. I wanted him to turn around and look at me. I wanted him to see me.

 

*

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      I woke up to a blade of sunlight drawn directly across my eyes. I was sticky with sweat. He lay beside me, his skin partially adhered to mine in the dewy moisture of the morning. His mouth hung open, wide and low, the sonorous sound of his breathing easing its way in and out.

 

      There was something in his mouth.

 

      I bent closer. On the bed of his tongue lay a brass key. It hissed at me, faintly, against the outgoing tide of his breath.

 

      For a moment, I hesitated, weighing my options. If I must be confined to one space for the rest of my life, here might not be so punishing. I could lean, every night, against this man as I did now, feeling the ebb and flow of our souls; his overwhelming mine until I could feel, vicariously, his confidence, his power, his total sense of ease. I remembered his eyes meeting mine, expressionless. Would he smile if he woke up to the sight of me making us bread? Would he be happy if I lived here for the rest of my life? Or would he resent my presence, as the local hyena began to pick off his goats one by one, and I was unable to stop them? Did he know how

much I needed this key, and that’s why he was giving it to me? Or was this an accident, a fluke of magic, brought on by a moment of intense vulnerability and trust?

 

      The key glistened within the cave of his mouth. My mind hesitated, but my soul buzzed with frenzied want and I began to reason with myself all of the right I had to take it. Hadn’t I been denied long enough? Wasn’t I forced to grow up in between the rocks of Byblos, forbidden to look out on the world; not given food or a language, only a vague sense of entitlement? I knew, I had always known, that a kind of paradise existed and would one day open for me to reveal all that my mother had told me about, all of the stories of the heroes she’d come from, the empty promises of a land that could be mine. Without intervention, the fortune would die out, and be passed on to someone else, someone who had no need for a key, someone who held the key in their blood. Someone less deserving.

      

      I reached in and took it.

 

      He rolled over in bed, his eyes still closed. The transaction was so easy, so simple. The next day, he’d wake up and go about his day as though nothing had happened. Yes, surely, he’d be fine. It was only one key–one small instance of trust and, on his part, oversight. If he wanted, he could easily manifest another, surely.

 

      I did not study the make of the door on my way out. I did not want to know if the key would in fact fit the lock–if it was the key to his home he had mistakenly given me.

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*

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      I was so close to a resolution. The soles of my feet connected with the ground, connected me to my ancestors, as I sent tiny shockwaves through the Earth, running up the hill to where I could see the cave. Nothing was as I thought it would be. It wasn’t hard at all. The key led me right there. My magic was growing stronger, I could feel it.

      

      I arrived at the exterior of the cave, panting. The salty stone was smooth as an egg. I placed my palm on its open surface. It felt delicate underneath my hand, and I realized with some pleasure that I could crack the rock open with my bare hands.

      

      But tradition has its demands. Better not to split the cave open, rendering all its contents vulnerable to the vultures and thieves. I dug into my pocket and retrieved the key.

 

      The cave wall contorted like a face, aspects of it pushing and pulling against one another until they reached a kind of uniformity. The high brow of the face was the top of the door, the stuck-out bottom lip was the footstep. A tiny pinhole in the face’s cheek, a single blemish, was the keyhole. I stuck the key in, but felt something jam halfway through. I jiggled the key, but felt no movement inside. Beyond frustrated, I began desperately jamming the key into the hole. C’mon, work! Pieces of dust slid down the face of the door like tears and landed at my feet, before the wind promptly whisked them away. This was the key, I thought to myself. This was supposed to work!

      

      With a barbaric final shove, I felt something come loose within the door. The force of my push and the feeling of the give was nearly enough to make me twist my arm. The face made a pained sound, flipping open like a mask to reveal a black hole behind it. Instantly, I was accosted by the smell of dusk and dust.

 

      The cave entrance was cast in shadows and a milky, yellow light, like a century’s old attic. A pang of timidity struck my chest, and I only poked my head inside.

 

      There were no signs of jewels, no gold either. It was a veritable room made of stone; a real cave, lacking any human touch or ornament. There were things contained within, but they were only clumpy shadows, huddling together in darkened corners as though cowering from the light. This? I thought, incredulous. This is what they left me?

 

      I began to walk further into the cave. My eyes landed on an old, baroque painting of a woman I couldn’t recognize. Her visage was seated next to a dusty heap of clothes in one corner, all crafted from patches of red and purple velvet. Those must have been important, I thought, and moved a little closer. On my way over I discovered (or tripped over) a tiny, useless compass, a wooden staff, a headwrap of some kind, and a few, clumsy-looking clay objects. There was also a miniature statue of a weird looking chimeric animal about the size of a children's toy. None of it made any sense. Had the cave been ransacked by thieves, leaving behind these useless items of no worth?

 

      When my mother had first told me of the cave’s existence, I’d imagined a treasure trove of jewelry; fine spices and perfumes, myrrh, a sprig off the ancient Cedar trees, the corpse of Humbaba, gold, jewels–the family pile of wealth!--I had also imagined a wealth of knowledge; scrolls, stories recounting my family’s greatness. I had expected war helmets and swords, their plate-scarring the faint echo of my family’s victory. And what had they given me instead?--Faces and memories lost to time; scrolls outlining complicated spells in a language I’d never been taught, and dust, such an ample treasure-trove of dust. An inheritance as ravaged and indecipherable as the land itself. A culture: gone, a people: gone, and even their mythology, all, all gone.

 

      My heart stopped. Something uncanny and unrecognizable in a forgotten corner of the cave was demanding my attention. I squinted at it, and was able to make out the image of a curving, ivory-textured object. It was long and sleek with tiny grooves in it and appeared to extend from a greater mass of ivory objects, like sticks, only all huddled together in a vague human assemblage.

 

      A skeleton.

      

      Pain. Panic. Fear. My first thought was to rush out of the cave, to spare myself this and whatever other hideous sights I might’ve found in there, but something stopped me just short of the cave exit, and it was the reminder that my magic was thin, and my only inheritance here. In the entire land, this was the only space that was carved out for me, that existed just to hold me, and that represented my family’s contributions: our divine right to exist! I couldn't just leave.

 

      Slowly, I made my way to a wall opposite the pile of bones. Were they…Was that a long lost relative, once? Someone very important? It did not matter. I curled my knees up to my chest and let my head fall at an awkward angle. It hurt to fold in on myself, but my journey had made me so tired. I wondered, idly, who would find me there, hundreds of years later, and wonder at who I once was. They might make up their own personal mythology for me; that I was a peasant girl who’d died after trapping herself in a cave full of useless objects.

 

      It mattered not. They could tell whatever stories about me they wanted.

I felt weak, weaker than ever before. There was even less of me then than there was when I was living in the rock face, sustained only by hope. There was no one in the cave, there was nothing left for me save some long-forgotten rubbish.

 

      The dust will eat me inside this cave, and I, too, will become an artifact for someone to find and wonder about. I will become a thing with no connection to them, that they will ascribe their own stories to.

 

      I closed my eyes.