The Sand Fish Read Free

tumbled his curls—and they got caught, too. Those fine ringlets: more and more, they became the only softness she could see in him. He was built as solid as a boulder. His skin was coarse and had none of the gold that lightened Noora’s complexion. Instead, what gold he had speckled his eyes, just like their father’s. But the tiny dots in Sager’s eyes were mostly hidden in the shadow of his protruding forehead.
    Noora began giggling as she watched him spit curses at the acacia. The more he twisted and wrestled, the tighter the tree embraced him. “Sand fish, really.”
    “Why am I even bothering?” he said, finally managing to free his hair. As he crawled out, his mouth curved into a squiggle that pulled with it the fine line of wispy hair that was waiting to turn into a mustache. “Why am I wasting my time with you when I have so many responsibilities?”
    Again, that big word. That manly word. Responsibilities : how important it made him feel! More and more, he liked to throw it at her, like a spear aimed to pierce her throat so she could not answer back. “There’s still our father,” she said. “He is still the head.”
    “Not always,” Sager said, tightening his ghitra back onto his head and brushing the dust off his dishdasha, the loose-flowing robe men wore. “Now that his mind is more out of this world than in it, I have to think for this family. I have to make all the important decisions.”
    She was about to answer back when another blast of wind blew into them. It shook the tree and startled the skink. The sand fish dove into the wall of the ridge and hit its snout.
    Noora gasped, and suddenly she and her brother were making a dash to either side of the acacia to see what they could do, which only made the sand fish panic more. Again and again, it tried to escape in the only way it knew how. Stuck in a place it shouldn’t be, again and again it smashed its nose—and Noora felt its pain: a dull pinch just below her navel, in the deep of her belly.
    “We’ve got to do something,” Noora called to him.
    “It won’t make it,” Sager called back. “There’s nothing we can do.”
    There were ribbons of blood, fine as silk thread, streaking its nose and a gash in the shimmer of its yellow back. Noora was sure it would lose its tiny toes as she watched it scrape the hard rock. It was trying to swim through!
    “Do something!” she ordered.
    Sager pushed his arm between the tree and ridge and tried to grab it. Once, twice, his hand closed on it, but it slithered out of his fingers, and finally the sand fish dove into the acacia.
    Noora shrieked. It was twisting in midair, unable to land—trapped—its tail pierced by one of the tree’s thick needles. Sager thrust his arm through and finally caught it.
    “There, there, there.” Noora cried, pointing him farther up the valley, where the earth was crumbly, easier to sink into. “Take it there.”
    But the wriggling, bloody sand fish would not stay still. It slipped out of Sager’s grasp and clambered onto his chest, taking a leap in the air in what Noora was sure would be its last. She cupped her mouth to stifle her squeal.
    In the air, it spun and twisted. On the gravel, it landed with a smack. The impact ripped off a section of its tail, which flew to one side and started to slice the air blindly.
    But the sand fish was alive. The sand fish was hobbling up the mountain.
    “Come on, let’s go,” Sager said. “We have to go get the water.”
    After the trauma it had been through, Noora wanted to make sure the sand fish reached the softer earth. “Let’s just see…”
    “Look,” Sager said. “As long as we’re around, it’ll try to escape, try to hide in that same way. It’ll ram its head till it kills itself. Let’s just go.”

3
    T hey set out with the first arrow of light. Noora was carrying a goatskin bucket with a long rope attached to its handle, and just like her brother, she had slung two water skins over her shoulders.