Stevie Sanity's Arc

Chapter 4 of 5

The song led them across the dunes at dusk. Stevie walked with the whole melody steady in his chest, Sophia a step behind. She held her guitar wrapped in cloth, guarding it from the grit. They were close now. The picture in Stevie's mind showed a half-sunk lamp, and every hill of sand looked like the one from the song. Then the wind changed. The first gust knocked Stevie sideways. Sand rose off the dunes in tall spinning walls. The storm smelled wrong, too sweet, and it moved like it had a mind. Stevie felt the song loosen in him. The wind was pulling the notes apart, scattering them the way it scattered the sand. Panic rose in his throat. Lose the song now and he lost the road to Djinn. "Hold the tune!" Sophia shouted. But the wind tore the words half away. Stevie hummed and heard the melody fray. The three low notes slipped first. He grabbed for them and caught nothing. Sophia dropped to her knees. She dug both hands into the sand at Stevie's feet. "It's here," she said. "Something's buried. I can feel it in my bones." Her fingers closed on beads. She pulled a necklace up out of the sand, dark stones and pale speckled beads strung around a black peace symbol. The storm bent away from it, like the wind was afraid. She pressed it into Stevie's hands. "Put it on. Now." Stevie looped the cord over his head. The stones lay cool against his chest. The moment they touched him, the storm quieted in a ring around his body. The song came back, not through his failing memory, but pulled steady by the necklace itself. He could feel it tug, low and sure, pointing one direction into the churning sand. "It's guiding me," Stevie said. "The storm knows Djinn is close. That's why it came. It's trying to keep us out." Sophia stood and shouldered her guitar. "Then we walk into it." They pushed forward. The sand swirled around them in golden spirals that curled and danced, but none of it touched Stevie now. The necklace held the storm off like an open hand. Each step, the tug grew stronger. Sophia stayed close, one hand on his shoulder, letting the ring of calm shelter her too. The wind fell away all at once. Ahead, the sand had cleared to bare ground. There sat the lamp, half-buried, exactly as the song had shown. The peace symbol on Stevie's chest went warm. "We found it," Stevie said. Sophia knelt beside the lamp and brushed the sand from its curved lid. "Djinn's inside," she said. "And their true name is gone." She looked up at Stevie. "So what do we get, if we open it?" Stevie set his hand on the lid. He had no answer. He only knew he could not turn back now.