Tikker's Arc

Chapter 1 of 6

Tikker was a desert clam the size of a fist, and the only sample of ghost pepper ash in the whole desert sat sealed inside Tikker's shell. One rock, cracked open years ago near the Salted Flats, had held that smell: smoke and fire packed into gray dust. Tikker had tested it in rubs, oils, and brines. Now Tikker wanted six more rare spices to build one scorching feast. The first step was simple. Return to the Salted Flats and find a second vein. But the trail was gone. Tikker crept over the dunes where the path had been. A fresh sandstorm had swallowed every marker overnight. The old ridge Tikker remembered, the dark rock, the dip toward the flats, all of it lay buried smooth. Tikker scraped at the sand with one shell edge. More sand poured in. The only lead to a second spice source was erased, and Tikker's low body could cover maybe a hundred steps an hour. Tikker stopped beside a tall yucca, the one plant that had not moved. Its spiky leaves stood stiff above the fresh dunes. If the yucca stood here before the storm, then its shadow still pointed the old way. Tikker pressed close to the trunk and studied the ground around its roots. Something glinted in the yucca's low leaves. A small beetle, its back shining with shifting color, crawled down a blade toward the sand. Tikker had seen these scarabs before. They dug toward buried moisture and buried rock. The beetle dropped off the leaf and began to burrow, straight and sure, in one clear direction. Tikker followed. The scarab tunneled a thin groove through the loose sand, and Tikker slid along behind it, low and slow. The groove held firm where Tikker's own scraping had failed. For an hour they moved together across the flats, the beetle leading, the clam trailing its line. The scarab stopped at the base of a strange formation. Red rock rose in tall pipes, like a giant stone organ bleeding up from the desert. Wind slipped between the columns and made a low, humming note. The beetle vanished into a crack at the rock's foot. Tikker pressed a shell edge to the stone and smelled. Not ghost pepper ash. Something sharper, colder, almost like frost and pepper at once. A second spice, sealed somewhere inside this rock formation. Tikker had found a new lead, better than the old trail. But the humming grew louder. The wind through the pipes was not just wind. The note bent and shifted, and Tikker felt the sand tremble. Deep inside the formation, something large had started to stir, and it did not want its rock cracked open.