EDGE and Tesseract are imprints of Hades Publications, Inc.

Chapter One

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The Longevity Thesis A Novel by
Jennifer Rahn

Chapter 1

Antronos was being swallowed by the Desert. He stood petrified, watching a great wall of sand heave upwards and seethe past him overhead, covering his world in red gloom. Turning to look back towards his mother’s hovel, praying it hadn’t disappeared, he found he was somewhere else entirely—in an instant, all had changed. The sky churned and a vortex of wind stretched down from the red, sooty clouds to touch the ground and tease the sand into a great column that tipped sideways, and slowly writhed towards him, like a great, opened maw. At his feet, stones were sliding towards that opening, becoming caught up in the spiralling wind and tumbling out of sight. He called out to his mother, his trembling, skinny hands clutching the few dried brambles he had found, as he continued to turn in a circle looking for what he knew would not be there.

Hell had returned.

Sand was beginning to boil around him, sending up small spumes as the Desert’s dementia cast up buried rubble and bones that had lain hidden under its surface. Collecting together in the crude shapes of headless torsos with legs, the unearthed debris stood up and marched resolutely towards the darkness at the end of the wind tunnel. The very Earth was flowing towards that gaping orifice, forcing Antronos to run in the opposite direction, or risk being dragged in himself. It began to rain. At first it was a light drizzle of grit, then small pebbles began to pelt Antronos in the face. He dropped his bundle of kindling and screamed, both arms held up to cover his eyes. His feet were sinking ever deeper into the ground as he ran, until he was struggling to pull his legs free from the sand that had engulfed him up to his knees. Something grabbed his ankles from below and dragged him down. After a few agonizing moments of breathless torment, he felt himself being ripped free from the grip of the Earth.

“Mea Haalom, mea Haalom.”

Antronos stopped struggling and collapsed into a sobbing heap as he recognized his mother’s voice. She was nearly smothering him in her arms, forcing him against her shoulder as she rocked back and forth, not letting him look at her face. He knew the Desert must be changing her again. After a few moments, he quieted. The magnetic whimsy of the Desert still raged outside, but his mother’s magic ensured the moaning debris creatures would not enter their home; neither would the Earth reach into the hovel to sweep him into its gullet.

” Lea Chaakan bestt inalan takat, mea Haalom.”

The Desert has turned to fire, my child, she began, telling him the story that always calmed him during these storms. Antronos relaxed in her arms, feeling her hands gently roam over his back and pull his crinky, yellow hair out of his face. But the fire is not all-powerful. It is held at bay by water, which has the magic to conquer its flames. There is a river called Yrati, which flows underneath the Earth and forms an impenetrable barrier that the Desert cannot cross. In time, you will learn to summon the river that protects us, as it does the people who live underground. The water is within us, and it is that which the Desert cannot conquer. You are safe.

Antronos no longer believed her as he had when he was younger. He could reason now that he was not safe, and the only people who were underground were already dead.

His mother chuckled as she read his thoughts. “These people don’t lie buried in sand. They roam about in tunnels.”

“Then why can we not go live underground?” he asked. He pushed away from his mother, and saw that this time the Desert had rendered half her face into a mass of writhing tissue that snaked down her neck and wriggled beneath the shoulder of her tattered, red robes. Through her tangled, dark hair, he could see her remaining violet eye watching him compassionately.

“There are two kinds of magic, Haalom. The water magic, which protects humanity . . .” She spread her fingers, palm down, over the floor of the hut and a small amount of water bubbled to the surface. “. . . and the surface magic, which is also necessary for life.” Antronos reached out to touch the water, fascinated, although he had heard and seen this story many times before. “The Desert must be mixed with water before life springs from it. But the Desert is wild, and its magic can deliberately mislead people to their death. It mixes you with other things, and gives you a death that lets you live forever.” She moved her hand over another patch of ground, and a broken skull that had petrified into stone twisted upwards to leer at them. The thing snapped its jaws, then twitched and pulled back downwards.

“I have already been touched by this magic. It has made me part of the surface, and I cannot go underground. Perhaps you can, but I wish that you would not leave me yet.”

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