The Ruby Dancer

Chandni had never felt so unbeautiful. This was a sickness. She clawed through the beads of bubbling sweat that dripped across her peeling face. How could one of Jehan's Ruby Dancers look so disgusting? Jamilia had told her that they were the Almighty's kiss upon the earth. Why were the elements allowed to defile such beauty?

Chandni's caressed the dainty ruby that lay on her chest for comfort. The gold chain it was attached to hissed with a white glow beneath the sun's glare. The necklace hurt for it boiled the skin around her neck into seeping, red blisters. Chandni would not remove it. The ruby cannot be separated from the dancer. She glanced at the sparkling red gemstone poised in her burnt and bloodied fingertips. It had effortlessly maintained its perfection despite the desert elements. Chandni was enraged. She threw her head up and screamed.

Chandni watched her halo spiral above through a veil of hair clumped with sand and sweat. Three vultures. Black crosses that blemished an empty sky signalled her doom. The halo knew she'd soon be a lump of meat laying on the flat, red salt plain. The image played behind her eyes. They were eating her flesh, picking away until all that remained was a pile of bones that the desert would crush into dust. Repulsed, she cursed them before pulling her hair back into a dusty knot that sizzled with sweat.

This is your fault. She turned. The box sat behind her. It was a black rectangle that was 4 feet high, 6 feet long and weight on her soul. She had been dragging it for days with a single rope which she threw down in detestation.

You were always the worst, dragging people down to join you in the filth. I am above you; I always was. Your grubby talons should have been unable to reach me, yet here I am. I should leave you here and let the desert grind you into dust! Chandni stormed to the side of box and kicked it, sending a sharp pain through her foot.

Returning to Jehan with the box, in the state she was in, would no-doubt result in her expulsion. A Ruby Dancer does not get dirty, she is incapable of it. Neither does she do physical work, it is beneath her. There was no doubt that the moment Chandni entered the city Jamilia, and her eyes of fire, would be waiting. She'd be stripped of her necklace and forced to return to eastern slums outside the city's walls. Chandni sank to the ground beside the box, squeezing the ruby in her fist. Her head span due to her dehydration. Visions flashed under her eyelids. There were images of her mother and father. They were watery figures without faces but it felt like them. Chandni whimpered as a headache set in and two tears rolled down her cheeks. After several minutes of silence, having been hunched against the box like a corpse, Chandni found a well of fire within. She clambered upright, seized the rope and returned to her journey.

The Anchor of God, the people of Jehan called it, a natural sandstone wall that stretched across the salt pans of the desert. Atop its peaks one could see the stunning city of Jehan which glimmered like a spellbinding jewel on the flats of the eastern desert. Chandni was certain that seeing the Anchor of God would fan the kindling hope that smoked faintly inside her, but it did not. The natural barricade lingered on the horizon for days. No matter how many steps Chandni took it remained little more than a rippling mirage. Until it wasn't.

How long had it been? Days, weeks? Chandni had no idea. She dragged her eyes from her blistered feet to find the rocky slopes of the Anchor of God towering above her. The burns on her body hurt less. The desert heat dropped as the sun set into the horizon and it's fading light pulled dancing shadows from the rocky crevasses.

A single pathway took travellers from west to east through the Anchor of God. Chandni stood where the path began. It stretched above her like a long tongue, twisting and turning into folds of rock. The path was very steep, almost vertical. Chandni looked down at her bleeding palms, then to box behind her. Her strength was fading. The air succumbed to a faint chill as the three vultures settled on an outcrop of rock above her and they chattered to themselves.