ROBERT WALTON - WELL OF SOULS

Robert Walton is a retired teacher, lifelong mountaineer and experienced writer.  His novel Dawn Drums won the 2014 New Mexico Book Awards Tony Hillerman Prize for best ficiton. Most recently, his “La Loca” was published in Principia Ponderosa, the Third Flatiron’s Volume 18. He and his wife make their home in King City, California.
 
Please visit his website for more information about him:   Author • Educator • Mountaineer

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                                           Well of Souls
 
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            Her naked shoulder turned sideways as she slid between two green boulders and disappeared like smoke in darkness.
 
            Earlier, hot dust tingled in my nose like freshly cut spice.
 
            Earlier yet, dawn grew among declining stars. Abbas spoke beside me as we turned our horses onto a blank slate of desert sands. “Jonathan, you will see today the great treasure of our people.”
            I rubbed my eyes. “Worth rising so early?”
            Maryam murmured from my other side, “It is.”
            Abbas continued, “You enjoyed the feast last night - my mother’s rice with cinnamon, the lamb?”
            “Very much - the yellow melons, too!"
            “Does it not surprise you that rice grows, that sheep graze, that melons fatten here?” His left hand swept wide, encompassing rocks blood red in the sun’s first rays and still shaded dunes, pale as moonlight.
            My eyes followed the gesture.
            “Water flows from the Well of Souls even in dry years like this one. It flows beneath the earth through ancient ways to our fields. We could not live here in the sand sea without it.” Abbas lowered his hand. 
            “Is it guarded?”
            He rubbed his dusty beard, now the color of twilight clouds. “Of course. Soldiers patrol far into the desert.”
            Maryam nodded. “Though the women of the well sometimes wander far.”
            “Women of the well?” I asked.
            “Bah!” snorted Abbas, “My little sister spouts an old wives’ tale!”
            Maryam shook her head. No, Abbas, it is women’s tears - tears of both joy and sorrow - which bring back the rains."
            Abbas muttered, “Bah!”
 
            Our ride ended at midday before three hills, round as mares’ bellies. “Abbas?”
            “Yes?”
            “The entrance is near?”
            “It is hidden." His dark eyes searched ahead. "Those rocks to the left are our guidepost. Come.” He jiggled his reins.
 
            Dust yellow as cardamom billowed from beneath the horses’ hooves as we hobbled them in the shade of two sandstone slabs leaning together. Maryam scampered ahead of us into a slit in the hillside. I followed Abbas into the opening.
            Coolness enfolded me. Pools stair-stepped away into a cavern’s depths. Waters trickled from one to another like words meandering from grandmothers' lips. Sunlight swords struck through crevices far above. One stabbed the farthest, greatest pool, made it bleed molten silver.
            Maryam’s voice chimed like distant bells, “This way!”
            Abbas shouted, “Wait for us!”
            She looked back, her eyes teasing like starlight on a midnight sea.
            "Wait, Maryam!"
            She cast off her robe and ran.
            Abbas called again, “Wait!”
            Her naked shoulder turned sideways as she slid between two green boulders and disappeared like smoke in darkness.
 
            Gathering clouds deepened dusk as Abbas and I rode between fields green with new plants and on to the city.
            I never saw Maryam again.