These are stories about the genesis of the characters in The Unnaturals, about the events leading them to become the people that they are.
November 2004
"Done!" the shopkeep exclaimed. "Let's have tea, the special kind."
The negotiation for the plain clay disk had taken approximately two hours, not counting the half an hour it took Ginny to convince the shopkeeper that she knew what she was doing. Sweetened mint tea was an integral part of the discussion, but this new kind was rare, a blend from India.
Ginny's hair was covered by her hijab, but her blue eyes, fair skin, and accent had revealed her to be a Western woman early on in the conversation. This was the shop her aleithiometer had led her to in a small oasis town north of Habarut on the Yemeni-Oman border. Given the political situation in Yemen, it was never entirely safe for anyone – let alone a British woman – to travel so far from the capital, San'a. However, the aleithiometer had never led her astray, and it was amazing what knowledge, a little money, and the right attitude (not too confident, not too ingratiating) could get you. Oh, and a little magic, as well. As a result, Ginny found her trip free of would-be-kidnappers. The local bandits would have to find other tourists to capture as bargaining chips with the central government.
This tiny store had the only antiquities in town. It was clear from the clutter that Naseem did more of his business in rugs, clothes, and imported CDs than ancient relics, but he also collected strange items that stragglers from the desert brought in. The blank clay disk was only being kept as a curiosity. Only the tiny etchings along the edge revealed it to be anything other than an old piece of practice pottery. Upon sensing Ginny's interest, Naseem claimed the finder had discovered it in the lost city of Ubar. Ginny knew better, but didn't disabuse Naseem of the notion. The final price seemed a fair one – about what an ugly relic from a lost city would cost to a foreigner, although an astounding profit above whatever Naseem had paid for the thing. In truth, Ginny knew the piece to be worth whatever money a person could imagine.
Their tea done, Ginny thanked Naseem profusely and bowed, sure to keep her hair covered and her eyes lowered. After this kind of conquest, Ginny would normally have had a drink of something a great deal stronger than tea, but that would have to wait. In fact, given the proliferation of sweet tea over the past two hours, Ginny found herself hunting for a restaurant with a bathroom. She ordered some dinner and considered her next move.
Trying to wash her hands in cramped space of the minimal restroom, her knapsack began to vibrate. Oh oh. Her aleithiometer rarely ever started spinning without her asking it a question, and here it was, going mad. It could only mean trouble. And in fact, when she checked it, it was switching urgently between three symbols. Given the order and deeper meanings, they could only mean Flee, Death, and (Ride) north.
Um, okay. Ginny returned to her table and asked if she could get her kebab "to go on the road."
"Storms are coming, lady," the child who was helping her mother said.
"Let Allah's will come," Ginny responded. "And four liters of water," she added, as a second thought.
Ginny had arrived in a landrover, and in the landrover she would flee north. Walking to her car, she tried to surreptitiously look for whatever her aleithiometer was having a fit over. Half-wild dogs, trash on the streets, lovely wide-eyed children, women carrying water. Some men standing in the shade, chewing qat. Nothing out of the ordinary. As she passed Naseem's shop to her car, she heard voices, low, but some instinct told her to keep walking quickly, head down. Her car must be safe or the aleithiometer wouldn't have told her to ride. What could it be?
If storms were coming, that would mean sandstorms, which were deadly. Ginny needed a little time to prepare. Using one of the two main roads through the town, she drove to a more secluded spot. She only needed a couple minutes. Ginny reached into her bag for some items – a few grains of sand, a feather, a shed claw from a cat – and concentrated very hard, drawing arcane symbols on the seat beside her. Two spells which would normally take her a couple hours had to be performed very, very quickly. One for covering all tracks to be set off when she wanted, and another against sandstorms. Anything else would have to wait, or would have to be something she could handle with her artifacts. It was tiring, but Ginny pushed through. She wasn't done yet.
After she'd completed her spells with the right words, Ginny took a deep swig of water and looked at her map. She figured out the farthest she could go, round trip, on her full tank. Now was the hardest part. She drove back around past Naseem's shop, landrover careening wildly as she went in and out of potholes, and blared her a tape of British pop for good measure. And then she gunned the engine, heading on the road north. She knew the road would go for a good 40 miles, but then it would curve sharply west. Nothing was further north but the deadly Empty Quarter and a sandstorm coming.
When she reached the curve in the road, Ginny stopped and took out her binoculars. They were very good, top-of-line, and more than paid for themselves when she saw what was coming. A black landrover full of – what was it, four men? Perhaps as many as six could fit in there. She didn't recognize the car from the town. There were rifles sticking out of the windows, pointing up and out. She couldn't see any symbols on the side of the car, but that would have been stupid of them, anyway. She wouldn't have been hard to track across Yemen, but who were they? Why were they after her? She suspected they weren't just looking for a rich tourist or a European woman. If they were following her into the desert, they must want her in particular, unless they figured they could bag her and return before the storm hit.
This time, a pearl and an eye from a stuffed animal were the necessary components. Ginny slapped her binoculars and looked again. Now she could hear them, understand them, and see into the vehicle.
"Are you sure she went this way?" the plump driver asked. She recognized none of the five men. In fact, none were speaking Arabic, and they looked East Asian. Asians, in Yemen? What were they speaking, Mandarin? The hell?
"Yes, the child said the fool Englishwoman went straight into the desert," said the man sitting next to him. He had some kind of accent, but Ginny couldn't place it, given the limitations of the spell.
"That seems crazy, with a sandstorm coming. Why do we always get sent after the crazy ones?" whined the driver.
"I still don't know why the Boss would have sent so many of us to catch a woman," This doubter was sitting in the back, in the middle.
"The Master knows her capabilities better than you do, Shin Dai-Gui." The man riding shotgun said sharply.
"Do you know what tipped her off?" mumbled the driver. "Maybe someone told her she was being followed?"
"Who would have?" asked another one from the back, this one with a very long face. "We know she never talked to the shopkeep again." With that, a few of the men chuckled.
"It doesn't matter," said the one with the accent sitting next to the driver. He must be in charge, Ginny thought. "Our orders are clear. Kill the woman. Retrieve the item. Speed is of the utmost importance. You know what will happen if we fail."
Ginny refocused her binoculars to continue to capture them as they got closer, and then put them down. She wanted to know so much – what they wanted, what would happen if they failed, the name of their leader, but realized that watching them get closer would be a new depth of stupidity for her. Ginny dropped the spell and drove off the barely paved road. She barreled over dunes for an hour, longer, looking at the sky. Finally she saw the yellow smudge on the horizon, coming closer. The wind picked up.
Ginny kept driving into the desert toward the coming storm. She waited a moment on the top of a dune until she was sure the other landrover was following her and saw her, and then she went down. She could imagine them pointing and shouting, perhaps arguing about their own safety. Maybe fifteen minutes until the storm hit, okay, now. Ginny set off the spell that allowed her to pass unseen and without trace, and tore as fast as she could down the narrow valley between dunes. The wind started throwing sand against her windows. Ginny couldn't see anyone behind her but couldn't be sure. Almost, almost – just before the thick mass of sand hit her car, Ginny set off the other spell and stopped the car, throwing on her parking break. And then she waited.
For over five hours Ginny sat in her car, fully able to breathe. She knew she'd be able to unbury her car fairly easily when the storm ended as part of the protection spell, but she was concerned that she wouldn't have enough energy to recast the untrackable spell. It hit her that she was pretty tired, but before she could relax she asked her aleithiometer if she was safe. Safe, sunshine. It said. Good. Ginny ate her cold kebab and then napped a little. Waking, she could hear that the howling was slowly starting to fade. It was dark inside her car. Ginny brought out the blank clay disk and said three words in ancient Egyptian. It started to glow with a warm light from the now visible Eye of Ra in the center. "Wow," Ginny said, fingers reading the hieroglyphs on the back of the disk. "I don't think I'll be parting with you anytime soon, if you'll have me."
The storm eventually stopped and Ginny was able to return to the sand-covered road without a trace of her own passing. On the way, she passed within a couple of kilometers of an overturned, mostly buried black landrover. In their haste to reach her, they hadn't taken even the simplest precautions against the storm. Their windows had been down – probably so they could shoot out of them – and the wind had blown the vehicle off the top of a dune. Through her binoculars, Ginny couldn't see anyone moving. In fact, the only bit of human she saw was a single arm sticking out of the sand, unmoving in the permanent act of reaching out. On the forearm was a distinctive tattoo of two Chinese characters. Ginny wrote them down. She wondered if any had survived, if they had any water, and whether the theoretical lucky few could survive the sixty mile walk back to the town. Ginny lowered her binoculars and drove back into town.
It would have been nice, or perhaps dangerous, to say that the tale of the Englishwoman who survived a sandstorm in the Empty Desert went far and wide. However, the residents of the small town near the border of Oman had seen stranger things, and most didn't notice when she came back through, picking up more fuel and water. Most of the gossip was angry: The day before a group of Asian men had killed Naseem, a popular shopkeeper, but fortunately none had returned from the desert, praised be Allah. But no, it was corrected; one of the men had stayed in town after the murder. As soon as the sandstorm had finished beating the town, he had left for the Yemeni capital, San'a, taking the west road. Ginny thought it prudent to see if she could get a flight out of Oman, and drove in that direction. Her aleithiometer concurred.