The desert, Affi thinks, was made to swallow things. The sun is swallowed by clouds of dust that blow overhead. The fine grains of sand swallow his hand as he rests it against the ground. Time itself swallowed in the daily loneliness of a boy with his mother. Alone in the desert.

“Affi!” snaps a voice, cold and sharp. “Where are your weapons?”

He raises his head, eyes darting involuntarily to where a carefully-crafted belt lies crumpled in the dust.

His mother, hands on hips, comes out from beneath the shelter of their roof. Her eyes are dark as pitch and narrowed, her hair pulled tightly back into a knot at the nape of her neck. Affi rubs his hands together nervously as she opens her mouth to speak: “You know you were supposed to be training! Stupid boy!” She scowls. “Pick up those weapons and get to practicing. I want to see you working on your uppercuts. They were clumsy the other day.”

“Yes, Maman,” he mumbles. Climbing carefully to his feet, he picks up the leather belt and buckles it on. She nods grimly, then turns back to her work in the house.

There are two knives, two keen blades hooked to the belt. He picks the smaller one out first, because it is his favorite, and twirls it around his fingers for a time. Then he practices slicing up with it, like Maman told him to: “from the guts to the ribcage,” she always says. “A man won’t be able to fight you while he’s holding his intestines in.”

The sun is close to meeting the horizon when Affi hears hoof beats. Gripping his knives, Affi heads for the road. He passes the makeshift fence at the edge of their property and ducks behind the sagebrush that marks the track between the town and their solitary outpost. The thudding sound is closer now, urgent.  No one here rides horses; they die too fast in the hot, dry desert. Horses mean intruders. Intruders mean danger.

A cloud of dust precedes the riders, but Affi can still make them out through a gap in the brush. The first rider has dark skin and wild eyes. He is wearing a turban and a huge sword knotted at his side with a sash. The second rider has a hat down over his face, and the third is dark like the others, but with wiry black hair that flies loose with the wind of his passage. As they approach, Affi can make out a scar on his face, from the right eye to the top of his lip.

Affi stiffens. He stands, to run back to the house, but the lead rider has spotted him. “Hiyah!” he shouts, and cracks the reins. His horse comes thundering to a halt in front of Affi, sending choking dust and sand flying. When the air clears, Affi is surrounded. The small knife in his hands seems like a toy in comparison with the long, sharp scimitars the riders carry.

A few moments ago he was hot, but now his skin is cold with fear. He shifts from one bare foot to the other, waiting fearfully for what comes next.

The turbaned rider speaks first. “Boy,” he says in a thick accent, “You live here?”

Affi shakes his head. Turban claps a hand on his scimitar, not subtly. “You sure?” he growls.

Affi’s eyes are fixed on the man with the scar, but he sees Turban’s movement and decides there’s no point in hiding where he lives. “Yes, I live here,” he admits. “Do you need a guide?”

A smile tugs at Turban’s mouth, under his thick beard. “Guide, maybe. Stefan here is looking for specific house.” He gestures to the man with the scar. “Ask boy, Stefan.”

Stefan spurs his horse forward a step, and Affi shrinks back in fear. Stefan is a good-looking man up close. His skin, though weathered by the sun, is not old, and the scar is only a thin white line on his face. His hair falls smoothly into his dark, liquid eyes. “What is your name?”

“Affi,” Affi ventures.

“Affi.” Stefan nods thoughtfully. “Affi, do you know a woman around here named Shalil?”

My mother, thinks Affi, but then he already knew this man was going to ask for her. The man with the scarred face – Maman never named him, but she told stories, tales full of rage and vengeance. It is why Affi trains with the knives. It is why they live on the outskirts of the town, away from where the main raids happen.

Stefan killed Affi’s father.

Stefan sits up straighter on his horse, looking around, until he spots the ramshackle fence some distance beyond. “Aha,” he says. “I imagine that would be her home over there, would it not?”

Affi spits in the dirt.

The man in the turban gives a shout of anger at this disrespect and starts to draw his scimitar, but Stefan holds out a hand and says something in a guttural language. Slowly, Turban puts his weapon away. Then Stefan fixes his eyes on Affi and chuckles.
“Are you her boy?” he asks with amusement. “You’ve got her temper, I can tell. She’s a sharp one, Shalil is. C’mon,” he says, patting his horse’s flank. Affi looks at him with black anger, and Stefan sighs.

“I didn’t want to do this the hard way,” he says, reaching down to scoop Affi up into the front of the saddle. Affi seethes. Behind him, he can hear a low chuckle from Stefan. “Just like your mother.”

They trot up to the grey, weathered house.

Stefan slides out of the saddle, his boots landing with a quiet crunch in the dirt. He offers a hand to Affi, who glares at him and jumps down on his own.

Stefan leaves his hand out. “The belt, please.”

“My mother made this for me,” protests Affi.

Stefan treats him to a wry grin. “You can have it back as soon as we leave, I promise. For now, I’d rather know that there won’t be a knife entering my back as I go inside.”

With a scowl, Affi unbuckles the belt and hands it over. He watches the smooth leather and its sheathed knives disappear into Stefan’s saddlebag. I will have to find another weapon, he thinks.

They leave the man with the hat – Yusef, Affi learns – with the horses. Then Turban, whose real name is Paal, kicks down the front door. It slams against the wall of the house with a loud, echoing sound. Paal and Stefan have their scimitars out, and Affi feels naked without a weapon. He opens his mouth to shout, to tell Maman to flee, but Stefan has his blade to Affi’s throat in an instant.

“Don’t,” he says, in a surprisingly pleasant voice. The cold steel rasps at Affi’s neck. “I want to talk to Shalil without her son announcing us first.”

Affi bites his tongue to prevent the angry words he wants to say. After a long moment, Stefan withdraws his scimitar, and they move into the house.

There are only three rooms in Affi’s house. Stefan and Paal search all of them.

They do not find Maman.

This time the words Affi has to swallow are exclamations of joy, as Stefan kicks over a chair and runs one hand over his smooth, dark face. He looks over at Affi and a smile slowly replaces his frown.

Flames flicker against the dark sky. The crackling is a low, pleasant sound, and the warmth of the fire does much to fend off the encroaching cold of night. Affi sits in the sand with Stefan, Yusef, and Paal and holds his hands out to the blaze.

They have been riding all day, and his whole body is sore. “Maman isn’t here. You should let me go now,” he says to Stefan.

“Even if you don’t know where she is, she’ll have to come looking for us eventually if we have her son,” retorts Stefan.

There is a pause.

“Affi,” Stefan asks, “Do you know how to use those knives you wear?”

Affi nods.

“Care to test your skill?” Stefan is rising from his spot in the sand, unknotting the sash around his scimitar and setting it on the ground. From inside his vest he pulls the knife belt. He laughs at Affi’s stunned expression. “I far prefer the knife to the scimitar. Get up. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Affi wraps the belt around his waist and walks over to where Stefan stands in a fighting stance.

The first time they clash is testing, casual. Stefan strikes with one knife and Affi parries easily, then counters. His blade slides off of Stefan’s block with a ring of metal. Affi knows Yusef and Paal are looking on, but the world seems narrowed, constricted to this circle of sand, the light flickering at Stefan’s back.

They come together again in a whirl of blades, faster this time. Stefan breaks through Affi’s defense, but then his foot slips in the sand and Affi pushes his advantage, knocking Stefan’s knife away and driving his own blade forward.

They come to a halt, Affi’s knife point barely touching the soft skin of Stefan’s throat. It’s a strange reversal of earlier. This is Affi’s chance to get revenge on the man who killed his father. To extinguish him from this world before he can kill Affi’s mother, too. His hand tightens on the hilt and Stefan is looking at him with a glint of something unrecognizable in his eyes.

Affi pulls back. Stefan relaxes, letting out a heavy breath, but he doesn’t look surprised. With some resentment, Affi realizes that Stefan knew he wasn’t going to hurt him.

“Well played,” says Stefan, and he’s not just talking about the fight. He holds out his hand, asking for the knife belt back.
With some bitterness, Affi hands it over. Not long afterward, they put out the fire, and Affi sleeps on a rolled up blanket that Stefan gives him against the cold.

Maman arrives at dawn. Affi is awakened by raised voices and the distressed neighing of horses. He scrambles to his feet, rubbing sleep out of his eyes, and sees her standing there. She is wearing a white robe and a face of fury.

“You stole my son!” she is shouting at Stefan, whose hands are surprisingly empty of weapons. Yusef is tending to the fire and Paal stands casually by the horses. Obviously neither of them has been told to consider Maman a threat. The thought makes Affi tense with anger.

“I didn’t steal him, Shalil,” Stefan says in a placating voice. “I only brought him with us because I knew you would follow.”

“You stole my son to get me to talk to you.” Maman’s voice is coldly serious. This is her worst temper, one she usually reserves for when Affi lets one of the animals escape or damages a weapon in practice.

“Shalil, I didn’t do all this for nothing. I have things to tell you.”
Affi sneaks closer. Paal lets him pass by the horses but there’s still Yusef at the fire to detain him. Slowly, Affi begins his way through the smoke to get closer. 

“I’ve wronged you, I know that,” Stefan starts. Affi is stunned: wronged her? Stefan killed her husband! “But I needed to make it right. I’ve…I’ve started a compound, Shalil. Gotten some of the tribal members to settle down. I still can’t leave the tribe, you know that, but we don’t raid as much anymore. We try to sustain ourselves from the land and the animals. The women and children live with us now. It would be a good place…to raise a child.”

Maman is silent.

“Who is his father?” Stefan asks softly.

Maman crosses her arms. “I buried his father fourteen years ago when you left.”

“What?” Stefan looks confused. “You were in love with his father even then? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’ve only ever loved one man, Stefan,” says Maman in a quiet voice.

“You…” Stefan turns to Affi where he stands with his fists clenched, as if seeing him for the first time. He scans Affi’s face, then turns back to Maman. “Shalil. Are you saying…?”

Affi dives between the two, clutching at his mother’s hands “Maman,” he cries out. “Why are you standing here with this man? He killed my father!”

Stefan looks at Maman with new horror. “You told him I killed his father?” he exclaims. “God, Shalil, why would you – ”

“Because you ruined me when you left, Stefan! You pledged me your love and then you told me that the tribe came first, that you could never leave them to be with me! What else could I tell the boy? That his father would not stay for him?”

“You had more than that choice, Shalil!”

“You made the choice for me.”

“Maman!” Affi drops her hand. “Are you telling me this man is my father?”

She gives a broken nod. Affi takes a closer look at Stefan, whose eyes are so much like his own. This man, with the scar that runs from his eye to his mouth, has been the subject of Affi’s nightmares for years. All the training he has done with the knives has been to kill this man…his father. Who is now offering the two of them a chance to go live with him in a tribal village not far from here.

They look at him: his mother, angry but familiar; and his father, once a stranger, but now Affi realizes the familiarity he’s felt. His gaze flickers between the two of them. Two parents – something he thought he’d never have – and now he can only choose one.

Maman abruptly reaches toward him. “Come, Affi, we’re going home.”

He takes a step back from her outstretched hand. She beckons him again, angrily this time. “Come.”

“No,” Affi says quietly.

“No?” He’s never seen his mother stunned, but this is it; her hand, in midair, drops to her side. “Affi.”

“I want to know my father,” he whispers. “I’m going with Stefan.”

A hand claps onto his shoulder. Affi turns his head to look up at Stefan, whose eyes are dark and impossibly sad.

“Affi,” Stefan says, “Go with your mother.”

“But – ” Affi begins to argue, but Stefan shakes his head.

“I came to you once,” he says. “I can do it again. But you’re a boy still, and boys should grow up with their mothers.”

Affi sucks in a breath, still full of disbelief. Stefan releases his shoulder. “Someday,” he says.

Maman snorts. “Not if I have a say in it,” she growls. “Affi. Come.”

He looks back over his shoulder one more time at Stefan.

I have found a father, Affi thinks, and lost him again.

Someday, he thinks. Someday. The stolid figure of Stefan fades like blown sand into the desert.