The Abrupt Physics of Dying by Paul E. Hardisty

first Clay did not see what the boy was showing him, such was its unity with the surrounding rock. It seemed impossible, but there it was – a scale of steps hewn into the limestone, a passageway disappearing into the rock. ‘
Aiwa, aiwa,
’ said Mohamed. Yes.
    The stairway, ancient surely, twisted up into the core of the bluff, the sides handtool-etched so that he could almost hear the men chipping away at the rock through the centuries. He climbed steadily, heart working harder now, cooler here in the bowels of the earth, his shoulders scraping the sides in places, until they emerged into sunlight so bright he had to shut his eyes.
    The oasis was a series of five spring-fed rock pools set in the barren footings of the canyon’s towering rock face, shaded by palms and acacia. The spring pulsed from the ground as if pumped from a heart, the clear water cascading over the grooved limestone from one pool to the next and the one after that. The place teemed with life: small green fish with silver bellies darted in the deep cool water,frogs croaked in the fringing reed banks, insects buzzed in dense shifting clouds of colour. It was one of the most beautiful places he had ever seen.
    A group of children splashed in the deepest of the pools. They smiled as he approached. Their gums, too, were red and inflamed, their skin dappled with sores. At the water’s edge, two women, clearly blessed by Allah, heavy with child, laid out their washing on the smooth rocks to dry in the sun. They whispered to each other as he approached. Clay looked towards them. One of the women raised her hands to her face and looked away. But the other met his gaze, and for a short moment she stared at him with dark, brazen eyes. Then she smiled and her teenage face vanished behind a drawn veil.
    Clay swung the boy down to the ground and crouched before him. He took the boy’s face in his hands and turned it to one side and the other. ‘
Tammam
? OK?’
    ‘I am tired,’ the boy replied in a thin, high-pitched voice.
    Clay pulled a sweet from his pocket, offered it to the boy.
    Mohamed held out his hand. It was covered in blood from Clay’s head. ‘You are hurt,’ he said.
    Clay reached for the boy’s other hand, dropped the sweet into his palm, patted him on the head. ‘I am fine,
al hamdillulah
.’
    The boy muttered the same words, thanks be to God, closed his fingers around the candy, held it a moment, pulled off the wrapper, then popped it in his mouth.
    Clay knelt and put his lips to the water. The first touch was cool, the water sweet. The boy crouched beside him and did the same.
    Clay stood and sniffed the air. Iodine, salt, empty miles of hazy blue. The wind was from the sea. He reached into his pack and fished out an empty plastic water bottle, opened the cap. He was not prepared, but this would have to do. He crouched by the edge and dipped the bottle in the pool until the mouth was half submerged and held it there as it filled. Clay stood, stashed the bottle in his pack, and looked up at the women busy with their laundry. ‘Stay here, Mohamed,’ he said.
    ‘I want to come.’
    ‘I will come back. I have work.’
    The boy bent the twig of an arm around Clay’s leg. ‘You are my friend,’ he said.
    Clay smiled. He crouched and put his hands on the boy’s shoulders. ‘You are my friend, too,’ he said in Arabic. He reached into his pocket and poured a handful of sweets into the boy’s outstretched hands.
    He left Mohamed at the pools and set off along the gradually constricting wadi bed. After half an hour of hard walking he came to a place where the canyon narrowed into a steep defile. Vertical dolomite cliffs embraced a sheer fault line that blocked the way. He stopped and looked up. There was not a whisper of air, nor any angle in the sun to throw shadows. He turned and wiped the back of his hand across his brow and down his temple and looked back towards the green of the oasis no more than a kilometre below, little Mohamed