I had killed a man.
The rising sun as it glanced off the dunes was too bright for me; my lips were so dry they burned, the skin of my cheeks stung as wind whipped sand across them, and my eyes ached, the pressure that came of seeing too much. I could feel a tremor that shook the marrow of my bones with every step. How odd it was, to sweat without feeling that sweat gather- with the stillsuit sucking away all the moisture from my skin, what remained was heat and electricity, as dry and sharp as the desert itself. There was a pounding between my temples that did not abate, loud and large enough in my skull that I thought for one delusional moment it might attract a worm. I had some fear that I would be sick on the sand. I had killed a man.
(...I had killed many, many men. No. That wasn't right. Was it?)
I blinked in the blinding light of that sun, trying to orient myself. I could feel my mother watching me from behind, the familiar pressure of her worried eyes on the back of my neck. She feared for me, that was obvious. I could guess why.
Before me a train of Fremen warriors stretched out, their sand-stained robes vanishing them into the desert. Their sand-walk was nearly silent, synchronized, as perfectly in time as an orchestra, but the only sound betraying life was that of their robes whispering faintly in the wind. Some of the larger men had tied the dead in a cradle between them, and like this they carried the fallen warrior home. His body swayed in time with their steps. I felt a sweat break out on my forehead, a fever kind of sweat, and I wiped it away with the back of one black glove.
I thought I knew him- or had known him. I had memories that didn't make any sense, memories of things that could not have happened to me, or at least could not have happened yet. What was the matter with me- had I traveled to a moment in the past, forgetting the life I had lead? Was I seeing visions of the future, like that Reverend Mother of the Bene Gesserit had wanted me to? Or was I simply losing my mind?
It hadn't been like this before, on Caladan- I had only dreamt when I was asleep. Now, here on Arrakis, I dreamt constantly. It was hard to remember what was real.
(Jamis, that was his name- he was a friend of mine, he reminded me much of Duncan Idaho. He showed me the ways of the desert, and he saved me from a Harkonnen blade, and I saw him seated in a dark room with a hand to his lips and I knew, somehow, that he was serving as my council…but this wasn't right. He was dead. I had killed him.)
I must have stumbled, slipped on the shifting sands, for the world looked to me askew. I felt sick everywhere, like I was going to faint. Why was it, that in so many of my dreams I was a murderer? Logically, I should see myself dead too, shouldn't I? There were many moments in these last days alone that could have easily killed me. I should see myself abandoned to be swallowed by the desert, given up as a weak and unsuitable alien, devoured by the elements the way the Baron wanted. I did not see this. For some reason, it didn't even seem to be a possibility.
The girl- Chani, her name was a firebrand in my head- turned back to face me, surely having heard my feet skid on the sand. I thought I heard her say something:
"This is only just the beginning."
...but her lips hadn't moved. She frowned at me like I was a puzzle in need of solving- not human, troubling, unknown. There were so many colours behind the blue of her eyes. I still held her knife, her bloodstained wormtooth, I clutched at it like it was a lifeline in an ocean storm.
In a cold room made of stone she kissed me, kissed me like it physically hurt not to do so, and the callouses on her fingers warmed my skin when she pushed me back into the bed.
In the noon-day desert her blade flashed across my throat, and my blood- blood that was black, not red, why- sprayed across the sand and I choked on it, falling at her feet. I tried to speak- I wanted to thank her- but already my body was going cold.
I was dressed in rich silks, finely embroidered with gold and jewels as befitted an Emperor. She stood before me in a dusky desert stillsuit, her hair wild and her face marked by dirt, and she smiled and told me I was the most beautiful thing she'd ever seen.
Muad'Dib, she called me. Desert Mouse.
The certainty in her face was as solid as steel, and she held my heart in her hands, cut from me, beating softly still. My blood covered us both, her eyes were the only blue thing left in the universe, and though I bared fangs and spit poison it was too late- she had already won.
I flew on vast black wings through the living depths of space, and knew only how to return home because she called to me.
In the desert, walking on the dunes. None of this had happened- at least, not yet. In some cases, surely, not ever. I couldn't do it all. I couldn't die multiple deaths.
(Or could I? Please, please, let it not be so- please, let me still have a choice.)
I held her knife and I had killed my friend Jamis and Duncan was dead and my father was murdered and my house was fallen. I had lost my mind. My blood felt like it was boiling under my skin. I wanted to crawl between the cool sheets of my bed on Caladan and sleep with no dreams whatsoever, and this desire struck me so suddenly and deeply that I nearly cried.
There was a door hidden in the rocks, imperceptible from almost every angle; through here we escaped the sun, I followed the girl who killed me, and she looked back at me again as we were swallowed by the shadows, wary and vaguely desirous. I wondered for an instant if she knew me as well as I knew her- but no. That was impossible.
It was cold in the sietch, at least there was this; I still felt breathless but tried to suppress it, I had to appear strong, I knew I wasn't fully trusted yet. I knew I wasn't trustworthy. I had to protect my mother. My heart beat too fast- I felt like it did not belong to me, it was something foreign, a bird I had cruelly trapped within me, desperate to escape.
The door to the Fremen's sietch was sealed behind us. The sound of it closing held all the same morbid finality as the sealing of a tomb.
I turned to Chani and offered her the hilt of her knife, this knife I had killed with.
"Thank you for lending it to me," I said in a voice that sounded, against all odds, silken and glasslike and cold. A witch's voice. It almost didn't seem to belong to me.
But Chani shook her head, and stepped away.
"It's yours now," she told me.
~
Rooms had been provided for us, I was alone in one, I had shut the door to the world beyond at the first opportunity. The room was small and chilled and lacking in duchal luxury, but I didn't care, I couldn't stand to be looked at by another person for even a minute more. I tore the stillsuit from my body, clawing at it like it was a parasite, and when I was free I collapsed, shuddering, into the narrow bed with its glittering sheets. The sheets served the same purpose as the suit, that much became quickly apparent, but in the moment I didn't mind. I felt too exhausted to rise. Tears rose and spilled from my eyes without the typical accompanying muscle tension- I was too tired, too weak even to sob. At this point, how long had I been running for my life? It felt like decades. I had lived tens of lifetimes in that time.
In so many of those lives, I was a monster.
I had killed a man.
I made a sound I did not hear, my fingernails raked at my own exposed throat, I felt hot and desperate and wild. Mad. If only it was just that- if only I were simply insane, and none of this was real, and I were but a pitiful, pathetic aristocrat's get, a failure in planned breeding, pained by fantasies and nothing more. For a moment, I wished as strongly for this as I had wished for my old home, back out in the desert.
I knew this wish wouldn't come true. Bile rose in the back of my throat.
I must not fear, the Litany so began; fear is the mind-killer.
(But I would prefer it, perhaps, to have my mind killed.)
The threads of the Litany dispersed, falling away from me like grains of sand through grasping fingers; I couldn't focus on it. I must have a fever of some kind- perhaps I was overdosing on Spice, I had certainly breathed in enough of the stuff. I stopped thinking of wishes that could not come true. I clutched at the undershirt I wore and tried to let my muscles relax despite the ever-present pounding pain in my temples and the dryness of my tongue. I wanted nothing more than to sleep, but did not think such a thing was possible.
Suddenly, I was dreaming.
I stood over the body of a stranger whose face I could not make out, for it had been obliterated- a knife had been skewered through his jaw and up into his brain, a crysknife, my knife. Another challenge accepted and overcome. I looked up into the eyes of the watching Reverend Mother with a smile, and licked blood from my sharpened teeth like a vampire.
A girl, both only three years old and simultaneously over a hundred, held within her palm a needle of poison with which she would pop a fetid balloon. She gazed up at her target with eyes as blue as the noon sky and said:
"I'm sorry, Grandfather."
(Look into the place you dare not look. You will find me there.)
I stood on the Dune, and beneath me it moved, it raced, it flew.
...Chani was there.
These visions, as vivid as life, faded into something muddled, uncertain shapes that formed from the shimmering red darkness behind my eyelids. It seemed those eyelids had become transparent, for though my body was locked in sleep- or rather, some hellish state that resembled sleep- I could still see through them, to the cold little room in the sietch. Chani was knelt at my side and she watched me, one hand outstretched to touch my heaving chest, and though she withdrew it in guilt her eyes were tender. In this moment, she was not killing me, she held no knife. She gnawed at her lower lip and sighed, those wondrous eyes tracing my paralyzed form with wary curiosity and the barest hint of lust; her presence was suddenly an incredible relief to me. It was more than enough to hear her breathing, to feel- almost imperceptibly- the warmth of her presence near mine. I was not alone.
(This knowledge was the greatest comfort that could be offered to anyone.)
The pain in my head faded, and so with it did the visions. I felt the cords of my fingers relax in their strained grip, felt my own breathing even. The fatigue of it all had caught up to me in full and darkness tugged at the corners of my conscience, demanding I succumb, which I did gladly. To sleep, perchance to dream- what was that, again? Poetry from the first world, the tale of a suicidal and murderous prince…with any luck, I would not dream.
To the slow rhythm of Chani's breathing, I slept.
