The Summer Nightingale

By I. N. Elend

The Summer Nightingale is a Saudi-Arabian inspired novella about a man who has lost his lover in a tumultuous war. Set in a fictional desert landscape, he meets a young dancer who dredges up his memories of his dearly departed. But Dancer hides secrets of his own behind their smiling façade, and what is uncovered may cost them their lives.
-Features a non-binary character and the tender ups-and-downs of a forbidden love.-

• Language: English
• Publisher: I. N. Elend
• Release date: Mar 18, 2018

I. N. Elend

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Book preview

I lie on the sand and listen to his voice.

The silence of the dunes wash over me but his words cut through like diamonds.

Get up and live.

This isn’t Habibi. This is my disillusionment, a world of over-watered cacti and crooked teeth and demure smiles. The taste of spice on his strange northern lips; his furs running along the nape of my neck.

He’d always been terrible at singing. He sang anyway, because when it was just the two of us separated from our parents there was never any inclination to fall back to old habits. We lazed like cats by the window, lying on plump couches, the sun warming our skin.

I open my eyes and pull the scarf down my neck. Coarse grains of sand graze my lips; when I part them, I feel the raggedness of my soul as it seeps out of my throat. The brewing sandstorm throws my sleeves around, rippling like ocean waves. My body is too acrid to produce tears. After so many weeks of bare-footed travel with empty pockets and sand-rubbed wounds, it’s easy to close my eyes again and let sleep take over, forever.

I crawl onto my feet and steady myself against my wooden staff. A pang of nausea hits my temple. I suck in a breath and step forward. One foot, then the next.

I’m at a tavern later.

It’s a miracle that’s one week too late. I drink anyway—watered down rum courtesy of the tavern’s owner. It’s charity. The sort of business I was raised in made no place for giving or receiving it, but that’s a life long gone anyway. I toast to the djinns for carrying my feet to the town of Sudan alive. Behind me the door to the entrance rattles, buckling under the strain of a fierce wind. The sandstorm had waited for me to reach this town.

You’re a special one, the tavern lady says, ambling over and giving me a refill. Mama Sahib always said that we have to respect those honored by the desert.

I drink, slobbering over the table in my thirst. The night stretches on, wind howling higher around the ramshackle buildings. The tavern workers take turns standing on their toes to peep out of the single shuttered window, swiveling around after to blink hard or rub the sand out of their eyes. Candles burn on rickety sconces, swelling with orange firelight. There is nothing here, this sad excuse of a town, waiting for the apocalypse that never comes.

Then there is a change: the whirring noise of choppers landing to avoid the storm.

The tavern occupants start to fiddle with their playing cards. The deceptive fifty-third card in a young man’s sleeve flutters to the ground, graceless. Hookah smoke begins to cloud the air in earnest, and in place of dry laughter is a stern silence, punctuated, by errant whispers.

Old men by my table begin to lisp. They’re talking about the recent attack on Rakhbansha: it had been a known blue zone, one of the only eastern safe havens amidst all the turmoil. An attack on Al-Ghatib, the second highest mosque where it is said the Prophet killed his son, led to an all-out counterattack. Since then, the east has suffered gravely. In the early days, those who could escape to Rakbansha did with their wealth, a minister’s ear or such sheer determination that they would brave the open desert to live. Live, not survive.

I reach my fifth drink before the heaviness in my head takes me again. My cheek slams against the wooden table and saliva spills out of my lips. The noise of the choppers finally recede. I fall asleep with the knowledge that a Bazi might knock open the heavy wooden plank barred across the entrance of the tavern and shoot down everyone in sight.

I expect it. Hope for it. It doesn’t happen.

Wispy dawn has cracked over Sudan by the time I drag myself up, a puppet tethered on rusty wires, my eyes lolled to the back of my head. The entire tavern is clear of customers. The tavern lady bids me goodbye as I leave.

Outside, people are busy in the thick of their morning activities. Piles of new brick as well as debris are scattered throughout the plains, leaning at odd angles against houses and trade shops. Some bricks are neatly packed, off-white, of jarring solidity compared to its beaten fellows. Sudan is smack in the middle of nowhere, but it’s also one of the trade towns that sit just by the edge of River Nam. It gets a good share of the supplies distributed by the capital this way. A consolatory act anyway, like flowers for a funeral.

There are a cluster of choppers by the rim of the town. A trio of Bazis stand at attention outside the legislation office, feet shoulder width apart, eyes trained like eagles on those who pass by. People walk down the main road in an arc around them, shuffling in their scarves and shawls to better hide their faces. The Bazis’ guns bite into the metallic light of dawn, silver flickering.

They used to have the black rotten teeth and puckered faces of an identifiable, indigenous people. Their uniforms hung too wide and long for their skin-and-bone bodies and they used to converse, however drily, with our people. The new Bazis are buttoned up to their collars, wearing gloves to separate themselves from the stain of heathen blood. They have the sort of coral skin that blush intimately under our sun.

Albi, no!

A ball flies in an arc towards one of the Bazis. It hits the side of the soldier’s arm before rebounding some distance away. A stork-like woman gasps as her son runs up to the Bazi to collect the ball, but she stands petrified by a road sign, reluctant to pursue him.

The Bazi walks up to the child. The boy steps back, hesitant for good reason. The Bazi releases the safety lock