FIONA OPENS HER eyes with the approach of sunrise. The dark sky is bluing, the stars disappearing. The change is gradual, at first, and then the sun explodes from the horizon, washing the landscape in golden light.
Lying on her side on a slab of sandstone, Fiona uncurls from the fetal position she’s been huddled in all night. Desert days are scorching, but the nights are cool. There is no comfortable in-between temperature except for a few hours after sunrise.
Her lips are dry and cracked, her breath hot. She slides herself, dragging her useless legs, to the streambed that trickles through the desert canyon. She can’t get enough of the cool water, which she slurps hungrily. The creek is only an inch or two deep, but the water is the main reason she’s still alive. She’s eaten some cactus buds, a few insects, and one lizard she was lucky enough to grab and choke down, scales and skeleton and all. But she knows it’s the steady stream of water, which she’s able to fill her belly with several times a day, that’s keeping her alive.
She remembers learning in school that a person could survive a long time on water alone. How long? Ten days? Twenty? She never guessed she would be in a position to test this out for herself.
She’s lost count of how long it’s been since she was abandoned here. It hasn’t been nearly twenty days, but the prospect of starvation is only one of her problems. Her injuries are another.
She’s sure there are broken bones in both of her legs. On her right, the ankle is swollen to an unbelievable size, the flesh a cadaverous purple color. Her left leg is worse, the lower part bent at a noticeable angle, telling her that both bones must have snapped. She’s thankful that neither bone is jutting out through her skin, but there must be internal bleeding. Maybe a growing infection.
She is stuck in a canyon created by the stream, which has etched itself into the hard stone over time. On one side of the creek is wide-open desert, full of sagebrush and the occasional prickly pear cactus, ocotillo shrub, and desert spoon stalk. On the other side of the stream is a steep cliff face, at least forty feet tall, towering over her.
She woke up the first day, nauseated with pain, at the base of the cliff. She thought she was in a pile of branches, but as the sun came up, she realized she was among the bones of women who came before her. There were three women, as far as she could tell. Clearly the remains had been pulled apart by coyotes or other scavengers, the skeletons no longer intact and in different states of decay. But she’d counted three skulls, the most recent of which still had patches of hair attached and remnants of skin, flaking off like parchment in an ancient book. One skeleton had a beautiful silver necklace still tangled in the vertebrae of the neck.
Fiona had clambered down into the creek bed to get away from the bodies and to find the water she could hear trickling through the rocks. She discovered a small overhanging shelf of rock that gave her protection from the sun during the hottest part of the days. She’s been there ever since, hoping someone will come to rescue her. She spent much of the early days crying—in pain, in fear, in self-pity—but now she has no tears left.
Each time she sleeps, she wonders if she’ll be closing her eyes for the last time.
Death must be close now.
She’d thought someone would find her. Surely they must be searching. But the girls who came before her, if they weren’t killed on impact, they must have thought the same thing.
And now there is nothing left of them but bones.
Fiona has considered striking out on her own. If she’s going to die, why not die trying to live? In her mind, she’s made a plan to travel downstream. Going downhill—even at such a minuscule angle—will be easier than uphill. But each day, when faced with the decision of whether to leave, she finds that she doesn’t have the strength.
Now, lying next to the trickling water, she asks for a sign. She catches movement out of the corner of her eye, and when she looks up, spots a scorpion crawling from underneath a rock.
It’s not the kind of sign she was looking for.
The creature skitters forward silently, its tail straight back, its pincers upright as if probing the air. The scorpion—about an inch and a half long—approaches her hand, lying flat against the sandstone.
Fiona is as still as a statue.
The scorpion’s exoskeleton is a pale yellow color, and Fiona can’t help but think how otherworldly it looks—how prehistoric. Scorpions like this were crawling on rocks when dinosaurs walked the earth. The thought of this—the scorpion surviving through millions of years of planetary changes—makes her think that perhaps this is the sign she needs. The universe has sent her a survivor—what better sign could she receive?
The scorpion crawls forward and steps onto the back of Fiona’s outstretched hand. Goose bumps rise on her skin, but otherwise she stays frozen. She wants to scream and yank her hand away, but she wills herself not to. Still, the scorpion senses something, and its tail raises from a flat line into a C-shaped arc—the barb at the end ready to strike.
Fiona could try to kill it—try to eat it—but she isn’t confident she’ll be fast enough. And she has another idea.
She’ll let the scorpion decide for her.
If it stings her, she’ll close her eyes and let the poison finish the job her injuries and her starvation have already begun. But if it crawls off of her arm and leaves her alone, then she’ll rise to her hands and knees and begin crawling down the canyon.
That’s the bargain she makes with herself.
If it stings her, she’ll let herself die.
If it doesn’t, she’ll fight to live with everything she has left.
She stares at the scorpion, perched on her skin, and waits for its decision.