The heat waves had shapes. The fifteen-year-old Ma Shiliu lay crouched between the camel humps, squinting to watch those twisted, water-wave-like patterns in the air ahead. They rose from the scorching sand surface, twisting the three dead poplar trees in the distance into bizarre dancing postures. His father had said this was the "tongue of the sand ghost," and wherever it licked, all moisture was gone.
"Tie the water bag tight! Don't let it shake!" The roar of his third uncle Ma Huaiyuan came from ahead. His voice sounded as if it had been ground by sandpaper; every word he spat tore a small piece of skin from his cracked lips. Ma Shiliu subconsciously touched the leather water bag at his waist—it had only a little left, and through the sheepskin he could feel the warmth of the liquid. He dared not drink more; only when he truly could not hold back did he take a tiny sip, letting the water stay in his mouth for as long as possible, moistening every corner that ached with thirst.
This was the seventeenth day they had entered the "Road of White Bones." The Ma family caravan moved like a dying long snake, slowly wriggling among the boundless golden sand dunes. Forty-seven camels, twenty-three men, fully loaded with goods carefully selected from Chang'an's Western Market: thirty bundles of Yuezhou silk glossy as water, fifteen boxes of Xing kiln white porcelain thin as paper, eight sealed buckets of Mengding tea, and, hidden in the safest spot and wrapped in three layers of oilcloth, twenty silk paintings—the "miracles of the East" destined for the mansions of Dashi nobles.
Ma Shiliu was the youngest in the caravan. According to clan rules, every Ma family male who reached fifteen must join a long-distance trade journey once, "to see life and death, to know human hearts." Before he left, his mother, Lady Lin, had fainted from crying twice; in the end she only repeatedly urged, "Follow your third uncle, watch more, listen more, speak less." Then she slipped the ancestral tortoiseshell hairpin into his inner pocket: "Your grandmother's dowry, blessed by a high monk, for warding off evil." The hairpin now rested against his chest, warm and smooth, carrying his mother's body heat and the faint fragrance of Chang'an's April locust blossoms—the season when they had set out. Now Chang'an was a dream too distant to reach.
"Little Shiliu, still holding up?" Chen Wu on the neighboring camel shifted his body. He was an old camel handler, his face wrinkled so deeply that sand grains could hide in the creases; his left eye had been injured in a sandstorm and was covered by a gray-white film. "Yes." Ma Shiliu answered hoarsely. In truth the insides of his thighs had long been rubbed raw; every time the camel stepped, the rough edge of the saddle scraped the wound viciously, making him clench his teeth in pain. But he could not cry out. Men of the Ma family were not allowed to.
The leader was Third Uncle Ma Huaiyuan, just over forty yet already having traveled the Western Regions nine times. He was always at the very front, wrapped in a heavy indigo headscarf that left only a pair of hawk-like eyes visible, constantly scanning the horizon. Beside him was Old Hasan—not his real name; the caravan called him that because he constantly hummed a Dashi-language ballad that contained the word "Hasan." No one knew where he truly came from; they only knew he had walked this road for forty years, and every furrow on his face was a memory of a life-or-death moment.
"Something's wrong." Hasan suddenly reined in his camel and pointed his skinny hand at the sky. Everyone looked in the direction he indicated. On the western horizon, the originally uniform murky-yellow sky was brewing a strange darkness. It was not clouds but something heavier, dirtier, like a basin of sewage from a dye vat, slowly spilling across the skyline. "Sand wall," Third Uncle's voice was very low, yet every word struck like a nail into wood, "a black wind is coming."
The caravan instantly tensed. Without any order, everyone began to move: checking cargo ropes, fitting blinders on the camels, stowing scattered items into leather pouches. Ma Shiliu fumbled to secure his own pack, his fingers stiff with tension. He had heard the old camel men speak of the "black wind"—the most terrifying rage-beast of the desert, capable of wiping an entire caravan from the face of the earth, leaving not even bones behind.
The wind arrived. At first it was only faint, thread-like whimpers, as if countless women were weeping in the distance. Then the sound grew louder, turning into roars, into howls. Yellow sand began to fly, not gently drifting but shooting like bullets, cracking against faces. Ma Shiliu hastily wrapped his headscarf around his mouth and nose, leaving only his eyes exposed. But soon even his eyes could not stay open—the sand grains were too dense, pushing forward like a moving wall.
"Gather! Hold the camels!" Third Uncle's roar fragmented in the wind. The world fell into chaos. The sky rapidly darkened to night, filled only with the wind's furious howl. Ma Shiliu clung desperately to the camel hump, feeling the animal beneath him tremble and neigh in terror. There were sounds of ropes snapping, dull thuds of cargo hitting the ground, terrified shouts—but all these noises were swallowed by the wind's giant maw. The last thing he clearly saw was the small blue flag on Third Uncle's camel ahead—the Ma family caravan's emblem—whipping wildly in the raging sand, then suddenly snapping and vanishing into the murky yellow.
Immediately afterward, an irresistible force struck from the side. Ma Shiliu and his camel were flipped over together and slammed heavily into the sand. The heavy pack frame scraped across his left shoulder, exploding with sharp pain. He tumbled in the sand; his mouth, nose, and ears were filled with sand, and suffocation gripped his throat. In the final instant before consciousness faded, he felt the tortoiseshell hairpin in his inner pocket pressing sharply against his chest. Then, darkness. …