The American continent.
In the desert of Arizona, the scorching winds carried grit that struck the face like tiny needles.
At the edge of the horizon, a lean, powerful silhouette was steadily shrinking into the distance.
That was Sandman — a young man born from a Native American tribe.
He carried no horse. He carried no unnecessary supplies.
He simply ran — in that stance that his tribespeople found bizarre, even heretical, flat-footed and unbroken — plunging headlong into the seeming endless wilderness.
He was going to enter a race called the Steel Ball Run.
To cross the entire American continent on foot. To seize the fifty-million-dollar prize from among all those white men on their fine horses.
And then — to buy back the land that had belonged to his people for a thousand years, before the white men took it.
Sandman's sister stood in the shadow of a towering rock, eyes narrowed, watching that stubborn silhouette dissolve into the dust and haze.
That was her younger brother. The brother who thought he alone could carry the fate of their entire people on his back.
He was the hope of their tribe. Or, perhaps more accurately — a fever dream.
The tribal elders had cursed Sandman.
They clung to their drying water sources and their ancestors' mouldering totems, huddling before the railways and barbed wire that the white men had built across the land.
They said Sandman had gone mad.
Said he sneaked away to read white men's books. That he wore white men's clothes. That he even learned the white man's graceless running style.
But only his sister knew: Sandman loved the earth beneath their feet more deeply than anyone.
"Sister, I can't understand it."
The night before he left, Sandman sat beside a dying fire, the flame tracing out the sharp lines of his face:
"Why is it that the rivers and mountains and winds and sand that used to belong to us — why do we now have to buy them back with little slips of paper that white men printed?"
Sandman's sister had no answer for him.
It was the most bitterly absurd joke the world had to offer.
While their ancestors were hunting, raising children, and burying their dead here — those white men's ancestors were likely still tearing themselves apart somewhere across the sea.
And yet now they came armed with papers called "contracts" and guns that breathed fire, declaring that all of this was theirs, that their God had given it to them as a promised land.
And the Indians — driven off their own ground, treated as something less than human — if they wanted it back?
Simple. Come back with money. Come back with green slips of paper by the hundreds of thousands, the millions.
Those green slips, those were the new gods of this land now.
The sister reached up instinctively to touch her neck — now bare.
There had once hung there a piece of emerald jewellery passed down through generations of her tribe — the only thing of any worth left to her, the dowry her parents had intended for her future.
She had given it to Sandman, to pay the entry fee for the Steel Ball Run.
One thousand two hundred dollars.
By the elders' reckoning, that sum was enough to buy a whole flock of sheep. But in this continent-spanning gamble, it was merely the price of admission.
A stake of twelve hundred dollars, bet against the miracle of fifty million.
Sandman's sister was no gambler. And she did not truly believe her brother had the ability to pull off a miracle that could reverse the fate of their entire people.
After all — against those white men with their fine thoroughbred horses and their revolvers and their cunning treachery, what did Sandman have?
Only a pair of legs. A pair of legs he believed could carry him to victory.
It was, perhaps, a little too much like a dream.
And yet — Sandman's sister had not stopped him. Because she respected her brother's will.
Sandman's sister lowered her head. The taste of something bitter spread slowly in her mouth.
She had never dared dream that Sandman could truly reverse the destiny of their people alone, and come home with fifty million dollars.
Five dollars. Five hundred dollars. Fifty million dollars. For this Indian woman, there was not, in truth, a great deal of difference between them.
She only hoped her brother would grow through this ordeal — and survive.
In that mad race, filled by white men's hunger for money — she wanted him to come back alive.
As long as he was alive, this land's spirit was still alive. Even if the land of their ancestors was taken from them — so what?
She wanted Sandman to see the world clearly through this run, and grow into a man more unyielding than the Rocky Mountains that crossed their ancestors' land.
"May the Great Spirit of this land watch over you, Sandman."
The Indian woman turned and walked into the depths of the camp, toward the cave that was kept sacred by the tribe's torches and their few remaining ceremonial herbs.
It was dark and damp inside, but immaculately clean — not a speck of dust had been allowed to settle. This was their tribe's holy place for offerings to the Great Spirit of the land.
In the centre of that cave stood the oldest totem of their people: Pachamama, the Earth Mother goddess.
The elders said she was a great goddess who governed the land and its abundance — and had watched over their people and their flourishing upon this earth since time immemorial.
But did the goddess truly exist?
When the conquerors arrived on horseback, with their firearms, and spread the disaster they called "smallpox" — she and her brother Sandman had read that history together, and she had already known: the gods did not exist.
If the gods truly existed, why did they not send lightning to shatter those iron rails crossing the desert?
Why did they not let the greedy white men be swallowed by the drifting sand?
And yet — in this moment, watching her only living kin, her brother, walk off into the wilderness —
What else could this helpless woman do, but beg the formless gods?
She knelt before the great stone slab carved with totems, hands pressed together, and murmured softly to that silent, motionless stone:
"O Spirit — if you truly exist — please watch over that child running beneath the blazing sun."
"Let him see the path ahead clearly. Let him be spared from vile bullets and treacherous arrows."
"If it is possible… please give him the strength to keep struggling against the sorrowful fate that has been laid upon our people."
The cave was utterly still.
Only the sound of water dripping from the outer walls — one drop, then another — striking the smooth polished stone floor. Like the pendulum of fate counting down the seconds.
The woman pressed her body low, forehead against the earth.
Like her ancestors in the cave paintings — those who had knelt before the spirits — though she had nothing left now to offer as a sacrifice.
And then — without warning — everything changed.
Deep within the cave, that totem slab — worn smooth by ages of reverence — suddenly shuddered violently.
BOOM——!
An eye-searing white light detonated from the centre of the totem — brighter than the noon sun at its peak.
The blinding radiance turned the dark cave into midday.
The Indian woman flung up her arm in terror to shield her eyes. Through that dazzling halo of aurora-like light, she felt a pressure so absolute it squeezed the breath from her lungs.
Like her ancestors in the cave paintings — kneeling helplessly before the sight of a god, unable to do otherwise.
The void rippled outward in that instant, like the surface of water struck by a stone.
At the centre of that radiance, two silhouettes took shape — slowly settling onto the still-dust-scattered slab.
The light receded.
The Indian woman lowered her trembling arm. Her vision cleared.
She saw a young girl, and a young man.
As for the young man — she would set him aside for now. His build was broad and strong, not unlike her brother Sandman — though at least he appeared unremarkable on the surface.
What the Indian woman truly saw was the young girl being attended upon by the young man — drifting in the air like a being of another order entirely.
She was white. Snow-white hair that only a god could possess. Dressed in robes so magnificent they looked like offerings made for the divine.
This deity was shorter than her in stature — yet Sandman's sister knew with absolute certainty, looking at her: the being before her was the goddess who could command this earth.
"Thud!"
"O great Spirit… please forgive my faithlessness and irreverence…"
Sandman's sister fell to her knees. She pressed herself flat, five points of her body against the ground:
"Please guide the destiny of our people — and my brother's — I beg of you…!"
To be continued…
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