The heat in the Mojave does not just touch your skin. It settles into your marrow. I remember the way the air shimmered off the dunes like a sheet of hammered glass. We had been walking for six hours since the camel, which we had named Amos, simply folded its legs and stopped breathing. It was 10:14 in the morning when the temperature crossed 105 degrees. By noon, the world felt like it was shrinking down to the size of a single, scorching circle of light.

Father Thomas walked a few paces ahead of me. He was a man who carried his collar like a heavy piece of armor. I had always admired his devotion, or at least, I had believed in it. He was forty-four, with hands that were always soft despite the work we did at the mission. I was twenty-six, and I had spent my entire adult life within the walls of a convent, learning to trust the word of men who spoke for God. I suppose that was my first mistake.

We had less than a pint of water left in the skin. Father Thomas had insisted on carrying it, claiming his strength was necessary to protect the supply. I watched him now. He stopped every few minutes to wipe his forehead with a handkerchief that had long since turned stiff with salt and dirt. He wasn’t praying. He was looking at the horizon, and his eyes had a frantic, darting quality that I hadn’t seen before.

“We are going to die out here, Beatrice,” he said. His voice wasn’t a prayer. It was flat, stripped of the usual cadence he used for the liturgy.

“God provides for those who are patient, Father,” I said. My throat felt like it was lined with dry sand, but I kept my voice steady. I wanted to believe him. I wanted to believe that our path was guided by a higher purpose, even if that path was currently leading us into a grave of shifting sand.

“God is not walking on this dune,” he snapped. He turned to face me. The sweat had matted his hair against his forehead, and his eyes looked glassy. “We need to do something. Anything.”

He gestured toward a cluster of rock formations about a mile off. He told me we should rest there and wait for the sun to dip. I followed him, my legs feeling like lead.

When we reached the shade, he sat down heavily and began to talk. He spoke of the fragility of our mortal coil. He talked about how the flesh was merely a vessel and how, in the face of the infinite, the rules we followed back at the mission were just shadows.

“We are standing on the edge of eternity, Beatrice,” he said. He leaned in closer. The smell of him was sour, a mix of stale sweat and something like wet wool. “Why should we carry the weight of our vows to the grave? We should be free.”

I nodded slowly. I thought he was speaking of a final, spiritual cleansing. I thought he was preparing me to shed the fear of death so that I could meet my end with a clear conscience. I didn’t question his logic because I had been taught that a priest’s wisdom was a mirror of the divine.

He asked me to lift my habit. He told me he wanted to see the beauty of creation one last time. I complied. I didn’t feel shame, only a strange, detached curiosity. I was twenty-six, and I had never seen a man as he truly was. When I asked to see his own manhood, he seemed surprised, but he agreed. I looked at him with the same clinical, honest focus I would have used to inspect a broken rosary.

“Sister,” he whispered, his voice dropping into that deep, reverent tone he saved for the altar. “If I put this in the right place, it can give life.”

He was looking at me with a hunger that had nothing to do with the spirit. I felt a sudden, sharp clarity. It was like a shutter clicking open in my mind. He wasn’t talking about a miracle of the soul. He was talking about a transaction. He was using his authority to satisfy his own desperate, dying urge, and he was using the word life as a lure.

I looked at him, and for the first time, I saw the rot beneath the collar. I saw a man who was so terrified of his own end that he was willing to desecrate the only thing I had left: my belief in his holiness.

But then, an idea hit me. If he was a priest of the Church, and if he truly believed he possessed the power to give life, then he was the answer to our problem. I didn’t see a predator. I saw a resource.

“I think we are saved,” I said. My voice sounded loud in the heavy, baking silence of the desert.

Father Thomas blinked, his face lighting up with a sudden, ugly triumph. “Yes, Beatrice. We are saved.”

“Put it in the camel,” I said.

He froze. His hands were still trembling, reaching toward the fastenings of his trousers. “What?”

“The camel,” I repeated, pointing toward the carcass of Amos, which lay bloated and stiff in the sun about fifty yards away. “You said you could give life. We need transport. If you put your power into the camel, it will rise. It will carry us to the highway. We will be saved.”

He stared at me as if I had lost my mind. The hunger in his eyes was replaced by a look of bewildered horror. “Beatrice, that is not… that is not what I meant.”

“You said you could give life,” I insisted. I stood up and walked over to him, taking his arm. My grip was firm. I didn’t let him pull away. “You are a man of God. You told me this was a power. If you are lying, then you are a heretic. If you are telling the truth, then you can save us. Go to the camel.”

I began to drag him toward the carcass. He stumbled, his boots sliding in the loose sand. “Stop it,” he hissed. “This is absurd.”

“Is it?” I asked. I looked him directly in the eyes. “You told me the rules didn’t matter. You told me we were at the end of all things. If you have the power of life, prove it. Save us, Father. Or admit that you are just a man trying to steal a moment of flesh from a dying woman.”

He yanked his arm back and fell to his knees in the sand. He looked at the dead camel, then at me, and his face crumbled. The mask of the priest fell away, leaving behind a pathetic, sweating middle-aged man who looked smaller than the dunes around him.

“It was a lie,” he choked out. He buried his face in his hands. “I just wanted… I just wanted to feel something before I died.”

I didn’t say anything. I watched him for a long time. The silence between us felt heavier than the heat. I realized then that I had never really known him at all. I had only known the shadow he cast on the wall of the mission.

An hour later, the sun started to descend. The temperature began to drop, just a few degrees, but it felt like a mercy. I sat in the shade of the dead camel, the only shade for miles. I held the water skin. It was light, almost empty. I took a small, measured sip, making sure to leave enough for whoever might find us, if anyone did.

Father Thomas sat ten feet away. He hadn’t moved. He was staring at the horizon, his shoulders hunched, his clerical collar discarded in the dirt beside him like a piece of refuse. He looked broken, but it wasn’t a noble, spiritual kind of broken. It was just the quiet, hollowed-out realization of a man who had finally met his own shadow.

I didn’t feel sorry for him. I felt a strange, cold peace. As I sat there, I saw a flicker of movement in the valley below. A light. A park ranger vehicle, patrolling the highway that cut through the silence of the desert. I didn’t shout. I didn’t wave. I just watched it move, knowing that we were finally going to be found, and knowing that when we were, the first thing I would do was tell them exactly who the man beside me was.

He was still staring at the horizon, waiting for a salvation he didn’t deserve, while I was simply waiting for the ride home.