The Bird King(109)

Gwennec laughed soundlessly. He reached up with two fingers, his hand marbled in blood and dirt, and touched Hassan’s beard.

“My friend,” he said, “my brother. Still an innocent, even after all this.”

“Don’t patronize me,” said Hassan, his voice breaking. “I can’t stand to hear you all solemn just now. You can’t leave us, Gwen. Who will patch the roofs and tubs and doors, and who else is such a good fisherman?”

“There are others who can do all that,” said Gwennec. “Fa—”

Fatima took his free hand and kissed it.

“When you bury me, someone must read the Rite of Committal,” he said, panting between his words. “Someone on the island will know it, someone—one of the Italians—”

Fatima did not see fit to tell him that half of the men and women he had greeted in the morning were dead. She had not counted the human corpses but guessed there to be between ten and a dozen—a third of the island’s visible inhabitants—and perhaps half as many jinn. Farther away, the leviathan was lolling in the surf, sloughing spars of wood and spearheads from its hide. The day had turned bright and clear; the wind carried the scent of wildflowers and mingled it with the salt of the sea.

“Everything will be done exactly as you say,” she said to Gwennec. Her lips lingered on his coarse palm. “I swear on anything.” She felt a hand on her shoulder and looked up to see Deng standing over her. Without speaking, he squatted down and tossed a satchel into the sand beside him. Opening it, he produced a slim knife and cut a slit in the side of Gwennec’s habit, where the poppy bloomed.

“Well?” demanded Hassan, watching as Deng frowned and probed the wound gently. Gwennec whimpered.

“Well?” said Hassan again, louder this time. “You’re hurting him.”

Deng sighed and rocked back on his heels, his fingers glistening with blood.

“I can give him something to ease the pain,” he said. “He should be kept warm and given water until he stops asking for it. There’s no point in moving him now.”

Hassan stared at his lover. His own hands were painted an emphatic red, along with the skirt of his robe and the sand beneath him, but he seemed not to realize how much blood it all amounted to, or what it meant.

“Can’t you do anything at all?” he said. “What good is all your exquisite learning if the only thing you can say is keep him warm?”

“Curse you all, don’t fight on my account,” muttered Gwennec. “I’ll not be held responsible. Only don’t go anywhere, any of you, and keep petting my hair or whatever silly thing it was that you were doing, it feels nice—” He broke off and closed his eyes, as if the effort of keeping them open pained him. Fatima lay down on the sand and whispered in his ear, proclaiming things that startled her even as she said them: she loved him, she would miss him all her life, she couldn’t bear it, she loved him. And though saying so shocked her, she knew it to be true. One could love many people. The heart was not a divided thing. Though part of hers would walk abroad into the unseen with Gwennec, it would not die. She nestled her face against his white wool shoulder and wept, as much for the things she now knew as for the man lying still and quiet beside her.

She couldn’t tell how much time had passed when she heard unsteady footsteps coming toward her across the beach. Luz was still wearing Fatima’s nightdress and had wrapped herself in a blanket, her hair loose, her mouth a raw wound. For one delirious moment, Fatima imagined she was the angel of death and half rose to send her away; it was only when Gwennec moaned that she sat again.

“Shall I go?” asked Luz. Her voice was unearthly, so ragged that it registered as neither male nor female in Fatima’s ear. She looked shrunken and hollow. Yet Fatima could not pity her.

“Yes, go,” she said, lying down again beside Gwennec.

“No, stay,” whispered Gwennec. “Hear my confession.”

Luz hesitated.

“I’m no priest,” she said.

“Not asking you to absolve me. Only to listen.”

Luz looked at Fatima warily. Fatima realized she would have to give up her place in order for Luz to hear the monk’s fading voice and was seized by a sudden, visceral sense of betrayal. Yet she bit her tongue and stood, moving aside as Luz sank to her knees and bent her ear toward Gwennec’s lips. She would never know what Gwennec said, but she saw Luz smile suddenly and then press her hand to her mouth, her eyes full of tears.

The light had yellowed and dimmed as the sun grew heavy, softening the awful cast on Gwennec’s face until he looked like an effigy of himself; his eyelids translucent, his mouth set in a soft line that was not quite a smile. Fatima kissed his forehead and one sunburned ear and the unsettled frontier between his brow and hair. He did not stir.

“It’s over,” said Deng gently.

Hassan continued to stroke the monk’s hair as though he had not heard.

“There are graves to dig,” pressed Deng. “Our duties to our friends don’t end in death.”

Hassan began to weep like a child, his blood-caked hands still entangled in Gwennec’s bright hair. Fatima took an unsteady breath.

“Who is left to read his funeral prayers?” she asked.

“I will,” said Luz, “if you can bear to hear me speak.”