The Bird King(110)

Thanking her was out of the question. Fatima stood without bothering to conceal the tears that marked her cheeks, and forced herself to look out across the beach. Mary was there, the clever armor she had made for herself overturned in the sand like an abandoned shell. The boys were with her, Asher and his three brothers, covering the bodies that lay upon the beach in linen, the auburn of their hair lost in the glow of the sun. And there was the beast coming out of the surf, its hide streaming, gilded by the afternoon and not quite tame: it walked past Mary and the boys without looking at them and stretched itself along the base of the cliff, basking in what heat the day had left.

Fatima pulled her hair back in a leather thong and prepared to be the king once more. Her breath would come only in gasps, long stuttering things that burned her throat, but she took them, one after another, agreeing with each one to live a while longer. She made her way across the beach toward the stairs, looking only once at the leviathan, which raised its head as she passed, and blinked its eyes, and smiled.





Chapter 26


They buried the dead in the center of the island the following morning, beside the palm-encircled spring, where the shadow of the mountain of Qaf would lie over them. It was the only place, Fatima reasoned, that would stand still long enough for a proper burial; the only place where they could return to mourn and to sweep the graves. She did not speak, though the others looked to her to say something final and profound: the sight of so many shrouded bodies stopped her. They buried the Spanish soldiers alongside their friends, for doing otherwise seemed ominous. Luz recited the funeral prayers in her broken voice, and Hassan said the janazah, and afterward they covered the bodies in sandy earth, smoothing the graves until the only evidence that remained of death was a few dark smudges on the ground. Asher and his brothers grew bored and collected palm fronds from the blue shadows beneath the trees, swatting halfheartedly at pale butterflies that sunned themselves at the edge of the spring.

“Will there be no peace for us?” Mary asked when it was all over. “Even here? We won’t survive another attack. It were only thanks to you and that beast that we survived this one. How shall we manage?”

Fatima looked around herself at the faces assembled under the palm trees and beside the spring, slack with the heat of midday and the effort of digging so many graves. A numbness had returned: the fear of living that had marked them all as they arrived half drowned on the shores of the island. Fatima sighed, shutting her eyes; the afternoon was cloudless and windless.

“Vikram said something before he left,” she said. “Something about leaving before the way was shut. I didn’t understand, but I think perhaps I should.”

Hassan, his face wary, came toward her, wiping his hands; he had made his ablutions in the spring, and his arms and face glistened. He was wearing a clean robe that was too wide at the shoulders: Fatima realized, with a pang, that it was one of Deng’s.

“I think I may have a notion,” he said quietly. “But it isn’t one you’ll like.”

Fatima reached out and touched his damp fingers. The nails on his left hand had grown back evenly; the only evidence that remained of the horror inflicted upon them was slight variations in the color of the skin beneath, where brown gave way to scarred pink and blue, as though the inks he used to draw had made their way into his bloodstream. He took her hand and pulled her to himself. Fatima breathed the scent of his hair and neck and let her head fall against his shoulder.

“I’ve missed you,” she confessed to the folds of his collar.

“I never left,” said Hassan. “My love, my love. Listen—it was my map that brought us here, so I think—I’m fairly certain—it was my map that brought the Spanish here too.”

Fatima lifted her head to look at him.

“So we destroy it,” she said. “We tear it up. Just as I used to do with the maps you made for me at the Alhambra—I would tear them up, and the rooms you had made for me would disappear.”

There was a pause in which Hassan looked steadily into her face with an expression she found unsettling.

“We tear it up,” he said finally. “But it mustn’t be done here, on the island itself.”

“What do you mean? Why not?”

“Because we don’t want to destroy the territory. Only the way.”

“But—” Fatima searched his face, which had hardened with resolve in a way that filled her with dismay.

“No,” she said firmly. “You’re not leaving. You’re not, Hassan. You’re needed here.”

“I’m not needed anywhere. I have done one wonderful thing—I’ve brought us here. And now I can do one more wonderful thing to keep us safe. That’s two more wonderful things than most people get to do in their lifetimes.”

Fatima’s eyes filled with tears. “You’re meant to live,” she said. “Why did we leave the palace in the first place? I could have stayed. I could have gone on to Morocco and borne the sultan’s children and died a rich old woman, just as you said. But I didn’t, because I love you more than I love any of those things.”

“Fa—”

“I will go.”

The low hum of conversation around the pool ceased, and a dozen pairs of eyes looked up at her.

“I will go,” Fatima repeated, standing straighter. “I will take one of the longboats out with the tide, into the mist, and destroy the map there.”