The Bird King(111)

“But you’re the king,” protested Mary, rising from where she sat on the lip of the pool.

“I’m not,” said Fatima. “Or I am, but so are you. And Hassan, and all of us, and none of us. The Bird King is not a person, the Bird King is—” She broke off, lacking the vocabulary to continue. The sun shone on the surface of the pool, which reflected nothing but a bright glare. It was not the darkness that would annihilate all things in the end; it was the light.

“You can’t go!” cried Mary, looking around herself for support. “Despite all your fine philosophy. We couldn’t get on without you. None of us are angry enough to keep living, not in so strange and wild a place.”

Fatima could think of nothing to say. Deng, who had been tidying the earth mounded over each of the graves, wiped his hands on the hem of his coat and caught Fatima’s eye warily.

“If destroying the map would hide this island from the Spanish, presumably it will also hide it from anyone else with a mind to find it,” he said in a quiet voice, tilting his head toward Asher and his brothers, who were running back and forth nearby, chasing one another with palm fronds. “No more boats. No one else saved from the sea.”

Fatima wrapped her arms around herself and wished powerfully for Gwennec, willing the island to send him back. She wanted to lift her eyes and see him walk out from between the shadowed dunes with his lopsided smile, his sunburned brow, and say, as he always did, the right things.

“We can’t save everyone,” she whispered.

“We can save many more than we have. Many more.”

She turned to face him. Sweat stood out on his brow from heat and effort; he was, as they all were, leaner now than he had been when they arrived on the island, the lines of his jaw were more pronounced, and the sinews of his forearms were visible. He pleaded with her silently, anxious grooves drawn around his downturned mouth.

“Say we save a hundred more,” said Fatima. “Or a thousand or two thousand? What good will it do if the Spanish come back and we lose them all to cannons and pikes? How many more graves must we dig?”

Deng sighed and turned to look over the dunes at the line of the sky.

“We will fade here,” he said. “Out of time and memory. We will leave nothing, no legacy. There will be no record of what we have built. What is a kingdom if no one remembers it?”

Asher’s middle brother shrieked and darted away from the hiss of a palm frond, dancing on his toes and grinning through the gaps in his baby teeth.

“It must be enough,” said Fatima. “This must be enough. This, us, each other. It matters that we lived.”

“You really mean to go, then.”

Fatima wiped her eyes. Asher’s youngest brother came and pressed himself against her legs in silent protest. She bent and kissed the top of his curly head, still lush with the scent of infancy. Her heart ached as much now that it was full as it had when it was empty, but the ache was sweeter, and would, she thought, carry her through her fear of death.

“A king must not ask anything of her subjects that she wouldn’t do herself,” she said. “I must go.”

There was a sigh behind her. Luz stood, less pallid now after hours standing in the sun, and cleared her throat.

“Enough of this,” she rasped. “The ground is already choked with martyrs. I will go.”

Fatima spat out a laugh.

“Please,” pressed Luz. “I can’t stay here. It would be unbearable. You don’t trust me enough to let me stay.”

“I don’t trust you enough to let you leave,” said Fatima. Luz laughed soundlessly and turned away. The air picked up strands of her hair, the same color as the sand, and played with them, lifting them lightly with the sleeves and hem of her borrowed dress, so that she seemed to float, half dead already.

“Why would you do this for us?” Fatima asked in a different voice. “What about your queen and your empire and all the rest?”

Luz was silent for a moment, looking at her own feet.

“I will never see that empire,” she said. “I thought I was saved. But I was looking for proof. That isn’t faith. I thought Hassan disproved everything I believed was true. I needed to destroy him so I could believe again. Instead—” She paused, following Deng’s gaze out toward the far horizon. “Let me have this one thing. Let me choose the way it ends.”

They prepared the longboat as if for a lengthy voyage. Mary folded blankets and cloaks and bundled them into the keel; there was a packet of dried fish wrapped in palm leaves and a basket of berries the boys had picked, and several jugs of water. Luz protested that there was no need for them to waste their supplies, yet it was too terrible to acknowledge she would not use them, so they packed the boat full. It was early evening before they were finished. The day had remained cloudless: each gradient of color was visible across the sky, blue and yellow and rose, as perfect and distinct as the first moment color was born. Fatima could not take her eyes off the sky. She did not help load the boat but stood beside it, her foot on the keel, keeping it still in the restless water. Luz, overtired, sat on the sand and watched her.

“Are you afraid?” Fatima asked the sky.

“I don’t think so,” said Luz after considering for a moment. “I’m not certain of anything now. I don’t love God as much as Hassan does, nor any living person as much as you love Hassan. I’m only biding time.” She smiled a little bitterly and rubbed her eyes. “It’s all right, Fatima. You needn’t waste your energy hating me. There’s very little left to hate. There’s very little left at all.”