The Bird King(27)

The warmth before her withdrew. Fatima could see two dim halos of light weave back and forth in time with the dog-man’s strange gait, growing fainter as he moved away. A clammy hand groped in the dark for her own: she took it, wrapping Hassan’s arm around herself, pressing her back against his chest. He was gasping oddly, as if trying to stifle the sound of his breathing.

“I might throw up,” he stammered. Fatima squeezed his hand and said nothing.

A growl rumbled through the dank air. The halos of light had stopped and hovered, suddenly still, at the height of a tall man. They illuminated so little that at first Fatima saw only more darkness. She began to imagine she had invented the dog-man: she was asleep after the lamps had been put out, there was no moon, and she would wake presently at the foot of Lady Aisha’s divan to begin the day as she had always done. She populated the darkness with ordinary artifacts, withdrawing her foot to avoid kicking over the copper bowl of washing water that always stood near her mistress’s bed, expecting to encounter the prickle of her own woolen blanket.

The effect was so vivid that she did not, at first, realize the dark was moving. It uncoiled, arranging its myriad scales, the light from the dog-man’s eyes gilding the lazy, variegated pattern of its hide. As it moved, Fatima saw the outline of muscle and sinew under skin: a limb she could not identify; a leg, or perhaps something else entirely, an assemblage of flesh from another way of being, from a place where nothing walked or swam or flew. The two spots of light did not waver. Fatima found herself pining for the dog-man with a sort of tenderness: he was surely just a jinn, dangerous but ordinary, the sort of creature that slipped into one’s house when one forgot to invoke the name of God before entering. This other creature was drawn from forces Fatima’s imagination could not touch.

She thought again of Lady Aisha’s divan. She could smell the costly resins rubbed into the wood to make it glow and to perfume the air around it: sandalwood and oud, myrrh and aloe.

Get out of the harem, came the dog-man’s voice in her head. And tell your friend to leave the fishpond at the bottom of his mother’s garden. Memory will not save you.

Fatima began to back away.

Damn you for a fool, snapped the dog-man. If you run from this thing, you’ll set it loose. It will lodge in your bloodstream like a splinter and you’ll carry it all your days.

It’s too big for that, thought Fatima, half to herself.

It’s small, said the dog-man. It’s very small. It began as a mote in the eye of the Deceiver. Keep your back straight and don’t look away.

Fatima searched herself for the wherewithal to do as he asked. Every sense she possessed told her to run: a scream was already pressing at the back of her throat, waiting for her to open her mouth. Behind her, Hassan stumbled and whimpered, his voice so altered by terror that it was almost unrecognizable. The dark, the air, the childlike sound of Hassan’s distress gathered into a knot in Fatima’s gut.

“Stop it,” she shouted, turning on Hassan. “Stop, stop, stop mewling like a baby and get up. What’s wrong with you? Why can’t you stand up?”

There was a sudden roar. Fatima felt the breath knocked from her lungs and tumbled onto her side, rolling once before coming to a stop against a hot rasp of fur that could only be the dog-man. She felt in front of her face for the ground, which was not where she expected it to be, and pushed herself onto her knees, gasping.

“I hope you brainless piss-stains are satisfied,” snarled the dog-man. “It’s gone, it’s fled. You’ve let it out. I kept it off you, not that you’ll thank me for it, and now it’ll doubtless go and find someone else equally brainless to feed upon. Your left-hand angels will wear out their wrists scribbling all of this in the book of your sins! Get up, you idiots.” The yellow eyes bobbed away through the dark.

Fatima groped in the dark behind her for Hassan. His silence was beginning to alarm her. Her own sudden rage had burned itself out, as it always did, and weariness had replaced it, as always happened. She felt cocooned within it, separated from the world, and even from the darkness, by layers of heavy gauze. She needed things she could not name. When her hand brushed Hassan’s, he pulled away and got to his feet.

“Say something,” Fatima pleaded. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want your sorry,” came Hassan’s voice, curtly. “I want to get out of here.” She heard the unsteady scrabble of his feet as he made his way after the dog-man. Fatima rose and followed him. They walked in a line, guided by the dog-man’s eyes and their own breathing, until it seemed, to Fatima at least, that the darkness had grown less profound.

“What was that … animal?” Fatima asked as soon as she dared.

“Knowing would only terrify you,” said the dog-man from somewhere ahead of her. “You already know enough, and this flame-haired fellow”—here one claw gestured at Hassan—“knows more than any human should, with his clever hands and bits of paper.”

“I don’t know anything,” protested Hassan.

“You are magnificently stupid,” agreed the dog-man. “Nevertheless, you have a rare and perplexing gift. You must have been born under a very lewd alignment of stars.”

“I was born in August,” said Hassan indignantly. “Under the sign of the virgin, like any respectable person.”

Fatima grinned in spite of herself.