The Bird King(50)

“I was taught to waste it,” said Fatima. As soon as she said the words, she saw the truth of them. “On silly fights with Nessma and the other girls. Clothes and food and who’d gained weight and who’d seen the sultan that day. Lady Aisha encouraged it.”

“Yes, you were taught to waste your anger. It’s convenient for girls to be angry about nothing. Girls who are angry about something are dangerous. If you want to live, you must learn to use your anger for your own benefit, not the benefit of those who would turn it against you.”

“I don’t know how.”

“You’ve already begun.” Vikram rose to his feet and surveyed the landscape. “We need to keep moving. Over the top of that next hill is a sight that will make you smile. I’ll carry you for a little while.”

Fatima clung to Vikram’s shoulders as he lifted her up. Beside her, Hassan stood with a groan.

“Are we going to leave this valiant creature unburied?” he asked, wincing as he looked at the silent mare.

“She doesn’t care,” said Vikram. “She’s already grazing in fields of eternal grass. Rally yourself, young Hassan—we’re nearly at the end of this little journey.” With that, Vikram shifted Fatima on his back and set off through the brush, away from the road. Fatima felt herself nodding off, lulled by exhaustion and the hearthlike warmth of Vikram’s body. A crow swooped low and threw its shadow over her neck, complaining hoarsely. Fatima convinced herself it was the same crow she had seen on the mountainside at daybreak, the one that had set off southward into the gloaming when she laughed at it.

“Lucky crow,” she said. “At least the birds have a proper king, even if we don’t.”

“Ah, but the crow’s part in that story is not a cheerful one,” said Vikram. “Crows are clannish, disliked birds. None of their cousins will let them roost close by. The smallest songbird will chase down an entire murder of crows that settles too close to her nest. The crow who set off with the hoopoe to find the Bird King was flying into exile, and he knew it.”

“What happened to him?”

“He chose the love of his king and of his friends over his own happiness.”

“But doesn’t love make a person happy?”

“Fatima was raised for the purpose of love. Fatima knows better than most whether love makes a person happy.”

The horizon rocked back and forth in time with Vikram’s steps. The afternoon light had grown red-orange and brought with it a wind that was light and cool. Fatima knew, somehow, that the summer had spent itself for good; there would be no more days of heavy heat.

“Love must make people happy sometimes,” she murmured. “Otherwise, I don’t see the point of it.”

Vikram only chuckled and continued along his invisible path through the grass. Hassan was leaning on him now as well, one hand braced against the jinn’s brindled back, his brown eyes glassy.

“I had a dream,” he said faintly, wiping his brow, “in the cave last night. I heard you talking as I was nodding off to sleep, and then I dreamed of a great golden bird. I sat in the shade beneath its wings. There was a beach—all lovely pale sand and white cliffs going right down to the water. You were there, Fa. It was very pleasant. You’ve just reminded me of it.”

Fatima tilted her face toward the sky and thought it was easy to be reminded of pleasant things in this place. The early evening was entering the peak of its violet beauty, heightening the contrast between the parched earth and the green-dark trees. Ahead of them was a sharp drop between two hills: the gap was spanned by the pocked remains of a Roman aqueduct, its stone columns weathered to a golden brown the same shade as the fading grass.

“How lovely,” said Hassan. He jogged ahead, his satchel thumping against his back. “It’s even taller than the one outside Granada,” he called back to them. “What master builders the Romans were! You’ve never been on the high road into the North, Fa—wide enough to race horses on and as level as you like, and over a thousand years old. How the earth remembers!” He sat down on a flat rock with a sigh, craning his neck to take in the stone edifice above them. Vikram veered around him.

“Hold on,” he instructed, and leaped up the rocky incline that hugged the aqueduct’s right side, his talons crumbling the stone as he went. Fatima held her breath and shut her eyes. Her center of balance shifted wildly, leaving her dizzy even with her eyes shut, as though the world had spun off its axis. After several long minutes of this, Vikram came to a stop.

“You can open your eyes now,” he said in a merry voice. Fatima opened one and then the other. They stood at the crest of the hill. Below the aqueduct, the ground wandered down into the winking lights of a small city, its red-brown tile roofs overhung with smoke; at its zenith was a dusty rise on which stood a Roman fortress. Beyond that, the earth stopped, replaced by a color Fatima had never seen. It was neither green nor blue but encompassed both of these, like dark glass. It broke against the land in a line of white froth, which pushed and pulled against a thin ribbon of sand in a rhythm she could hear from where she stood. Fatima’s throat closed. Her robe furled around her ankles as if to draw her into the wind, which rushed down the hillside toward the waves like an eager lover.

“That’s the sea,” she rasped.

Vikram sat on his haunches with a sigh. “Yes. That is the sea.”