The Bird King(63)
Fatima swayed on her feet, looking from the tiller to the compass to the implacable water with a dismay she no longer bothered to conceal.
“It would take months to learn all this properly,” she said. “Years.”
“You haven’t lied yet,” laughed Gwennec. “We’re a day out from Marbella, though, so we’ll see what you and the blev’ruz can learn before nightfall tomorrow.”
At the mention of Hassan, Fatima felt a little thrill of doubt. She looked over her shoulder at the empty stairwell leading down into the hold: no shadows interrupted the square of sunlight on the floor below. Hassan must still be asleep. She was surprised by how profoundly she did not want to see him.
“Do you think I’m selfish?” she asked.
Gwennec shifted on his feet.
“I don’t know you at all, madam,” he muttered. “And you nearly broke my jaw.”
“I think—” Fatima stopped and searched for words in the water that foamed and clapped against the hull of the cog. “I think I’m much smaller than the things I set out to do, that’s all. It’s not selfishness. I spent all my life in the same place. You get no sense of proportion that way.” Her eyes were watering; she wiped them with the back of her hand. Gwennec’s face softened.
“You’re very brave,” he said. “That I do know. Brave to a fault.”
“You know we’re going to die,” said Fatima, unwilling to be flattered.
Gwennec was quiet. Beyond him, the shoreline in the far distance had changed shape: a fat line, cliffs perhaps, marched along the horizon in a sweep of ocher and green.
“Yes, I know you’re going to die, one way or the other,” said Gwennec after a while. “I spent all night thinking about it. You’re daft as a pair of barnacle geese, you and your friend. But you’re not bad sorts. I could tell if you were. I don’t know why the Holy Office wants you, but—” He stopped and scratched at the back of his flaming neck. “Sometimes these things get muddled.”
“Muddled.” Fatima laughed spitefully. “What a stupid word for the state we’re in. A death sentence for something you didn’t do isn’t a muddle. It’s a crime.”
“Call it what you want,” said Gwennec, looking away. “What I meant is I’m sorry for your trouble.”
Fatima regretted hurting him. The day was so fine that they might have been on a pleasure outing: though the wind had already begun to chap her face, the air itself was delicious, a vapor of salt and pitch and warm wood. Black-headed gulls rode the breeze overhead. They complained at the lack of food scraps, diving toward the deck and then veering away again as if puzzled. A familiar gait trod up the steps from the hold, and Hassan, his hair askew, emerged on deck, wrinkling his face at the strong light.
“Afternoon,” called Gwennec. “How’s the head?”
Hassan made a noncommittal gesture. He took several deep breaths, holding the last for a long moment before letting it out again. Fatima tried to smile: he wouldn’t look at her.
“Do you think you can take the tiller for a little?” Gwennec asked her in a low voice. “Watch the compass and keep us on this heading, just as I showed you.”
Fatima straightened and nodded.
“Good.” Gwennec hitched up his skirt and made his way down the stairs toward the main deck. “I’m going to teach our friend how to tie knots.”
With only the sun to mark the passage of time, the afternoon passed slowly. Fatima watched Gwennec and Hassan squat near the mast with piles of rope between them: Gwennec would make coils and loops and pull them tight, then untie them again with a single tug, like a bazaar magician, and hand the rope over to Hassan for practice. Hassan was evidently enjoying himself. Fatima could hear him laugh as he produced a series of useless tangles, but she suspected this was a performance for Gwennec’s benefit: Hassan learned everything quickly, and a knot, after all, was a map of sorts, a path that led into the heart of something and out again. Before long, he had mastered Gwennec’s teachings well enough to follow him up the ratlines toward the top of the mast, where they were both obscured by sail, inaudible save for an occasional curse or howl when the cog pitched suddenly.
Fatima, for her part, watched the gimbals of the compass dance in their drunken, meditative way, completing a half rotation only to pause, seemingly think better of it, and slowly turn in the opposite direction. When they began to list off course, she put gentle pressure on the tiller, keeping the ship on a more or less westerly course to follow the distant shoreline. It was odd work, requiring a kind of detached focus that reminded her of sewing a hem or repairing a torn sleeve, each stitch, like each small correction at the tiller, closing the gap between two disconnected points.
Fatima fell easily into a stupor. She let her eyes rest on Hassan’s map and saw the light change on the outline of the lake at the center, dappling its ink perimeter in gold and blue. Though she would never set foot in Qaf, or Antillia, or whatever it was, it pleased her to imagine it: to fill in the lines of Hassan’s map with forests and fields and little streams, a sort of garden writ large. The king of the birds resided within it somewhere, at the foot of the great mountain, but he remained indistinct: the only simorgh Fatima had ever seen was in an illuminated book of Persian poetry, a beast in gold ink whose torso and head resembled an eagle’s or a griffin’s and whose tail was like a peacock’s. The memory of that image made her wistful now, and filled her with a delicious, wasteful hope.