Other things arrived as well. It was always during the fragile hour between sunset and full dark, the time between prayers, when the colors of the sky were haunted: shadows came, cast by nothing and speaking in whispers; slender trees that walked and did not speak at all; and things that looked like cats or jackals but went on two legs instead of four. One evening brought a fat, jolly creature that stood no taller than Fatima’s knee and looked, to her eyes at least, like a frog that had undergone several additional metamorphoses on its journey from tadpolehood; if it wanted to talk to someone, it would climb onto the nearest rock or hillock or stair to look its companion in the eye and then hold forth at length, with extraordinary vocabulary, about the weather or the tides or any other subject that happened to catch its interest.
They emerged, it seemed, from the air itself, fleeing from shores unknown to the island’s earthly inhabitants, and took up residence alongside their human neighbors in the empty houses and sheds that lined the cobbled main street of the city. The street was full of sound now at all hours of the day, full of jokes and arguments and the protests of Sona’s rooster; and sometimes, when unknowable conditions were met, some of the jinn could be persuaded to sing. Fatima took to sitting in the western arch of the keep at twilight, warming her feet on the stone steps still radiating the heat of the day, and listening to the noises that persisted after the light had died. They suffused the extraordinary landscape with what was small and tender and banal: the anxious muttering of hens settling down to roost, the sound of washing water poured into basins, the gentle unmelodic snores of those who slept. Civilization was, Fatima realized, something very simple; it was the right of these small rituals to perpetuate themselves in peace. As king, she did very little but witness it. There were no lands to conquer, no riches to hoard, no rivals to dispatch; there were only water buckets to carry and boats to meet on the beach. The others called her the king when they were alone and Fatima when she was with them, for so she was: king of all and master of none.
Chapter 22
Hassan and Gwennec had taken to rising together before dawn so that Gwennec could pray lauds and Hassan could pray fajr, and afterward they could both join Fatima as she walked the walls of the city: it was on one of these occasions that they spotted a horse on the beach.
“Is that what I think it is?” said Hassan, peering over the ramparts that ran along the roof of the keep toward the brownish object treading through the sand below. “A horse? Have there been any boats?”
“Not for days,” said Fatima. She stood on tiptoe and looked where Hassan was pointing. The horse was moving slowly, staggering like a drunkard, its track a jagged line along the beach behind it. It was wearing a rope halter but bore no other sign of human ownership; its shaggy mane and tail streamed water, as though it had only just emerged from the surf, a nautical oddity, divorced from any craft that might reasonably carry it.
Fatima watched the sun illuminate a familiarly dappled shoulder and went still. Without speaking, she turned and hurried back into the keep, running lightly down the curved stone staircase that led to the main hall on the first floor and exiting through the eastward archway. The day was gray and windy: wet air slapped against her face as she made her way down the cliff steps and finally stumbled onto the beach. The horse pricked its ears at her approach and stopped, raising its boxy head. Fatima halted likewise and caught her breath.
It was Stupid. Foam dripped from the stout gelding’s mouth, and he was breathing heavily but seemed otherwise unharmed. He bobbed his head when he recognized Fatima, shuffling toward her to press his nose against her chest. Fatima stroked the animal’s wet flank. A numbness crept up from her fingertips, which registered the warmth and damp of the horse’s coat only remotely.
Muffled shouts reached her over the rolling of the surf. Hassan and Gwennec skittered to a stop just short of her, incredulous and laughing.
“It is Stupid!” crowed Hassan. “I told you, Gwen! What other horse have you ever met with a face like a brick? What a good boy”—here he reached out to rub water from the creature’s mane—“What a good boy.”
“Hassan,” said Fatima, preparing herself to ask the question whose answer she dreaded. “How long have we been here?”
“Weeks,” said Hassan.
“Months, surely,” said Gwennec. “Four months, I think.”
“That long? No—I say ten weeks at most.”
“It’s been four months,” insisted Gwennec. “I keep track because I know how long it takes me to build things. A big tub for the washhouse takes three days, including salvaging wood and nails, and so on. It’s been four months.” He paused. “At least, I think it has.”
Fatima shook her head. Her mouth was dry, despite the constant press of wet air, and she licked her lips.
“Stupid couldn’t have survived nearly that long in the water,” she said. “How long can a horse keep itself afloat by swimming? A day? Less? Look at him, look at how he’s breathing, look at the way he recognized us—it’s as if he only just went overboard.”
Hassan’s face, every inch of which had grown freckled from long hours in the sun, fell into an expression of dismay.
“What are you saying?” he asked in a very different voice.
“I’m not sure,” said Fatima. Driven by something she could not describe, she continued down the beach, walking at first, and then, when she caught sight of a black lump rolling in the surf at the waterline, breaking into a run.
The lump was a bundle of sodden velvet, a black dress collapsing under its own weight, and inside, like a corpse washed and shrouded for burial, was Luz.
Fatima stopped so fast that her momentum nearly carried her over. For a few moments she wasn’t sure whether Luz was alive or dead, but then she heard a little moan, as low and grating as an animal’s, and Luz, shaking, propped herself up on her hands. Her hair hung over her face and trailed onto the sand, the blonde waves stained green with seawater. A stream of bright blood leached toward the surf from a wound Fatima could not see.
Luz began to cough. The sound of it made Fatima’s stomach turn: it was deep and full, a grotesque, efficient spate of productivity, and with it, Luz brought up shards of wood and glass. Fatima found her legs would no longer hold her and dropped to her knees. It was as if Luz had swallowed the wreckage of her ship: she was returning it to the sea splinter by splinter, upholding some unspeakable bargain, her own body a borrowed vessel embalming the dismembered wood and metal in a rush of blood. Fatima watched, stupefied. The sea pulled everything toward itself in its insensible rhythm. In no more than a minute all was gone, wood and blood and metal, and Luz lay silent on the beach.
It was in this state that Gwennec and Hassan found them. They hovered behind Fatima’s shoulder and stared, their mouths identically slack. Fatima realized she should offer some explanation, or at least some description, but words had deserted her and instead she reached for Hassan’s hand. She had resisted touching him, or even looking at him more than was necessary, since he had moved his sleeping mat away from the fire; she sensed that this hurt him, though she would not allow herself to meet his eyes long enough to confirm it. Now she needed to remind herself that he was solid, that the island was solid, that there had been victory and peace, for if this was true, the crumpled figure on the beach was not, as she feared, the end of everything.
Hassan gripped her hand with a little cry that told her he had missed her. Sensing she would not have another chance, Fatima turned to look at him and say the things she should have said weeks ago, when a cleaner understanding was possible. Love was awful; this she had always known, but it was other things as well. It was real enough to thwart empires, to summon land out of the barren sea, even when the sentiment of it was entirely used up, even when the pleasure of it was gone, even when it was no longer a feeling at all, but a purpose. And she still loved him.
But she said nothing, for Gwennec shouldered past her with a howl, drew his foot back, and kicked Luz in the stomach with such force that Fatima could feel the impact in the sand.
Luz convulsed, coughing more blood. Gwennec raised his fists and brought them down on her slack body over and over again, the sound of it terrifying, at once too muffled and too loud. Hassan let go of Fatima’s hand to wrap his arms around the monk, straining to pull him away.