Chapter 14 #2
Dalila took the tooth from my hands and examined it. “I cannot think of any creature with teeth this size.”
“Nor I.” Tinbu swallowed loudly and said what I suspected we all feared. “You do not think...”
“That this might have been Falco’s ship?” Layth had died before he could tell us more about the vessel the Frank had ended
up hiring, but Falco sounded like a man who threw his money around, a man who would have wanted the biggest, fanciest ship
he could buy. A ship like this. Ocean currents are strong, of course, and I’ve seen vessels rumored to be wrecked on the other
side of the sea wash up on our shores. But they’re typically in far worse shape than this one, broken into timbers and weathered
and covered in growth by their time in the water.
No... this ship was close when it met its doom. Which meant it had likely come here on purpose.
“It might be,” I finally admitted, running my fingers over the ripped stitches.
Tinbu made a low sound of distress. “This ship would have sunk quickly, Amina. Really quickly, and that’s assuming whatever creature struck it wasn’t actively pulling it down and attacking its passengers. There
might not have been enough time for anyone to escape on its dunij.”
When Tinbu couldn’t find a way to be hopeful, you really were in trouble. And yet it was difficult to argue with his assessment.
You will never see your daughter again . Would Salima believe me if I brought word of Dunya’s death? Grant me mercy for the peace of knowing her granddaughter’s
fate?
Doubtful. She’d probably find a way to blame me instead.
I turned away from the shipwreck. “We don’t know for certain that this was their ship. And staring at it isn’t going to help Dunya. Let’s go.”
The cliffs eventually gentled enough for us to clumsily climb a steep patch of stony sand dunes until we reached the plateau
that made up the island’s heart. Behind us was the sea, and far to the west, rocky mountains tore at one of the bluest skies
I had ever seen. In many ways, the craggy land reminded me of Oman, determined patches of lush green sprouting from the dust
and dry rocks, the vibrant color complementing the bright blue water and stunning coast. And yet it was different enough,
many of its trees and plants alien, to remind me that I was very far from home.
It was not easy terrain to traverse, particularly for a trio of middle-aged folk who’d spent the last two weeks not walking
anything longer than the Marawati ’s cramped deck. My bad knee was not yet in agony, but there was a pulsing unsteadiness in the joint that promised future
retribution with every misstep. The ground was uneven, rising and falling in hills and shallow ravines. The undergrowth was
thick and spiky—lovely, yes, with red and purple sea roses climbing to lift their faces to the sun, but thorny vines conspired
to snag my shins and bloody my ankles. Fig and frankincense trees grew in abundance, gnarled and twisting old grandfathers
whose brief passages of shade were appreciated, but too few to be any true relief. In little time, sweat drenched my body,
my garments sticking to my back.
After hiking a damnable number of hills, we emerged in a valley with breathtaking views. Tendrils of mists lingered around
distant summits, spiny grasses and prickly bushes spreading everywhere. Here we spotted our first of Socotra’s famed dragon’s
blood trees and stopped to marvel at the specimen. It appeared less like a tree and more like a dome of grassy turf that had
been shoved into the sky—an arboreal mushroom. Hundreds of branches snaked out from its trunk, a dense network of bark veins
so thick the eye could not pierce them.
“It is as strange as they say,” I commented. “It looks like a tree from another realm, like something designed to give shade to angels and djinn.”
Tinbu shuddered. “Or demons and ghouls—oh, Dalila, must you do that?”
“Yes,” she said, twisting one of her knives into the dragon’s blood tree’s trunk. She yanked it out, pressing a pale cloth
to the weeping wound that instantly turned red. “Do you know the properties this sap is rumored to have?”
“You are going to get us eaten by a tree spirit.” Tinbu stepped back, as though to put space between Dalila and himself, and
then addressed the tree’s canopy. “Do not blame me for her offenses!”
“Tinbu, stop yelling at the tree. Dalila, stop stabbing the tree.” I grabbed them each by an arm as though they were wayward children. “You’ll make me regret not bringing Majed.”
We continued walking, unmolested by tree spirits and breaking for a rest around midday. Here and there we saw evidence of
local people: a tapper’s tools left in a frankincense grove, a leather strap caught on a branch, and the hoofprints of sheep
in the dust. There was even a path, narrow and full of switchbacks, but still enough of a trail indicating people used it.
Though we encountered no one, we tried our best to steer clear, concealing our tracks when we could.
It was difficult to discern how far we had traveled. By the time the sun was setting, staining Socotra’s landscape in bloody
hues, the sea was far behind us. But there was nothing that hinted at the northern coast being close, and oddly enough...
there was very little sound . No night song of insects, no warbling birds, no rustling as tiny reptiles or rodents skittered about. Rather it felt as
though nature itself was holding its breath, prey frozen before a scented predator.
There was a small mercy in such silence, however, for it meant we heard the faint murmuring of a small creek we might have otherwise missed.
We reached the brook just as the sun finally slipped beneath the horizon.
It was a blessed if eerie sight: bladed palm trees veiled in shadow and the pale humps of boulders rising in the murmuring water like bobbing corpses.
The creek cut deeply into the hills, providing a natural place to shelter.
The current was gentle, the water colder than it should have been after a day in the sun. But it was enough to slake our thirst
and rinse the dust from our skin. We each of us prayed in our tradition and then, not daring a fire, huddled close as kittens
to ward off the night chill. We ate a simple meal of dates, salted fish, and rehydrated biscuits. Another time we would have
gossiped and told stories. Now, exhausted by our trek and age, my friends fell asleep easily at my urging.
I wrapped myself up in my cloak to take the first watch and gazed at the sky. It was beautiful—the thick clusters of stars
and constellations some of the clearest I had ever seen. I found Taurus and then al-Dabaran, though the moon was not yet in
its manzil and would not be for some time. I traced out other constellations, my mind turning to the stories my father would
tell me of them. My mother and grandfather had taken care to instill in me practical knowledge: how to read my letters, how
to make a meal for one stretch to feed four, how to tell a storm was approaching. But my father had been a dreamer, and he
loved the old tales behind the celestial map we relied upon to guide our way. There were spirits said to embody each of the
lunar manazil. The beautiful Thurayya who could grant wishes, and al-Na’am, the mighty centaur who watched over hunters. Fearsome
al-Dabaran, who wore scaled armor and held aloft a serpent as he rode across the sky on a horse that breathed typhoon winds.
My father’s retellings could be dramatic and my mother would often chide him, especially before bedtime when she feared he’d give me nightmares.
But his stories never frightened me. I was an overly brash child who delighted in believing every stray cat a djinn, every shadow beneath the waves a mermaid.
But it went beyond imaginings. I’d grown up feeling terribly unusual, out of place and never at peace with the fate afforded young girls.
In a hidden corner of my heart, I nursed embarrassing dreams. That I was not the child of my parents, but the daughter of a tribe of female warriors who flew upon winged horses.
Or I was heir to a hidden sea kingdom below the waves, and the whispered sighs I heard from the water when we sailed and the strange lightning in the distance were not natural weather phenomena but magic , my true family calling to me.
Then I grew into an adult. One who learned the hard way that if there was magic in this world, it could be as brutal and cunning
as the worst monsters out of a fairy tale.
I wonder, then, what sort of magic is the Moon of Saba?
I struggled to recall what my father had told me. He had liked the story, finding commonality with the lunar aspect so struck
with the sight of Bilqis that al-Dabaran took the form of a pearl to join her—this was a man who had nearly fallen off his
ship upon spotting my mother, giving up a life of piracy to marry her. If I closed my eyes, I could still see him winking
at my mother when he told the story and—to my youthful horror—giving her backside an affectionate squeeze when he thought
no one was watching. I wasn’t a child who appreciated romance.
But I had a hard time imagining a murderous, power-hungry Frank coming all the way to Socotra on the strength of a love story.
So what else had Dunya told him? What did Falco believe the Moon of Saba could do that it was worth embarking on such a dangerous quest?
I regretted now not taking more of the documents that had been on Dunya’s desk.
All I remembered was the almanac, left open to the pages discussing the approaching eclipse—now only a few weeks away.
In my despair and rage over Salima’s threat, I had not been thinking clearly, and the strange words and symbols of the other books had only confounded me further.
But if I’d had the wisdom to bring them along, my companions and I might have studied the texts during our voyage, gleaning what we could together.
It matters not , I tried to tell myself. Worry more about finding Dunya and less about the purpose of magical gems that likely don’t exist. But in my heart, as I stared at the cold stars in the heavens above, I knew it was not going to be that easy... neither
to spirit her away, nor forget the tales buried deep inside me.