Chapter 15
Sleep clung determinedly to me the next morning, bizarre dreams of locusts sweeping across an eclipsed moon leaving me foggy-headed.
Save a solitary vulture circling in the distance, the world still seemed strangely absent of life. We had not awoken to insect
bites, and dawn came and went without the sweet twitter of birds. There were no fish in the creek and no spiders in the webs
glittering with morning dew. It was as though instead of crossing Socotra, we had slipped into the pages of a storybook, into
a realm whose inhabitants had been rendered invisible.
At least until we tried to leave our camp.
Dalila threw out her arms to stop us, her wooden staff nearly smacking me in the chin. “That footprint was not there last
night.”
The footprint in question, little more than a smudge in the dust, was located on a rise in the winding dirt path from which
our small camp would have been visible, even at night. And yet a spot from which the footprint’s bearer should have also been
visible to us . The moon and stars had been bright, neither bushes nor trees obscuring this area.
I frowned. “We would have seen someone. Did either of you fall asleep during your watch?”
When Dalila and Tinbu both gave adamant denials, I drew closer to examine the print.
It looked to have been made by a shoe—a sandal or boot, perhaps—around the size of my own.
It was a deep impression, and yet bizarrely it was the only one.
Now, granted, were I a lone traveler in a notoriously hostile land who came upon strangers at midnight, I might also freeze and silently retreat, sweeping away what I could of my tracks.
But we should have seen them. Heard them.
“Dalila...” Tinbu’s voice was compassionate. “Do you think the footprint could have been there before we arrived, and you
perhaps didn’t spot it?”
“It was not there last night,” she said firmly. “I look for these things.”
I lifted my gaze to the misty horizon. The rising sun was burning away the morning fog, setting it to a sparkling blush of
swiftly evaporating dew. This was typically my favorite part of the morning, the peace and the promise of a new day almost
magical.
But I did not feel that way now.
Tinbu and Dalila were still arguing.
“You could be getting all riled for nothing,” Tinbu said. “I know your eyes—”
“My eyes are fine ,” Dalila snapped.
Rising to my feet, I declared, “We are leaving. I want to put as much distance as possible between us and this camp by nightfall.”
We did not get far.
By midday, signs of human habitation, sparse when we set out, had grown impossible to ignore: tufts of sheep hair caught on
thistles and a grove of clearly tended olive and fig trees; far more footprints on a widening path and rock cairns indicating
directions to unknown destinations.
At first the faint smell of smoke was almost welcome. Cookfires, we assumed, a sign that we were not the only humans in some
desolate portal world, though there was no corresponding plume of smoke in the sky. The scent became heavier and ever-present,
impossible to avoid no matter which direction we turned. Then it was laced with worse—rot. The sickly sweet aroma of death
and decay, of old blood and spilled entrails, grew thick in the hot air, and by the time we came upon a too-quiet village,
I think we all knew we were about to discover something dreadful.
We stopped in the shade of neighboring trees.
From here, the blackened remains of burnt huts and a broken livestock pen were visible.
There were no signs of life. No children shouting, no dogs barking at the approach of strangers.
Belongings littered the perimeter, an unlatched door swinging open and shut with a bang.
“What do we do, nakhudha?” Tinbu whispered.
It was an excellent question. No part of me wanted to get any closer to that village, but we were here to scout, to uncover
answers even if we didn’t like them. The shipwreck on the beach, the odd absence of life in the hills, the footprint we couldn’t
explain, and now this. None of it was painting a reassuring image of what was to come.
I wanted to turn back. My instincts told me to turn back. But every time I thought of climbing aboard the Marawati and getting the hell out of here, I saw a knife at Marjana’s throat. I saw my home ablaze, my mother assaulted by some vengeful
ghost from my past. Mustafa and his little family executed for crimes in which they had no part. My loved ones punished for
my choices, by my enemies before I could save them.
Focus . “Let’s take a quick sweep,” I decided. “If we are to land more men, it is best we know whether this was pestilence of the
natural or human variety. But cover your faces and keep a weapon close.” I wrapped the tail of my turban around my nose and
my mouth, then freed my sword and a throwing knife.
It was a modest village, no more than a dozen thatch huts and about half that number of small stone homes. But there were
signs of abundance in the broken pots, dropped rugs, and shattered furnishings littering the path. The animals were gone,
and here and there were trails of grain, indicating carried-off sacks of food. The place had clearly been plundered. But despite
the burnt huts, there was little sign of violence. No bodies, no blood.
It made no sense. I have seen the aftermath of raids on villages such as these.
They are violent, they are gruesome, and they leave marks.
Those cruel enough to steal from and annihilate the lives of the rural poor rarely care about hiding the evidence, and those they attack will fight to the death to defend the homes and livelihoods they’ve scrabbled together.
“Where is everyone?” Dalila asked under her breath.
“Perhaps whoever attacked this place kidnapped its inhabitants?” I suggested. “I’ve known slavers to carry off entire populations.”
“And no one fought back?” Tinbu asked doubtfully. “I don’t believe it.”
I didn’t either. I stopped to peer into one of the huts as Tinbu and Dalila continued. The tattered curtain hanging from its
entrance danced in the wind. The interior was dark—darker than seemed possible given the bright sun—though I could spot the
lines of a small Christian shrine: a half-melted candle besides an icon of the Prophet Isa and his mother, may they be blessed.
I stepped closer and then stilled. Coming from the hut was a very particular odor. Not smoke, not rot.
Lightning . Storm clouds and salt, the brine of decaying maritime creatures, and the heavy moist air of monsoon rains. It was the same
stench that had lingered about the ruined ship on the beach.
Then Dalila gasped.
Dalila never gasped. She was my most implacable, enigmatic companion, always ten steps ahead of the rest of us. So when I
heard that sound, I tore from the hut and dashed to her side as fast as my feet would take me. She and Tinbu had wandered
ahead, beyond a large stone building marked with an unobtrusive bronze cross—a church. Beside it was the largest dragon’s
blood tree I had seen on Socotra, looming over the small church to provide what must have been a wonderfully shaded central
meeting place, the heart of the village.
Three elders—two old women and a gray-haired man dressed in a long black robe—had been speared to the tree’s trunk.
My steps slowed, horror stealing over me.
My companions were unhurt; it had been the ghastly sight that made Dalila cry out.
But ghastly it was. Lances pierced the three elders through the stomach, holding them some distance away from the ground.
The corpses were hunched over the weapons, their skin blue and their bodies shriveled.
One woman’s fingers still clawed around the lance.
It would have been an agonizing death, a slow death.
Tinbu covered his mouth. “Gods have mercy, why would anyone hurt old folks like this? Those women are probably grandmothers .”
“That man is a priest,” Dalila said. Her face was expressionless, her eyes locked on the murdered elders, but I did not miss
that she was clutching her own cross. “This village is Christian.”
“A priest?” Tinbu repeated in surprise. “Does that mean it wasn’t the Frank who did this?”
Dalila let out a bitter sound. “The Franks only view the rest of us as Christians when it suits them.”
From beyond the village walls, a branch snapped. I spun around, raising my throwing knife. But there was no further sound
save the pounding of my own heart. No movement save the rustling garments of the murdered old folks in the tree.
Get out of here . The lightning smell from the burned hut, the footprint, and now three vicious murders. It was all adding up to something
I did not like.
“We’re leaving,” I decided. “Right now.”
Dalila ignored me, approaching the bodies. “I want to bury them.”
“ Bury them?”
“Yes,” she replied flatly.
“Dalila, do you have any idea how long that will—”
She glared back at me, uncharacteristic anger flashing in her eyes. “You would do it if they were Muslims.”
The charge took me completely aback. I had never seen Dalila show such concern for strangers before. And yet...
Would I?
If the grandmothers had been veiled in my people’s manner and the old man wearing the turban of a sheikh, would my heart have
insisted on staying and shrouding them as best I could, offering funeral prayers at their graves? Did Dalila, a friend who had left her home and stood by my side, truly believe that of me?
Was she wrong to? More disconcerted than I would have imagined, I opened my mouth but faltered for a response.
Tinbu beat me to one, touching my wrist. “We’ll make the time, Dalila. Why don’t you look for a shovel? Amina and I will get
their bodies down.”
It was grisly work, the sordid details of which I will not relate. The bodies were heartbreakingly frail and light, and I
couldn’t conceive of a reason these poor people had been slaughtered in such a brutal manner. It was difficult to determine