Chapter 3
SULLHA
As the afternoon heat began to ease, the children who'd spent the last hour hiding from it in the shade of the compound wall and the mango trees lining it were venturing back onto the climbing frame.
The sun was still bright, though, painting the concrete paths the color of honey and smoothing out the peeling stucco of the dormitory buildings.
From Sullha's spot on the bench, the place looked almost pretty, but only if she squinted hard and looked at it from a certain angle.
A slight shift to the right or the left revealed the uglier spots she tried not to see, so she just looked straight ahead and focused on the best sight in the entire world.
Tomek had climbed to the top of the frame and was now hanging by his knees from the highest bar, his arms dangling and his dark hair falling away from his face.
"Look, Mama! I'm upside down!"
He was showing off for his friends, and it was a little dangerous, but Sullha fought the impulse to call him down.
She smiled. "Yes, you are, sweetheart! Just be careful up there!"
"Yes, Mama."
He was five. He could hang upside down if he wanted to, and if he fell, the sand under the climbing frame would catch him. She'd checked the quality of the padding herself, making sure that the children were safe and their landings were soft.
It reflected her philosophy about most everything she did.
The best she could do was provide gentle landings wherever she could put them.
But today she wasn't thinking about landings of that kind.
Today, she was thinking about landing somewhere else.
Somewhere that wasn't the enclosure or the island.
Somewhere where there would be no more visitors to serve, and where Tomek could grow up free and choose his own destiny.
There was a book on her lap, one she'd read so many times that she could recite it from memory, and she had no intention of even opening it. She'd brought it as a prop, a justification for sitting on the bench that faced the gate, where the sun wasn't in her face so she could read.
She was waiting for Yaaf.
Yesterday, he'd brought her books as a present, but she'd had to give them back because she couldn't keep them, and then he'd asked about his mother, and she'd been forced to be the bearer of bad news.
That conversation stayed with her, more so than all her other conversations with him. She kept turning it over and over in her head, until the edges wore smooth, looking for parts she had gotten wrong and things she could have said differently.
She should have prepared him for the news, softening it as she went, so that when it finally came, he was ready for it. But she hadn't known that he hadn't been informed of his mother's death, and he'd caught her by surprise with his question, so she hadn't had the right words prepared.
Yaaf had gone so still, and then she'd put her hand on his without thinking, offering comfort the way she would have done with any of the women in the compound who needed consoling.
His hand had been warm and still beneath hers, and he had not pulled away from her touch.
They'd had a moment, but perhaps she was reading too much into it.
With a sigh, Sullha dragged her attention back to the yard.
Tomek had dismounted from the bars and was arguing with Roshav about something, and they were both gesturing wildly with their hands.
Pol was sitting on a rock near the sandbox, his face screwed up in concentration, ignoring the squabble while stacking pebbles into a tower.
Sensa wasn't paying the boys any attention because she was busy bossing around three younger girls in a game whose rules didn't make any sense, probably because she was inventing them on the spot.
There had been a time when Sullha's mother would have enjoyed the yard on an afternoon like this.
In fact, Sullha had only ever seen her smiling when she'd watched the children play, but even then, it would be fleeting, and the dead expression would soon return.
Her mother hadn't visited the play yard in years.
Sullha shook her head, pushing away the thought, but it came back.
Her mother now worked in the laundry, and she lived in a dormitory with other older women who had been reassigned. The laundry was the resting place for most of the women whose bodies had finished being useful for breeding, and who were too dead inside to do anything else.
The work was grueling but mentally undemanding, and since more than ten thousand warriors had their dirty uniforms and linens delivered to the enormous laundry to be washed, dried, ironed, and folded, it provided plenty of work for hundreds of women.
It was better now that machines did the heavy lifting, but it hadn't always been like that. Burda had told her that when she was young, women had stood at deep sinks, fed sheets into the rollers, and hung the wet things on long lines strung behind the building to dry.
Sullha could only imagine how exhausting that must have been.
Her mother was still young, somewhere in her mid-thirties, but she'd always seemed old beyond her years.
"Dead one walking," one of the older women had murmured once during dinner while Sullha was close enough to hear. The woman hadn't said it to be unkind. She'd just said it as she'd seen it.
For years, her mother had been drifting through her days like a leaf in the wind. She ate what she was given. She slept when she was tired. She did not speak unless she was spoken to, and often not even then.
She had never held Tomek.
She'd seen him. She'd even sat on one of the benches and watched him play when he was about two years old, but she'd never acknowledged him as her grandson.
When Sullha had given birth to him, her mother wasn't there to help her.
The midwife and two other women helped with the delivery, and when she'd brought him to see her a week later, her mother had looked at the baby and then looked away.
"What do you want me to do with it? It's a boy. One more for the war machine."
Sullha had carried him back to her room and had not taken him to her mother again.
And yet.
She was still her mother. There was a duty there, stitched into Sullha whether she wanted it or not.
An old knot in the fabric that she kept pulling at and could not undo.
The woman had carried her for nine months and pushed her into the world and fed her, at least in the beginning, when there had still been some motherly instinct inside her.
That had to count for something.
If the chance came to leave this place, and Yaaf claimed that it was coming, then the question of her mother would have to be answered.
She could not pretend that it would answer itself.
Perhaps in a new place with new air and no one to be afraid of, whatever was left of her would wake up.
She was not that old. It was not impossible.
But when Sullha tried to picture her mother holding Tomek and pressing her cheek against the top of his head, the picture just wouldn't form.
The soil anchoring her mother had gone dry a long time ago, and she could water the ground around a plant like that for a year, and it would still not come back.
Sullha closed her eyes and let the shame settle.
She was ashamed of herself for not wanting to save her mother as much as she wanted to save others.
Ashamed of the small voice in her head that said it would be a waste to squander one of the few spaces on the list of escapees on someone who'd turned into a husk a long time ago.
It should go to someone who still had life in them.
"Can I sit with you?"
She opened her eyes.
Asira was standing next to the bench, the strap of a handmade canvas bag slung over her shoulder.
"Of course." Sullha scooted over to make room.
Asira sat down and set the bag between her feet.
"I brought my drawing supplies," she said. "I thought it would be nice to draw the kids playing. Tomek gave me the idea."
"He did?"
The girl smiled. "I meant, I got the idea after drawing him. He was such a good subject. And he said that he was going to show the portrait I drew of him to all his friends, so I figured they would want their portraits done as well. I also promised him to draw you. So I'll start with that."
Asira was speaking quickly, the words just tumbling out, and despite her enthusiasm about drawing Tomek's friends, Sullha had a feeling that wasn't the whole reason for her showing up in the play yard when she'd never come there before.
She'd come because she wanted to talk.
"I would love for you to draw my portrait," Sullha said. "But you have to promise to make me look prettier than I actually am."
Asira gaped at her for a moment. "Why would I improve on something that's already perfect?"
"Oh wow." Sullha chuckled. "I think that is the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me."
"Really?" Asira looked doubtful. "No one has ever told you that you are pretty?"
"Tomek tells me all the time that I'm the most beautiful mommy in the world, but he doesn't count."
The truth was that he was the only one who counted, and maybe Yaaf too, but Yaaf had never told her that she was perfect, or pretty, or beautiful.
Did he think any of those things and just didn't know how to talk to women? Or did he still see her as his childhood friend and not a grown woman he could be attracted to?
Her good mood vanished as it dawned on her that he didn't seem to think of her that way. Yaaf hadn't indicated in any way that he found her attractive. He was coming to visit his old friend. That's all.
She should be glad. If he had shown interest of that kind in her, he would have scared her.
"Sullha?" Asira asked. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing." She affected a smile. "Do you want me to sit still, or should I pretend to read?"
"Just sit the way you were sitting when I walked over. You had that dreamy expression on your face."
"I was watching Tomek."
Sullha glanced at where he'd been last and saw him tearing across the yard toward them.
He skidded to a stop in front of the bench. "You came!"
Asira smiled. "I did. I promised to draw your mother, but I can also draw any of your friends who want to sit still for me. Tell me who you want me to draw first."
Tomek scrunched his little nose, and Sullha could see the inner negotiation happening in real time behind his eyes.
"Can you draw Pol? He's my friend, and he's very good at sitting still."
Sullha bit the inside of her cheek to keep her expression from giving her away.
"I thought you wanted a picture of me," she said.
"You're always here. I can get a picture of you any time."
"Aha."
That was solid five-year-old logic she couldn't argue with.
Asira grinned. "That's all right with me," she said. "I can do your mother's later. Go get your friend."
Tomek spun on his heel and tore back across the yard at double the speed he had come.
"I'm sorry," Asira said.
"Don't be. He's five, and his friends are the center of the world. I'm just the bench warmer."
Tomek came back, dragging Pol by the wrist. The little boy was a head shorter and was doing his best to follow without understanding what he had agreed to. His knees were dusty, and there were streaks of something green across his forehead and cheek.
Sullha grimaced. Hopefully, he hadn't eaten a grasshopper.
"Sit here," Tomek instructed, pointing to the end of the bench next to Asira. "She's going to draw your picture. It takes a really, really long time, so you have to sit still."
"Why?" Pol asked.
"Because if you move, she will have to start over from the beginning, and it will take even longer. Right?"
He turned to Asira for confirmation.
She kept her expression composed. "Correct."
Pol sat down obediently and fixed his gaze on a pebble near his shoe.
"I'll be back for you," Tomek told him solemnly, and then ran off to rejoin the other children on the climbing frame.
Sullha watched him go and tried to decide which part of the exchange was the cutest. Probably the one when he was telling Pol how to behave.
"I'll move over to that bench." She pointed and stood. "Give you space to work."
"You don't have to," Asira said.
"Trust me, I do. Sometimes, I talk to myself, and that will distract you."
She didn't, but if Yaaf came and thralled everyone not to look her way, she wanted to have her bases covered in case his thrall didn't include ignoring speech.
"All right. Thank you."
When Sullha drifted two benches over and sat down, Asira pulled out a clipboard with several pages attached to it, and Pol folded his hands in his lap and fixed his eyes on a spot behind her. He was a small, solemn statue waiting to be rendered, and he looked adorable.
There was something hopeful about a girl drawing a child in a place where the prevailing art form was survival.
Sullha leaned back, rested her hands on the bench, palms flat against the concrete, and watched the scene.
Whatever Asira had come to say, she had not said it yet, but she eventually would, and Sullha could wait.