Chapter 16 #3
He took me to a pavilion in a lovely, shaded garden.
Slender columns held up a wooden portico heavy with grapevines, and a pair of mahogany dragon statues faced off over a silver fountain that would have put a dent in the caliph’s treasury.
At least two dozen Khatti Ugalans milled about the manicured lawn.
They were mostly men, but a handful of women were also waiting, from a wizened elder to a bright-eyed girl clutching scrolls.
Upon spotting me, excitement seemed to sweep the crowd, whispers rising all around.
“Your audience of dreamers,” the steward said with resignation, gesturing for me to take a seat upon a small wooden stool I knew with a glance was going to wreak havoc with my knee, before he turned to face the crowd, gesticulating and speaking in a blur of Khatti Ugalan.
“You may start by telling them of yourself. Your name and homeland. How you came to be a ship’s captain. I will translate.”
“All right.” I looked out over the small audience, trying to take some ease from their eager expressions.
There isn’t a sailor who doesn’t relish spinning yarns and I’ve always enjoyed chatting with locals during my travels—particularly locals who might then have useful things to share about any spinning tools they’d seen lying about.
“I am called Amina al-Sirafi. My people hail from many of the communities that dwell upon the great ocean to our south, though I was born in a land called Oman. My father’s family have been sailors and ship captains for as long as I know, and it was my grandfather who first taught me the trade. ”
I paused to let Mitanni translate and we proceeded in that manner for a bit, me relating an abbreviated version of my life story that was more lies than truth by the time I ended with the storm that had left us shipwrecked here.
The steward had no sooner finished speaking than the flurry of Khatti Ugalans began all but shouting over each other in an effort to be heard first.
Mitanni glanced down at me; the steward had refused to sit, as though the presence of a bunch of people interested in the forbidden practice of sailing would sully him. “They wish to ask you some questions.”
“I am here to share what I know.”
He nodded at an old man with a white beard that stretched to his belly.
“We shall accommodate the elderly first; the young ones can always come back another day.” Switching to Khatti Ugalan, he must have asked the man to share his query.
“Ah. He wishes to learn if you have seen the breathing islands?”
“The breathing . . . islands?” I repeated in confusion.
The steward spoke again with the elder. “He says he has heard stories of them. They are islands the size of buildings, constructed of gray stone, that move freely in the sea, breathing out great spouts of mist from their navels.”
Letting the odd description swirl in my mind, I chuckled. “I believe he refers to whales. They are not islands, but rather massive fish, the largest that dwell in the ocean. And yes, I have seen a great many. I have even heard them sing to each other, a wondrous melody.”
That question led to a more detailed one about how the moon’s phases influenced the tides and then it was as though a dam had been breached, the inquiries relentless.
The subjects were dizzying, less than half having to do with anything remotely related to sailing.
Instead, people wanted to know what else was out there, a fierce curiosity about the rest of the world that was nearly overpowering.
No wonder the kingdom needed a law to keep people from venturing off its shores.
The desire to do so beat in the hearts of every person here.
Ironically enough, their keenness put me more at ease—I could certainly relate to those restless souls who itched to explore.
But as the day stretched into late afternoon, the sun descending lower and lower until it blinked behind the tall palace walls, all I had learned echoed what I already knew: this was an isolated place, its people largely ignorant of the foreigners from whom they supposedly all descended.
And so after relating what I knew of “fire mountains” (volcanos, a sight I would be happy never to witness), I interrupted to ask my own query.
“Is there anyone here who was not born in Khatti Ugal?” I asked Mitanni.
“I do not believe so, but . . .” The steward translated the question for the crowd, and was met with blank silence until the girl with the scrolls offered a response.
“What was that?” I asked, hopeful.
“She says her grandfather was stranded here when his vessel struck a reef, but he was the only survivor and not well in the head. He died years ago and would only mutter to himself in a language they didn’t know.”
I hid a frown. The group that had rescued us—and the queen herself—spoke of a Khatti Ugal that received castaways with some frequency.
Why were they not among those I was chatting with?
Part of me had envisioned speaking with a group of fellow shipwrecked souls from around the Persian Gulf, those who might offer a better perspective.
Much of the story the queen and her people offered about Khatti Ugal made sense, more sense than the peri’s terrifying tale and Jamal’s bawdy fable.
But there was a determined current of mystery, like a dye that wouldn’t blend in.
I tried again. “I’ve heard that there’s been a recent increase in shipwrecks. Surely some of those survivors are in the city?”
Mitanni seemed to hesitate before translating, but then an old man abruptly piped up.
“No, no, no,” he muttered, seemingly half to himself. “They were not right. They did not fit.” But he didn’t say the words in Khatti Ugalan.
He said them in a sailor’s creole. And not just any creole, for the shared language of ship folk is as varied as the cultures that birth us, but one with a distinct Malay overlay. One that I recognized.
“What . . . what did you just say?” I stammered. This man was clearly no local and excited, I rose to my feet.
Only for my bad knee to promptly give out like someone had kicked it. I stumbled, falling hard to the ground. A jolt of pain spiked in my head, my vision blurring . . .
Then it was as though the world had turned over.
The mosaic floor was shattered, so covered with dirt that shards of color could barely be seen.
I glanced up in shock, and it was like I’d been sent a century into the future, a century after this place was abandoned.
The portico had collapsed, broken remnants drowned beneath overgrown vines.
One of the dragon statues was gone, the other missing a wing, and the silver fountain was now tarnished and filled with dead leaves.
And my audience . . . where there had been two dozen souls, all bright-eyed and chatty, stood only three individuals, entirely transformed.
The young girl was dressed in rags, her vacant stare transfixed on something beyond my shoulder.
A man stood naked and streaked in filth, miming motions as though he was writing on a lap board.
Faded shrouds lay in the dust around them, and the old man who’d spoken a sailor’s creole sat in the dirt, rocking back and forth.
“They didn’t fit,” he said again. “They didn’t please her.”
“Captain al-Sirafi.” There was a violent shake of my shoulder.
The vision of decay vanished as suddenly as it had come. I was on my hands and knees, staring at my own sick though I didn’t recall vomiting. A cold sweat had broken across my skin, leaving me damp and shivering, surrounded by worried Khatti Ugalans.
Mitanni barked an order in their language, clearly motioning for the crowd to give me space. “Are you all right?”
I took a deep breath. “I . . . I’m fine,” I lied. This man was the queen’s right hand; I would tell him nothing I didn’t want Lab to know. “I took a bad blow to my head when we were shipwrecked. I must still be suffering the effects.”
He laid a hand on my shoulder again and I shivered.
Even through the wool, the steward’s touch was uncommonly icy.
For the first time, I noticed that it wasn’t a tunic Mitanni wore under his cloak but a rough animal hide, stitched haphazardly.
But before I could study it further, the steward drew his cloak closer.
“Let us return you to your quarters,” he decided. “That is enough excitement for today.”
Mitanni helped me up, and I held my tongue as he spoke to the group. But as we left, I could not help but glance back.
The old man had fallen to his knees. And then, in the language of travelers from a land far, far away, he wept, quite clearly. “I want to go home.”
* * *
“And he spoke a mariner’s tongue?” Majed asked. “You are certain?”
“From Srivijaya.” I repeated the words. “Salih spoke it,” I added, referencing the one former husband who hadn’t caused me grief. “I remember it well.”
Majed sat back, looking as bewildered as I did. He’d been the first to return to our rooms, concerned to find me pacing in agitation. (I had tried resting. It did not take.) Now, after being filled in on my visions, he was openly alarmed.
“What do you think they are?” he asked. “These visions? You get flashes of the Unseen Realm sometimes, do you not?”
“Yes, but they never feel like this. I see creatures, hear their whispers, but . . .” I touched my heart. “I always feel it here. And since we have arrived—” I broke off, realizing it for the first time. “I haven’t sensed anything magical. Not once.”
Majed opened and closed his mouth. I knew the words he wanted to speak, knew he hesitated out of concern for me, so I voiced them:
“You believe what you said last night, don’t you? You think the peris tricked us and that we’re trapped in a kingdom from which it’s impossible to sail.”
His expression was apologetic. “All the pieces fit.”
“Then I have doomed us.”