Chapter 19 #2
The harbor, I decided. I was tempted to hunt down the temple workshop, but on the chance this was a test from the queen to see what I did when let off my leash, I didn’t need to direct her suspicions.
The harbor was innocuous, the natural curiosity of a sailor.
And so, I left my room, discovering a narrow staircase from the terrace that overlooked the sea.
I followed it, wandering through a series of quiet corridors and down crumbling stone steps that eventually led me to a stretch of misty beach.
With but a press of my sandal upon the moist, yielding sand and a deep breath of the salty, wave-whipped air, I felt instantly revived.
Oh, but if there were only a boat—even a crude dugout would serve—to hop aboard, to push into the churning water and be carried upon the waves.
To be surrounded by ocean rather than a foreign palace and its machinations.
Then again, considering the state of the sea before me, perhaps that was for the best. The churning, slate-colored expanse of water looked as deadly as it had that first night.
Shattered black rocks littered the coast; it would be a hellish spot to guide even a small boat.
A foreign trade vessel, unfamiliar with the waters, would have been torn apart.
It certainly had the makings of the great graveyard of ships I thought I’d seen that first night. Except there was no sign of them. No half-sunk wrecks, no shattered hulls. Not even a single timber.
Hallucinations, Dalila had dismissed my visions.
Products of a fevered mind. I wasn’t so sure but kept walking.
It was a gray morning, mercifully cool with a thin cover of clouds that melted into fog over the roiling sea.
The tide was high and coming in fast, the waves fierce as they beat upon the pale sand.
Not far in the distance, a rocky bluff rose from the shore, crowned with a forest of dark pines.
Curious as to what was behind it—not my crew, unfortunately, for the Marawati was on the other side of Khatti Ugal—I decided to climb.
The incline was steeper than it initially appeared.
There were few places to grasp, save the occasional tree root or broken outcropping of rock.
But I had stubbornly set my mind to the task, not content to stop until I was dragging myself over the lip of the bluff.
The shade was thick and cool, the heavy aroma of pine a lovely perfume.
I stopped to catch my breath, admiring the view of the palace on the opposite curving shore, the city of Khatti Ugal spread below like a honeycomb.
From here, it all seemed so fanciful and harmless.
A whisper of movement sounded from behind me, and I stilled. It wasn’t much: a rustling of fallen pine cones, a few broken twigs. It could have been a rodent, a bird.
But I suspected it was something far larger, more human-shaped. Rising to my feet, I acted nonchalant. I rolled my limbs and sighed as I drifted deeper into the forest, making my way through the dappled woods as though simply enjoying a morning stroll.
Then . . . there. Another cracked branch, a hush of breath that was not mine—
I lunged. With a startled cry, whoever had been watching me from the bushes ran.
But I was faster, crashing through brush and leaping a fallen tree to catch a skinny man with a mane of wild gray hair.
We tumbled to the ground, falling among the pine needles as he writhed to get away.
He was weeping, wailing, and carrying on . . . in Persian.
With a gasp, I let him go. “Who are you?” I asked in wonder. “No, please!” I shouted, seizing the fraying hem of his sleeve as he tried to scurry away. “I mean you no harm! My name is Amina. Amina al-Sirafi. I am from Oman.”
“Oman?” The name seemed to grab him as though a word from a spell. Tears flooded his bloodshot brown eyes. “You are real? This is not a trick?”
“It is no trick,” I assured, sitting back on my heels. “I am the nakhudha of a ship that was wrecked in a storm and washed upon the beach north of the city.”
He reached out, touching my face as though he didn’t believe I was there and then blushed, jerking back his hand. “Forgive me, forgive me. Oh, God. Oh, Most Merciful One. I have not seen another person from our world in twenty years.”
Twenty years. The words hit like a hammer and looking at the man before me, I could see that passage of time carved in his ravaged body.
He wore a cloak of tattered ribbons and scavenged feathers, with crudely sewn patches of motley fur.
The sun had cured his brown skin nearly to leather, wine-colored spots scattered across his face and arms. His beard fell to his belly in a messy morass, twigs and leaves snarled through his uncut hair.
One leg was crooked, scars covering his flesh, and when he opened his mouth to take a ragged breath, there were but four teeth visible.
“What is your name?” I asked softly. “Where are you from?”
The man looked utterly lost at the questions, his gaze hollow and haunted. “I . . . I think I was called Hasan. My family, we are from Sistan.” More tears filled his eyes. “My parents are likely dead by now.”
I did not know what to say. “I’m so sorry,” I whispered. “What happened?”
“I was escorting a shipment of goods to Sohar, but our ship . . . At night, the skies started changing as though we had slipped into different worlds. People panicked, some threw themselves overboard, claiming it was a sign from God. We were marooned at sea nearly a month before we ran aground in sight of the city.”
My heart sank at both the loss of life and the too-familiar tale. “How many were you?”
He blinked. “Perhaps a dozen? God knows best and it has been so long.”
“And now?”
The grief in his gaze was the only answer I needed.
This man was alone and clearly had been for some time.
After a moment, he continued. “Most had succumbed to starvation and lack of water. But then . . . once those of us who survived were brought into the city . . .” A great violence seemed to take over him and he clutched my hand.
“You need to warn your people, take them from the city, as many as will leave. It is only safe here, at the edges of her net.”
I hardly knew what to question first. “But why?” I asked. “What happened?”
He began to cry. “The locals . . . they are not human. They are not real. This kingdom is full of demons and djinn and false tricks. They do not know God. They are evildoers.”
“But what did they do? Where are the rest of your people?”
The burning fervor in his eyes—lost and possessed, mad and mourning all at once.
“Some of them were not deemed ‘useful.’ And so they . . .” He squeezed his eyes shut and trailed off, like their fate was too horrifying to speak aloud.
“As for the rest, they abandoned themselves. They fell apart, in bits and pieces. A soul there . . . an arm here, hearts and lungs and blood and bile . . .” He made a dispersing gesture with his fingers, like a man tossing grain to livestock.
“And they laughed and dreamed the whole time and wrapped themselves up in vile robes of falsehood. The palace, the town—it is no idyll. It is a false paradise, a trap.”
His words reminded me of the old man wailing in sailor’s creole, of the many visions I’d had of peaceful streets and opulent gardens overrun with decay and abandonment. But Hasan scarcely seemed a portrait of sanity.
“They . . . fell apart?” I asked.
“Yes!” His voice cracked, his fingernails digging into my skin. “You must believe me.”
“Let me go,” I said firmly. I was more than capable of prying this man’s fingers off, but I could tell it was terror that had gripped him. “Brother,” I pressed, trying to call upon our shared faith. “Remember yourself.”
He immediately released me. Then he curled in on himself, sobbing. “I am sorry. I am sorry. But they will infect you. They will creep through your blood and your brain, and you will all die. You have to flee, you have to hide.”
“We intend to flee,” I promised. “We need only repair my vessel and then, God willing, we are going home. You can join us.”
Hasan let out a high burst of laughter that was half howl. “There is no way to leave. The waters are a cemetery of ships and the forests bend back on themselves. If she does not wish you to depart, you never will.”
“The forests bend?” I asked in open confusion.
He pulled at his overgrown hair, my disbelief clearly making him more upset. “Look for yourself,” he said, jerking his head toward the trees. “It is the only way you shall understand.”
With little idea of what I was supposed to see, I rose to my feet, the hair on the back of my neck standing on end.
The forest was silent as I walked through, absent the sounds of birdsong and distant waves that had filled it before.
Even the breeze had stopped, as though the very land was waiting for me to make my way across the soft earth.
The morning light had grown brighter, patches of water and sky glittering through the dark trees growing larger as the forest thinned out and then finally, I stood on what I assumed to be the opposite side of the bluff.
By now, the mist had burned off. The beach below me was empty of anything save seabirds, the water a perfect mirror of the gray, tumultuous harbor on the other side.
And directly ahead, beyond the stretch of beach, was the palace.
Impossible. The palace had been at my back as I walked. I had a good sense of direction, yes, but the jumble of trees must have confused me. I turned back around, meaning to cross the stand of forest yet again.
And yet again, I reemerged to the same vista.
My heart starting to race, I took note of the sun’s position. Then I marked out the cardinal directions with rocks upon a patch of sandy soil. I walked north, I walked south. By the time I tried east and west, I was running across the inconceivable stretch of woods.