Tamam swept away the silence. “It is done.” He walked toward us, sweat shining on his brow. “We should leave soon. The vultures will attract attention when they come.”
Saalim groaned as he looked out at the desert—already rippling like water with the sun barely overhead—but he nodded.
“We can’t leave so soon,” I said, pointing at his leg. “The bleeding must stop for some time. Moving will make it bleed again. We have time. It is said ‘a man not home by moonrise won’t be coming home.’”
Tamam nodded. “So we have until night before they are missed. We leave no later than dusk.” He seemed restless, agitated. Sitting and waiting did not suit him.
At midday, Tamam retrieved his pack and divided the dried meats and fruits between us. My sack was sitting at my side again. I resolved never to remove it from my body.
Sickness ebbed and flowed as I thought of the nomads. Blinded by his anger, Saalim had not seen that the man would not have hurt me, would not have hurt him. He only wanted our packs, not another mouth to feed. Only when Saalim attacked did the man defend himself.
The swing of the nomad’s scimitar . . . I thanked Masira that it had just missed Saalim’s gut to hit his leg. It was as though Masira’s hand pressed away the blade.
While Saalim attempted sleep, I watched for signs of Nassar and Amir. Tamam had told me to rest, but I could not. I did not think I would sleep again until we were far away from the vultures that circled and dove on the corpses behind us. I remembered my mother’s sky burial, watching the vultures return her to Masira.
“They approach,” Tamam said. Saalim stirred from his restless sleep, his eyes opening, then closing again.
Amir dropped quickly down from his camel. “They had only las, but they gave it freely,” he said with some surprise.
“Freely?” Saalim asked groggily.
Amir nodded. “They gave these, too.” In his hands were folds of thick linens, more than I hoped we would need. “Liika said it was for Emel. For the goddess that protects her.”
Saalim stared at me.
“Give me the las,” I said, reaching out my hand. Amir passed a small vial to me. Eiqab—Wahir—whomever, be praised. They had given us the oil! With Amir’s help, we undressed Saalim’s wound.
The wound was a dangerously clean slice. The skin would close too quickly. I remembered Altasa telling me that an open wound was better—that it allows for dressing, cleaning, and air. If a wound closed too soon, there was a high chance of it festering. With Saalim clenching his fists and jaw, I gently separated the skin for Amir to pour water into the wound. Saalim bucked under our attention, but he was silent. He did not pull his leg away. I dripped the oil into the wound. Sons, let this help. My mind kept barreling toward a future in which the wound became foul, in which Saalim could not continue the journey, could not survive it.
The linen was folded beside me, and I took the first strip in my hands.
“Bend your knee.”
With the greatest reluctance, Saalim did. “I can do this,” he said, sitting up. He sent the men away, saying he felt like a child with them all tending to him. “Really, you don’t . . .”
I pushed his hands away. “Let me,” I said, and began to wrap the linen around his thigh, my gaze following his leg under the blanket. My palms brushed against his skin, reminding me of when his body was mine to touch. In the pool of the oasis, in the tent of the bazaar, in the fractured piece of Madinat Almulihi’s palace on the shore.
My fingers trailed across his leg, and Saalim groaned under my touch. I picked up another piece of linen, drifting my hands across his skin as I tied it in place.
“Emel,” he said so quietly I barely heard.
“Hmm?” I hummed, glancing at Tamam and Nassar, both of whom reclined on mats. Amir was sitting at the water’s edge, his back turned to us, moving his arms in prayer.
Carefully, I wound the last bandage around his thigh.
“Emel,” he said again, his hand reaching toward me.
He did not take his eyes from my face as I secured the cloth on his leg. “What is it?” I asked, leaning my ear closer to his lips. The heat of him touched my temple.
“Come here,” he whispered, his voice tremored. He opened up his arm as if to invite me to curl up beside him. “Please.”
My skin tingled, my body ached with longing. There was nothing I wanted more.
Shaking my head, I sat up and collected the clean linens. “If only there were fewer eyes to see us,” I said. Then slowly, I pressed my lips to his brow. With my lips against his skin, he was again the Saalim from my past. I held the kiss for just a moment. His breath hitched. “And you were less of a fool.”
By the time we had arrived at the next settlement, I was desperate. The las was not enough. The edges of the wound were swollen. The fluid that seeped from it was a sticky, pale yellow. Festering had begun, and with it, fever had set in.
“We need to find a healer,” I urged Amir as we waited for someone who would guide us to the leader of their village.
“I know,” Amir said, haggard with worry, before he and Nassar were led into the settlement. “We will find one before anything else.”
Though Saalim insisted he was fine, we all saw the sweat—even under the cool moon—that dripped from his brow, his arms, his neck. He was hunched on the camel as we traveled. He was not well, and he was getting worse quickly.
This settlement was not unlike the one I had come from—tents for homes, organized based on the direction the wind blew that day—and I wondered if this community was still nomadic or if, like my father’s people, they had decided to lay shallow roots in this part of the desert.
Amir and Nassar soon returned with two men who promised they would take us to their healer.
“You are lucky,” one of the men said. “He is one of the best.”
“It will not heal,” the man said, peering at Saalim’s uncovered wound with nose upturned. “He will die.”
We gaped at the healer, Saalim included. Death was not an option.
“No,” I said at the same time as Amir.
Tamam and Nassar waited outside.
“What can you do?” Amir asked. “We can pay—coin, salt. We have food—”
“I will not waste my supply on this,” the healer said. He pointed at the dark red lines that traced up Saalim’s thigh. “It is too late. It spreads to the heart.” He rose, smoothing down his tunic.
Muffling my whimper, I watched the man. How could he turn down Amir’s offer? Saalim could not die!
Finally, Saalim spoke. “I am the king of Madinat Almulihi. Whatever you can spare us will be returned to you in three times the quantity.”
“You are nothing but ill,” the healer said. “And my answer is no.”
I forced myself to look at Saalim, though I did not want to see him. I did not want to see the face of someone who had been told they were to die. I did not want to see the man I loved look . . .
Scared. His eyes, dulled from the fever, did not meet mine. They stared at the healer’s back.
The shelf holding the man’s ingredients and salves was not far from us. Only the healer stood between. I considered stealing the supplies from the shelf, running past him to stuff them in my pack.
Instead, we left, Saalim leaning heavily on Amir. Nassar was gone.
“He went to ask about Kassim and Edala,” Tamam said.
“Good,” Saalim grunted.
One of the guides led us through the tents until we came into a large clearing with an enormous fire burning at its center. Beyond it were several large tents—their entrances tied open with thick rope.
Nassar emerged from one and approached us. Three woman flapped their arms behind him, rushing toward us in a hurry, eager to host.
“He’s heard nothing,” Nassar said. “But he said we may stay here as long as we need to, until you are healed.”
Saalim chuffed a laugh. “I’ll die here, then,” he said as, with the help of Amir, he followed the clucking women.
Confused, Nassar glanced at me as I followed them into an unoccupied tent.
“Tell Pedu he shows more hospitality than his healer,” Saalim said as he was eased onto a chair. There was a raised mat lying in the center, and the way the women were ushering Saalim to it, I suspected that this was a space for him.
“I’ll tell him,” I said, desperate and angry. My fists were still clenched from the healer’s unwillingness to help.
“No, Emel,” Nassar said. “It would not be well-received.” Nassar shooed the women away who were telling him about the bed for Saalim. “Yes, I see it, thank you.” With his attention returned to me, he said, “Stay here.”
Nassar was right. It would do us no good for me to cause trouble when they offered us a safe place to sleep. Nassar asked me to stay with the king, so I did.
I went to the chair beside Saalim. He watched me as I moved, his face still clouded with fever. Water was sent for and brought to him quickly. A bath was prepared—slowly, with two trips to the oasis and two completely filled barrels. Saalim was given privacy to soak, and when I made to leave he stopped me.
“If you go, I will have no company.” He sounded unexpectedly sad.
As if the emotion were strings, I followed their tug. Closing the tent to the people outside, ignoring the way Tamam watched me with questioning eyes, I asked, “Do you need help stepping in?”
Small grunts and groans. Then, “Yes.”
I went to him, taking his forearm in my hands as he removed his clothes slowly, carefully.
Saalim naked, stepping into a bath. Me at his side. It was more than I had dreamed, yet it was my nightmare. He winced as his wound was submerged.
“You will not die from this,” I said tightly, infusing my words with urgent anger. He was giving up, caring less.
“Do you know, I keep thinking of mountains. Higher than any I’ve ever seen in my life. And there is ice—frozen water. I’ve never seen it before, you know. But I can see it when I close my eyes. I can feel it. And I’m taking it into my hands. It is like powder, see, and I am pressing it on my leg, on my neck. It is so cold.” His words came out in slow, tired breaths.
I stilled, listening to him. “That sounds impossible,” I said tightly, drawing the chair to sit beside him. He could not know that he had visited a mountain before. At least, when he was a jinni he had told me such stories. There was that imperfect magic, its tattered shroud.
“Here,” Saalim said, resting his elbow on the edge of the basin so that his hand was stretched out toward me. “Fewer eyes.”
I took his hand and pressed it to my lips. Leaning my cheek into his palm. His fingers twitched, caressing my face. I closed my eyes against the tears.
He would not die. He would not die. He would not die. Not when I was this close. Not when we were this close.
Water sloshed up the sides of the basin.
“Will you tell me now?” he asked as he reclined further into the bath. His head was against the basin’s edge, his face turned toward me.
“Tell you?”
“About us.”
I hesitated. What would it do to someone to learn of a past they remembered nothing of? I remembered hearing about the mad woman who lived in my village. She knew nothing about the world we lived in, always living twenty years prior. The children loved to tease her when she asked after her husband. “He’s dead!” they’d shriek, and she would mourn him anew.
“When my day was hard, or I needed to be distracted,” I began. “I had a friend who would tell me the most amazing stories.”
Saalim opened his mouth as if to protest, but the energy was not there, and he closed it.
“My favorite was the one about the jinni and the ahira.” If anyone listened through these cloth walls they would only hear a story. They would not understand it was an impossible truth.
“An ahira, eh?” Then he frowned. “And a jinni.”
“This jinni is good,” I whispered, running my lips across his fingers. Slowly, careful that I said everything just right, I told Saalim the story of us.
“Where did he go?” he asked after I told him of the ahira’s wish that split them.
“Home,” I said as I helped him stand from the bath. Carefully, we moved to his bed. When he finally lay down, his breath came in heavy, fast gasps.
After his breathing slowed, he asked, “And then what happens?” His brow furrowed when I shrugged. “I do not like that it ends there.”
“Neither do I.”
“That story has far too much romance. Not enough battles or swordfights. What did this jinni do all of the time? Swoon over this ahira?”
Unable to stop myself, I grinned. “He did.”
“You must finish the story. How does it end?”
“Happily,” I promised.
And when he closed his eyes, I cried.
“We need to return to Almulihi,” Nassar said at dawn.
“Almulihi?” Amir asked. “And take Saalim where? To Altasa? We’ve already discussed this. Her supplies have burned. We have Emel.”
I balked. “Oh, no—”
“The bazaar will have what he needs! There are other healers,” Nassar said, angry now. He spoke loudly, and I turned, expecting Saalim to awake at the commotion. The knot in my chest tightened. He was still asleep. When we’d first taken the journey to Madinat Almulihi, it had seemed he never slept. Always awake, always preparing.
“There are other settlements we can travel to,” Amir said. “Ones that are closer, that perhaps are more easily bought.”
“It will take us further from Almulihi. We can’t take that risk.”
“There is a settlement a night’s journey southwest of here. Almulihi is ten—probably thirteen with our current pace—nights away. We don’t have that kind of time.” Amir looked at me then.
I knew he was right. “We don’t.”
At dusk, Tamam and Amir helped Saalim onto his camel. Saalim swore he would be fine, that he was strong enough, but his glazed eyes and shaking hands belied his words. Nassar looked as wary as I felt.
Though I was tired, sleep did not threaten me as I thought it would, worried as I was for Saalim. He attempted stoicism, but I saw the slump in his shoulders, the way the camel’s sway sent his body rocking.
When the moon was high, he lurched to the side and fell to the ground.
“Saalim!” I cried, leaping from my camel.
Tamam was already there, kneeling beside Saalim.
“Are you hurt?” I asked, skidding to the ground beside him. His cheek was hot under my hand.
I spun around, looking desperately—foolishly—for anything around us that could help him. Sons, why did this have to happen here? The helplessness was suffocating. I could barely think.
“It is fine,” Saalim said with thready breaths. “Just tired. Fell . . . asleep.”
“We will rest,” Tamam said.
Amir was beside us now, Nassar behind him with camels’ reins in his hands. He looked out at the night with a stony gaze.
“We can’t stay!” Amir said, pulling his map from his pack and pointing to it violently. “We still have half a night’s journey to the next settlement. We can’t wait until sun-up to resume. It will be too hot. He will . . .” His voice trailed off as he stared at the map beneath the moonlight, his eyes darting around it as though he was trying to grasp at any alternative. When I looked back to Saalim, his eyes were closed, his breathing rapid.
No, no, no. I couldn’t bear it. I could not stay here and watch Saalim sputter and die like a lamp out of oil. I walked away from them, from the camels. I went straight into the night, remembering what felt like so long ago when I was at the Haf Shata, feeling trapped as my father’s ahira. How I stared at the desert, wishing to run into it. Desperate to be free from the cage of my father’s palace.
Now I was more trapped than before. I rubbed the heels of my hands into my eyes, digging through memories for a solution. Trying to remember recipes in Altasa’s book, anything that might help us. Was it too late to return to the settlement we had left? I could find the ingredients I needed in the marketplace or steal them from the healer.
My hands swung down at my sides, and I stared at the horizon, the sun just rising above.
Sons, was it dawn already? It couldn’t be. The moon was still high overhead—still bright. I looked back to the horizon, to the sun.
No, it wasn’t the sun.
It was a flame.
“A traveler!” I hissed as I approached the men. They looked where I pointed. “I will go and meet him.”
“No!” Tamam said, his urgency taking me by surprise. “You will stay. We will all stay.”
I pressed my hands to my hips. “He might have something that can help us. Maybe there is a closer place with a healer. Maybe Amir’s map is wrong.” Amir scowled at the suggestion but said nothing.
“Tamam is right,” Nassar said, shaking his head. “A traveler who walks with a flame wants to be seen. Wants to be approached. No one with sense would waste oil like that.”
“Where there is no sense, there is motive,” Tamam said.
We had little to lose. Without waiting for them to protest, I strode away.
The risk of what I was doing caught up with me once I was near the traveler. My steps grew smaller, and I looked back from where I had come. I could not see the men anywhere. My breath caught, my chest pulled tight. Of course. It was too dark. Why did I think I could approach this person and return without issue? Shouting would not help. Voices carried across the desert even more poorly than sea-born people travelled across it. My heart slammed against my chest as I peered through the dark.
The traveler was close to me now. Squinting, I saw it was a woman—unremarkable in every way except that she was holding the lamp low to the ground, examining the sand as though looking for something.
I pressed my shaking hands to my brow, closing my eyes and mustering the courage to approach her. When I opened my eyes, the woman was standing within arm’s reach of me, staring at me with question.
“Sons!” I screamed, my hands pressed against my chest.
The woman was on the precipice of age. She was older than me, but not yet so old that she belonged best in a settlement.
“You sneak up on me; I sneak up on you,” she said, voice smooth as oil. Then she looked down. “No scorpions here, eh?”
“I—no,” I confirmed after peering at the ground.
She dropped the lantern from our faces and waved it over the sand above us. “They hide well.”
“Do you live here?” I asked, growing hopeful.
“Here? Yes.” She did not look up at me, but I heard amusement bending her words.
“Nearby?” I hoped.
“Right there.” She pointed over her shoulder, my gaze following as if tied to her finger.
I faltered. There was a home—lit like her lantern—sitting not far from us. How had I not seen it before? I rubbed my eyes, trying to make sense of it. When I looked back to the woman, she was gone.
I turned, and let out a relieved sigh when I saw that she had just moved on, searching for more scorpions.
“My friend needs help,” I said. I could not lose her. Glancing back to the home, I was reassured to see it was still there.
“Help? From me?”
“My friend. He is sick, dy—dying.” I closed my mouth tightly, stopping the sadness from leaving me.
“You need no help from me, then. Masira will take him here.”
“No,” I begged. “I need to save him.”
“A lover, eh? You’ll find more.”
“He is a king,” I whispered. If I saw the men again, they would not be pleased that I told this to a stranger. “Of Madinat Almulihi.”
The woman smiled now. “Well, why didn’t you say? I would love to see this king of Madinat Almulihi. Take me to him.”
“I, ah . . . I am not sure where they are. I ran here so quickly.”
Her eyes were like a lash as she whipped toward me. “You ran on foot to a traveler by yourself, without means of return?”
“If he dies, then I would face troubles far greater than that. I have nothing left I can lose.”
“Lucky for you, I am not so foolish. And your men are loud.”
As if she followed a path made from my footsteps—and perhaps she was, though I saw nothing—we found them.
“Who is this?” Nassar said with biting anger.
The woman ignored him. Her stare lingered on Tamam for just a moment before she set the lamp beside Saalim and kneeled.
I watched her face, but aside from a quick pinch of her brow, she gave nothing away.
“Fever?” she asked.
“Yes, from a wound.”
“We will take him back to my home.” She looked at the three men. “You can come, but you must stay outside.”
“We are not goats,” Nassar said.
“But you smell like them, eh?” she said, rising. She did not tear her gaze from Saalim until she turned toward her home. “It is just there. Come with me.”
Despite Saalim and the camels slowing us, the walk to her home felt quick.
The woman was already inside when we arrived. “Come in today, tomorrow, whenever you are ready. I will wait.”
Wait, indeed. We all stared at the home. An enormous skull—bigger than the tents back home—jutted from the sand. Tusks longer than the canal boats in Madinat Almulihi dipped under the sand before emerging again. Rope was strung across them, clothes hanging from the line. Lanterns were hung from the tips of the tusks. Atop the skull was a large piece of oiled camel fur. The skull was the most inexplicable home I had ever seen.
“What . . . ?” Amir whispered. I heard Nassar grunt in echo of his question. Tamam was silent.
I stepped forward, walking under the upper jaw to enter. “Where is the king?” the woman called when I came in alone. Her back was to me, allowing me the opportunity to stare at the bizarre room.
There was almost nothing in the space. A single mat lay on the ground beside the lantern the woman had been carrying.
There were no food stores, no shelves with pitchers or goatskins of water. There was not even a puzzle board or game with dice. We must have been closer to a settlement than Amir realized; otherwise, what did she do with her days? Sleep? And hunt for scorpions?
As I stared at the austerity, it occurred to me that in the bleakness of the room, there was no medicine. Nothing that would help Saalim. I was unsure how to voice my concern.
She did not give me the chance, “Do you want help, or have you changed your mind? Bring in the king.”
Slowly, Amir helped Saalim inside.
“Out,” the woman said to Amir as soon as Saalim was lying on the mat. Amir glowered at her, then glanced to me. I nodded. It would be okay. I hoped.
“May I see your wound?” she asked Saalim. Her voice was quiet, gentle. Like a mother’s. Suddenly I, too, was calm.
Saalim nodded. Had he even heard her question? Did he even know that it was a stranger who spoke to him? I sat beside him, taking his hand. The woman glanced at us as she removed the bandage, but she said nothing.
“I can heal this,” she said as she stared at the wound—thick, milky fluid, sticky along its edges.
“You can?” I rocked forward on my knees. My heart was thunderous, although now not from fear, but from joy, hope. “How?” I looked around. Beside the woman was a thin book, not unlike Altasa’s recipe book for tonics. Did this woman keep the same? “Where are your ingredients?”
“Ingredients? For what?” She laughed, her smile spreading across her face, revealing strong rows of teeth.
Saalim stirred at the sound and I leaned into his ear. “She said she will help you. I promised, eh?”
“You love this man?” the woman asked. Her voice was low, as though she did not want the men outside to hear.
Hesitating only a moment and sparing a furtive glance to Saalim to confirm he was without awareness, I said just as quietly, “He is the reason for my life.” His knuckles were coarse against my lips. I counted them: one, two, three, four. Little dunes making up my world.
“I see,” she said. She softly pressed her hands on his thigh beside his wound. “Can you lend me your cloak?” she asked after a pause.
Unthinking, I pulled it off and handed it to her. She took the cloak and watched me as I straightened the tunic over my shoulders.
Just then, Saalim’s voice broke the strained silence. “Have you seen . . .” He exhaled, his eyes closing again. “Brother, sister. Emel?”
“We are searching for two people,” I said, and told her of Edala and Kassim. “The man travels with someone we can’t well describe. It is a woman, younger I think than you.”
The woman nodded slowly, then stood and went to the edge of the room where she had a leather sack I had not noticed before. Feeling around inside the bag, she pulled from it a jar of salve and carried it back.
“This is saha. It will help,” she said. Taking a goatskin from beneath her dusty cloak, she unstopped it and poured water over his wound. When she had determined it to be clean enough, she lathered the salve over it. Saalim winced, but when the salve was placed, he visibly calmed. I could have sworn that even his face looked cooler. She took my cloak and draped it over Saalim. I pulled at the edges, helping to ensure it covered him.
“I can dress the wound,” I said.
“No. It has been trapped too long. It needs air.” The woman stared at Saalim’s face, something inexplicable in her gaze. As if she sensed my wondering, she whispered, “A king.”
She stood.
“There is a settlement nearby. I will go tonight and see what they know of these people.”
“Oh no—” I began, but she was already tightening her cloak and walking outside. Her face was taut, holding back some emotion I could not decipher.
“Don’t you dare enter!” I heard her warn to the men outside. “I will be back and will know if you’ve been inside. He needs rest and care. Emel can help with the second bit. Doesn’t need ninnies like you fussing over him.”
Saalim’s lip twitched, but he did not open his eyes.
“Emel?” Amir was at the entrance, the fabric closed in front of him.
“I am fine,” I said. “He looks . . . better already.” I tried not to let my hopes soar too freely. Tried not to stare at his face and see the dampness disappear, or the strain ease.
“She just walked off.” Nassar was not talking to me now, but I could hear the surprise in his voice all the same. He mumbled something about salt chasers, but it was not without respect.
“I am not convinced we can trust her.” It was Amir.
“What choice do we have?” Tamam said.
Indeed, what choice did we have? Saalim’s breathing was hushed, gentler, quieter. He rested easily now.
Seated beside him, I pulled my knees into my chest, watching him heal before my eyes. Relief was settling on me like a blanket in a cool night. It took away the fear, the anxiety, the desperate, aching sadness. But as it washed it away, I felt there was still something that lingered. Something nagging. What was it?
I sorted through my memories, the things that had happened and were happening. The woman, her home, the strangeness of it all.
Then, I found it.
Emel.
She had known my name. Just like Saalim once did.
I know I had not told her my name.