Dreams of the Compass Rose

by Vera Nazarian

  “Then do it,” she said fiercely, a pale shadow of her former commanding tone returning. Her empty eyes focused past him and through him, gazing upon an unseen distant horizon. And Nadir lowered his head before her, even though she could not see it, and he said softly as a whisper, “It shall be done.”

  * * *

  I glanced away from her eyes. Even then they were impossible to meet directly, roiling with darkness, so many layers of it. And yet for the first time I saw a difference in the overall lines of her face; a kind of new calm had settled upon her. Not peace, surely, for that was the one thing she would never have. But it was a stillness of some kind.

  The one whom I knew as Egiras, my Princess, tormentor, sovereign, burden, was suddenly one other thing—a delicate being of agony. For the first time it had come to the surface, and I knew now that she was not perfectly invulnerable, but rather had been perfectly contained. Egiras had been contained in an impenetrable shimmering veil of Illusion. And pity came to stab me, to overwhelm, in that instant. I had always known it to be so, had always known she was one to be pitied, despite all, but it had never been sincere or real to me before, always on the bitter edge of hatred.

  Until now.

  And thus I did as she asked. I arranged to sell her city House and the dross bulk of her extravagant belongings, and hired an experienced caravan leader and trustworthy guards to take us far into the desert—all paid for by the revenues from that sale. I also re-hired the most loyal of the servants to accompany us on this long journey into the unknown lands. Egiras would need her handmaidens to care for her person, especially now that she could not fend for herself. And the ones who would come on this journey had to do so without any qualms or fear for their lives.

  For only the gods really knew where we were going.

  * * *

  “Yaro, Yaro, child of dust . . .” muttered the old woman, thinner and blacker than a dried-out twig, nearly blind, and draped in rags the color of the earth upon which she lay. “Where are you?”

  “Here, mother,” said a younger version of the old woman, equally dark and thin, and only a little less nearsighted, but with a straight back. She stood leaning against the outer city wall of stone, veiled in a poor shawl against the open wind of the desert. The wind came to strike them both as it broke itself in fury against the city walls and the sparse earthen embankment that arose at the foot of the walls, the layer of soil that had been brought here from afar and deposited in a fine sediment to form the foundation of the city. Sand slowly encroached upon the earth, dunes rising like stilled waves of a petrified ocean. Whiteness mingled with sienna and deep umber.

  “Do not go far . . .” said the old woman.

  “I am not going anywhere. I only stand here so that I can see the road better, and the caravans that pass here. One of them will be ours.”

  “What caravan would take an old serving woman and her willful daughter who betrayed her mistress?”

  “I betrayed no one . . .” bristled Yaro momentarily, her voice initially strong like an angry swell of surf and then again receding into dissolved humility. “And, yes, a caravan will take us, because it must. Because the sum of the whole world is justice, and it is at our disposal—at everyone’s disposal—as long as we remember that we must give back what we take.”

  “What?” said her mother, “What kind of mad arrogant words do you speak, child of dust?

  Stop provoking the gods with your unending ramblings. It is not for the likes of us to use the things of the world, or to have opportunities come to us. We will die here in the sand, very soon. Or at least, I will die first, as I drink the last of our poor water, and then you will follow me, in the bright sun-whiteness that is desert death. . . .”

  “Hush, stupid old woman! Take this instead and drink before you indeed go up in sunflames. Look how burned and black you are!”

  And saying that, Yaro squatted down at her mother’s side and dug around in their one sack of possessions. Eventually she pulled out the old wooden bowl that she’d used to feed the old woman soup but which now held only water, for they had had nothing to eat for several days. She rummaged around some more and took out a water-flask, which she uncorked with difficulty, and poured a small amount into the very bottom of the bowl. Yaro propped up her mother’s head and tilted the bowl at her lips while the old one drank weakly, her turtle throat making swallowing movements. The old woman’s shawl had come off her head, revealing white, tightly coiled hair close to her scalp, in sharp contrast to her midnight parchment skin.

  When she was done, Yaro hid the bowl and the flask away again in the dim recesses of their bag, and used the corner of the old woman’s shawl to wipe the glitter of sweat from her mother’s forehead. Then she ran the cloth gently against the soft flattened nose and sunken hollow cheeks while the old woman sighed and closed her eyes under the touch.

  The morning sun started its ascent towards the zenith.

  And at the same time a caravan embarked from the city gates, with the soft clamor of pack beasts and the sounds of footfalls against the road near the embankment. Soon those too would fade as the road transformed into an ocean of silent sand. . . .

  Yaro immediately sprang upright and placed her palm over her brows to shade her eyes from the wicked sun. She peered, squinting her eyes narrowly, putting all her intensity into the gaze, willing her blurred vision to focus the chaos of colored light and shadow and movement that was the world into distinct recognizable forms—which for a moment it did, granting her a brief scene.

  There were pack-beasts cruelly loaded and fine horses bearing guards, stout wagons with wide-tracked desert wheels, and several covered sedans suspended from tall swaying camels. An altogether familiar sight: one more caravan exactly like a dozen she had already observed over the past days.

  And yet unlike. For in that moment of intense squinting truth she recognized a large human shape atop one of the horses. She recognized him with her nearly blind eyes from a distance of several hundred feet.

  She knew him merely by his manner of being. Not by the outline of his form or his bearing, but rather as one senses the position of all things in a single moment of homing—the distant horizon and the earth underneath and the sky above. She recognized him by his placement and direction relative to herself.

  And, knowing who he was and whom he accompanied always, Yaro drew in her breath while a coldness came to slither into her, despite the heat of the climbing sun. It brought cold, such cold, the act of knowing that salvation and destruction lay in the exact same place.

  “Our caravan is before us, mother,” said Yaro. Then she added, “Wait here, while I go to them and beg to take our former place. For it is the caravan of my former mistress the Princess Egiras, and with her is the Lord Nadir. One of them will condemn me and the other will insist upon mercy.”

  I trust mercy to prevail, Yaro thought.

  But the cold continued. For, in order to be subjected to mercy, Yaro was about to destroy the last shreds of her pride.

  * * *

  As I moved forward to ride alongside the outer perimeter of the caravan—for we had just left the confines of the great city—with the white sands stretching in all directions immediately before us, I saw a human speck approaching from a distance.

  Unbelievably, I knew who it was.

  It came to me with a stab, the familiar frail slope of her shoulders, the thin hands hidden under layers of poor cotton, and paradoxically the quick energetic movements of power, the way she carried her shawl-covered head half-lowered and yet somehow defiant. Her skin, the same date-brown deep color as mine, or the color of the earth itself deep underneath the sands—

  umber, cool and dark and rich with unexpected moisture. . . .

  A woman of my own race.

  Yaro, the one who had brought the moon-mask to Egiras, just before the madness took over and made that festival night the Night of a Thousand Moons.

  I watched her approach, walking with determination toward us, towa
rd me, it seemed, then starting to run, leaving the solid earth of the embankment and stumbling over the resilient sands.

  “My Lord Nadir!” she cried. “Please wait!”

  I slowed my horse, falling behind the leisurely rambling gait of the caravan pack beasts, and sat in my saddle. I glanced once toward the covered chair that carried the Princess, seeing the curtains closed tight, and sensing nothing but stillness within.

  Yaro had caught up to me by then, and she stopped before my mount. She was breathing quickly, and sweat was beading the black skin of her pinched face, her sunken cheekbones. Her shawl had slipped back to her shoulders, revealing the thick carpet of curls that protected her scalp from the deadly sun.

  Her eyes were without any light and fathomless.

  “Yaro . . .” I said. “What are you doing here?”

  “I beg your mercy, my Lord Nadir,” she said breathlessly, lowering herself to her knees.

  “My old mother and I have nowhere to go, and the blame is on me. . . . I know that the Princess has cast me forth from her side, and for a good reason. I have said things to her in proud thoughtless anger, disdainful impertinent things never to be uttered by a nothing like me. And yet I am here now, begging your kind mercy, not on my behalf but on behalf of my mother who suffers because of my willfulness. Her gradual fading into desert oblivion I cannot bear.”

  I stared down at her, watching the dark, tightly curling hair on the top of her head, the nape of her thin neck as she came to bow before me on the powdery sand. She was shaking.

  “When have you and your mother eaten last?” I asked, my voice withdrawn somehow, controlled. It sounded cold and unyielding to my own ears.

  She looked up at me—her eyes impenetrable because they were full of liquid, and were thus glittering in the sun—and said, “I no longer remember, my Lord. Several days ago. But we still have water. . . .”

  I thought of what the reaction of Egiras might be to this. I imagined fury and raving madness and an instant banishment. And then I thought maybe it would be none of that. For Egiras was no longer aware of the world around her, and it was very possible she would not even notice the return of this serving woman unless someone pointed it out to her. While I considered this, Yaro got up from her kneeling position and spoke again. “Please, my Lord,” she said, “I no longer have any thought of pride or justice or even of what this means I am doing. If you would like me to grovel, I will gladly do it. I will prostrate myself at your feet, and at the feet of the Princess Egiras, and exult in whatever agony of punishment she may bestow upon me. I will take all humiliation, pain, mockery as the most supreme gift of the gods, nay, a blessing—”

  “Enough,” I interrupted. “You are delirious with sun.”

  And then, seeing the intensity in her liquid eyes, I raised my right arm and in a loud voice called out for the drivers to halt the caravan.

  As the beasts and riders came to a noisy rolling stop before and behind us, I leaned forward from the saddle and stretched out my hand, large, powerful and leathered, to take her thin calloused one, encasing it completely.

  I pulled her upward and onto the saddle in front of me, feeling as if I were lifting up a bag of bones wrapped in black skin and tanned cotton. She made no sound, and she felt like wind in my hands, before me.

  “Where is your old mother?” I asked, speaking to the back of her head, just above her left ear, and smelling the desert. “Take me to her. She will have a place in the caravan. And as for you—you can be my very own servant, not the servant of Egiras. Thus the only one with the power to dismiss you, from now on, will be myself.”

  * * *

  In the whiteness of sands that is the desert, time distorts into ripples of a roving dune, and hours, days and weeks blend into one.

  The caravan bearing the Princess Egiras moved steadily and relentlessly toward the Eastern horizon. Egiras would say nothing, was a non-entity, seated in her sedan chair and wrapped from head to foot in billowing layers of pale fine cotton against the sun. In addition, the overhanging canopy cast her face into relative shadow, and the handmaidens who were carried at her side superstitiously glanced at their mistress often to ascertain that she was indeed there and not merely an empty veil filled like a sail with nothing but wind.

  More than once in their progression of days they stopped at a minor oasis. The pack-beasts would be unsaddled and given rest while a small tent was rigged up for the Princess herself. At these times, in her blindness, Egiras seemed to pay no heed to a skinny black servant woman who might otherwise have seemed very familiar but who kept her head diligently lowered as she scurried about carrying things and doing relentless chores.

  Yaro was unnoticed by all except Nadir.

  Always at the side of the Princess, he would glance at the woman servant briefly and then intentionally ignore her, as though he feared that merely by looking at her he would mark her somehow, make others take note of her presence, and thus make her more real. If she were not real, she would not be noticed.

  The old decrepit woman who was Yaro’s mother had been concealed in one of the small covered wagons carrying supplies. She lay surrounded by sacks of grain and provisions, and covered by heavy burlap cloth against the sun. Yaro would come to check on her several times amid the day’s chores, and when the caravan was on the move she would ride in the same wagon, sitting next to her mother and wiping her brow.

  Every sundown, as cool relief came to the air even though the sands radiated stored heat like coals, the caravan stopped. Camels were relieved of their burdens, and came down crouching to sleep, while the other pack beasts were tethered to stakes driven deep into the sand. The servants and the guards went about the business of the evening meal and the preparation for sleep. It was then, while most were preoccupied and the handmaidens cared for the breathing marionette Egiras, that Nadir observed how Yaro silently and dutifully came to unroll his own meager bedding for the night.

  The first time it happened, he was surprised, and stood up from his place in the vicinity of the cooking fire, where Egiras was being spoon-fed a warm stew that she barely managed to ingest past clenched lips.

  “What are you doing?” he asked, coming up from behind Yaro like a silent giant shadow. Yaro started in nervous alarm, but then, seeing with her nearsighted eyes, up close, that it was only he, she inclined her head in respect.

  “I am serving you, my Lord Nadir,” she replied. The light of the remote fire flickered with liquid intensity in her pitch-black eyes as she met his gaze. Then she looked down and continued to prepare his bedding, shaking out the roll in case some harmful insects or scorpions had crawled in. Her slender callused fingers moved deftly, and her hands were steady, despite their alarming thinness.

  “Thank you . . .” said Nadir.

  And then he did not know what else to say, and so he stood for several moments and watched her in peculiar silence before once again joining the group around the fire. The next evening it was the same. Only this time, after Yaro had tended to his belongings, she brought food and wine to him as he sat resting before the fire, just a few feet away from the Princess.

  “Where did you get this?” he said. “What is this?”

  Yaro placed the cheese and thick warm stew on a large piece of flatbread and placed it on a spread cloth at his feet. She took the jug of wine and poured a cup for him, to the brim.

  “This is from the pot, my Lord,” she replied smartly. “And the cheese is from that large round serving bag near the Mistress. The wine I took from her servants also, telling them that it was for my Lord Nadir, since I am his one and only servant, and that, if they did not give it immediately, they would be invoking your great displeasure.”

  Nadir’s brows lifted and he gave a soft laugh in the fire-lit dark. “I’ve never had such a servant as you before. . . .”

  “You’ve never had any servant,” Yaro said. “And it shows. My Lord needs to learn how to be a lord, for my Lord is too kind.”

  But Nadir continued
laughing, so that the others looked their way, never having seen him even smile before; this was surely unprecedented.

  “I have never needed a servant before,” he said at last, taking a chunk of flatbread and dipping it into the stew, “because I am not a lord. But I find it a good thing to be served thus kindly by you, Yaro.”

  “Harumph!” said Yaro sternly, and not another word more. She then gathered herself up, quickly moving her dark spindly limbs, and was gone, disappearing somewhere behind the Princess’s tent and the wagons.

  Nadir ate the meal in warm silence.

  More than seven days had passed, and there was no visible difference to the desert around them. Maybe it was simply that memory for such minute things is ephemeral, and all grains of sand look alike when they comprise one crumbling uniform ocean. The sun’s sterile essence rained down impassively upon the world and brought apathy to all those who had to suffer beneath it. The caravan steadily moved East in its journey.

  Their stores of food and water were adequate, and yet grumbling was heard among the guards. And the handmaidens of Egiras whispered in displeasure that there was not enough water for them to wash their hands and faces properly, and that the constant sand dust had come to fill their hair and eyelids, despite the coverings of many veils.

  Egiras sat propped up by a pillow in the suspended chair that carried her, her face swaddled and her nose and lips covered from the dusty wind. Only the cold liquid coals of her eyes were visible. She looked toward the East, and her gaze briefly rose, seeming to follow the movement of the celestial light overhead, before again fixing upon the horizon. The delicate twin folds of skin over her eyes narrowed them into slits when the wind blew directly at her, but at other times she would look onward with glassy, fully open eyes. Sometimes her lips moved without a sound.

  “What does Her Brightness see? Where does she strain at so intently? Her eyes are blind, yet why does she always look? ” gossiped the handmaidens nervously. They were young and the idleness of the trip made them more susceptible to various forms of indisposition and restlessness. And the strange lack of demands upon their company by their silent frozen mistress made things even more unbearable.