Ashes and Light

by Karen L. McKee

  When he returned to the alcove, he carried as much fuel as he could find and started a small fire on the old fire pit. Its heat reflected back at them from the rock wall. In that hint of warmth he stripped off his shirt, pulled his damp vest back on, and went to Khadija.

  “We have to get these wet things off you.”

  Her hands clutched the shawls around her. They were damp from her coat, but they were the driest things they had. He gently loosened her fingers and pulled the shawls away, laying them by the fire to heat, then began to unbutton her coat.

  At first she fought him, a terrified look in her eyes.

  “It’s all right. It’s all right. Khadija, Allah saved us from the river. Now he gives us warmth to live.” He explained it to her as she was a fearful child.

  Finally her hands collapsed to her sides and a look of resignation came over her face. His half-frozen fingers shook as they worked the buttons and pulled the coat off her shoulders. He laid it beside the fire, but knew it would be a long time before the thick wool would dry.

  She shivered like a reed in wind, her hair, scarfless, tangled in damp threads around her shoulders. Her salwar kameez was plastered to her pale skin.

  “You need to get out of those wet things,” he said softly. He held up one of the petu, now warm from the fire. “You can wrap yourself in this while your clothes dry.”

  There was defeat he didn’t understand in every line of her body. He supposed it was because she was back with him, when she had tried to escape.

  He knelt beside her. “Here. I’ll hold this up. You remove your wet clothes and wrap yourself in this. On my honor, I’ll do nothing.”

  She did as she was bid, then huddled by the fire. He brought her chador to her and covered her with it up to her chin. He settled the other petu around his shoulders and watched the way her chin nodded towards her chest even as the shudders took her. The fire wasn’t enough. He barely felt it himself.

  “Sit close to me. I’m warmer than you are.”

  She didn’t move, so he draped his petu around her shoulders, then sat, bare-chested. When the cold was too much, he pulled her to him, felt her resistance, but would not be denied.

  “Let me have one of the shawls.” Her eyes were dull as she obeyed. Her hair fell around her face, her almost limp body, as he pulled her against him and draped the single petu around them both.

  She was soft against him. Her hair, as it dried, lifted and tickled his nose. Somehow it still smelled of herbs and wildflowers. Gradually her fatigue conquered her and she relaxed against him. His arms came up around her, brushing the petu-covered swell of her breast.

  Michael leaned back against stone, settling Khadija against him. All it would take was a flick of his fingers to have the weight of her breasts in his palms, her body against his. It felt right to be like this. And his body knew what it would do next.

  He pulled her petu closer around her chin and considered.

  Something was not right, just as something had not been right at Hashemi’s camp. To leap into the river had been downright foolhardy for her, even if this was one of the strongest women he had ever met. But the fact that no one had seemed to give chase was the real concern.

  It was likely Hashemi had sent her. The question, then, was what did Khadija Siddiqui want?

  #

  He woke to full daylight—noon at least—and the scent of fire. His arms registered that Khadija was gone.

  His eyes flickered open. Not gone. She knelt beside the fire pit, grey petu still around her shoulders as she nursed the small fire into smokeless flame. Her long fingers gently nudged bit of tinder into position, sticks and bits of grass to best catch the flame.

  She was so precise in her movements, precise and yet filled with unknowing grace as she pushed a heavy lock of hair back behind a delicate ear. He would like…. He swallowed, feeling like a voyeur as she checked her salwar kameez top and his and the jalabiyya. She frowned at the coat. It obviously was still sodden.

  But she pulled her top to her and in a quick motion had shrugged the petu from her shoulders, sitting half naked in the strand of sunlight that found their haven.

  Her skin was pale as milk, smooth as calm water, and her long hair fell to a slim waist and beyond to the swell of her hips hidden in the bottoms of her salwar kameez. There were songs and psalms to be sung to her beauty, and she did not even realize it. He would tell her so. Sing the songs.

  She was braless as she warmed herself by the fire, the shift of her torso allowed him a sweet glimpse of the fullness of her breast. Then she stretched her arms up over her head, arching her back. Muscles worked under that smooth skin. Her spine bent with the grace of a willow.

  He shouldn’t be watching. This was a private thing.

  He closed his eyes and cleared his throat and heard the swift flurry of cloth before opening his eyes for the second time.

  She looked at him as she smoothed her salwar kameez over her hips. By the look of her she’d managed to replace her bra as well. A strange look was in her eyes—resolve and something he couldn’t identify—pain, perhaps. Or panic.

  Then she was on her knees in front of him, and her lips were on his.

  Chapter 31

  Khadija sensed his initial surprise in the way his arms came up, the way his hands plucked at her shoulders, then relaxed to slide slowly, inexorably, down her back.

  Oh, Allah, what she did.

  His lips, hard on hers, became harder and insistent as his arms tightened and he half-lifted her onto his lap as if he would own her. As if he would do all the things she remembered. Warmth and wanting surged into her, and she hated her weakness. Hated that she did this for Hashemi.

  She pulled back, her head full of his scent. Perhaps…perhaps it would require no more than this kiss and he would tell her everything. She rested her head against his chest, her own heart pounding in hate of what she did—just as she had hated him this morning when she woke warm in his arms and had fled for fear of what she was. Her choices and her feelings named her whore—not Hashemi.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “I was a fool to run. Hashemi—he’s an evil man.”

  His arms pulled her closer, and his lips graced her cheek, her neck. She stopped herself from stiffening.

  “Why did you, then?”

  His voice was soft and yet it rumbled with a power deep inside him, as if it came from the earth. She replaced her ear on his chest and heard the long slow beat of his heart. This man was more alive than she could ever be.

  “I—was afraid. I wanted my father.”

  Best to stay as close to the truth as possible. She felt his chin on her head as he nodded. His lips on her hair. His hand ran up and down her spine like a parent comforting a child, a man gentling a timid beast. She relaxed into the warm safety his arms offered and hated herself.

  “And yet you left him.”

  Not so safe, then. There was a cold question underneath his statement. If she was afraid of him, why had she come back? She remembered Hashemi’s words. The question was whether she could she say them convincingly.

  She pressed against him, feeling the way Michael Bellis’s body responded, the answering heat that flooded her. She was a whore. Hashemi’s whore, and she wanted to weep.

  “They were going to kill me for helping you escape. I realized I was wrong to help men like them. I wished I’d stayed with you.” Closer to the truth than she wished to admit.

  Michael’s fingers dug into her shoulders and he held her from him. He looked into her eyes and she found herself bound by the naked wanting in his gaze. She looked away lest triumph show on her face. Instead she raised her fingers to his lips, his cheek, and felt him tremble, lean into her touch.

  He was hers. He would tell her what she needed to know.

  Then he shoved her aside.

  She tumbled to the ground. In one swift movement he stood, bare-chested save for his vest, looking southward and running his fingers through his wild hair. When he turned back to
her, his gaze was hard.

  “Either you’re one hell of a liar, or I’m a fool.”

  She looked up at him, aware that her still-damp salwar kameez clung to her body, that her hair hung loose like a whore’s.

  His guarded look brought a pain to her chest. Worse than the aching need she’d seen every other time she’d met his gaze, this was the look of an honorable man who was used to betrayal—who saw it in her.

  What would she have to do to learn what she must? She climbed to her feet. “Trust me or not. I’m here for you. Take me back to my father as you promised. I won’t try to run again.”

  She turned back to the fire, making herself busy spreading the front of her jalabiyya to dry it.

  “You should bring the kettle. We can have tea.”

  She heard Michael retreat and sagged against the stone. That had been the hardest thing she had ever done. She felt sick at her actions, worse because his arms, his warmth and caring, had meant more than James Hartness ever had. That said nothing good about her, for she used this man’s caring just as Hashemi had said she must. Just as Hashemi used her. Honor was only a tool to be used.

  It didn’t fit the Quran’s exhortations that all good Muslims must work for good. She knew her actions would lead to this man’s death. She covered her face with her hands until Michael brought the kettle. Then he stood above her as she made tea, smoking something he had pulled from the roll behind his saddle.

  Hashish. The smoke coiled away from his face, but his gaze was far away. After the tea, she spread her coat in the sunshine, knowing the dry wind and the sun would steal the last of the river water away. It would allow them to move on tonight.

  When she was done, she looked for Michael. He had urged her to sleep, while he worked around the horse. She watched him check the animal’s hooves and frown. When he was done, he settled on his heels beside her.

  “He’s got hooves like concrete, but one is still splitting from the rocky ground. We’re going to have to take it easy for a few days.”

  She waited. She’d been around him enough to know when there was something else he would say. Finally he shook his head.

  “Khadija, I’ve been a fool keeping you with me. At first I couldn’t have my route exposed. But Hashemi knows where I am and he knows I’ve got to be heading for the Anjoman Pass—that’s the only way I could be going. That’s not the kind of place you take a woman. We’ve passed Ferghamu, but the lapis mines at Sar-el-Sang, the Blue Mountain, can’t be far. There’s a small town where traders stay. I’ll leave you there. You can get a ride back to Feyzabad and your father.”

  He stood up.

  The wind seemed to roar in her ears. It was all she had wanted and she could not accept it. “Thank you, Michael. Inshallah, I will see my father soon.”

  “Inshallah, we will see.”

  She waited, unable to sleep, as sunset threaded blood across the sky. Michael dozed against the far wall of the alcove, his dark lashes masking the pale eyes that were a window on his soul. He slept like a soldier, catching it where ever he could.

  She was only a worthless tool to be used and discarded—just as Hashemi planned to discard Michael Bellis.

  And that was not the Afghan way. The Afghan way was to take the discards of others and make something of use from them. In the ancient past they had taken the ruins of empires and made Afghanistan. These days old Russian tanks had become fence lines near Kaabul. Pieces of Russian engines had become well pumps. She had even heard that explosives from old bombs were used to mine the emeralds and rubies of the Panjshir Valley.

  That was the Afghan way. It seemed more Michael Bellis’s way as well. He could have cast her off. He could have left her bleeding. He could have left her with Hashemi or in the river where she would have died.

  Perhaps what she saw in Michael’s eyes was only pity. She could have read him wrongly. Or perhaps it was only animal lust, but that would make it easier to do her duty to Islam. Get the information Hashemi needed. Protect her father. For herself.

  Praise be to Allah, Lord of Worlds.

  She completed her prayer and asked for strength.

  After sundown they rode in total darkness, the quarter moon hidden behind clouds, the bleak landscape gone. She rested against Michael, too aware of his arms—of their strength and of all the things she needed to know. She had to begin.

  “When I was small, my brother and I used to play in the park along the Kaabul River. I still remember it: there was water in the river then and my father and mother would walk with us and laugh as I chased my brother around. He was always so much faster than me, it was easy for him to outrun me, and yet he let me catch him. I didn’t realize he let me until I was much older.” She shook her head. “I think I may have wanted to become a doctor because of Yaqub, even more than my father. I was still chasing my brother. He left for medical school when I was only fifteen and I missed him so much.”

  She stopped speaking and a void seemed to wait to be filled.

  Allah Infinitely Good, the All-Merciful,

  Thee I worship, and in Thee I seek help.

  There was a difference in him—a stiffness in the way he sat. Would he answer? Would he speak at all? Instead he sighed.

  “Your brother was a good man. You must miss him. I do.”

  “You knew Yaqub well?”

  “Of course. As I know your father. We were—friends.”

  Friends. The word hung in the night, like the unfinished end to the sentence. Friends and yet your kind killed him. Friends and your kind betrayed him, just as my father does by not avenging his death. Anger blossomed in her chest and she forced herself to stay still, to be a silent cat listening for prey.

  Allah, Owner of the Day of Judgment

  “You started to tell me of yourself the other day. What is there to tell?”

  “What indeed?” She could tell by his tone that the taunting smile was on his face. She stiffened and felt a slight rumble in his chest.

  He laughed at her again. Was she that bad a spy that he could see through her words to her motivation?

  Show me your straight path,

  not the path of those who earn your wrath

  nor those who go astray.

  “Why were you in Feyzabad?” she asked.

  “I wasn’t—by choice. Hashemi and the others brought me.”

  “From where?”

  Silence behind her, then: “Khadija, why this sudden interest in me? You’ve not asked one thing since we’ve traveled together.”

  She heard weariness in his voice.

  “I know you better now. You rescued me.” She half turned and looked back at him, trying to compose a wicked grin. “We slept together, didn’t we? Surely that counts for something?”

  Her stomach curdled at her brazen words.

  Silence again. Perhaps it was his silences that evoked such loyalty in her father and such hate in Hashemi.

  “You know how I live, Khadija—or at least you suspect it. Why else would you ask these questions? Yes, I’m a spy and no, I can’t tell you more than that. That knowledge alone is enough to get us both killed.”

  His sharp, bitter words closed a door, and his arms were no longer warm around her. Instead they were a prison. He urged the gelding into a trot and farther into the maze of hills, following Michael’s reading of the stars. When the animal slowed at the next hill, she tried again.

  “Does my father know?”

  “Your father knows many things. He taught me poetry and Islam. But he should be left out of any discussion of my life.”

  She opened her mouth to ask another question.

  “I mean it, Khadija. My life leaves a man hollow and incapable of caring. There’s only duty. My duty says I’ll say nothing of anyone I know. Names are lives, and I’ve seen too much death to trade a name so easily, Alhamaduli’Llāh—Praise be to God.”

  “But you said Yaqub was your friend. Friends care for each other.”

  His whole body stiffened so the horse seeme
d to jar him in the saddle. The wind rose around them, until finally he said: “Yaqub’s dead. You know nothing.”

  But his protest told her more than she wanted to know about her father. She thought of the scene in the clinic, of her father swiftly mending a wounded Michael Bellis when the foreign army medical services were only blocks away, when any Kaabul hospital would have opened all its resources to serve the foreigner.

  But Michael Bellis had come to her father. She should have seen it then.

  “Stop. Stop the horse.”

  Michael obeyed and she threw her leg over the horse’s neck and slid to the ground, stumbled away and leaned against a stone. Her stomach heaved and she was sick.

  The retching brought her to her knees, and then Michael’s hands were on her, holding her chador and hair back from her face, rubbing her back, offering her water to cleanse her mouth when there was nothing left in her stomach to lose.

  He helped her to her feet and steadied her as she accepted a sip of water. She felt him so near to her, too near her heart. Whether he told her anything more, she already knew too much.

  Her father was more than a casual acquaintance to Michael Bellis. He was one of those enemies of Islam Hashemi sought. He was in league with the kofr who had killed her brother.

  Chapter 32

  Mohammed Siddiqui clutched the brown paper bundle on his lap as Ahmad Mali Khan shook his hand through the Jeep’s side window. Through the pinprick of light he could just see the brown walls of Ahmad’s courtyard. Beyond the walls would be the brown buildings of Feyzabad and beyond the town were the brown mountains and valleys. Everything colorless brown.

  “Safe journey, old friend. I wish for you joy and safe meetings as you return home, Inshallah,” Ahmad said.

  An empty wish with Khadija gone, but he knew it was meant in good faith.

  Mohammed sighed. “I will see Hamidah meets with her family to be, and that Zahra is enrolled in school. They will be waiting in my home for you.”