“Me too,” he replied. “Staying behind wouldn’t have been any fun.”
“You would’ve missed the view,” I said, smiling and gesturing to the pyramids with a nod of my head.
He continued looking only at me. “What a shame that would have been.”
My smile widened, and I felt a flutter in my belly that traveled low. “You aren’t talking about the river, are you?”
He fell quiet for a moment, wearing that stone wall of a face again. “I’m with you,” he said, with that ardent intensity sobering his expression again. “I offer you my life and my death.”
I stared at him in starstruck wonder. I needed to ask him a thousand more questions, but I didn’t know what they were. “Why do you sound so sad?”
He drew a deep breath, his urgent gaze faltering for an instant. “Me, my sister, my father—we’re with you. You’re one of us. My family comes first to me. Whatever crossroads I will come to, I will choose you.”
He called me family, something I’d wanted to hear my entire life, but those words—I was sure of it—meant more. There came a deep spark in my heart; a thunderclap warning of a distant storm.
CHAPTER
20
Our air ferry made port the next day at a trading post to refuel, and after I had breakfast, I went to explore. There appeared to be no permanent buildings or obvious homes of any kind. Elaborate tents and tables were set up like small shops, filled with beaded jewelry, painted pottery, colorful clothing, and an array of tools. One man had tied a dozen camels to a post presumably to sell, and a shepherd threw grain to his flock of goats. A handful of campfires were tended by men and women cooking their breakfasts as well as local cuisine to sell.
Men were dressed far more plainly than the women. Most were dressed in bright white gondora, but their head scarves, braided around the crown of their heads, were dyed in a variety of colors. Tattooed women in colorful, patterned robes carried naked children on their shoulders. I passed another group of women with painted eyes and many gold coins and other embellishments dangling from their dresses and hoods. One of them stared at me, a gorgeous woman wearing a hood woven in intricate, colorful geometric patterns and a string of coins hanging over her nose and across her cheeks. I supposed I looked rather strange and unbeautiful to her, wearing what looked like a man’s soldier uniform. I was the only woman here who wasn’t tattooed. If anything, I was a pebble to her diamond.
A table of beautifully beaded jewelry attracted my attention and I wandered over to get a closer look. The camel tied just outside the entrance watched me curiously and reached out to sniff my hand. I smiled and scratched his nose only to be treated with his open-mouthed groan. I wandered away and poked my head inside the tent. The floor was covered in many uniquely different rugs, and several wooden posts kept the canopy securely suspended.
I found a woman inside, placing more jewelry out to be sold. Her black veil was embroidered with colorful stars and embellished with metal pieces and coins. She looked up at me and said something I recognized to be Arabic and heat filled my cheeks.
“Do you speak English?” she asked helpfully, her words soft, though her accent was thick. Small symbols tattooed in faded blue ink adorned her cheeks and chin.
“Yes, forgive me,” I said.
“There’s nothing to apologize for,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “I know English so I can trade with them. You are American?”
“You have a very good ear,” I told her.
She smiled, continuing to arrange her jewelry. “I have met a lot of people.”
“I was born in Egypt, but I grew up in America,” I explained. “My family is Medjai.”
She paused and turned to me, her delicately painted eyebrows lifted. “How curious. I know of the Medjai. Your tribe is a very, very old one. Some believe our marks—oucham—came from Medjai practices, from wandering adasiya. My grandmother used to sing me songs of Medjai sorcery and how they protected Egypt from enemies. I did not think there were any left. You and I are like cousins. I am from Tlemcen.”
“Your people is an old one, as well,” I noted.
“If the Medjai truly brought the tattoos to Africa, then I thank you,” she told me. “They make me feel beautiful, even though I’m not a young girl anymore. In my village, a girl becomes a woman with her first tattoo.”
A fullness overcame my heart, one of sadness and loss. I felt as though something were being taken from me, something I never had a chance to grasp. My people had our own standards of beauty outside those in New York. There was more than one way to be beautiful. I didn’t have to chop off my hair or try to straighten it or wear belted dresses. I could do whatever made me feel beautiful. I would reclaim all the pieces of my heritage that had been stolen from me.
“What is your name?” the Amazigh woman asked, interrupting my thoughts.
“Ziva,” I said.
“Ziva,” she repeated, tasting my name on her tongue. “Ziva means ‘radiance.’ Like the sun.”
I smiled. I never knew my name had a meaning. “Thank you. May I ask your name?”
“Rabaiya,” she replied.
I examined a garment, listening to the tinkling of the gold coins and beads as I moved them with my fingers. “If you know anything about the traditional Medjai dress, will you help me? I want to embrace who I am. I’ll pay you very well for your time and goods.”
Her smile shone brightly as the desert sun in her eyes. “I would be honored. Let me have a look at you. Is there anything you wish to keep?”
“My boots and trousers,” I admitted. “They are very practical for what I do.”
“Which is?” she asked, skimming through an assortment of fabric hung on a line.
All I could offer her was a partial truth. “A soldier. Of sorts. I’ll need a lot of mobility, but I need protection from enemies and the elements, so I cover as much skin as I can.”
“I can work with that,” Rabaiya said. She selected a long piece of partially-sheer black linen embroidered with white stars and a dagger with an interestingly curved blade. She cut through the fabric, shortening it, while I removed my button-up shirt and cast it aside. She turned to me and folded the linen around my upper body.
“You wrap it like this—see? And tie this sash under your bosom.” She finished and stepped back to take me in. “Hmm. It’s still long—too long for a soldier in battle. Tuck it into your trousers. There.”
The sleeves were billowy and allowed air to cool me while the fabric protected my skin from the sun. Around my neck, the linen bunched into a cowl shape which I expanded to test its coverage of my hair and part of my face. It would be perfect for desert tempests. The fabric was loose fitting around my waist and permitted me a great deal of movement and comfort.
“This is wonderful, Rabaiya,” I told her. “Thank you.”
She waved her hand again. “I’m not finished. You are a warrior, but you are also a woman. It’s okay to love your femininity.”
I didn’t understand her meaning until she took my hand and steered me toward the jewelry. She chose different beads and gemstones and sewed them into my linen shirt, their many colors glittering against the black like a rainbow of stars splashed against the universe. She picked a few thin and scattered locks of my hair and strung them through gold and mother-of-pearl beads.
“Now that I know you are a soldier, I have to ask. Are the stories of Medjai magic true?”
I studied her, considering her question and the consequences of my honesty. She asked me something she already knew the answer to. That I saw in her keen eyes. I had control over my magic now and my gut told me I wouldn’t scare her. For my entire life, I had struggled with my identity and Rabaiya had given me an incredible gift. I wanted to give her a gift in return.
I raised my hand and whispered a gentle tahen spell. The small flicker of netherlight grew, a twinkling star dancing across my palm and my fingertips. She stared in awe, the glow glimmering her wide, dark eyes.
“This is a beautiful gift,” she breathed as though she’d lost her voice. “Thank you, Ziva.”
I let the netherlight fade in my hand. “It’s the very least I can do for you. You’ve given me something I will cherish for the rest of my life.”
“I wish I could do more for Egypt’s protector,” she said. “You will save us from the evil spreading its shadow across this world. Egypt must be returned to the hands of its own people. You can do that. If there is anything—ever—I can do for you, find me, cousin.”
The conviction in her voice stirred my soul. “I’d like to offer the same to you, too, Rabaiya. I will protect Egypt and its people.”
“You will do what is best for us all,” she said. “This I know in my heart.” She reached into a clay pot painted indigo and sunset orange. She retrieved a handful of silver and gold coins. “Your jewels and coins let everyone know you have royal blood.”
I stared at her sidelong in disbelief as she wove the coins through my hair. “How did you know?”
“Your eyes,” Rabaiya replied. “A queen’s heart shines in her eyes. Embrace her.”
One corner of my mouth pinched into a smile. “I will.”
“There . . . is an adasiya looking for work, last I knew,” she offered with caution. “If you would be interested.”
I turned my head and looked at her tattooed face. “Yes, I would.”
She put a hand on my shoulder. “Wait here.”
A few minutes later, Rabaiya returned with another woman of similar age wearing a red dress with colorful embroidery. Her face was marked with a sun in the middle of her forehead and a line drawn from either corner of her mouth to her jawline and a third line from her lower lip down the center of her chin.
The adasiya seemed not to speak English since Rabaiya spoke in Arabic too quietly and rapidly for me to keep up. The one word I did catch: Medjai. The woman nodded and smiled at me as she reached up and held my chin, moving my face side to side to examine me.
“Ziva, this is Touta,” Rabaiya explained. “She will give you the oucham. The marks hold energy from good spirits, which will help protect you from machinations of evil.”
Touta set a bundle of goat hide on a table and unrolled it to reveal her tools: a small knife, a dark glass bottle, a candle and flint, and rag squares. With Rabaiya’s aid in translation, Touta guided me to lie back so she could wash my skin. She lit the candle and a small flame burst to life at the wick. She dipped the blade into the fire, sterilizing and purifying the sharp metal.
Then the adasiya got to work.
The full moon over Egypt was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. Its silver glow turned the endless desert midnight blue. Out here, where there was no nighttime city fire to eat the stars, the sky was alive with celestial bodies and splashes of sapphire blues, amethyst purples, emerald greens, and pearly moonstone shades of white. The sight was something I could never have imagined in my most unreal dreams. I understood why the ancients believed our gods lived among the stars. My nightgown glowed in the moonlight and a cool, gentle breeze played with the hem around my ankles. I’d never felt so free in my life.
I heard a footstep behind me and a gentle hand caressed the small of my back. Sayer’s scent and presence flooded me. His body pressed against mine, his heat an ember aglow, and he brushed his face against my hair. He pushed the curls aside, exposing the bare back of my neck and shoulder. He inhaled, my scent as intoxicating an incense to him as his was to me.
“Do I gaze upon Nephthys herself?” he whispered, and the delicious memory of his healing kiss struck me, giving me a chill.
“There are ageless tales warning against comparing a mortal’s beauty to a goddess’s,” I teased, trying to act cool when all of my nerve endings were on fire.
“Unless she is also a goddess of night and starlight,” he declared, and he brushed his lips back and forth across the bend of my neck. “I would worship at your altar.” He gently guided me around to him. He stepped forward and my back bumped against the railing. Strands of his hair swayed across his face in a whisper of Nile air. He was excruciatingly beautiful, alight beneath the heavens.
“If I am a goddess, then what are you?” I asked, searching the stars reflected in his eyes.
“Anything you desire.” He raised a hand to touch the beads in my hair and smooth his knuckles across my collarbone. He leaned toward me, not quite close enough to kiss my mouth, but enough to wreathe me in his heat. Fire blazing in their depths, his eyes fell to my lips and rose to meet my gaze again.
A needful pang reverberated through me, warming my blood. Even the night air couldn’t hide the flush in my cheeks. He raised a hand to touch the bottom of my chin and admire the oucham given to me. In my head I imagined the line drawn from the middle of my bottom lip, the shorter lines branching off and the little circles hanging from each branch.
“Olive tree,” he said, gently avoiding the tender areas of my skin, “for your strength and resilience.” His thumb brushed my left cheekbone to the circle surrounded by dots. A matching tattoo adorned my other cheek. “Moon and stars. For femininity and womanhood.” His eyes found mine and I believed him when he told me, “You’re beautiful.”
I felt beautiful. I felt Medjai. I felt like I belonged. I felt like me. Like the breath of life was in my lungs at last. The path behind me was no longer a gray fog and the path ahead of me was no longer made of living shadows waiting to gobble me up. The path ahead rose into windswept heights bright beneath stars, right where I stood now. And Sayer was there. And Nasira was there. Tariq and Cyrene. Anubis.
And Sayer was there. He was here.
My smile rich and warm as molten chocolate, I dared to toy with him and slide away, my bare feet silent on the deck. I backed away from him, gathering fistfuls of my nightgown to keep myself from tripping on the hem. “So, you would obey my every whim?”
There was a flick of his brow and a sideways smile. “I will honor my pledge to my death.”
I raised my hem a little higher off the floor. “Catch me.”
Then I bolted, laughing, the wind five hundred feet above the Nile whispering coolly on my skin, billowing my loose hair and the folds of my white dress in the moonlight. Only once did I glance over my shoulder at him as he pursued me to find a wide and dazzling smile brightening his face.
I narrowly avoided slamming into a passing Medjai couple as they leapt apart with grumbled protest. “Sorry!” I laughed breathlessly.
Taking a tight left turn, I flew down a set of stairs, hit the floor, and my bare feet slid. Behind me I heard the loud thump of Sayer’s boots as he landed.
I ducked into a hallway and caught sight of a door with a single porthole window. I tore it open and darted through—only to find myself outside on a small empty deck with no other exit. The air rushed from me in defeat.
Sayer burst into the room and seized my waist. I squealed and whirled in his arms. His hands traveled up my back and held me against his chest. His smile brushed my neck, my ear, and skimmed across my cheek.
“Now that I have you?” he whispered against my skin.
“Kiss me like I’m your girl.”
He lifted his head and gazed down at me. His dark eyes, hooded by thick lashes, fell to my lips and he lowered his face to mine. I covered his hands with mine as they settled on my hips, letting him know they were where I wanted them. My palms pushed up his chest and wrapped around his neck, loving the feel of his body, and I pulled him down to me. When I kissed him, his shoulders went rigid with surprise for an instant, but he pushed through it, melting, squeezing my hips and pulling me against his body.
His lips were soft and warm and sweet. His heat blazed from his skin. I opened my mouth against his and he kissed me deeper, impossibly slower. My face was sore from its fresh tattoo, but the pain was a delicious bite and I would hold on for as long as I could stand it.
When his mouth moved to the tender skin of my jawline and then my neck, my teeth bit together and a pang hit m
e from deep inside. His lips returned to mine and I sighed against them. My fingernails skimmed down his neck and across his shoulders, and his hands gripped my waist more firmly, the way I wanted him to hold me, as though I might float away if he loosened his grip. I rewarded him with a tiny whimper of pleasure.
Sayer pulled back, and his brown eyes consumed me, up and down and everywhere, his pupils wide with desire. He rushed into me, his lips finding mine again, wilder than before. He felt like a storm in my hands, energy building and rolling into me, his kisses the crack and lull of thunder.
But the pain became too much and had begun to spread up my cheeks and down my neck, a sparkling, piercing ache.
I pulled away with regret and relief, offering him an apologetic smile. “My chin—the tattoo—”
He exhaled with a soft laugh, his cheeks flushed. “No—I shouldn’t have. I was rough.”
“No!” I exclaimed, aghast. “No, you weren’t at all. My face is sore, that’s all.”
“You’re healing,” he agreed. “I knew better.”
“You didn’t do anything I didn’t want you to do,” I assured him, and my words made him smile. I took his hand and returned it to my waist, where he held me tight and pulled me back to him. I said slyly, “You should have kissed me before I was marked.”
“I’ll kiss you again,” he promised. “A thousand times more.” He kissed my cheek, brushing his nose over my skin, and kissed the corner of my mouth before resting his forehead against mine, the both of us breathless. For a moment, I felt suspended in time and air, unreal and distant, as the kiss replayed in my mind, the low, low weight in me so heavy I felt I would bottom out. More. I wanted more.
I’d fallen for him like the rain, the crashing of an unstoppable force that couldn’t be reasoned with, only braced for. I’d had two choices: run for shelter or stand in the storm and let myself be devoured. Needless to say, I wasn’t the kind of girl who ran.
Wardens of Eternity Page 22