Dawit found himself trembling. Instead of moving, Dawit glared at Teferi. “What possessed you to endanger her this way? Tell me that, at least.”
Teferi’s voice was low and measured, at last striving to mask his fear. “How could I have anticipated such an attack, Dawit? There is no precedent. Kaleb burned you, yes, but to attack Khaldun’s own visitors so crudely? He is mad.”
“And worse, he is a coward.” Berhanu frowned with distaste. “What man hides himself and throws a knife at a girl-child? And then flees to avoid answering for his actions? Such a man would club a cow from behind and then boast of it. I have never known Kaleb to be so.”
“You see how it was? And your wife was troubled, accusing us of imprisoning her in her chamber,” Teferi went on, explaining himself. “I can’t bear to see beautiful women unhappy. I confess I have been a poor guide, but the role is not rightfully mine. This is the first you’ve come to ask about her, Dawit. If you had—”
Dawit gritted his teeth, drawing his weapon back. “Speak on and you’ll lose your tongue today as well.”
Teferi abruptly fell silent.
But despite his rage, Dawit could not deny Teferi’s unfinished accusation. It was his role to be his wife’s guide, not Teferi’s. Had he been here, Jessica and his child would never have been exposed to Kaleb’s attack. Dawit would not have underestimated Kaleb so. Again, as Mahmoud had already told him, his anger was misplaced.
Exasperated, Dawit lowered his blade. “It’s the bigger fool who expects a fool to behave wisely,” he muttered, giving Teferi a last glare. “Go, Teferi. I’ll tend to your damages. She should thank her fortune: In Turkey, you’d have cut off her hand yourself. Or her head.”
Teferi’s eyes glistened with hurt at the reminder of his shameful acts. But he only gave Dawit a submissive half-bow and stepped aside to let Jessica’s husband go to her at last.
• • •
Jessica had been conscious for about an hour when she first heard the shouting outside her door, a blistering voice in a language she couldn’t understand. The voice scared her. She was sure it meant Kaleb had come after them even here.
But Teferi, who was sitting beside her bed, smiled at her wanly. “Ah, your wish has come true. It is Dawit.”
David?
Before the yelling began, Jessica had been lying in silence as she watched Teferi rocking Fana in his arms, singing softly in her ear. Boola-hey, boola-hey, boola-hey-hey, he seemed to be singing, a strange nonsense song she was sure he had first sung long ago. Jessica could see the old tears crusted around her daughter’s closed eyelids, but Teferi had stopped them with his rocking and his songs. In that instant, gazing at Teferi with Fana, Jessica felt her first glimpse of peace since the surreal knife attack in the rock garden.
For a long moment, she even forgot about the nub of her wrist hidden beneath her blanket, swathed in cloths that had somehow dulled the pain to only a vague throbbing. Healing cloths, Teferi had called them as he wrapped her bloody wound, although she’d been only semiconscious at the time, instinctively trying to pull her mauled wrist away from his touch.
Healing cloths. The name was remarkably apt, as with so many other miracles she had seen.
Not only had the pain nearly dissipated, but each time she glanced at her wrist, it had grown. The small nub, once bloody, had sealed itself into a caked pinkish mass that was becoming a larger nub, half the size of her palm. Soon that would broaden into a new palm, then fingers, Teferi had said. He’d served her a special meal-like mixture he told her would enable her to heal more quickly, feeding her tissues. The miracle of her blood was at work.
But Jessica’s peace had vanished when the shouting came. Thinking of it later, it surprised her that she had not recognized her own husband’s voice. But how could she? In all their married life, she had never heard David shout that way, with such uncontrolled anger. The man outside her door was someone she had never met.
“He’s unhappy with me,” Teferi said, resting Fana beside Jessica on the bed. Fana barely stirred, not waking fully, and Jessica was glad. She wasn’t ready for her daughter’s tears again. “I’ll try to calm him. Then, maybe he’ll see you.”
Jessica didn’t answer. She felt weak, drugged. She only smiled at Teferi. She hoped he could read her thoughts, that he knew she was thanking him for keeping Fana calm after the trauma of the attack. And for wrapping her wrist in healing cloths.
She closed her eyes for a moment. When she opened them, Teferi was gone. She saw a bandaged face above her instead, and David’s eyes gazed at her.
“Mi vida,” he said. It had been many years since anyone had called her by David’s favorite pet name. You are my life, he used to say, squeezing her hand tightly as if he really meant those words. This time, his voice was the same as always. Where had he been for so long? The calm she felt amazed her.
“Hi,” she said softly, almost shyly. “Try not to wake . . .”
“Yes, I see. I’ll be quiet.”
Every inch of him was still bandaged, she saw, except his eyes, lips, and his nostrils. And he stood tall before her with a long, crescent-shaped knife at his side. She had never seen a weapon like that in David’s hands, but she supposed it was a common accessory for him here, whoever he was. Then, a joke came to her, and she heard herself saying it out loud: “Nice knife, but I would have preferred flowers.”
David’s lips smiled. He knelt gently, resting his weapon on the floor. Then he sat in the chair Teferi had just left, gazing at her with eyes that barely blinked. She longed to see the rest of his face, to read his expression. He had an unfair advantage over her, with her face in plain sight.
“You’ll feel fatigued until it grows back,” David said. “I lost a hand once, and it ached for two days after it grew back. You might take more time, or less. I don’t know. Does it hurt?”
She shook her head. “Teferi fixed it up for me.”
Jessica didn’t have to see David’s face to notice how his eyes flinched at Teferi’s name.
“Don’t blame him for what happened,” she heard herself mumbling. “Teferi’s the only person who’s tried to make me comfortable here, and he’s good with Fana. He was singing to her just now. Please stop threatening him, if that’s what you were doing.”
“If you wish it,” David said without enthusiasm.
That brought a rock-hard silence between them, and Jessica felt frustration along with her weariness. She hadn’t envisioned that her first meeting with David would be like this, with her laid up in bed after an attack. She’d wanted to think her words through, and now she barely had the energy to speak to him, much less think first. David’s presence now, in some ways, seemed less real than her dream the previous night. This was a bad time for a reunion.
Just then, Fana began to stretch and shift, and Jessica saw that she was awake. Fana’s eyes widened with surprise when she noticed David, and she drew closer to Jessica.
“Here’s our sleepyhead,” Jessica said. “See who’s here? It’s your daddy.”
Still half-asleep, Fana’s expression was sour and incredulous. She didn’t speak.
“Hello, Fana,” David said, lowering his head closer to her. Fana drew back more, frightened by his bandages. Jessica could feel the race of her daughter’s heartbeat through Fana’s slightly fevered skin.
“Yes, I know,” David went on. “I’m not very pretty, am I? Not like you. There’s a bigger mess underneath all this wrapping, believe me. But I’ll be all healed up in a few days. Until then, you’ll just have to use your imagination.”
“Your father will look just like a regular man again,” Jessica said to Fana.
“And your mother will grow a new hand,” David said. “Abracadabra.”
Fana seemed slightly reassured. She slipped her curled pinkie into her mouth. “What’s that mean? Abra . . . ca . . . ?”
David, the mummy, cocked his head playfully. “You don’t mean to tell me you’ve never heard the word abracadabra? Not even once?”
Fana shook her head, wide-eyed. He’d hooked her, just as he’d always been able to hook Kira with his storyteller’s voice full of intrigue and surprises. Jessica was unprepared for the lump that filled her throat as she listened to David speak to Fana so lovingly and naturally. Her chest constricted with hot pain. David had been such a wonderful father to Kira, until . . .
David clucked, shaking his head. “It’s a special word magicians use when they’re about to create magic. Magic is going to make my face heal and your mother’s hand grow back.”
“I know magic,” Fana said. “I can do tricks!”
“Yes, she can,” Jessica said, forcing the words past the lump.
David glanced back at Jessica, hearing the change in her voice. From his eyes, she suspected he knew exactly what had caused the sudden heaviness in her words, and he felt it, too. There were worlds of meaning in his gaze to Jessica, and he didn’t turn his eyes away from her even as he continued to talk to Fana. “Well, I’m not surprised you can do tricks, with a magical name like yours. Who named you Fana?” At that, his eyes went back to their daughter’s.
“Me!” Fana said.
“If that’s true, it’s a trick in itself. I bet you didn’t know that’s a name from Ethiopia, in the Amharic language. And do you know what fana means?”
Fana shook her head. She’d leaned closer to David now.
“It means ‘light,’ ” he told her, practically whispering in her ear.
“Like light in the sky?”
“Like the very sun itself.”
Fana giggled, pleased. Jessica was too exhausted to respond, but in her puzzled expression, she asked David, Really? And David nodded to her. Then, after a pause, he surprised her when he mouthed, I’m sorry, through his bandages.
Jessica shook her head slowly, closing her eyes for an instant. This was not the time for apologies, nor for remembering what either of them should be sorry for, and she saw in his eyes that he understood. How ironic, she thought, that even after all this time, she and David still had a telepathic language all their own. Whether or not David was any better at reading minds than she was, they still knew each other in the unspoken places their hearts held in common.
That knowing would never go away, she realized.
David chatted on with Fana until Jessica found herself surrendering to her sleepiness. She must have dozed off, because when she opened her eyes, Fana was asleep, too, curled next to her. And David still sat in the chair beside her bed, his eyes fixed on Jessica as if he didn’t believe she was really there, his bandaged hand clasped tightly around her hand that was still whole.
• • •
In her dream that was not like any other dream, Fana was alone at a table for a tea party. The other chairs at the table were all big, round, and soft, just as she’d imagined in Alice in Wonderland, and she bounced on the cushion of her big pink chair, which sent her flying up a foot with each bounce. And the food on the table! It was crammed with every cake Fana had ever seen or tasted—pound cake, cupcakes, German chocolate cake, cake with glazed strawberries on top, pineapple upside-down cake, a three-layer wedding cake, birthday cake covered in colored sprinkles, even the corn-meal cakes Sarah made that Fana loved. Fana touched the edge of the cupcake nearest her empty plate, and when she put her finger in her mouth, the pink icing was sweet and thick, just the way she liked it! Her mouth watered. She could eat whatever she wanted!
But wait. What if this wasn’t a dream? Mommy always said sweets weren’t good for her. Wouldn’t she have to ask Mommy if she could have sweets, just like always?
For the first time, Fana peered away from her table to try to get a good look at where she was. But that was silly, she realized. She was in Wonderland! She didn’t see the white rabbit or the croquet players, or even the Queen of Hearts, but she was wearing a dress just like Alice’s, and black shoes like Alice’s, and she was biiiig like Alice.
Judging from the size of the puny trees growing around her, Fana guessed that the table where she sat must be as tall as her house in Botswana, and she was even taller than that. When she stood up, the treetops only tickled her kneecaps, the flowers and stones beneath her were almost too tiny to see, and the grass was nothing except a big carpet rolling up and down the hills. She left biiiiig footprints in the soft earth, and she could see far, far away.
At the top of a distant hill, in fact, she could clearly see the silhouette of a man on a camel. It must be The Man, she realized. How small he looked so far away!
The Man’s elbows were bent because he had his hands cupped to his mouth, and he was shouting something to her in the wind. She could hear bits and pieces, but the wind wasn’t strong enough for her to make out his words, even though the wind was blowing much harder than it had been since the last time Fana had paid any attention to it. Her braids stirred.
Fana waved hello to The Man, even though she couldn’t hear him.
He didn’t wave back. Instead, he motioned for her to come to him.
Fana took one look back at the table, which was still full of cakes behind her, and then she looked at The Man. He seemed even farther away this time. How could she even be sure she would find him? Besides, the cakes on the table smelled so good; some of them were still hot from the oven, which was when cake tasted best of all. Maybe if she sat at the table for just a minute and ate only a few pieces of cake, she could go to The Man after and see why he was calling her. That wouldn’t be too bad, would it? The Man couldn’t get mad at her for that. She would even bring him a piece!
“Come sit down, Fana. I made these just for you.” The voice behind her was an old lady’s voice, even older than Gramma Bea, who was seventy. Maybe the lady who baked the cakes was more than one hundred, like Moses’s great-grandmother, and her skin was all wrinkly like crushed paper, because mortal bodies got broken down. That was what Mommy said. They got sick and broken-down, and they stopped, that was all. They went to sleep, like Giancarlo the Italian soldier.
The woman who stood behind Fana’s chair was wearing a pretty pink satin robe with a hood, and Fana could not see her face. She tried to, but there were shadows in the way. The woman looked skinny, though, and she was as tall as Fana. The old lady was a giant, too. And there was a strange sound near her, a humming sound.
“Is anybody else coming to your tea party?” Fana asked, trying to be polite.
The pretty hood shook back and forth. “Just you, Fana. You can have as much as you want. Everything here is yours!”
Fana squealed with laughter. “I can’t eat it all!” she said, trying to imagine eating all those cakes by herself.
“Yes, you can,” the voice said. “You just don’t know your own appetites yet. Your eyes aren’t as big as your stomach.” That sounded to Fana like something her mommy would say to her when she ate too much and got a tummy-ache—except different, somehow. Mixed up.
The wind was whipping harder, blowing so much dust that Fana could no longer see The Man standing on the far-off hill. Maybe he went away, she thought. Maybe he got tired of waiting for her. That thought made her sad, but only for an instant.
Fana went back to her seat at the table, and she wondered if the old lady was planning to stand behind her chair the whole time, or if she would join her to eat, too. But she didn’t wonder that very long. She picked up a cupcake and tried to see if she could shove the whole thing in her mouth at once. The icing scraped against her teeth, so sweet, so perfect. Her dreams had never tasted like cupcakes!
“Is it good, Fana?” This time, Fana thought she heard the hum in the old lady’s voice.
Fana couldn’t answer because her mouth was full, but she nodded enthusiastically. She was grinning as wide as she could without letting any delicious food spill out.
“You can have anything you want, Fana. You know that, don’t you? You do know that no one can keep you from having anything at all. Don’t you know that yet?”
“My mommy can,” Fana said, finally able to speak.
“That’s a silly thing to say. Of course she can’t. How would a nervous Nellie like your mommy do that?” Nervous Nellie. That name almost made Fana laugh. Yes, her mother could get very, very nervous sometimes. She had been very nervous ever since the day Fana had gone to sleep in the bathtub. “You should be glad they’re afraid, Fana. It’s good when they’re afraid.”
“That’s not true.” Fana was tired of the old woman’s conversation now. She talked on and on, just like Teferi, and Fana wanted to be left in peace to eat her cakes. Besides, she was beginning to notice that the old woman smelled bad, and it was harder and harder to hear what she was saying over the humming sound in her throat. The buzzing.
Lightning lit up the sky, and the wind was blowing so hard that Fana’s braids whipped her face. She heard one of the trees beneath her go craaaaaack, and then it snapped in half and blew away. Like a big pencil. It was going to rain soon, and hard.
“It is true, Fana,” the old woman said. “It’s the truest thing there is.”
“You can stop talking now, please,” Fana said, using her armrests to prop herself higher in her chair so she could turn around and finally see the old woman’s face.
But there was no face. There were only two shining eyes. And bees. Shiny, sticky bees just like the ones from the tunnel had swarmed all over this woman’s face, not leaving any of it uncovered, even the tip of her nose. Or did she have a nose at all? Fana stared hard, trying to see. There! The bees moved a little, and Fana thought she would see the old woman’s nose—but there was only gooey blackness, like something she could stick her hand through if the Bee Lady didn’t smell so bad. A . . . shadow. Maybe the woman was just bees bunched up under her robe. Bees and stinky shadows.
In her dream, Fana turned around in her chair and grabbed a hunk of chocolate cake from the table with her bare hand. She giggled when the moist cake and icing squished through her fingers like thick, warm mud, then she crammed as much as she could in her mouth. She knew bees couldn’t hurt her. Nothing could. Nothing and no one.
The Living Blood Page 33