Susan Fletcher - Alphabet of Dreams

by Susan Fletcher

  A sudden hush, as if all the air had been sucked out of the world. Men turned to stare at Babak and me. And then an explosion: angry shouts and accusations, men scattering in all directions, camels groaning, and above it all Giv calling—calling for the men to wait, to mind their duties, calling out that they were cowards, deserters, traitors, vermin, dogs.

  “You’re the vermin!” one man bellowed. “Get us killed, you would!”

  I stood rooted, unable to move as pandemonium surged around us: men swarming like beetles; tents shivering to the ground; camels roaring, rocking to their feet, speeding away. I saw Balthazaar appear at Giv’s side. Giv listened to what he said, then pointed at the remaining men. “Pack up!” he shouted. “Now! We depart!”

  Numbly I began to stuff our things into bundles. I handed them through the tent flap to the men outside, who took them quickly without meeting my eyes. Next I woke Babak—as well as I might. He blinked at me groggily; I picked him up and ducked outside.

  We were but a fraction of our former numbers. No more than twoscore camels remained, and half as many men. Giv came striding toward us.

  “Mount your camel, then,” he said, “and be quick about it.”

  “Why? What’s happened?”

  “Just do as I say.”

  He vanished into the throng as suddenly as he had appeared.

  I fetched Ziba, asked her to kneel. “Whoosh!” I said. She refused, looked anxiously about. “Whoosh!” I insisted, tugging on the nose line. Reluctantly, she knelt. Soon after, Pacorus appeared at my side, helped me to load and saddle her.

  “What’s happened?” I asked.

  “It was Pirouz,” he said, not meeting my eyes. “He came riding up to the garrison with two other men sometime after we had passed. They were heavily armed, and the guards obeyed them without question. The two men asked questions about our caravan and became enraged when they heard the guards had let us pass without calling them.”

  “So Pirouz is coming?”

  “The king’s soldiers are coming! Those two men—Phraates’ spies—railed at the captain of the guard, and now they’re all coming. They said …” Pacorus looked at me now, and there was something angry there, something of a dare. “They said you and Babak are the children of Vardan.”

  I stared right through Pacorus, seeing the crush of horsemen careening through my father’s gates, hearing the din of metal-clash and Mother calling.

  “Mount!” he said. He pushed me toward the camels.

  Babak and I mounted.

  “Huh!” Pacorus tapped Ziba up and slapped her on the flanks. “Get along with you!” he snapped. “Go!”

  CHAPTER 41

  MADMEN and STARGAZERS

  Ziba bolted. I hung on as well as I might, clasping Babak to me, straining to cleave myself to the saddle. Ziba’s humps jiggled comically, but dread lay leaden in my belly.

  Others streaked past us, bells jingling, tassels swaying, men and camels grunting. Melchior. Gaspar. Pacorus. Balthazaar hovered near us for a time, until Giv, who seemed everywhere at once, motioned him to move ahead and stationed men behind us. Soon we found ourselves near the rear of the pack. Dust clogged my nostrils, stung my eyes, coated my throat. Ziba’s breath came labored and uneven—she was slower than all but the heavy-laden pack camels—but some sense of fear or urgency infected her now, for she put down her head, stretched out her neck, and strode out as never before. I clung tight to the strap on her forward hump, struggling to reseat myself and Babak after a hard jolt knocked us off balance. Babak had come full awake; he held himself taut.

  I craned back to catch sight of the king’s men, or the Eyes and Ears, or at least a dust plume that heralded their coming. But night had thickened around us, and the air was so clotted with our own party’s dust that I could not have seen theirs.

  We pounded across a wide bridge that spanned a black ribbon of river, lined with a garden of date palms. A shadowy field of ancient ruins went joggling past; then, to either side of us, the gateposts of the slumping city wall. We rumbled over the collapsed remains of what must once have been a moat, and then headed west across the marshy waste.

  Soon, as the full moon rose, half obscured by a veil of dust, the main channel of the river Euphrates appeared before us, broad and slow and dark.

  And soon again we had reached the river, and Giv was shouting at us—at all of us—to dismount. The emissaries he had sent ahead must have achieved their purpose, for a knot of men stood on the riverbank, holding tall rods, their heavy log rafts clustered on the water behind them.

  Pacorus came to help us—a little grudgingly, I thought. He lifted Babak off the saddle and waited for me to dismount. We led our camels onto one of the smaller rafts. Although Ziba did not balk this time, she lifted her head high, minced cautiously with her feet, and grumbled loud and long. We pushed off.

  I turned back, seeking some sign of the soldiers, but saw only dust and darkness. Pacorus, noticing my look, sighed and seemed to soften. “Across is Rome,” he said, pointing to the far bank.

  “That won’t stop them.”

  “We’ll take all the rafts. At least that’ll slow them down. You’re safe, for now.”

  For now. My heart beat fast from our headlong flight. A blister throbbed on my heel. The river was filling with rafts, like a flock of water-birds paddling serenely toward the far shore. The Euphrates gurgled and splashed as our riverman plied his pole. A heron called mournfully; I could hear men murmuring nearby on the dark water, and the fitful groans of camels. This river smelled different from the Tigris—heavier, slower, muddier, older.

  The sudden peace was unsettling. I sat on the edge of the raft, took off my boots, dragged my sore feet in the cool river. Babak came to lean against me. He seemed awake, but very weary. In a moment, Pacorus sat down to my other side. “You might have told me,” he said.

  I turned to him, looked him full in the face, trying to read the unspoken words that filled the silence. I might have told him … what? Who my father is? That I’m a girl?

  “Why?” I asked. “What would have changed?”

  “You are my friend. I could have helped.”

  Neither his eyes nor his words told me what I yearned to know. Koosha had seen me, with no one to tell him I was a girl. Did Pacorus?

  And why should I want him to?

  We drifted across the reflected face of the moon—captured like a great white fish in the river Euphrates. The Persian shore receded into blackness, along with the king’s men and his dreaded spies. I breathed in the smell of Pacorus—a tang of ink, the musk of his sweat.

  He is but half noble, I reminded myself. Beneath me. Not at all part of my plans.

  Still, I could have stayed in this moment forever, in the space between two kingdoms, with Babak safe beside me, and Pacorus near.

  All too soon we reached the far shore. Giv called out to all of the rivermen—something about buying their rafts, something about paying them well. Pacorus urged us to mount and be on our way; I tugged on my boots again and strained to see across the river. The Eyes and Ears. Were they there, waiting to follow us?

  As we left the Euphrates behind, I heard the sound of splintering wood.

  Later, when Giv rejoined us, I asked him if all the rafts had been destroyed. “Many, but not all,” he replied.

  “But surely, over time, the king will find or build more.”

  “Yes,” Giv said.

  “But would they dare leave Persia and follow us into Rome?”

  Giv snorted. “Leaving Persia has naught to do with it. The Eyes and Ears would not hesitate to cross into Rome. But the great western desert …” His scowl deepened. “Only madmen and stargazers would dare it.”

  CHAPTER 42

  ACROSS the DESERT

  We struck out across the trackless waste. At times Ziba’s footfalls echoed hollowly on slabs of rock; at times they swished through mounds of loose dirt or sand; at times I heard the crackle and snap of thornbush. Giv made no move to tether us t
o the pack camels. Ziba stayed near the other animals; when I desired her to move one way or another I guided her with the nose line. Once the moon had set, it was ever more difficult to see. Though starlight washed the landscape with a silvery glow, it lent no shadows to limn small hillocks or hollows. Ziba plunged and strained on the uneven ground.

  Often and again I turned back to see if the king’s men were following. But saw nothing, until a single man galloped camelback into our midst—a messenger Giv had stationed at the riverbank—reporting that the soldiers had detained the pack camels we’d left on the Persian side, but that there were no remaining rafts on which to pursue.

  At this, Giv gave the order to slacken our pace—but only a bit.

  The remaining men of the caravan looked curiously at Babak and me from time to time. Children of Vardan. Now they knew. But not, Giv had told me, that I was a girl. That must remain a secret. This new knowledge did not seem to change how the men treated us, other than perhaps to make them stare at us more often, yet hold themselves more aloof. But then, we had always been somewhat apart. Much as I had tried to make myself useful, Babak and I were not working men, but children. Melchior’s pets.

  The sun rose, laid a burning path across my shoulders. We stopped briefly for devotions and moved on. There was no sign of the Euphrates, only dry, gritty soil and stones as far as the eye could see. A sense of unease began to niggle at me. On the map Pacorus had drawn we were to follow the Euphrates for a long while and then strike out across the desert for Palmyra. I recalled what Giv had said: Only madmen and stargazers would dare it. But surely not everyone who journeyed to Palmyra was mad or a star-gazer! Didn’t all western-moving caravans go through there?

  I urged Ziba forward and found Giv conferring with the guide and his men. “Where are we going?” I asked. “When will we meet up again with the Euphrates?”

  Giv deftly tapped Ziba aside from the caravan. “We will not,” he said.

  “But I thought—”

  “I know what you thought.”

  “But Palmyra—” The word flew out of my mouth; I couldn’t stop it.

  “Oh, aye. You thought to escape in Palmyra. But we will not be passing through there now. If you’re looking for something to lose sleep over, it is there.” He gestured wide, taking in the whole sweep of the desert. I could only gape at him, until he said more gently, “You can close your mouth now. You’re not as clever as you think.” Abruptly he turned his camel and left.

  So he had known all along what I had planned, and never said a word. Once in Palmyra, he would have been watching for us to escape.

  I felt all within me sag.

  Palmyra, and my kinsmen, and my mother and my father, seemed to shrink from me, to grow more and more distant. I closed my eyes and tried again to see my mother’s face, but it had dissolved altogether. Her soft hands, with many rings, moving in the air as she talked or brushing a tear from Babak’s cheek—those I could see. But not her face.

  Remember who you are!

  The echo of my grandmother’s voice pulled me up short.

  I would bide my time, and soon, when Giv was least expecting it, I would act. I still had a small sack of coins secreted in the folds of my sash. And we were closer than ever, tantalizingly close! If we rode straight north, we were bound to reach the Euphrates, and then … We would get to Palmyra. It might take longer than I’d hoped, but we would.

  Now Pacorus and Gaspar rode past, deep in conversation. I caught a faint whiff of Pacorus’s scent, and the Euphrates crossing rushed into memory—the bright moon reflected in the water, and Pacorus by my side.

  How would it be, I wondered, if he became my kin?

  The sun climbed higher, turning the sky white and leaching the color from the land. In time, I became aware that Babak was dreaming. He hummed and rocked against me, murmuring words I could but partly make out, floating in and out of this life and into some other—some world of shaggy beasts and stars and weddings and ailing, angry kings. I tried to shake him awake. I tried to shout him awake. He hummed and rocked, eyes wide and blank. Sometimes, after a long spell, he seemed to come back, turning round to blink at me, asking for a sip of water. But soon he was gone again, gone to another place, a place where I could not follow. And all I could do was hold him—and pray to the Wise God to bring him back.

  We made camp before the hottest time of day, setting up tents in a stand of dusty acacia trees and gray green scrub amid a desolation of sandy dirt and rock. But birds perched in the trees, and a hare peered out at us from the brush. Our new guide had found a well as promised, though I heard mutterings that he was not of the tribe who held the well, and that tribe, should they happen upon us here, would be mightily displeased.

  I looked about at our company, now that we were gathered. No more than thirty men remained. It seemed that most of Gaspar’s archers were still among us, and Balthazaar’s small band had stayed. But of Melchior’s original caravan, few were left.

  They wanted nothing to do with the children of Vardan.

  Later—after Babak had sipped a bit of water, eaten a few gritty dates, then lapsed back into his dream world—Balthazaar came to see us.

  “How does he fare?” he asked.

  I lay down the girth I’d been repairing. The tent cloth dimmed the glare of the sun, but light pressed, as through a sieve, between the threads of the fabric and stabbed in blazing shafts through the torn places. Babak did seem deep and soundly asleep. Still, the bruised hollows looked darker beneath his eyes, and the gauntness had deepened in his cheeks. His skin stretched dry and tight across his bones, and there was something old about his face that had not been there, even in the City of the Dead, when we were hungry most of the time.

  “The old dreams have returned,” I said. “In Babylon, and then again last night. Bits and pieces of the dreams he’s had for others before, but with no cloth or other token to summon them.”

  Balthazaar bowed his head, pinching the bridge of his nose as if to ease pain.

  “He hasn’t walked in his sleep, though,” I said. “Not since we were with Pirouz.”

  The Magus looked up sharply. “He has walked in his sleep? How often?”

  “Three times now.”

  Balthazaar’s eyes grew grave. “Well. If he has walked thrice in his sleep, he will likely do it again. I have an herb that may still the walking, if nothing else.” He rummaged in a leather satchel he had brought with him, and handed me a small cloth bag. “Steep a pinch in hot water every day and feed him half a cupful. Otherwise he may put himself in danger.”

  I sniffed it. Bitter. “I could tie him to me when I sleep.”

  “And he could untie. If you were weary enough, you would not wake.”

  Babak shifted and groaned.

  “Could you …” I began.

  Balthazaar nodded for me to go on.

  “Do you remember,” I asked, “the first time we met you, how you moved your fingers across Babak’s face?”

  “Yes, child.”

  “That night he slept sound and sweet, as he had not since …” Since I began selling his dreams. “Since he began dreaming for others. So perhaps if you did that now … Would you? Would you touch him again?”

  “Child, what I did was merely comfort, no remedy for what’s plaguing him now.”

  “Could you try?”

  Balthazaar hesitated, then stroked his long fingers across Babak’s face. I could feel the tension in Babak ease, and he let out a little sigh. All at once the tent grew brighter. I looked up to see Melchior at the opening, glaring in at us.

  “What are you doing?” he demanded.

  Slowly Balthazaar withdrew his fingers. “Trying to comfort the child. He is not faring well.”

  “Comfort? What do you mean by ‘comfort’? I no longer ask him to dream for me, and now you steal a dream from him? Remember whose boy he is. Remember that he is mine.”

  “The child is gravely ill. If you doubt me, come and see.”

  Melchior h
esitated, then reluctantly came to crouch beside us. Balthazaar pointed silently at the hollows beneath Babak’s eyes. Something came over Melchior’s face then, a kind of surprise. The corners of his mouth dragged down. When he spoke, his voice was unusually soft.

  “You may resume,” he said.

  CHAPTER 43

  BLOOD

  We pressed on, traveling mostly by night to avoid the worst of the heat, stopping when the sun was high in the sky and sleeping until late in the day. Then, just as the last red rim of sun disappeared below the horizon, the world would go still, and the cool, dark, star-flecked curtain of night rolled down across the sky. It seemed, at times, as if our next step might take us right into it, out of this earthly realm and into the heavens.

  The desert swept past us in moonlit undulations, dreamlike, seeming no more solid than the currents of a river: steep-sided wadis; stands of thorn trees and scrub; vast stretches of pebbly, sandy dirt and weedy grasses. The drift-sand waxed and waned, sometimes just puddling round the roots of plants, sometimes mounting into great, wind-hewn dunes. And always rest-less—skirring in feathery eddies at the camels’ feet; or lifting off the knife-edge of a dune; or whipping past our faces like billows of stinging smoke. From time to time herds of wild animals drifted across the landscape—gazelles, ostriches, antelope. Often we heard the distant howls of wolves. Once, we passed an ancient city gone to ruin—carved marble pillars thrusting up from mounds of shifting sand.

  On the valley floors the taste of dust mingled with the sharp tang of the wormwood that spread up the sides of wadis, and in the damp hollows the fragrance of lusher growth perfumed the air like drifts of summer flowers. Often, silence lay so deep about us that the creak of a saddle seemed whip-crack loud, and a sudden rustling of brush beneath a camel’s feet could make me jump.