“I should get you girls some new clothes,” said Aafsaneh, changing the subject. “The rain did you no favors.”
“Milady, please,” Shulamit insisted. “I’ll give you money. I’ll make your wine the official wine of every Shabbat in my palace for the rest of my reign. Anything.”
Aafsaneh had stood up and was rooting around in her wardrobe, not looking at them. “Here, this looks like it would fit you -- you share my large chest,” she said to Aviva, holding up a long gown that was as bright a yellow as a lemon rind. “It goes with this.” In her other hand, she held a bright yellow scarf covered with pink roses.
Aviva took the garments from her uncomfortably. “Thank you. They’re very pretty. About those poor men--”
“I can’t. My little loves, please understand. Your hearts are in the right place. But I’ve been so safe here, even without my husband. What I felt for Jahandar-- it was-- like the sun. I can’t control it. Even as evil as he is.”
“You must have controlled it enough to leave,” Shulamit pointed out, trying not to be distracted by Aviva unceremoniously changing her clothing beside her.
“I left once,” said Aafsaneh. “Could any woman have the kind of strength to leave twice?”
“You look like you’re strong enough for a lifetime,” Shulamit commented.
“I might be. But I can’t risk it. My final word is no.” Aafsaneh sat down again. “You’re welcome to stay and eat as much as you like, but I’m not coming with you. I’m sorry about your friends, and I’ll pray for that poor man, but I can’t face Jahandar again.”
Rivka, who had been stuffing her face and not saying anything, banged her fist down on the table so hard that olives flew into Shulamit’s lap. “Milady,” she barked, shaking her head with frustration. “Even someone as cruel and stupid as Jahandar could see how wise and how gracious you are. You’re like the queen of this farm, and all your men look up to you and would obviously die a thousand deaths just to make sure you sleep through the night without being disturbed. All we need is for that wise, amazing person everyone thinks you are to come out and play -- not this scared, frozen woman I see in front of me.”
Shulamit, horrified, froze and clutched Aviva. “Riv, be quiet!”
Rivka ignored her. “You’re scared of your feelings. So, nu? Feelings are scary. Death is scarier. Tomorrow night, because you won’t go meet up with your old boyfriend, we have to go in there with our army and start an international conflict where there was none before. Men will die -- my men will die. The men I’m sworn to lead. I’d prefer not to have to lead them to their deaths!” Aafsaneh opened her mouth to speak, but Rivka barreled onward, a verbal Red Sea closing in on anything Aafsaneh might have wanted to say. “Yes, I know Jahandar’s forces are weaker than ours, but they’ll fight valiantly, and if I lose even one man because of your cowardice, I swear, I will break every bottle of wine I ever see with your name on it.”
“Oh, my God, Riv, what--” Shulamit whimpered.
“And I have to do it, because if we don’t -- if we fail, if we can’t go in there, if I can’t make it back in time to my army and lead them to the City before tomorrow night, they’ll set a huge fire, and Farzin will be--”
Aafsaneh stood up suddenly, knocking over the table in front of her. Olives and cheese flew everywhere. “Farzin?” She was shaking, her eyes flung open wide, her limbs tense.
“The engineer who led the bridge project,” said Shulamit. “What? Why?”
With fingers trembling so profoundly that she could barely maneuver them, Aafsaneh struggled to open the locket around her neck. “Does he look like this?”
Rivka, puzzled, scratched her head and said, “I don’t know. Vakht Oyf . Wake up, Isaac.”
With a growly voice, the snake murmured, “Vos?”
“Wake up and look at something. Here.” Rivka approached Aafsaneh so Isaac could scan the locket with his beady eyes. “Is that Farzin?”
“It looks like him. Sort of. Only, that’s not him.”
“What’s going on?” asked Shulamit.
“This was my husband,” Aafsaneh explained, swallowing uncomfortably as she held both hands up to her temples and swayed slightly, “and our son looks just like him.”
Chapter 21: Mama Bird to the Rescue
“It’ll take me all of today and tonight to fly there,” called Aafsaneh breathlessly from behind her dressing screen. Garments flew about like living creatures as she discarded her morning robe and prepared herself for the public eye. “And maybe part of the morning. I only hope I can get there in time! He didn’t tell me where he was working. All he said was that I’d be proud -- that it was his biggest project yet, and he’d tell me all about it when it was finished. Oh, my poor baby!” She’d already spoken to her servants and was nearly ready to leave.
“It only took us a day and part of a night to get here,” Isaac commented, still resting as a snake around Rivka’s shoulders, “and that was with three people on my back and exhausted from flying the day before.”
“But dragons are faster than birds.”
“Aren’t we almost all the way back home?” Rivka asked her constrictor consort. “What’s the plan?”
“We go home and get the Royal Guard, just in case,” said Isaac. “If we leave soon and get everybody out quickly, we should be able to bring our men there by nightfall tomorrow, which is...”
“Yeah.” Rivka looked grim. “And Prince Kaveh can ride with me. I’ll look after him.”
“Kaveh? Jahandar’s son?” Aafsaneh emerged from behind the screen in much more splendid clothes. “I remember him. Farzin was fond of him. I wondered--”
“You wondered right, but it’s a long story,” said Rivka.
“I’ll explain on the way,” said Queen Shulamit. “Can I borrow a pair of gloves?”
“On the way where?” Rivka asked quickly.
“I’m riding with her. Can I? Can we? Will it slow you down?”
“You both look small... probably not,” said Aafsaneh, considering. She opened a small box and retrieved a set of embroidered gloves for Shulamit. “Will these work?”
“But we’re your guards!” Rivka exploded.
“I have to go with her to make sure we’re successful,” said Shulamit slowly and deliberately. “I’ll be okay. Aviva can look after me.” She pulled on the gloves. They were much bigger than her hands, and a little too hot to be comfortable, but now she knew she’d be able to hold on to Aafsaneh in her bird form without aggravating her body’s odd reaction to fowl.
“She’s a cook.”
“She’s good with a knife. And she was younger than you were when you first went into battle, when she killed the sorcerer who tried to rape her.”
Rivka opened her mouth and then shut it again. “Fine. Whatever. We don’t have time to argue. Isaac, can you fly yet?”
He craned his neck up to face her, and shook his head from side to side slowly. “Give me another five minutes, and then maybe.”
“I have just the thing.” Aafsaneh rummaged through a small wooden box in the corner of the room, then emerged with a small vial of something that looked like wine.
“How will it help to get drunk?” asked Rivka suspiciously, but Isaac was already slithering to the floor so he could transform.
“It’s charmed. Here.” Aafsaneh rushed over to them.
Isaac rose up as a man and murmured a quick, distracted thank-you as he seized the vial from her hand and drank it in one swallow. “All right, Mighty One, we’re off.” He and his warrior wife scrambled out into the vineyard so his transformation into dragon form wouldn’t disrupt the furniture.
“Don’t forget my wedding dress! And the chuppah!” Shulamit called after them as they flew off into the bright morning sky.
When she turned back to Aafsaneh, she discovered that in place of the stately middle-aged woman there now stood an enormous swan, her feathers the scintillating blue of a morpho butterfly. Her large eyes were now ringed by black over a formidable b
eak the color of ripe mango flesh. “Now, girls! Quickly!”
They obeyed without a word, Aviva helping Shulamit get her balance and placing her firmly in front of her on the bird’s back. She kept one hand on each side of Shulamit’s tiny waist as the swan emerged from the building and flapped her giant wings, sending up a wind that sent loose strands of Aviva’s hair to dancing.
“Thank you,” said Shulamit quietly, and they were airborne.
The neat rows of viticulture beneath gave way to wilderness as the great swan flew into the sky toward the home she hadn’t seen in over twenty years. “I’m glad we’re flying west,” commented Shulamit. “It’s so bright today we’d have to ride the whole way with our eyes shut if we were going in the other direction.”
“Hmm,” Aafsaneh murmured in assent. She sounded distracted, and her distress was unmistakable. Beneath their legs, the young women on her back felt muscles as tense as a tabletop.
“We have to keep her mind off what’s going on in the Clay City,” Shulamit craned her head around to whisper in her sweetheart’s ear. “I trust her, but I can also see us crashing into a tree!”
“We want to have a baby soon,” Aviva blurted out. “In your magical studies, have you found a way to make a second mother give milk?”
Shulamit’s face burned with embarrassment at the question, but it did exactly what it was intended to do. She leaned back into Aviva’s bosom, satisfied to make the minor sacrifice to her dignity.
“Oh, yes, there’s definitely a way to do that,” said Aafsaneh. “I helped a woman on my farm nurse her baby nephew once, when her sister was too sick.”
“That makes me feel the sunlight,” said Aviva. “I know love makes a mother, but... I want to give something of my body too, like she will.”
“I don’t think you need to, though,” Aafsaneh continued. “If the queen is the one having the baby, her body will probably make everything the baby needs. And if you nurse too frequently and Shulamit doesn’t, she could go dry.”
After a long pause, Aviva responded. “I’m used to feeding my loved ones.”
“By continuing to feed your queen, you’ll be feeding your child too. And after about six months, you can start to feed your child directly, with other foods.”
Shulamit felt an effervescent joy at the way Aafsaneh referred to her future offspring as Aviva’s child as well. She hadn’t expected any ugliness, because of what Kaveh had repeated about Farzin’s mother, but she still poignantly appreciated the validation.
“It’ll come looking for milk,” Aviva pointed out, poking herself in the side of one breast, “from these coconuts I drag around.”
“So it won’t be nursing for nourishment, but nursing for bonding. There are so many ways you’ll be there besides this one,” said the Swan-Lady. “Still, it’s a generous idea. I like your heart.”
“Me too,” said Shulamit. She was less nervous than usual while discussing this sort of detail with a stranger, but she still felt a firm thumping in her chest.
“How did you find her?”
“She found me,” said the queen. “I get sick if I eat wheat or fowl -- that’s what these gloves are for. She’s a cook, and she’s the only one who figured out what was happening.”
“We spent a lot of time together,” Aviva added. “Our vines began to grow up around each other.”
“What about the sickness when the child begins to grow inside me?” asked Shulamit, her memory tripped by the discussion of her teenage illness. “Is there magic for that?”
“Yes, I’ve helped ease that too.”
“Thank goodness! Will we need to come visit you, or is it something Isaac can manage?”
“It sounds like woman’s magic to me,” said Aafsaneh, “but, you know, I’m not really sure! I don’t know where his skills lie. I would have liked getting to know him better. It’s been so long since I’ve been around another wizard.”
“You’ll probably get to see plenty of him. I mean, I hope you will,” answered the queen. “If all goes right, you’re going to be my -- I mean, let me think about this -- my legal husband’s mother-in-law. So Isaac will be family! Family of choice, anyway.”
“You’re a lucky queen to have your throne guarded by a dragon,” said Aafsaneh. “I’m interested in what kinds of other abilities he has. I’m sure there are things we can learn from each other. Isaac has the dragon and the python, right? Is he ever a crocodile?”
“He can, but he doesn’t like it,” Aviva explained. “He says it makes him feel sleepy. I guess crocodiles do spent a lot of time sleeping with their eyes peeping up in the water. And he doesn’t have a turtle form.”
Shulamit noticed Aviva didn’t volunteer the existence of the lizard form, but somehow, she instinctively trusted Aafsaneh. She didn’t add to the information herself, however, and she also stayed away from anything that might out Rivka’s womanhood. Instead, she asked if Aafsaneh had any other forms herself besides the swan.
“When I want to be small I look like a little blue starling,” said Aafsaneh. “My husband used to joke that he’d caught me one year when he put out nets to keep the real starlings and finches out of the grapevines. He was always saying things like that. That’s where Farzin gets that never-ending sense of humor of his. Oh...” she added, “but, that’s right, you haven’t met him yet.”
“It almost feels like we have,” said Shulamit, “because Kaveh talks about him so much.”
“Since they can’t be together, Kaveh feeds voraciously on the crumbs of memory,” Aviva agreed enthusiastically.
“I know those meals.” There was a pang of pain in Aafsaneh’s voice. “It’s been years since my husband died, but I talk about him with the farmers all the time. I tell stories to their children, the ones who never knew him. It wasn’t just that he made me laugh, although when we first met, I desperately needed it.” Then she told them of how she, a young noblewoman with illicitly-learned magical skills, had fled into the countryside to escape her royal lover and met the wealthy farmer she had married. “He was a good man,” she concluded, “and filled with so much optimism. Farzin has that part too. I hope it’s helping him now.”
“From what Kaveh says, it sounds like your son has your devotion to goodness and justice,” said Shulamit, eager to draw her once again from her quite understandable rage and worry.
“I’m glad to hear that,” said the Bird-Woman. “I did everything I could to raise him right. I’m so proud of my boy.”
“I can’t tell you how much it means to me to hear you talk about him that way even though you know he’s in love with a man,” said Shulamit, instantly feeling self-conscious about her honesty.
“Why should that matter?” said Aafsaneh, and Shulamit would have cried if Aviva hadn’t instinctively cradled her tiny body more tightly. It wasn’t that King Noach loved his daughter less than he would have if she had loved men. But she knew her aberration disappointed him, and no amount of Bens or even Isaacs could patch up the memories of hearing the words ‘unconditional love’ used in a twisted way, meant to brand her natural inclinations as something to be loved in spite of.
As the day waned on, they talked more about Kaveh, since Aafsaneh had never met him, and heard more stories about Farzin’s father. Aafsaneh wanted to know lots of things about life in the palace, but stayed away from painful subjects like elephants. Her voice was gentle, but underneath all her stories and her polite and friendly questions lay a deep sea of anguish. Shulamit could hear the tension in her voice, and she hoped the conversation was calming enough that she could concentrate on flying and get there safely.
The queen and her consort took turns napping in the night, each making sure the other wouldn’t fall off. Her dreams didn’t bear repeating, the dreams one has while closing in on an effort whose failure could result in three different nauseating nightmares come to life. Would she have to lie with a man, after all, or would a war start because of her refusal to select one? Or would she let down her responsibility to her co
untry and to her father’s memory, and abandon her kingdom to the squabbling of third cousins once she was dead? She was glad to wake from those dreams and hold Aviva instead, squinting into the pink dawn. Today was the day. She eyed the sunlight uneasily, silently willing its glowing rays to go on forever. With the departure of that sun might end all her hopes.
Broad morning daylight streamed over the sleepy girls as their flying chaperone reached the City of the Red Clay. Aafsaneh’s path took them directly up the river, and Shulamit soon realized she was quickly drawing closer to the new bridge. The workers Kaveh had told her about were still there -- dozens of tired, gaunt men with glassy eyes set in determined faces. Some of them were picking through a basket of fruit and passing its contents out to the others, but much of the fruit wound up back in the basket or even thrown into the river because of rot or mold.
Even numerous as they were, they seemed such a tiny, forgotten band compared with the rest of the teeming city.
A few of them spotted the enormous blue bird flying overhead, and although they couldn’t have seen the women on her back, Aafsaneh by herself was enough to inspire a sensation. Within seconds, they’d told the others, and all the men were staring and pointing, momentarily distracted from their grim vigil.
Shulamit, with the wind around her face, swelled up with euphoria. These men were in their most desperate need, and she -- little Shulamit! -- had the power to save them. All she needed to do was speak the words, and her entire Royal Guard, with the notorious Captain Riv Maror riding “his” fearsome dragon, would rain like a thunderstorm down on King Jahandar, crushing him into submission. How dare he force these men into this position after the months of hard work they’d given him? It was a beautiful bridge.
She could practically hear trumpets playing.
Aviva caught the look on her face and said, “Hm?”
“I could save them.” Shulamit bit her lip and played with the edge of her scarf.
Climbing the Date Palm Page 16