Anno had scoffed at this, saying she would not wait to be betrothed to lay her cheek against its rough trunk and watch the stream glimmer through its swaying, pinnated leaves, like a curtain.
“Also, the stream. Any water, really. She enjoyed sitting by the water.”
“But, Daron, not in this rain!” Kevork protested.
“There was no rain when she started out, was there? And if nothing had happened to her, she might have returned home by now, do you not think? Something has happened to her, or she is so upset…” Daron’s mind raced.
They were walking swiftly now.
“Where else?” Kevork persisted.
“The orchard, but not now, of course. The churchyard.”
They were moving uphill.
“We will start at the willow and end in the churchyard. She may be by the stream where it pools. She may be there,” Daron called back, his walk already turning into a run.
They left the village roads immediately. It would be the quickest way to the shelter of the willow. Slipping through an opening between the homes, they leapt out onto the surrounding steppe.
Their boots were quickly caked with reddened soil as they leapt from mound to rock. At one point, they leapt onto the low, flat roof of a one-room shelter with its back built into the side of a hill, saving minutes of time by going over rather than around it. They were soon by the willow.
From a distance it was plain to see that no one was there. Nevertheless, Daron slowed his run and walked the last remaining steps inside the shelter of its branches. He stared straight up through the leaves to the blackness beyond it and exhaled at this first failure. Then he turned to Kevork. His cousin raised his lantern to better see Daron’s face. He lowered it again quickly and waved toward the stream. “Come! Where is that section of the stream? It pools, you said?”
Again they ran, across the short plain to the banks of the stream. They saw immediately how the water had risen and then they ran again, more slowly now, outside its uneven ridge. They traveled downstream to an area where the land flattened abruptly and the water’s flow slowed as the natural walls of the stream widened and rounded. In the summer the girls loved to remove their shoes here and wade in its twinkling coolness. Now, the two men only stared into its ugly, muddied depths.
Their soaked heads fell forward with yet another defeat.
“Daron,” Kevork spoke softly, very near his side. The growing absurdity of searching for someone in the open air, in this downpour, made him ask. “Daron, listen. Do you think, she would have tried to just,” he faltered and began again. “I must ask. Do you think she would have tried to just kill herself?”
Daron’s head snapped around. “No!” he shouted.
“Are you certain? She would not do that?” Kevork persisted.
“She would not do that! To me!”
Kevork was silenced. A relationship like this was beyond his understanding. Anno was almost a stranger to him.
The rain had thickened the air, making it pungent and spicy. Daron found it hard to breathe suddenly. Could she be dead somewhere? He must think. The churchyard was still a possibility. He had not understood the peace Anno felt by the gravestones, but he had accepted it. Could she have fallen there? Tripped on one of the stones in the dark? Perhaps she had been so close to them all along and they had not known?
“The churchyard, then, Kevork?”
They turned away from the rush of water.
Three hundred paces downstream, Turgay and Anno lay cradled against the yielding bank. Their bodies had ceased their hard trembling, and now waves of warmth lulled them into unconsciousness.
NEVART HAD DRESSED and stood leaning heavily against their open door, peering into the street for someone to appear with news. The men had been gone for less than an hour, but it seemed more.
No one voiced their utmost fear. No sane person wandered in this rain and fog for hours. She was either dead or hurt or taken.
Naomi had helped Daron and Kevork with their coats and then had backed into a corner of the house, where she sat on her haunches, unmoving and wide-eyed with disbelief. Mgro’s daughter, Nairi, was staring at her strangely. Naomi knew she should go stand with Nevart by the door where news would reach them first, but she could only stare at the walls and remember her dream, again, coming to her so vividly. She clenched her teeth. Cold, muddy water was washing over her naked skin. She was not immersed in the water, but her hair was wet and twisted around her neck.
Her left hand lifted and pressed against her mouth. It felt so close, but she was here, here in this corner on the dry floor staring at dry walls. What had Mariam said? Dreams of dirty water were never good.
She rose and crossed the room. Again she clenched her teeth. She thought surely they would crack. They chattered so loudly in her ears. Down the stairs and she saw Nevart standing alone. She murmured only that she would return and continued out the door. She passed the flooded rows of vegetables and the high garden wall to the left and walked uphill to the church square. Nevart had cried out after her. Perhaps because she had not understood what Naomi said, or perhaps because Naomi had left without permission, or perhaps because she had not taken a cloak or head covering. It did not matter, because her dream told her of this night, and she must find someone who would listen to her.
Tiny flames of light flickered as she approached the square. The rain had all but stopped. She searched their faces and saw them solemn and lined. Anno had not been found, then.
She asked for Mgro or Manuel, for Kevork, for Daron. They had not been seen. Heads shook slowly. Even Naomi’s father-in-law was out searching.
Naomi walked as far as the churchyard and then turned back. Perhaps she should find Mariam. She would be an ally and not think her foolish.
Now the hour of searching was nearly up, and Naomi noticed men straggling back to the church square, heads shaking. At the sound of footsteps behind her, Naomi turned. Kevork and Daron were emerging from between the headstones and descending the incline of the graveyard.
“What news?” Daron asked, his eyes hollow.
“None. Yet.” Naomi took both his wrists. “Daron, my son, please listen. I beg you.”
Blankly, he watched her.
“Did you search the stream?” she asked.
Kevork glanced at Daron, who did not answer. “At some points, yes,” Kevork supplied.
Naomi turned to him and held his eyes with a seriousness that he rarely saw. “You must search the stream. She is there. I feel it.” Her hands squeezed Daron’s wrists uncomfortably.
“Believe me.” She looked back at Daron now. “I know what I am saying.”
Daron felt as if a stranger were speaking to him. There was no trace of his light-hearted aunt. Her face was colorless and harsh.
“If you do not go, then I shall.”
She did not say that it was a dream, real and persistent, that made her insist. And they did not ask.
Both nodded back at Naomi. They would search the length of the stream. Many times.
Kevork clapped a hand on Daron’s back and choosing to move methodically, they retraced their steps past the flatland and up the knolls back to the pool, to continue their way downstream past all the lengths of water they had missed.
Naomi heard the voices in the square. Her back was to them but their words carried.
“…useless in this mud and rain.”
“I never recovered from my cough last spring…”
“In this fog I can see about as well as my blind grandmother…”
“I tried to check the bottom of a well, but could not see further than the length of my arm.”
Shivering, she moved away from earshot.
The fog had coated the moon in layers so that now its light was nearly extinguished. Daron and Kevork could not move as quickly as before. Globules of rain spattered and trickled off leaves and branches twofold in weight onto their numbed faces and shoulders. Reaching the pool, they trod ankle-deep along its melting ridge. Th
ey peered deep into its depth this time, instead of only around it.
“Your mother has seen another dream,” Daron said.
“Yes,” Kevork admitted.
And we are desperate and helpless enough to act on a vision, a dream, they both thought. Well, they had to search somewhere next. Let it be this stream.
“How far along do you think we should continue, Daron?”
Almost a mile more and they would meet the rush of the Sassoun River.
“To the end,” Daron answered.
Up ahead, the ridge of the stream’s bank, on the far side, rose unusually. Daron ignored it. They were looking everywhere at once, to the right and the left of them, and in the water. They searched anywhere their limited vision allowed. Eventually, they neared the unusual rise, and standing almost straight across from it, Daron froze as he focused on its shape.
Kevork stopped as well and followed Daron’s gaze. They both cried out and bounded into the water in wide-armed, disbelieving rushes of hope and discovery. They plunged themselves fully and gratefully into the same icy water that short hours ago Anno and Turgay had tried so tragically to cross over.
“Anno! Anno!” Daron cried out her name repeatedly, thunderously at first—and then once he reached her side, it became almost a moan as he pulled her still and weighted body to him, her limbs flaccid, her eyes closed.
Kevork pulled Turgay, unconscious as well, out of the water and laid her flat on the bank. Daron frantically bent his ear to Anno’s mouth, searching for life and calling her name. Kevork looked over his shoulder toward the Kurdish camp and saw no movement.
Daron’s head reared. “There it is! A pulse in her throat.”
With one mighty thrust he stood on his feet in the rushing current with Anno cradled high in his arms. Water spilled off her body like a waterfall. He sank with his first step and straightened himself with the next and Kevork watched him forge ahead with long cautious strides.
Kevork followed closely behind with Turgay in his arms. He was stunned by her leaden weight, but thought she was most probably lighter than Anno, her bones hollowed and slighter with age. But then there were the layers and layers of clothing she wore, soaked and dragging.
Daron climbed the other bank of the stream on his knees. Once clear of the ridge he felt he could run with Anno, straight to warmth and shelter. He turned once to see that Kevork followed and then never looked back again.
He did not allow himself to dwell on her lifeless face. Her head bobbed and rocked limply and he thought he could easily fling Turgay’s body into the nearest pit with satisfaction and pleasure. It did not take much deciphering to realize she was the cause of all this heartache. He could see that Anno’s temple was bloodied red even in the shadows.
For the third time that night Daron and Kevork passed through the churchyard. As Daron passed Anno’s grandparents’ stone, he sent a short prayer to them. “Please. Please, not her.”
Daron and Kevork burst into the square and a stifled shriek arose from Naomi at the sight of them. Heads swung in alarm at the sound and a great rush of bodies moved toward them.
“Is she alive?”
“Who is that with her? Old Turgay?”
“They are soaked through. Are they alive?”
“Where were they?”
“Anno is alive,” Kevork answered once. He did not respond to questions about Turgay, because in truth, he did not know.
As it became obvious that Daron was taking Anno straight to her father’s home, many offers were made to help carry her. He did not slow his pace and he did not respond.
“Where is Headman Vartan?” he called back to the trail of people behind him.
“He is being called.”
Still neither Anno nor Turgay stirred.
Suddenly, Vartan and Haig appeared, running toward them from a side lane. Only then did Daron slow his steps. Vartan’s large, trembling hands cupped Anno’s face and he stared up at Daron in terror.
“She is alive,” he answered gently, praying it was still true. Vartan’s arms shot out for his daughter and for a tiny fraction in time, Daron and Vartan held Anno together, and then, reluctantly, Daron released her.
Vartan waited for Daron to take his eyes from Anno’s face, and with one toss of his head, motioned for him to follow.
Kevork still carried Turgay, and Daron fell into step alongside him, leading the long trail of villagers. He searched once for Naomi, but she was not there.
Nearly home, Yeraz burst toward them, her headpiece billowing like wings, her shoes tossing gravelly stones into the air. She came arms outstretched but was struck at once by Anno’s utter stillness and halted several feet away. She clamped both hands across her mouth as strangulated sobs erupted from her throat.
“No! Yeraz! She is alive!” Vartan shouted.
Yeraz sucked in air, disbelieving, and swung back toward home. She pulled her skirts high above her knees and stretched her thick, stockinged calves to new extremes as she cried out directions.
C H A P T E R 24
A rush of bitter mountain air lashed each corner of the front room. The toneer’s steady but weak flow of warmth was no match for the onslaught of drenched bodies that proceeded through the door. No sooner had they exclaimed over Anno and the wound to her temple than Kevork entered bearing another body. All rushed forward to see who it was and, upon recognizing Turgay, began to piece together what they believed might have been the events of the night.
Mariam sprang into action like a woman of twenty years. She helped Vartan lay Anno gently on a straw mat and motioned for Kevork to lay Turgay down as well. She and Yeraz immediately began to peel off Anno’s shoes and clothes. Lucine pulled her wet hair off her neck and slapped her face gently, calling her name. The villagers dispersed, pleading to be called if help were needed. Kevork, feeling awkward, left as well. Daron did not follow. He turned his back and faced a dark wall that flickered now with his swollen shadow.
Anno’s garments seemed fused together, but Yeraz and Lucine tore at them fiendishly and Anno was soon lifted off the mat onto a mattress. Mariam had already warmed its surface by applying rows of flat, rounded stones heated at the fire.
Haig had remained at Turgay’s side for long minutes, but could find no sign of life left in her. Unlike Anno’s, her expression seemed content, almost as if she were already warmed.
Uncle Hagop shuffled forward and, eyes brimming, made the sign of the cross above her forehead. He whispered, “God be with you now, little sister.”
Vrej came through the door at last. His cheeks were flaming red and he smelled of pines and wind. They realized he had been searching the forest at night for Anno, and Yeraz did not let herself think of the danger he too had been in.
He took in the entire scene before him. Anno looked as though she were sleeping; she was swathed heavily, like a newborn, while her chest was being rubbed with warm oil. Her temple, he saw, was deeply cut. Not far from her, Turgay lay, wet and tiny, on her straw mat.
Vrej took off his coat and boots, and his eyes roamed the room. Aunt Marie was busy at the fireplace hoisting a large pot. The men were gathered around the toneer, still wearing their half-soaked clothes. His eyes rested on Daron. He, too, had been pulled close to the toneer. Vrej had been told on his way home that Daron and Kevork had found Anno and Turgay, but considering the circumstances he was surprised to see Daron here, still, in their home.
Vrej went and stood by him.
Lucine pulled Anno’s hair out from under her and spread it out to dry.
“Turgay is dead?” Vrej asked of no one in particular. Grunts were his only answer.
“Tell us now, Daron, where you found them,” Vartan finally asked.
Daron told them how he and Kevork had searched. He was too tired to explain to them about Aunt Naomi and her dream. He did not understand it himself and was not prepared to endure their looks or questions.
He crossed the room wordlessly and stood over Anno. He bent to touch her hand and th
ought she felt a bit warmer. Chunks of moss clung to her hair. He knelt, and his eyes, on a level now with Yeraz and Mariam, were sunken and vacant.
Anno was covered to her chin. Her mouth was slightly opened and he watched her breaths, slow and shallow. Mariam saw his eyes well. Unprepared to bear the pain there, and the fear, she snapped at him. “Go near the toneer, boy! Take off those shoes and those socks. Lucine, get some hot tea inside these men. Have we not seen enough today?”
Mariam, he knew, was making it understood that he would stay.
Vrej built up the toneer’s fire, Anno’s specific chore, and it sparked and spread a welcome scorching heat.
Had Anno opened her eyes just then, she would have seen Daron seated cross-legged between Vrej and Uncle Hagop, watching her. He was holding a steaming cup of tea, but a cup of oghee was being pushed at him as well by Uncle Hagop. As it was, she did not stir.
“Why has no one come in search of her?” Marie hissed to the women. “Is she not their mother, after all? Leaving her to wander in this rain! Did they want her dead?”
Yeraz exhaled. She felt as if her chest would burst with fear. Fear for her daughter, whose temple blazed as she battled whatever unknown ailment was upon her due to her exposure. And fear of how the Kurds would choose to interpret the causes of Turgay’s death and where they would choose to lay the blame.
At midnight, Vartan and Haig reached an agreement. At first light, they would cross the stream to the Kurdish camp and locate Turgay’s family. They would be told the entire truth of how their mother and Anno were discovered. Daron had remembered, later, noticing the large row of boulders close to where Anno and Turgay lay. It was quite obvious that while crossing to deliver Turgay home, the two had fallen. They would be told that Anno lay unconscious. Turgay did not survive.
It would be done at first light, so that Turgay’s body would be buried the same day as her death.
As the Poppies Bloomed Page 11