Susan Fletcher - Alphabet of Dreams

by Susan Fletcher

  He gathered up Shirak, clambered into my lap, and hid his face against my chest. “He’ll tell you when he’s ready,” I said.

  Zoya made an impatient noise in the back of her throat. “Babak—”

  “No!” he said.

  Zoya cursed softly and turned away from us.

  “What is the matter with you? You’ll have to sell the dream later; there isn’t time now.”

  By the lamplight I could see her shoulders fall, as with a sigh. She looked up. “You’re right,” she said. “You can’t stay here.” She blew out the lamp; suddenly, it was dark. “Come.”

  *

  We stayed off the roads as much as possible. Like me, Zoya knew many roundabout ways. Before long the moon rose, large and round, washing the landscape with a milky radiance that made it easier to see where to place our feet—and would surely reveal us to any who might come looking. The sight of a shepherd in the distance or the unexpected rustling of a clump of brush or the clattering of rocks on the path sent my heart into my throat. Once, we heard the clopping of a horse’s hooves. We dived behind an outcropping of rock and huddled in a hollow of darkness, breathing dust, holding ourselves still. Babak shivered convulsively against me; the nighttime air of early autumn had begun to bare its teeth. I held him tight, praying that his silent movement would not vibrate the air and make us known.

  I thought of Suren. Captured.

  But when, in a moment, horse and rider passed, I suddenly wondered: How did we know this was so? Perhaps someone had recognized Suren in Rhagae or had overheard him talking and reported it to the king’s Eyes and Ears. And even if he had been captured, he might escape. Yes, surely he would! Father had escaped capture once, long ago, and Suren was quick; he could ride like the wind. We had no cause to think the worst.

  Babak shivered again. Looking down, I saw that his feet had begun to bleed. I ripped in half what remained of a dream cloth I had secreted in my sash, and bundled up each of his feet. Shirak, also in my sash, poked out his head to watch.

  We set off again.

  For a stooped old crone who leaned upon a walking stick, Zoya set a rapid pace. Perhaps her back and knees were bad, but the rest of her seemed spry enough. We clattered up heaps of broken rock, skidded down brushy defiles, trudged across long expanses of gravelly sand. Babak tripped and fell. His knees now bled through his trousers, and his feet dripped blood as well. My grandmother’s voice said contamination in my ears, but I told her there was nothing to be done. I carried Babak on my back for as long as I could, then set him down to walk.

  In time the reek of marsh began to drift in to me: damp, and rot, and green, growing things. Soon we were threading through a forest of reeds; the ground grew soft and wet, sucked at my bare feet, squished between my toes. And soon again the water rose to my ankles, then halfway to my knees. It felt cold at first, but before long it seemed warmer than the air. Babak began to whimper. I stooped down to let him clamber up on my back. A bullfrog croaked, hoarse and low; I slapped at buzzing insects that alighted on my arms and stung. It was darker in the marsh, especially once the moon had set. I didn’t want to think what was in the water, but visions of wriggling snakes and leeches and sharp-clawed, scuttling things began to creep into my thoughts.

  “Are you sure you know where you’re going?” I asked Zoya.

  She grunted.

  “What is the favor you did for this woman?”

  “If you must know, I helped her escape when I midwifed for a princess. She was a slave—a foreigner—and … well, ’tis a tale for another time.”

  Helped a foreign slave escape? This woman’s past was full of secrets and intrigues.

  On we slogged. My legs began to feel leaden, and my back throbbed with pain. In a while Babak tipped back his head, throwing me off balance. “Babak! Don’t do that.”

  “Stars,” he said.

  “Hmph.” I was of no mind to prattle about stars.

  “Like my dream,” he said, pointing at the sky.

  My feet, of their own accord, ceased walking. “You dreamed of stars?”

  And now Zoya had stopped too. She turned around, swished through the shallow water toward us.

  “Star dance,” Babak said. “Two stars. Near, apart. Near, apart. Three times near and apart.”

  “When …” Zoya looked at me, then back over my shoulder at Babak. “When did you dream this?”

  “Today,” Babak said. “When we were hiding.”

  She blinked and shook her head, turned to me. “He said he didn’t dream.”

  “Because you pressed too hard. Didn’t I tell you?”

  “Stars.” Zoya scratched her chin, gazed up at the sky. The night was clear. Stars clustered thick and bright.

  “Two stars,” she mused. “Dancing.” At once Zoya leaned in, thrusting her face right next to Babak’s. “Tell me more about this new dream of yours.”

  I twisted away, putting distance between her and Babak. “Don’t … push.”

  She glared at me.

  Something did not feel right. True, Zoya was ever captivated by Babak’s dreams, but now there was a sort of fever about her that I had not seen before. For the first time I wondered what she dreamed of, hoped for. Was her fiefdom in the City of the Dead enough for her? Or did she dream of regaining her old station and hobnobbing with nobility?

  “Whose cloth was that?” I asked. “The one you gave to Babak today?”

  “They don’t always tell me,” she answered lightly. Then, “Eh, look!”

  I sighted along the line of her pointing finger. Dimly ahead, in the marsh, I could make out a faint sprinkling of lights among the reeds. I hesitated, feeling a cold shiver of unease between my shoulder blades, then shook it off. I was too weary to flee, and there was nowhere else to go. Besides, Zoya wouldn’t do harm to Babak.

  Surely she would not.

  CHAPTER 13

  PEOPLE of the MARSH

  It was a small settlement of huts, all huddled together on a dry, hummocky island in the middle of the marsh. Reed huts, they must be, for the lights we saw now appeared to be inside the dwellings, screened fine by woven walls. As we approached, three or four moving, brighter lights appeared. Torches.

  “Who goes there?” a man called. Zoya shouted back her name; the torches drew near. Soon I could make out the shapes of six or seven men.

  “Wait here,” Zoya said, and she sloshed on alone. I set down Babak. Skinny though he was, my back ached from carrying him. His hand sought mine; I clasped it.

  “When can we go home?” he asked.

  “Hush.”

  A disputation arose. “Thief,” one man said, pointing a finger at Zoya; another man cried out, “Hoaxer!” It seemed Zoya hadn’t told me the whole story about her doings with these people.

  She spoke to them, low and intent. “One night’s all,” I heard her say, and “donkey” and “your reward.”

  The squabbling swelled around her. At last she began to fumble with something, then held out an open hand to one of the men. A glimmering in the torchlight.

  Silver coins.

  The man hesitated, then took them. Zoya motioned to Babak and me. “Come!”

  The hut was close and dim, furnished with a lamp; a scattering of cushions; a few earthenware dishes, pots, and jars; and some reed mats on the floor. Far less than we’d had in Susa, but opulence beyond imagining compared with the City of the Dead. Zoya spoke softly to her old friend while the husband stood just outside in convocation with the other men. The woman listened with quick, frightened glances at Babak and me from time to time. She did not ask our names, and we did not offer them. At last she set out a platter of flatbread and soft cheese, while Zoya fussed over some cups and a jar of wine. I tried to catch her eye. I wanted to know what had transpired back there in the marsh, and hadn’t had a chance to ask. Zoya glanced at the woman, then shook her head at me as if to say, Not now.

  “Here, Ramin,” she said, “some wine.”

  The wine was bitter, the bre
ad stale, and the cheese had begun to grow mold. I didn’t care. They slaked the thirst and filled the belly.

  It had been a long, long day. The drowsiness that for hours had lapped at me in ripples now engulfed me in swelling waves. Babak took Shirak from my sash and fed him some of his cheese.

  “Brave Shirak,” he said. “Roar!”

  I leaned back on a cushion, allowed my eyelids to shut.

  Drifting. Drifting down into a deep, deep place. I could still hear Babak’s voice—talking to Shirak, telling him not to be afraid. I listened to the melody of it for a while, little uplifts and downturns, patterning rhythms. Lulling me.

  It was just before I went under, before I was entirely drowned in sleep, that I saw Babak’s face above me. Worried. I forced a smile, started to rise, but then Zoya was there, taking him away. “Don’t pester him,” I heard her say. “Weary … needs to sleep.”

  Sleep. Needs to sleep.

  I slept.

  When I awoke, my body was damp with sweat. There was a hard, pulsating knot inside my head, my belly churned, and something smelled odd: of mud and decay, and lush, new sprouting growth. Long, thin shafts of light pierced the walls of the cavern….

  Walls. Not stone, but mats of plaited reeds. I sat up, but the room swayed and my insides sloshed. I lay back down again, reached for Babak.

  Not there.

  I remembered then: Zoya. The hut in the marsh. Eyes and Ears of the king.

  A fly droned in sleepy circles round the room. I watched it for a while, then sat up again—slowly this time, so as not to knock loose the painful knot in my head—and looked about. Shirak, curled up beside me. Jars for water and oil. Pots for cooking. Rolls of reed mats. Atop the mats, a folded length of cloth, white as the face of the moon.

  No Babak.

  But now another sound: children’s voices. Laughter, outside the hut. Babak must be there.

  I stood—the room swayed gently back and forth before subsiding—and stumbled to the open doorway. There was a stretch of hard-packed earth and then the marsh, reaching out as far as I could see. The sun stood high in the sky. Most of the morning had gone.

  How long had I slept?

  We had arrived, I guessed, toward the end of the evening watch. I had slept the rest of the night … and most of the next morning as well?

  There they were, the children, a ragged flock of them—darting in and out among the huts, playing a “catch me” game. I shifted my gaze from child to child, searching for Babak. Suddenly one of them caught sight of me, stopped, pointed. “He wakes!” she shouted.

  “He wakes!”

  “He wakes!”

  They all ran laughing and shrieking into the marsh, disappeared one by one among the reeds.

  “Wait!” I cried. “Where’s Babak?”

  I followed them into the shallow water, but my legs wobbled strangely and the marsh mud sucked at my bare feet. I could not keep up.

  Drugged. The word floated into my mind. The wine was drugged.

  But why?

  A sick feeling of dread rose in my belly.

  “Babak!” I called.

  I heard them still—the shrill voices—but fainter now, farther. In the distance too I could hear men’s voices, and chopping sounds, and rustlings of reeds. The mournful croak of a bullfrog. Another, higher, answering.

  My feet slowed, then dragged to a stop. The sweet, rich reek of marsh rot seeped into the throbbings of my head, the roilings of my gut.

  I’ll take you to the Magus…. Don’t be a fool, Mitra…. He could keep you safe.

  The white cloth. White, as Magi wore.

  Ask him about his dream. Ask him.

  Star dance…. Near, apart…. Three times near and apart.

  Here, Ramin, some wine.

  Sunlight flickered between the rushes. A dragonfly buzzed past, a quick flash of brilliant blue green. A ploink as some small creature dived into the water nearby. I slapped at a stinging insect. Welts, all over my arms.

  My knees caved in. I knelt in the dark water, cupped my face in my hands. The sickness lurched up from my belly; I let it out.

  A swishing of water. A rattling of reeds. All at once a man appeared before me; children clustered round.

  I wiped my sleeve across my mouth. “Where is my brother?” I demanded.

  No one answered, but I knew.

  CHAPTER 14

  HELL HAG

  I turned away and plowed back through the marsh water. I would find him. I would find him and steal him back. My head pained me, my legs did not work right, and my mind felt numb and cloudy. I had no idea how I would do it, but I would find him. I would.

  “Wait!” A man’s voice.

  I looked back. More men now, their reed-cutting knives at their sides. The urchins stared at me, whispering and pointing. One of the men drew near, and I recognized him by his long jaw and bristly eyebrows that went up at the ends: the husband of Zoya’s friend. “Babak,” he said. “The boy that came with you and the old woman. He’s your brother?”

  “Yes! What did she tell you?”

  The men exchanged glances. “I told you about that one, that Zoya,” the husband-of-the-friend said. “You can’t trust her.” He turned back to me.

  “If you wish to speak to her, she’s here in the village.”

  “Zoya is here?”

  He nodded. “She borrowed my donkey, but I told her if it wasn’t back this morning, I’d come after her myself. She returned with two donkeys—the one I lent her and another she said she’d bought….”

  “After she sold my brother to the Magus.”

  His face remained still—all but his eyes, which widened a little, as if in surprise. “She told a different tale. We know she left with the boy last night and came back later without him. We know she got herself another donkey. She told us the boy was in peril, needed sanctuary.”

  Grimly I lurched back the way I had come. The men and children followed in a ragged half circle behind and around me. I tripped once and fell to my knees; another time I stepped into a deep place and sank in water nearly to my chin. And all the while they followed—solemn, graceful, at ease in the marsh water, suiting their pace to mine.

  Yet soon my head began to clear and my legs grew strong. A jolt of rage surged through me, merged with the beating of my heart: Babak. Babak. Babak.

  And now the village rose above the reeds, and now I could see a gathering of women, watching us come near. “Fetch the old hoaxer!” the husband-of-the-friend called. “Fetch Zoya!”

  But there was no need. A figure appeared in a doorway; she hobbled down among the assemblage of women. Zoya. And then I was running—or as close to running as I could manage—rushing at Zoya through the last remaining reeds and up onto the shore.

  “You old hell hag! Fork-tongue! Lizard spawn!”

  Zoya raised her walking stick to fend me off. Someone grasped one of my arms; I struggled against him; another man took hold of my other arm; they held me fast.

  “You sold Babak, you demon’s get! Scorpion! Bloodsucking daughter of a leech!”

  “Eh, stop it, Ramin,” Zoya said. “You’re making a spectacle of yourself.”

  “Give him the donkey.”

  I whipped my head round; it was the husband-of-the-friend.

  “I paid good coin for it,” Zoya said. “It’s mine.”

  “If what he says is true—and knowing you, I doubt it not—you got plenty for what wasn’t yours to sell. Give him the donkey. The saddlebags, too. Maybe he can find his brother before it’s too late—if only to say farewell. Come sunrise I want you away from here and back in the hole you crawled out of. I don’t care how much peril you’re in.”

  Zoya’s glance flicked toward me and away. She shrugged. “Eh, it’s a bony old nag. More trouble’n it’s worth.”

  The man turned to the children. “Fetch the donkey. Fill a waterskin for the boy, and a sack of food. Get him a headcloth, too—he’ll have need of it.” To the men holding me he said, “Let him go.�
�

  I shook out my arms, glaring at Zoya. “I trusted you,” I said. “I knew your greedy old soul was pinched and dry, but I thought there was at least a drop of human kindness in you.”

  “I’ve done you a favor and you don’t even know it, you little whelp. Ramin,” she added, a pointed reminder that she had kept that secret.

  “You pretend to care for others,” I flung back, “but truly you serve only yourself.”

  “And who do you serve, oh high-and-mighty one? We’re more alike than you think.” Zoya turned to leave, then hesitated.

  “I would’ve given it to him myself, that donkey,” she said to the husband. Then, to me, “You won’t find them at the caravansary. They left this morn, heading for Sava.”

  She was the oldest, skinniest, feeblest donkey I had ever set eyes on. She let me mount, but she was balky and slow. I’d have set a brisker pace if I’d straddled a toad. Some of the marsh urchins guided me along the pathways through the marsh. When we came to a road, one of the older ones pointed west along it. “This road,” he said, “leads you to another one, a bigger road. Sava’s south and west.”

  I hesitated, for I had heard that the Magus would soon be journeying east, to Margiana. Might Zoya have lied again?

  But it hadn’t felt like a lie, what she had said. It had felt like a grudging gift.

  A girl about Babak’s age reached into her sash and held out the one-eyed kitten to me. “Here,” she said. “For Babak.”

  I almost didn’t take him. But the kitten let out a hoarse meow and scrambled eagerly toward me, so I tucked him into my sash.

  “Move along!” I admonished the donkey after the children had vanished into the reeds. I clouted her ribs with my heels; she put her head down, flicked a great, hairy ear, and refused to budge.

  I dismounted and hauled on the donkey’s lead; she pegged her heels to the ground and strained backward. I sighed, let the lead go slack. Then that ornery donkey began to walk.

  I darted in front of her so at least I would seem to be leading. Looking back north to where the Elburz Mountains shimmered in the distance, I tried to find Rhagae, but it was too far away.