Zakai’s eyes deepened, becoming blacker than the moonless night, his touch as searing as the noonday sun. “I love you,” he said. “You, bright and soft. My meaning.” I smiled as he rolled me over and we took a lesson from the wind, tumbling and cresting, our bodies flying so high, we reached the stars from where we’d come.
As I floated to earth, the strength zapped from my limbs, no more than a gentle breeze, I closed my eyes. Just as I drifted to sleep, I heard Zakai whisper, “Oh little star, I’ll die a million deaths if my love has hurt you.”
CHAPTER FOUR
A half-moon later, the tall block of a man named Berel arrived on Sundara, two of Haziq’s bodyguards dropping the chains that had kept him docile on the plane ride there as they departed, brushing their hands of him, and muttering the word animal. Apparently, the giant was given to unprovoked bouts of violence that occurred on a random schedule no one could predict or understand. When I stared into his crooked eyes, one dark orb going in an altogether alternate direction from the other, and observed the low, heavy set of his brow, I could believe it. There was something wrong with him that had nothing to do with his body, but rather a twisted mind and an empty soul. He was like a dust devil that sprang up on a fair and sunny day. You couldn’t see it until it was right upon you, but you could sense it coming all the same. A shift in the atmosphere, the prickle of your skin, and then boom! You were flattened.
“Here is your performance partner,” Haziq said to Ahmad when he introduced him to the group, bringing something from behind his back and looping it loosely around Ahmad’s neck. It was a leash. He handed the end to Berel, who tilted his head so he could look at it with confused interest. After a moment he smiled, showing his tiny, crooked teeth set in overly large gums. “Now you are the dancing monkey,” Haziq said on a boisterous bubble of laughter, walking away. “Try not to displease your master.”
My stomach seized to look upon Ahmad’s face. I had only seen that mixture of fear and rage on one other face—Zakai’s.
Later, I found the little man in the smaller courtyard behind the house. He had quickly become my friend and I sought him out daily to spend more time with Bibi, teaching him tricks beyond what he already knew. The courtyard Ahmad sat in now wasn’t surrounded by fruit trees, and didn’t offer the miracle of the water well, but it was shaded by the house, and had a view of the rolling, shifting desert. And Haziq never came here. It was far too plain and secluded for him. He preferred the lush open areas where his family might look upon him with a mixture of envy and fear.
I clasped my hands in front of me, unsure what to say, anguish rising in my chest at the sight of the locked collar still around his neck—the cold, heavy reminder that a beast controlled him. Before I could decide how to begin, and without turning, Ahmad said, “Did you know there are tides in the sand, just like the ocean?”
“I’ve never actually seen an ocean,” I said. “I’ve only heard of it. Will you tell me more?”
Ahmad paused, looking over at me as I walked up next to him, and pointing at a bench near the wall that we might sit on.
I sat down first and Ahmad joined me. He stared at me for several beats and it made me feel self-conscious. “Where did you hear about the ocean, Karys?” he finally asked.
“From Doren the dog-faced boy. He was only here for twelve full moons before he repaid his debt to Haziq. But he had grown up in a house near the sea and he told me about the waves, the salt, and the giant fish and other creatures that live in its waters, different than the ones I already knew about.” He’d also told me about the soldiers who had come in the night and killed his family in front of him, and how Haziq had found him later, near death, the corpses of his loved ones rotting on the floor. I still shivered when I thought of it. My heart still ached when I pictured Doren’s haunted eyes and his memory of the soldiers howling with laughter at his hair-covered face even as he lay dying.
“There are no fish in the desert,” Ahmad said. “How did you know about them?”
“Sometimes Haziq brings food from the sea frozen on ice to serve the customers for dinner. Once they didn’t eat it all and Haziq said we could have the shrimp and the lobster that was left.”
He stared at me again in an assessing way. “Ah. I see. Did you like it?”
I frowned. “I didn’t eat any. Zakai said it’s better not to experience something we’ll likely never have again.”
A strange look came over his face. “They keep you very sheltered, don’t they?”
I thought about that, feeling slightly embarrassed, like a child. “I suppose. I think it’s because they don’t want me to be hurt by the knowledge of the tragedies beyond these walls.” I swept my hand toward the stone barrier. “They do it out of love but . . .”
“But you like stories, don’t you, Karys? Even the bad ones. You seek knowledge from those who will give it to you. And you don’t tell that to the others, even Zakai.”
I blushed in shame but nodded quickly. It was as though the little man had looked straight into my mind and plucked out all my secrets. I did seek knowledge. I wanted stories. Yes, even the bad ones, and perhaps especially those. And I didn’t even know exactly why I desired such things.
Ahmad looked back out to the desert. “There are opportunities to gather knowledge, even on Sundara,” he murmured.
“Yes,” I said. While I didn’t desire the freedoms Zakai did, I was deeply curious to hear the descriptions of things I’d never experienced, and it was a relief to say it out loud. I wanted stories and pictures in my head, like the vision of the great blue whale Doren had described, the one he told me was bigger than Sundara, though I knew that couldn’t possibly be true. “Will you tell me more about where you came from? The city and the streets? The houses? Did some of them have green shutters? Will you tell me what it smelled like there?”
Ahmad glanced back over his shoulder, his smile wilting, and a look I couldn’t define coming into his eyes. “What if I told you more than that? What if I taught you to read?”
I stared at him, my heart jumping. “Read? Letters?”
“Yes,” Ahmad said. “And learn numbers too. Math.”
“You know those things?” Almost all of those on Sundara had never been taught to read or write. They came from circumstances where they’d been rejected or ignored, a burden to their struggling families who grew crops for a living and had no need of a non-producing mouth to feed. A few knew a couple of letters, and others, like Yanna, had taught me the meaning of the words they used in conversation, but mostly, they’d been resistant to teaching me, saying Haziq would discipline them by withholding food if they did.
“I do. Though I didn’t tell Haziq that. My mother taught me. She was very wise,” Ahmad said.
I glanced back, expecting to see Haziq standing at the edge of the courtyard, listening, though I’d never once seen him there before. “Haziq, he—”
“Doesn’t ever have to know,” Ahmad said, his eyes narrowing slightly.
Was this some sort of revenge then? Regarding . . . Berel and the leash? Still . . . how exactly would he teach me? “There are no books here. And few writing implements or paper.” My eyes slid away as I thought of the pen I’d taken from Haziq’s desk once when he’d looked away, and the notebook that had fallen from the pocket of one of the men who came to watch our performance. But that notebook only had a few blank pages left inside, and I was deeply protective of it. It was where I kept my secrets.