The Bird King Read online

  Hassan was quiet for several minutes as Fatima stuffed the canvas sack with clothing.

  “Oh, Fa,” he said at last, his voice very small. “Where are we going to go?”

  “I don’t know,” said Fatima, wiping her wet eyes angrily with the back of one hand. “Away.”

  Hassan rose. He opened a small cupboard and began to remove sheaves of paper, charcoals, gum arabic, brushes, ink. These he arranged, with more care than Fatima had ever seen him put into anything, in a buckled case of boiled leather with a carry-strap sewn from end to end, which he looped over one shoulder.

  “You don’t have to come with me,” he said. “Stay here, where it’s safe. They’ll give the sultan a snug estate somewhere, or he’ll cross the Strait to Morocco. Go with him.”

  Fatima shook her head.

  “They’ll know I helped you get away,” she said. “It won’t be any safer for me here than it is for you.”

  “But sweeting”—he knelt next to her and plucked at her tunic, like a child seeking attention—“you don’t own a pair of shoes.”

  Fatima looked down at her naked feet. It had not occurred to her that one might need things outside the palace that one did not need inside it. A sense of profound, infuriating helplessness overcame her, and she began to sob in earnest.

  “Lend me some,” she sputtered. Hassan leaped to his feet and began to rummage through a wooden chest, pulling out various small items and rejecting them, until, with a cry of triumph, he produced a pair of much-worn leather boots. Kneeling, he slipped them onto Fatima’s feet with melancholy tenderness, tightening the drawstrings around her calves.

  “There,” he said. “Your first pair of shoes. May you live to wear a hundred nicer ones.”

  Sniffling, Fatima stuck out one foot and wiggled it experimentally. The boots were too big, far heavier and clammier than the quilted silk slippers that kept her feet warm in winter or the wooden clogs she wore to and from the stool chamber. Yet the weathering of the heels and the bend at the ball of the foot suggested they had carried Hassan many miles, and might do the same for her. That, at least, was something.

  “Here!” Hassan was up again, clattering in a corner of the room, and turned around with a pair of daggers in steel-studded leather sheaths, which he held up, one in each quivering hand, like an improbable assassin. “Defensive measures! The captain of the infantry gave me these after the battle of Zahara—which I helped win, you know, even though I wasn’t actually there—and I just chucked them into the corner. Whoever thought I’d need them? Here, take this one and put it in your sash.”

  Fatima pulled the weapon from its sheath. It was lighter than she expected and shone like cloudy glass in the firelight. She had no notion of how to wield a knife that was not meant for cutting up salted meat, but she sheathed it again and tucked it into her sash anyway. The feeling of the dagger against her hip, straight and cold in its swaddling of embroidered silk, sent a stab of anticipation through her body. She felt oddly alert, light-footed in her heavy boots, as though her bones had gone as hollow as a bird’s.

  Hassan shouldered the canvas bag that Fatima had packed. The weight of it seemed to press all the giddiness out of him, and his face fell.

  “For a second, I forgot,” he said, attempting to smile. “I told myself we’re going on a little adventure, and I forgot that we’re not coming back.”

  Fatima stroked the wall nearest her. It was warm from the heat of the brazier, and the glowing coals had gilded it red-gold. It seemed strange that she should mourn a place in which friendships had been so few and so tenuous, yet she did mourn. The palace was her home and home was not a matter of loving or hating; to leave it was to do violence to the past.

  “Did you hear that?” Hassan was suddenly rigid. Fatima held her breath and listened. There were voices in the workroom beyond the door, growing louder as they approached. The clack and rattle of metal suggested men in armor. Fatima pulled her hand away from the wall and felt her heart thud against her ribs.

  “We’ve waited too long,” she whispered.

  Fists pounded on the door. Fatima backed away, groping at the dagger in her sash, and nearly tripped over the clutter on the floor in her big boots. There was no way out of the room besides a narrow window in the outer wall. It was little better than an arrow slit—this was, in fact, its original purpose—and led to a long drop on the other side, where the ground sloped away. Fatima stared at Hassan in alarm.

  “Wait,” he whispered. “Wait.” He grabbed a scrap of paper from a pigeonhole and fished a charcoal from the pocket of his robe. Pressing the paper against the wall, he began to sketch. The door latch flapped up and down as the men on the other side tried to pry it open.

  Fatima was seized by a fury as irresistible as hunger.

  “Go to hell!” she shouted. The door began to shake.

  “You’re a madwoman,” said Hassan incredulously. He pressed the scrap of paper into her hand. Fatima looked at it: there was the four-walled room in black lines, the door and window reduced to neat squares, the bed to a rectangle along one side. Yet something else had been added: a square on the floor with a half circle at the center. Fatima dropped to her knees. She began shoving books and plates and piles of clothes out of her way, clearing the floor near the bed. Underneath the clutter, as trim and unobtrusive as she could have wished, was a trapdoor with a great iron ring in the middle.

  “Go,” whispered Hassan. Fatima gripped the iron ring and pulled with all her strength. The trapdoor grated open, exhaling clammy air and the scent of earth. Below it was darkness. Fatima hesitated.

  “Go,” Hassan said again, looking over his shoulder. “I’ll pull the door shut behind us.”

  Fatima sat on the lip of the door and dangled her feet into the dark. Swallowing and closing her eyes, she pushed off and fell.

  It was over in a moment. She landed in loamy dirt, illuminated weakly by the light of the brazier in the room above. Her hands flailing in front of her, she stumbled out of the way. She could see Hassan’s feet hanging down, his robe hitched up to his knees, the exposed shins pale and covered in whorls of reddish-brown hair. With a cry of terrified hilarity, he landed beside her, the trapdoor slamming shut in his wake. The passage went black. Fatima could hear herself breathing in high panicked gasps, the sound amplified by unseen walls. The darkness was so complete that it felt like going blind. She reached out and smacked Hassan on the back with her hand. He yelped. Footsteps shuddered overhead.

  “The map,” hissed Hassan. “Tear it up, quick.”

  Fatima uncurled her hand. The map was damp with sweat. Shaking, she tore it in half and threw the pieces away. The footsteps overhead paused. Voices came as if heard from underwater, reduced to murmurs of incredulity and confusion. The footsteps resumed again, scraping against the stone above, kicking at objects that protested dully. Wood smashed, followed by the unmistakable clang of the iron brazier hitting a wall. The voices retreated, replaced by silence.

  Fatima fought to quiet her breathing. She reached out again, groping for Hassan’s hand. He felt her touch and interlaced his fingers with hers.

  “Where are we?” she whispered.

  “I have no idea,” said Hassan. His voice shook so much that Fatima could barely understand him. “I haven’t thought that far ahead.”

  “What do you mean?” Fatima’s voice rose and collided with some invisible barrier. “You’re the one who brought us here. What do you mean you have no idea?”

  “I panicked, Fa! I was only thinking about a door, any door.” Hassan moaned faintly. “I could try to make a proper map, but I’d need some light.”

  Fatima had not thought to pack flint or tinder. She reached out with her free hand, feeling in the dark for something to guide them. There was only undifferentiated gloom. Gripping Hassan’s fingers, she took another step, hand before her face, and then another, and was finally rewarded by a flat plane of packed earth that might have been the wall of a tunnel.

  “You’ve ne
ver been lost in your life,” she said, trying to sound confident. “We’ll just follow this until we can see something.”

  “All right,” quavered Hassan. He squeezed her hand. Fatima groped along the wall, testing the ground with her foot before putting her weight on it. She pulled Hassan with her, inch by inch, pausing more briefly between steps as she grew surer of herself. The quiet was almost more unnerving than the dark: darkness might be infinitely large, but the heady sound of their breathing suggested a very small passage. Fatima didn’t dare let go of the wall to test this theory. Instead, she told herself the tunnel had been made by someone, and thus must lead somewhere. She imagined a sultan in ancient chain mail and a pointed helm hurrying his troops through this passage to surprise the enemy; or perhaps a wise, ebony-eyed princess holding a torch aloft, quieting her ladies and children with a whisper as they escaped past the siege lines overhead. The thought that others might have passed this way before and lived—there were no skeletons littering the ground, anyway—comforted her.

  “Heron,” said Hassan in a pleading voice, breaking the silence. It took Fatima a moment to understand what he was asking for.

  “Now?” she said with an exasperated laugh. “You want me to tell you a story?”

  “Oh God, yes. Please. I never realized how afraid I am of small, airless, pitch-black tunnels without any sign of an exit. Tell me a story.”

  Fatima tried to think. “Heron,” she repeated, attempting to clear her mind. “I’m sure we’ve done this one before. You always pick waterbirds, Hassan.”

  “I grew up with them, is all. They come to mind.”

  “Heron, heron. The heron is a hunter. A stealthy hunter who keeps very still and waits for his prey to come to him.”

  “Like Luz.”

  Fatima curled her lip. “Luz isn’t a bird. She doesn’t deserve to be a bird. Luz is some awful thing, like a—a weevil or a worm, burrowing into perfectly good food.”

  “Does the heron make it?” Hassan’s breathing was shallow, rushed. “Does he make it across the Dark Sea with the others, to the realm of the Bird King?”

  “Of course he does,” said Fatima. Her own voice sounded unfamiliar. “It’s the heron who feeds all the other birds along the way, diving into the waves for fish. Nobody likes him at first because he doesn’t flock like the others, and spends so much time by himself, but they come to see how loyal and brave he is, in his own way. Not everybody has to be friendly in order to be good.”

  “That’s nice,” said Hassan, still quavery voiced. “I like it when the odd ones get a happy ending.”

  Fatima turned her head to respond and collided with a wall. Her nose filled with a plume of dust and a bitter, fungal scent. She sneezed violently, cursed, and sneezed again.

  “Are you all right?” came Hassan’s anxious voice.

  “I’m fine,” muttered Fatima, wiping her streaming nose with the back of one hand. “There’s a turn here, apparently.”

  “Which way, which way?”

  “I don’t know,” Fatima snapped. “Give me a minute to figure it out.” She felt along the wall, which curved away from her in an odd fashion, as if it was sloping downward, yet when she put out her foot, the ground sloped up. She blundered forward, crouching, and encountered another wall.

  “I think we’re stuck in a corner,” she panted. “Hold on to my sash—I need my other hand, please.”

  Obediently, Hassan relinquished her hand and fumbled until he found her sash, which he gripped unsteadily, as if he was unsure of his footing.

  “All right?” asked Fatima.

  “All right.”

  Keeping one hand on the wall, Fatima reached out with the other. The other wall, if there was one, was too far away to touch. Steeling herself, she let go of the wall entirely and reached out in front of her with both hands. She took one step and then another, and then set her foot on empty air.

  Fatima shrieked. Hassan yanked backward on her sash, toppling them both into the dirt.

  “You were falling,” he panted.

  “I don’t know what happened,” said Fatima. She was shaking so emphatically that her teeth chattered. “I don’t know which way to go.”

  Hassan began to laugh.

  “I’ve never been lost!” he shouted at the black, listening air. “I’ve never not known where I am or which way to go next. I had one talent, and now it’s useless. I should never have come to Granada all those years ago. I should’ve stayed at home and minded my mother. I’m sorry, Fa.”

  “It’s all right,” lied Fatima. “Let’s sit here for a minute. Let’s just sit.”

  Hassan went silent, except for an occasional sniff. Fatima stared into the malignant darkness, straining her eyes, hoping, somehow, that they would adjust, allowing her to make out some helpful landmark. She stared until she saw spots, light sparked by the internal pressures of her own body, weak splotches of yellow and white and blue. They failed to illuminate anything of substance. Yet she focused on them anyway—on two in particular, a pair of yellow specks as bright as lamplight, which bobbed and jerked when she examined them too closely. They persisted after the other lights had faded, dipping and weaving across her field of vision. She had to stare at them for another long minute before she could accept that they were eyes.

  “Hassan,” she forced herself to whisper. “Something’s coming.”

  The sound of Hassan’s breathing ceased. Fatima heard the dry rasp of metal against leather and realized he had drawn his knife. She hurried to do the same. Her dagger slid free of its sheath with the readiness of a well-made weapon. It was a prompt she did not know how to follow, except to grip the hilt as tightly as she could and point the blade away from herself.

  The lights paused. Out of the dark came a volley of laughter.

  “Little children,” said a man’s voice, as low and merry as a jackal’s. “Little children have sprouted little teeth. What exactly do you plan to do with those pretty knives? Shave?”

  Fatima couldn’t move. She had a terrible feeling she was about to wet herself and clamped her legs shut. The lights drew closer and resolved themselves, shedding a pale, cold light on the familiar shape of the palace dog.

  “Hello, young Fatima,” it said. “What are you doing so far from the harem?”

  Fatima fainted. She had never fainted before, so the order of things that came next was unclear: she was awake, then not, then there was screaming—not hers—and the face of a man hovering over her, his lean, handsome features marred by an expression of contempt.

  “Oh, get up,” he was saying. He had many teeth. “There are worse things than me down here, and you’ll meet some of them presently if you keep shrieking and falling over.”

  “Nessma was right,” slurred Fatima, half-conscious. “I used to think she was just being an idiot. You’re a demon.”

  “I’m not a demon,” said the dog-man. Invisible hands pulled her upright. “But I’m not far off, either. On your feet, little sister.”

  Fatima struggled to stand. Somewhere behind her, Hassan gave an angry yelp and slashed about in the air with his dagger.

  “Put that knife away before you cut your own necessities off,” said the dog-man. “There’s a good child.”

  “Who are you?” demanded Hassan.

  “Who are you, it asks,” laughed the dog-man. He shook himself, and for a moment, Fatima saw a dark pelt and a pair of clawed feet. “It has a little spirit after all. You know who I am, Hassan. You’ve passed me in the halls of the palace any number of times these past ten years. A better question would be, ‘Where am I?’ for on that point you are clearly ignorant. Look here. Look where you two almost stepped.” He turned away and the light from his eyes seemed to brighten, illuminating the faint edges of the tunnel around them. Inches from where Fatima stood, the ground stopped, falling away so sharply that the hole it created appeared like a flat blot of emptiness even darker than what surrounded it. The tunnel continued on the far side, a bit farther than Fatima could jump.r />
  “I nearly just died.” She felt no fear, only a wild solemnity.

  “Life is a series of near misses,” said the dog-man, slipping his talons beneath her elbow to guide her away. “Death happens only once. This way.”

  Fatima felt Hassan wrap one hand around her sash again. They padded behind their guide, whose molten eyes cast enough light to let them see a few feet of the path ahead, but no more. He led them along a ledge that wound around the sudden drop, hugging the far side of the passage. Fatima clutched at the wall as they went, digging her fingers into the pliant earth until her nails were so packed with dirt that they pained her.

  “The roads that lead to hell are cold,” said the dog-man to himself, half singing. “The fires of hell are colder still, and darker than the hour before dawn. Light, light, let’s have a little light.”

  Fatima did not try to make sense of this. The path widened and narrowed at her feet, seemingly at random. She didn’t dare look up from it at the creature loping beside her, whose scent alone—hot metal, glass pulled from a forge fire, the smell of something that was neither alive nor safe—alarmed her. Nevertheless, they had walked a long way without coming across any promising landmark, and her fear began to give way to curiosity. “What is this place?” she asked after what seemed like a prudent interval. “It feels less and less like something built on purpose.”

  “Ah.” The dog-man turned and looked at her. The light from his eyes illuminated a predatory smile. “Finally a little sense. This isn’t rightly a place anymore, only a crossroads between places. Some old and very nervous sultan tunneled under the Alhambra years ago, and a few of his cruelest descendants kept prisoners down here to die in the dark. But not for many decades now—or is it centuries? Now things that like the dark live here instead and have made little improvements of their own. That oubliette you nearly walked into is one of them.”