Of Dreams and Rust (28 page)

His gaze returns to mine. “I would like to hear about those dreams. I wonder how closely they match my own.”

“You think we found each other there?”

“All I know is that I searched for you every night until I found you, and when I did, you always welcomed me.”

“Is that what
‘yorh zhasev'
means?” I whisper.

“Yorh zhasev ve bana sevye,”
he murmurs, clasping the back of my head and kissing my neck. “It means all those things.”

I bow my head against his shoulder. We hold tight, and I feel the moment another wave of grief hits Melik. But I have him, and I wrap myself around him, and I offer him the comfort of my body. “What do you believe happens to us after we die?” Melik whispers.

“Many Itanyai believe you go to a nice place, a beautiful place, where you join your ancestors and watch over your family and your descendants.”

“Do you believe that?”

I rest my forehead against his throat. “I don't know. I want to. I like the idea that my mother has not left me completely, even though I cannot feel or see her. What do you believe?”

“We believe you return to the birthplace of all souls, a beautiful glittering sea that is the source of all life, from the beginning of time until the end.” He presses his face to my hair. “You rejoin all the souls who have ever been, and perhaps you will be born again once more. Like you, I want to believe, but right now it seems as real as the story of the boy king and his winged lion.”

I thread my fingers into his hair. “I did not know Sinan as well as you did, but if anyone could swim his way through a mystical sea to be born again, it would be your little brother.”

Melik lets out a raspy chuckle, and his arms pull tight around me. “I believe you are right. He was so alive.” His voice breaks again and he takes a deep, shuddering breath. “Maybe he will find a way to return someday. I hope that is possible.”

We go quiet with that thought, that hope. It seems we have few words left now, and few tears. Sinan's loss is just as big, and the fight to come is just as frightening. But Anni told me that the Noor never assume that there is a better time to be joyful and thankful than the present, and I believe that now. I will take the solace of being here with Melik, and I will not spend this time worrying. I will bear what we've lost, and I will be thankful for what we still have.

I kiss the side of Melik's neck. In the lantern light goose bumps ripple down the column of his throat. I pull back the collar of his tunic to follow their progress. Melik's head falls back, and my fingertips drift down his skin. When they settle over the exposed stretch of the scar on his chest, he presses his palm over mine. His heart bumps heavy against my hand. “Wen . . .”

“I am being very clear,” I say, caressing his face with the back of my other hand. “And you can make of it what you will. But I am here tonight, and I am your bride.”

“If this is because you think you must—”

“It is because I love you, Melik, and it is that simple.”

He opens his eyes and stares at the ceiling of the cave, our shadows flickering in the lantern light. Slowly he takes my hand and lays it on his rough, stubbly cheek. He searches my face, and I smile, waiting for him, my heart skipping, until he seems to accept what I have said. He kisses my palm, then reaches into my satchel and pulls out the sleeping blanket. I scoot off his lap and he spreads the thick wool over the floor of the cave, then I kneel on it, already reaching for him. He pulls me into his arms, and together we are warm and whole, tentative but certain all the same. My hands tremble as I lift his tunic, as I touch the places I have healed and the places that I am claiming for my own.

I know how these things go in theory. I understand how people come together, how they overlap. Until this moment, though, I did not understand what it could mean. Melik stares into my eyes as his fingers slip beneath the hem of my tunic, as I lift my arms and allow him to remove it. I have never willingly bared my skin for another person, and my cheeks blaze as his gaze slides over me. It is not a bad feeling, though. I am made of anticipation, so full of want that it overwhelms everything else.

Melik knows how to touch me in ways that make my fingers dig into his skin. He is bold and curious, and I give myself over to him, craving every stroke. As much pleasure as it gives me, I sense he needs it as well, to numb the pain, to feel connected and loved, to be held to the earth. But when his mouth closes over my bare shoulder, when his hand slides along my waist and guides me down, when we are skin to skin, it is not a taking. It is a mutual offering, a gentle and complete surrender on both sides. It is frightening, and yet still I feel safe, because I trust him and we are in it together.

Somehow, tonight, we have forever even though we do not know what tomorrow brings. We weave our future with our interlocked fingers and mingled breaths. We do not need the promise of another sunset. We are alive now, together now, fragile perhaps, but we will not break. I promise him with every kiss, as our foreheads touch, as our eyes close—I will fight for this until the end, and I know he will too.

When we are spent, sapped of words and sighs and strength, Melik wraps us in the blanket and walks his fingers along the bumps of my spine while I close my eyes and listen to his heartbeat. I am sore and exhausted, but I am also warm and happy. It is not hard to drift into dreams, and when they come, I am on a high cliff above an endless ocean that shimmers and teems with life. Melik's hand slips into mine. “Don't let go,” he says, and then we jump.

*  *  *

I wake with a start, blinking and sniffing at the air, my heart hammering. “Melik?”

“Hmmm?” he asks sleepily, winding his arms around my body.

“Do you smell smoke?”

He sits up quickly, his nostrils flaring, every muscle tensing. I wait for him to tell me it is just the scent of Dagchocuk in the morning, but after one or two breaths he curses and rises to his feet, yanking his pants from the floor. “It's the signal fires.”

“The soldiers said the machines would not arrive for two days.”

He looks down at me, raw horror in his gaze. “I think they lied.”

Chapter

MELIK WRENCHES ON his tunic and ties his hair back, every movement a snap of frantic energy. “I'll wait for you outside,” he says as he disappears through the passage to the ridge, leaving me to dress myself with shaking hands.

When I make my way outside, the sun is high above us, and Melik is perched on an outcropping, looking toward the east, where wisps of black smoke stretch high into the sky from three distant points within the canyon, and from one just to the east.

“I'm ready,” I say, because he does not seem aware of anything but the view.

He tears his eyes from the horizon. “Would you consider staying here?” he asks quietly.

“What?” I clutch the strap of my pack. “Why?”

He jumps from the outcropping and lands on the trail next to me, scooping his pack from a boulder. “When this is over, you can find the soldiers. Tell them you were held prisoner. Tell them who you are. They will get you back to the Ring.”

“Melik?” My throat is so tight that it comes out as a squeak.

He grasps my shoulders. His eyes are red rimmed and bloodshot, shining with fear. “Wen, the machines will be here in a few hours at most.”

I crane my neck to peer at the smoke. “How can you tell?”

“The distance between the smoke puffs, and their number. There are nineteen headed this way, and they are past the point of the battle yesterday.” He swallows hard. “Which means my men destroyed one of the twenty—and are probably dead. And we have no reinforcements. I sent word with Commander Kudret yesterday, but even if the general decided to send anyone, they would not arrive until tomorrow.”

I cover his hands with mine. They are cold and sweating. “What are you going to do?”

He looks toward the east. “I will fight until I am dead, Wen, but we cannot stop them all. And even if I survived this attack, the soldiers would execute me on sight.” He bows his head and closes his eyes as my hands slide into his hair. “But I have to do what I can. Maybe if I could—”

“And you would leave me behind?” I ask, choking on the idea of losing him now. He talks like it is a certainty.

“I want you to live through this!” he shouts, his voice breaking.

My fingers pull tight in his rust-colored locks. “But you can't make me stay here while you go,” I whisper, standing on my tiptoes and drawing his face to mine. “Not now. I can help. You know I can.”

Our kiss is desperate with grief and terror. “I cannot watch you die,” he breathes against my mouth.

“And I cannot sit here and do nothing. You would never accept such a thing. How can you ask me to?” I step back and put my hand over my heart, then turn my palm to him. “You cannot keep me from this fight.”

He stares at my hand outstretched, and then he takes it in his own. “Then we will go together.”

He tugs me down the trail, and I jog after him. I savor every slide of his palm against mine, every time he steadies me with his hand on my waist, every exhaled breath. I stare at his broad back, his shoulders, his booted feet as he nimbly weaves through the passes and descends toward the village.

When I was young, I sat at my father's desk and played with an hourglass he kept there. I would turn the thing over and listen to the quiet hiss of sand as it tumbled down. As the bottom filled, the sand stopped falling in a steady torrent, and it became possible to spot individual grains. I feel like that now, examining each second separately, trying to memorize and hold it in my mind.

As we reach the lower part of the trail, Melik turns to me. “Find my mother. Tell her what is happening.” His thumb strokes over the back of my hand. “See if the two of you can load the wounded onto a cart and head south. Warn the other villages on the Line.”

“Focus on what you need to do,” I say to him, wishing my voice weren't shaking, wishing we weren't down to a few grains of sand, a few seconds before we reach our good-bye.

He pulls me to him and flattens his palm between my breasts.
“Mican tisamokye,”
he whispers. “You carry my heart.” He kisses the top of my head and lets go of my hand. His face is lit with a ghostly smile. “So no matter what happens to the rest of me, it is up to you to take care of that.”

He pivots on his heel and sprints toward the village, leaving me to scramble in his wake. The lanes are filled with scared Noor, pointing up at the smoke that signals the beginning of the end. As I run toward Anni's house, I hear Melik's voice, rallying his men. I place my hand over the spot he touched and pick up my pace. “Anni!” I call.

She comes out of her cottage, her eyes going round as she sees the others pointing at the sky. Her face is puffy and pale after a night of crying, and she opens her arms to me. “You found him,” she huffs as I throw my arms around her waist and squeeze.

“I found him, and he is with the other fighters.” I pull away from her. “The machines will be here much sooner than we thought. Melik asked us to take the wounded south.”

Her eyes stray toward the center of the village, to the makeshift hospital within the wedding tent. “There are many more besides the wounded who must go south. Can you prepare the ones in the tent while I spread the word to the elders and the families with children? I will meet you with the cart.”

I leave her to warn the others, and jog to the tent. Old Aysun is inside with the patients. Her eyes narrow when she sees me.
“Kuchuksivengi,”
she says.

I squat in front of her and turn my palm up. I crab my other fingers like a spider's legs and walk them along my open hand, then point in the direction of the canyon.

Aysun squawks,
“Devi!”

At that word the patients begin to rouse. Their chalky complexions tell me of their pain, and I take a few moments to distribute my jie cao, because this trip will be bumpy and unpleasant even for those who are not desperately injured. With Aysun's help I change bandages and adjust splints, speaking soothing words despite the terror inside me. My knees are flat on the sparse grass floor of the tent, and when I feel the first vibration in the ground, I go still, hoping it is a trick of my mind. It is too soon, far too soon. We will never get these people to safety in time. Surely I am imagining the tremor. . . .