Vial of Tears, page 15
He nodded, still frowning as he studied her hand. All around them people clapped, danced, and sang, while Sam and Eshmun became an island in the middle. Drums beat a steady rhythm.
“Where else do you hurt?” he asked.
“The blisters on my feet,” she said, “and the hole in my heart.”
“If there is emptiness within,” he said, “it is because you try to fill it with hope. It is like trying to drink fog to quench your thirst.”
They weren’t quite dancing, but they were being carried back and forth now by the shifting crowd around them. Sam raised her voice and stood on her toes to tell him, “Hope is all I have.”
“Which kind?”
“What do you mean?” Sam asked. “Hope is hope.”
“No. There are two kinds… one that heals and another that harms. Sometimes we cling to hope like a raft when in fact it is an anchor, and the weight of it will bring you down. Sometimes we think that hope is a salve, yet it only prevents a wound from healing.”
“You promised you’d look for Rima. Now you’re saying I should give up? No.”
“Only on impossible hopes, ones that you insist on nurturing, no matter how difficult it is to keep them alive.”
“I must hope. Rima is alive, and we’ll find her,” Sam said. The crowd spun around them and they likewise turned in circles. She pretended to stumble forward, put her hands on him, and plucked a strand of black hair from his cloak. “Besides, why should I listen to you? You’ve given up on everything.”
“There is no one in this world who speaks to me in this manner. With such—”
“I know,” Sam said, cutting him off. “With so much insolence.”
“May I finish?” he asked with a small smile. “With such quštā.”
Truth. Sam pulled in a long breath. Nodded.
“As you told me in the mountains,” Eshmun continued, “true words hurt. I will never forget what you said to me about my mother. No, she would not be proud.” His eyes dropped.
Sam tilted her head at him. She pinched the hair tighter between her fingers. “So… you realize you’ve gone from calling me a liar to calling me honest?”
“The truth is this, Samira,” he said, “the ruḥā gather like storm clouds. They are my constant shadows, reminding me of my failure to find passage. There are those who have lost faith in me. They mock me.” Sam thought of the few dismissive looks they’d gotten in Sarepta, the undercurrent of disdain. “The rising voices of my people are like thunder on the horizon.”
A pained look swept over his face as he pressed a hand to his heart. He opened his mouth to say more, but at the same moment, another commotion broke out in the street. Carefree voices turned instantly to ones of warning, panic. The music stopped.
“Wanderers!” a man cried out. “Strangers from beyond the city gates!”
A group of women—flanked by two of Eshmun’s guards—had padded into the feast. One had scratches all over her arms and legs. Another was missing an eye, and the skin had grown over the socket like a wrinkled tarp. They stood at the periphery of the party, five of them, in torn clothing.
“We know these nomads,” one of the guards called out. “They bring news.”
“Sire!” one of the Wanderers said. She looked among the throng until her gaze fell upon Eshmun. “We made our journey to warn you.”
“You followed us,” Teth said. He appeared out of the crowd and took his place protectively next to Eshmun. “I knew a party of five trailed behind us from Baalbek. I smelled you. Were you sent by Melqart?”
“No,” she said. “And we did not intend to follow you so closely, but a tannîyn drove us into the mountains.”
“A tannîyn!” someone shrieked, and then an angry chorus followed: “Shush, old man! Do not speak its name!” Next to Sam, a woman put her hands to her cheeks and moaned. A worried murmur swept through the crowd.
While anxious words were passed back and forth, Sam used the distraction to place Eshmun’s strand of hair inside the little box, snapping it shut and hiding it once again under her belt. A tinge of guilt pricked her, but she reminded herself that she owed him nothing. She could not trust him. And if she had to pay Zayin to save Rima, so be it. He wasn’t doing anything. He was telling her to give up.
Eshmun held up a hand and the crowd fell silent.
“Continue,” he said. “Why do you seek us out here and now?”
Another nomad came forward, her neck long and slender and ridged with uneven skin. Her hips sat impossibly wide atop skinny legs. Sam thought she might be ḥayuta, an ostrich. “We bring news from Baalbek,” she said, glancing at Teth and then turning her eyes to the ground. “I am sorry, brother.”
“Ushu,” Teth said with recognition. He took a step forward. “What is it?”
“There is no easy way to say this.”
“Say it, then.”
“It is Meem…”
Teth pulled in a breath, a low growl pooling underneath. Sam looked up at Eshmun to find his right pupil narrowed into a closed slit: The keyhole had locked tight. The crowd was silent, waiting. Sam heard a fork or skewer hit the stone road with a clatter. A dog barked in the distance.
Ushu let her long neck bow to the ground, the image of a wilted flower. “Meem… has been murdered,” she said. She shifted uncomfortably on her long legs, as if she herself were feeling the worst of the crime. “They cut off her feet.”
13
A musical instrument plucked out a single flat note, and then Teth slammed a fist into a table, sending food everywhere.
“No!” he roared, his head thrown back. “Meem!”
He smacked his hands to his temples and pulled at his hair, wailing. Screams and gasps spread through the crowd as Eshmun took the stage, standing above everyone with raised hands.
“Stay calm,” he said. “There is nothing to fear here.”
But Teth’s cries had turned to low, guttural moans. Sam shuddered, watching him sprout fangs, still tearing at his head as if he could rip the news away. A storm of panic was brewing. Sam could sense it all around her—the words ḥayuta, tannîyn, murder, Kition, and gihannā ran through the street like currents of electricity, charged and ready to catch fire.
Teth’s shirt split along his spine and his pants ripped across his thighs as he morphed. All signs of his human shape were disappearing. His nose was a snout, his ears had shifted to the top of his head. Saliva dripped from the corners of his black lips, his canines growing longer.
The little girl with the ponytail—the one who’d admired Sam’s ring—slipped her hand inside a woman’s, and the two of them hurried off, the girl’s rose-colored dress fading into the crowd. One by one, people turned away, trading horrified glances. Their fast footfalls made a pattering noise like rain.
Sam whispered his name—“Teth”—as if she could bring him back. But he stood on his hind legs and roared. Sam winced and covered her ears, tears streaming from her eyes. Plates and goblets crashed to the ground as he barreled away in an anguished rage. “Teth!” she cried after him.
“Stay calm!” Eshmun again shouted out to the crowd. “You are safe here in Sidon!”
The party broke up as quickly as it had come together. Tables and chairs disappeared from the street, one by one, until it was empty again. An overturned cart lay on its side like a slain beast; from its bed, cracked melons spilled, wet and full of seeds. Sam could hear doors locking, the sound of metal bars sliding into place. Even the makeshift stage had already been disassembled.
It was as if the party had never happened.
Someone handed Sam her bag with the frying pan still heavy inside. She looped it over her shoulder as she navigated around the shards of a broken bowl and a splintered chair, trying to catch up with Eshmun.
“You were close behind us,” he was saying to Ushu. “When did this happen?”
“We were joined by Addir, the falcon, who flew to us and then went his own way afterward,” she said. “He brought the news. The ruḥā of Meem haunts her parents’ home. She hovers at their doorstep.”
“Who has done this?” Eshmun asked.
“We know not,” Ushu said. “A neighbor said she heard a man’s voice demanding the shoes.”
“Shoes?” Eshmun asked, bewildered.
“Shoes,” Ushu repeated, as if Eshmun should know, as if there were only one pair of shoes she could possibly be talking about. She fanned her fingers nervously across her wide hips.
Behind Ushu, one of her travel companions, the woman with only one eye, pulled a small clay tablet from a bag and offered it to him. “Forgive me, but perhaps my lord has not yet seen this.”
“What is it?” Eshmun asked, taking it from her.
“A record of the symbols,” Ushu said, “which were inscribed within the shoes. Codes, or… directions of some sort, said to point the way toward the tar´ā. Meem copied the symbols and sold them on papyri and clay tablets—such as the one you hold now. She then offered the shoes themselves for sale. There was to be an auction.” Ushu wrung her hands together and then began fanning her fingers again, as if she could fly away. “That is, as I understand it, when the negotiations turned hostile. Buyers began threatening each other. Her price was outrageous. And so someone decided to take the shoes, along with her…”
Ushu’s voice trailed off.
“I see,” Eshmun said.
Sam wrapped her arms around herself. She tried to keep from imagining Meem, how her mutilated body would have looked. The blood. Severed ankles. Her small face, cold and pale.
An animal’s distant keening made Sam’s heart slam against her chest. She was sure it was Teth on his way back home to Meem, too late to save her.
“May you find the guilty party,” Ushu said, bowing her ungainly head.
“Teth will find him first,” Eshmun said grimly. He took the tablet, studied it briefly, and then tucked it inside his cloak. His fur collar, Sam noticed, looked tired and matted.
“I am sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings,” Ushu said. “Of all the things we have carried back and forth across this land, this news was our heaviest load. To think, a murder so savage outside of Gadir or Kition! Baalbek has become darker since Ba’alat Gebal went east, but this? Meem was of a native ruling house, the merchant aristocracy! Her great-grandfather once served on the Council of Elders. It is a brazen crime.”
“Yes,” Eshmun said. “Her grandfather Rabā is a loyal ally. I consider him family, an uncle. This disturbs me greatly. It is a gruesome offense. An affront.” He was silent a moment in thought, and then he pointed down the street. “I imagine you are weary from your journey. There is a home at the corner with round windows and a copper cat at the door. The couple there takes boarders for a fee, but I will arrange to pay it myself.”
At this Ushu smiled. “Your reputation for kindness is well deserved,” she said. “Thank you.”
“Wait, please!” Sam said, taking a step forward. “Please, before you go, could you tell me if you saw anyone unusual along the way? I’m looking for my sister.” She cast an angry glance at Eshmun; he should have asked.
Ushu’s head dipped again, making the mottled skin along her neck dimple. “We have heard talk of a strange girl being taken by boat to Kition. Perhaps to the dark marketplace… or even as an offering to the god of death himself.”
“When?” Sam demanded.
“I am sorry, but I have no other information,” Ushu said as her travel companions fell in behind her. The one-eyed woman hobbled as they made their way down the road.
“Thank you,” Sam whispered, watching them go.
I’m a concubine and Rima is cargo, she thought. She pressed her palms to her eyes, despair casting shadows over her thoughts. An offering.
Back inside that candlelit marketplace tent, Zayin had lied to her about having Rima. Or she’d soon after sold her off.
The price would have been high. A commodity.
Sam looked up at Eshmun.
“I need to get to Kition,” she said, her voice dripping with acid. “Where is it? When can we leave?”
“Pe of Arwad,” Eshmun said, talking to himself. “Glassmaker. Bayt, builder of homes. Mengebet, captain of the sea.”
Sam lunged at him and grabbed him by the arm. “You’re listing names again! Stop! Where is your uncle? I want to go there, right now!”
“I had hoped it was not true, but it sounds as though she indeed has been taken to him,” Eshmun said, incredulous, disgusted. “He was to stay in Gadir.”
Sam looked down at her feet, at her new sandals. “Meem was murdered for my shoes,” she said. Sam remembered the way Meem had examined every item of her clothing with fascination. The zipper in her pants; her bra, the way the stitching was sewn.
“She was ordered to burn your belongings,” he said. His eyes flashed. “She disobeyed.”
Meem had wanted money. If Teth had more wealth, she’d said. She’d been trying to make him into a suitable match. So they could marry. Sam’s heart lurched for Teth, for both of them, and the wedding they would never have.
“Does Meem’s death mean you’ll turn back for Baalbek to find the murderer? Teth will,” she pressed, “won’t he? He’s already on his way. I’ll go alone to Kition, then. Tell me how to get there.”
“Come,” Eshmun said, leading Sam along the street where a group of men stood huddled, talking and smoking, sending blooms of smoke over their heads. “You will sleep while I attend to business. One cannot stroll into Kition. We will need men. And we will need to sail—I must ready a crew.” He pulled out the clay tablet the Wanderer had given him and tilted it toward Sam. “Can you decipher this?”
NE WEST.
She ran her finger over the letters. “Northeast west, maybe?”
It didn’t make sense—but then she read the rest of the etched letters: MADE IN CHINA US 8M. It was from the inside of her shoes. NINE WEST, they had once said, but the N and the I had long ago worn off.
“This is written in English,” Sam said. “My language, from my world. It’s not some magical message about finding passage. There are no instructions. It’s just my shoe size and where they were made.” She looked at Eshmun, feeling her heart stutter. Meem had not been entirely kind to Sam, but she did not deserve such cruelty. No one did. “Meem is dead because of me.”
“No,” Eshmun said. “That is not true. If she had burned the shoes as she had been ordered, this would not have happened.” He raked his fingers through his beard. “If I had allowed you to wear your own shoes, this would not have happened.”
“If you hadn’t brought us here to this world,” Sam said.
He frowned at her, a sad twist of his mouth. “It is exactly as Zayin said back in the temple in Baalbek: I cast my blame in the wrong direction.” He tossed the tablet onto the ground, where it cracked in half.
Sam felt broken, too. Who was to blame for all of this? Rima was missing because of Eshmun. Meem was dead. Sam was the one who’d touched the coin in the first place. Maybe she should blame Jiddo for sending her the ancient jug.
She stopped walking. If someone would murder Meem to have my shoes, she thought, what would they do to have me? She thought of the tannîyn and the jackal-women. She suddenly registered all the stares she’d gotten at the feast just now, the men who seemed to be studying her, the women afraid to come too close. She looked over her shoulder, certain she was being watched. “Where are you taking me?” she asked.
“To someone I believe you already know,” he said, “but have never met. She has a soft pillow, a place for you to lay your head. Your eyes are so dark and your skin so pale, one might think death is beginning to take you. You are exhausted.”
“Yes,” she said. “I am. But I can sleep on the boat.”
“What boat? No boat is ready,” he said. “My men are not yet assembled. I have not yet given the orders. In the meantime, there is nothing you can do.”
“Then when are we leaving?” she pressed.
“Enough. Come.”
He tossed his head sideways for her to follow. They walked between two long buildings, passing doors on either side. Along the narrow alley, the occasional oil lamp flickered by their heads, small green fires housed in jars of opaque glass. Dark shapes danced along the walls behind the flames: shadows of insects or smoke. Eshmun licked his fingertips and extinguished them, one by one.
Finally, they slowed and approached a door on their right. Eshmun tapped several times, and when no one came, he cleared his throat.
“Helena!” he hissed, pressing his mouth close to the door. “It is Eshmun.”
Almost at once, a latch clicked and the door swung open. A woman stepped forward.
While most everyone else they’d met along the way had seemed cowed by Eshmun, afraid to touch him, Helena did not hesitate to embrace him. A smile blossomed across his face as she cupped his cheeks against her palms.
“Where have you been?” she asked sternly. “I was beginning to think you’d gone after Ba’alat Gebal, and we had been abandoned. A tannîyn, Eshmun! My neighbor has just left here after sharing the news from the feast. A murderer who takes the feet of his victim! A hellfire in the cedar forest! What can all this mean?”
“It is good to see you as well,” he said as she clucked at him. “And please do not mention the beast by its name. We do not wish to summon it.”
Helena pulled back and Sam now had a clear view of her face.
Her face.
“Mom?” she choked, though of course it couldn’t be her mother. Mom was in Michigan. This woman lived here, in this stone building. She didn’t look exactly like Mom, but the resemblance was uncanny: She had the same narrow nose, the same light brown eyes flecked with lines of olive green. She wore a simple dress and no shoes.
Sam reached out for Eshmun’s arm, feeling like the world was tipping beneath her. “Wh-who are…?”
“Eshmun?” Helena asked. She seemed just as flustered. “Who is this girl?”
“Samira.” Eshmun sighed heavily. “When I see you together, all uncertainty vanishes. The similarities are undeniable.”
