The Broken Ones (54 page)

The source of the light, the flickering green, had its back to Oscar. It sat at the end of the table, between Megan’s bound ankles, shining its awful glow up her spread legs and over the four of them. Oscar could just make out the idol’s silhouette. Hunched and horned. It was hard to see; its outline seemed to shift and flicker, to pulse. The air was as cold as a snow peak’s, dry and dead.

Oscar stumbled. His leg was a lump of numb flesh now, a liability to drag around. His vision doubled and darkened. A bit longer, he pleaded in his mind, just a bit longer. He bit his cheek and tasted blood. His eyes cleared a little. He pulled the gun from his pocket.

“No, no, no,” Megan wailed, squirming against straps, her pale flesh shaking, her face wet with tears and mucus.

Thirty more feet, but it might have been a hundred. The pistol in Oscar’s hand felt as heavy as a suitcase. He knew he needed to halve the distance if he had a chance of hitting anything. Just a few more steps.

Chaume’s red dress looked almost black, and her black hair was so glossy it reflected jade. Silver glinted in her hand, also reflecting the greenish flames. Copper, Oscar realized: it was the copper grate that burned green. There was blood all over Megan’s quaking belly. Moechtar wiped it off while Chaume cut. The commissioner looked ready to faint. The frigid air was tainted by coal fire, vomit, and urine. Oscar felt so
tired
. Sleep.

Then he heard her voice. The words Chaume spoke were alien, rolling and hushed, like Arabic, but no Arabic he’d ever heard, mixed with Germanic fricatives,
zh, zh, zh
. Lulling. Urging. Only one word Oscar recognized.
Ereshkigal
.

The strange, horned altar seemed to swell as Chaume chanted. It seemed to expand, to
grow
.

Still, they hadn’t seen him. The idol, the only light source, was between them and him. Twenty-five feet. Twenty. His cold leg was turning to black ice, spreading a choking dark frost up his body and neck, over his eyes. His vision was cloaked in black, and the three bodies around Megan seemed to be at the end of a tunnel. Fifteen feet but it looked fifty. They were tiny figures, little puppets on a diorama.

Megan screamed again, and her soft body arched. Chaume put down the scalpel and picked up a long, shining knife. Its triangular blade reflected the eldritch green light.

Oscar forced another shuffle forward. The air was so cold that his breaths formed veils of mist in front of him, tinged green. The room was at once a bell tower of noise—thunder; Megan’s wailing; Chaume’s imploring, rising voice—and oddly muffled, as if they were characters on a screen while he watched from the bunkered distance of the projection booth. He lifted the gun, but his arm wouldn’t move. The pistol was so heavy it might have been an anvil, a cannon, the moon.
God
, he pleaded.
Please
. His arm slowly rose.

Chaume, a tiny thing, lifted the knife to the flame. Moechtar, now the doll he always seemed to Oscar, watched through glasses that were shining emerald ovals. The commissioner closed his eyes. Megan’s belly was a small patch of red and white. The foggy air shimmered like a soft green curtain.

“Stop now,” Oscar croaked. The pistol at the end of his arm looked small and shortened, like a coracle at the end of a long, thin jetty.

Chaume looked up. Moechtar turned and reached into his jacket. The knife moved down. Oscar told his finger to squeeze the trigger. Something shifted at the end of his arm, but it might have been the tremor of a pulse or a puff of breeze.
Don’t jerk. Squeeze
. A flicker, but it might have been lightning. A sister flash, from Moechtar, as small as a firefly in a distant willow grove. People were moving, and then they were gone.

All was green. Soft as moss. Dark. A curtain. Something tinkled, like bones on a butcher’s block.

Tick-tap-tick
.

Or dice in a wooden bowl.

Or …

Chapter
42

H
e pushed aside the curtain, a simple thing of loosely woven wool threaded with tiny beads of colored pottery.

Green
.

Color filled his mind like wind through a suddenly opened window.

Green. This room is so beautifully green
.

And yet, as he stepped in he realized that it was not the room itself that was green; the walls were mud bricks rendered with a plaster. It was the light that seemed green.

Tick-tap-tick
.

Oscar stepped onto a flagstone floor, and found himself in an alcove. The sound of ticking, tapping wood grew louder. He followed the noise around the corner and saw the kitchen. At first, he thought he was back in Gelareh’s apartment: warm afternoon sunlight filtered through vines and herbs in the courtyard outside and struck the room a thousand shades of emerald, peacock, jade, and lime. Smells arrived like a fresh dash of water—frying onion, simmering rice, apricots, saffron, bread, mint, walnuts, tarragon.

Tick-tap-crack
.

But this was not Gelareh’s flat. This house was older, much older. Its ceiling was domed and rendered. The courtyard was too bright to look at directly—the light poured in from the west, cooled by the winking sea of grapevines and honeysuckle and jasmine, but still dazzling. A breeze played at another curtain: more strands of thick, rough wool seeded with pottery beads. A figure was passing through it and out into the courtyard and the last of the day. From outside came the sounds of children laughing and playing.

“You’ll see,” said a woman beside the curtain, and she drew the
beaded strands closed again. She smoothed her hands on the cloth she had tied about her loose dress. Then she seemed to realize that Oscar was behind her and she turned.

Her hair was black, held back by a worked-leather clip. She was tall and slim but luxuriantly curved; the makeshift apron knotted about her waist accentuated her hips. She was not young, but certainly not old—Oscar would have said she was his own age, in her mid-thirties, but any number refused to stick. Her beauty was timeless. A long, straight nose, narrow and in perfect proportion to her high forehead. Her lips were full; high cheekbones dropped sleekly to a strong jaw and a long neck. The skin of her arms and neck was the color of almond meal; her face was a shade paler. Her eyes were wide-set and almost black, outlined by kohl and long lashes.

She gazed at Oscar, and her eyes sparkled. She was either delighted or furious; amused or disappointed; lustful or chaste. All he was sure of was that she recognized him. Her lips drew upward in a pleasant smile.

“Well, well,” she said. “Here you are.”

Only she didn’t say that. The words she said were older, curled with accents from a land Oscar had never seen, but, somehow, he knew them.

“I was asked to keep an eye on you,” the woman said. She scrutinized his face a little longer, then she gestured with long, slender hands toward the kitchen. “Help us with the walnuts.”

Tick-tick
.

The kitchen was part of the same vaulted room, and as he approached the cooking smells grew stronger. Everything was set at knee height, so one could work while sitting on the flagstone floor. The wide bench of the same whitewashed handmade brick was two feet high, and its top was polished stone almost invisible under vases spilling with basil, baskets of plums and apricots, smaller vessels of fragrant seeds, tiny open sacks of orange, brown, and yellow herbs. White cloth sacks were suspended in an alcove pantry, and Oscar could see the pink curves of garlic bulbs and the serrated leaves of angelica. Two little brown cockatiels stirred in their head-tucked sleep in a carefully wrought bronze cage. Sweet woodsmoke rose to a hole in the ceiling from a waist-high fire pit upon which was a hot stone and, on it, a circle of flatbread cooking. A girl knelt on a reed mat beside the fireplace, attending the bread.

“Turn that before it burns,” the woman suggested.

The girl nodded—
I know, I know!
—and reached for the bread, tweezing it between her fingers and flipping its uncooked side onto the stone. The girl turned and grinned at her achievement. It was Megan. She saw Oscar, and her eyes widened just a little in pleased surprise.

“Don’t be so cocky. Take it off now,” the woman said, and Megan plucked the flatbread off, put it onto a wooden platter, then reached for a ball of dough that she began teasing out into a flat disk. “Easy, don’t poke holes in it.”

“I won’t,” Megan said, and rolled her eyes conspiratorially at Oscar. There was no sign of her crippling brain damage. She was again the normal young girl, pretty with the freshness of youth, that she had been before Oscar’s car hit her. Except she was older. Three years older. She grinned as a sleek cat rubbed itself against her thigh.

A dream
, Oscar realized.
I am having a beautiful dream
.

The woman led Oscar to the other side of the low bench, and he saw a third figure who had been hidden behind a flourish of sweet basil. He sat cross-legged with a bowl of walnuts on his lap and was cracking them open with a wooden mallet
—tick-tick-tap
. Jamy wore a plain white shirt and dark-brown trousers. He looked up at Oscar and smiled. His eyes were hazel and reflected the rectangles of warm light pouring through the windows and courtyard door. Oscar felt the woman’s hand gently press on his shoulder. He sat beside Jamy, who handed him a second mallet and moved a small basket of husked nuts closer. Oscar sat, and realized that his pains were gone.

A very pleasant dream
.

No
, said another voice in his head. A soberer voice.
You’re dying
.

“So,” the woman said, but didn’t say. “We need to decide if you’re staying for dinner. We have plenty, but we need to plan.” Her voice was as refined and lovely as her face. It reminded Oscar of desert dunes—tight ripples on long curves, with sharp edges between light and shadow.

Oscar felt a warm nuzzle on his buttock and looked around to see another cat rub itself against him. He scratched behind its bony shoulders, and its purr vibrated through his fingers. He realized that he was hungry. He couldn’t remember the last time he had eaten. The aromas of rice and herbs and yogurt and fresh flatbread made his mouth water.

“I don’t know,” Oscar replied. He looked at Jamy and Megan. “Are you staying?”

“I’d like to,” Jamy said. He had a soft, pleasant voice.

Megan frowned, but Oscar couldn’t tell if it was at the question or the hot bread she pulled off the cooking stone.

The woman took a small tuck of skirt on each thigh, lifted, and sat in a graceful descent that allowed Oscar to see, very clearly with the afternoon sun shining through the thin cotton, the shape of her strong, slim legs. She sensed his stare and raised her black eyes to meet his. Again, they sparkled, either with displeasure or delight. She patted her hands with flour and began to roll more dough.

“Well, the day is fading and you need to decide.” She looked at Jamy. “Is he quick at decisions?”

Jamy shrugged. “Some,” he said. “Others …” He looked at Oscar, a small reproach, vanished with a grin.
Tap-tick-crack
.

The four of them fell pleasantly silent for a moment, preparing their foods in the glow of late day. A breeze brought in the smells of sorghum and dates, cows, distant sand, and the more distant sea. Outside, in the brilliant afternoon light, Oscar could make out the forms of children laughing as they ran after a ball, or chased one another for the sheer delight of it.

The sunlight gleamed off something near Oscar’s knee.

Glass. Two circles. And metal. Moechtar’s glasses.

“He doesn’t need them anymore,” the woman said, and whisked them away.

Oscar nodded and shelled walnuts, pleased by the simple feelings of their smooth wood and yielding nut flesh under his fingers.

I might stay
, he thought.
This is nice. Yes, I think I will—

Knocking interrupted. Knuckles on a door somewhere out of sight.

The woman sighed and kept rolling her dough.

More knocking. Insistent now.

The birds in the bronze-wire cage stirred again and looked up. Oscar could see that they weren’t cockatiels; they were too full and fluffed, their heads more flattened. They were tiny owls. One of them looked at Oscar, and he was sure its amber eyes narrowed in recognition. Then it yawned and showed its gray, dry tongue.

The knocking grew sharper. And a new scent arrived on the air. Not the bread, not the spices—something farther away but growing stronger. Meat cooking.

The woman rose to her bare feet, and Oscar found himself watching her breasts move as she stood.

“Why is it,” she said, “that when you sit down to do something someone decides that
now
is the time to disturb?” She looked down at Oscar and smiled. It was beautiful but dangerously hard. Her nostrils flared, and she licked her lips. “What would you do?”

Oscar suddenly knew who was knocking at the door. He knew what the smell was.

“Send them away.”

The woman’s dark eyebrows arched, as if she found his answer obvious. “Regardless?” she asked.

“Of?”

The woman shrugged her slim brown shoulders. “Manners. Obligation. Gifts. Appetite.”

Megan coughed conspicuously and dropped a disk of dough onto the hot stone with a sizzle.

“This is your house, isn’t it?” Oscar asked.

The woman lifted her chin. “Do you not like it?”

“I love it,” he answered, honestly.

This seemed to content her, and Oscar realized that he would not like to displease this woman. Her cats rubbed at her shins and calves. He envied them. “So?” she asked.

“Do you want what she brings?”

The woman shrugged, but it was a knowing gesture. Megan studiously poked at the bread.

“Then it depends on what pleases you most,” Oscar continued. “Receiving gifts. Or doing as you will.”

The woman kept her gaze on Oscar. The sun was dropping in the sky, and the greens in the room were being supplanted by warmer tones: coppers, dark golds, reds. Her eyes were lost in the shadows of her sculpted cheeks. It seemed as if he were staring into two dark wells. The hairs on the back of his neck rose.