the mountains . . .”

  The play continued. Would Joanne really go to this

  planet which kept appearing to her in these visions?

  Jalila didn’t know. She didn’t care. Nayra’s hand slipped into her own and lay there upon her thigh with a weight

  and presence which seemed far heavier than the entire

  universe. She felt like that doll again. Her breath was

  pulling, dragging. The play continued and then, some-

  where, somehow, it came to an end. Jalila felt an aching

  sadness. She’d have been happy for Joanne to continue

  her will-I-won’t-I agonisings and prayers throughout all

  of human history, just so that she and Nayra could con-

  tinue to sit together like this, hand in hand, thigh to

  thigh, on this hard bench.

  The projections flickered and faded. She stood up in

  wordless disappointment. The whole square suddenly

  looked like a wastetip, and she felt crumpled and used-up in these sweaty and ridiculous clothes. It was hardly

  worth looking back towards Nayra to say goodbye. She

  would, Jalila was sure, have already vanished to rejoin

  those clucking, chattering friends who surrounded her

  like a wall.

  “Wait!” A hand on her arm. That same vanilla scent.

  “I’ve heard your mother Pavo’s displays along the south

  road are something quite fabulous . . .” For once, Nayra’s golden gaze as Jalila looked back at her was almost coy,

  3 3 1

  I A N R . M A C L E O D

  nearly averted. “I was rather hoping you might show

  me . . .”

  The two of them. Walking hand in hand just all lovers

  throughout history. Like Pia and Joanna. Like Romana

  and Juliet. Like Isabel and Genya. Ghosts of smoke from

  the rocket plumes which had buttressed the sky hung

  around them, and the world seemed half-dissolved in the

  scent of sulphur and roses. An old woman they passed

  who was sweeping up discarded kebab sticks and wrap-

  pers made a sign as they passed, and gave them a weary,

  sad-happy smile. Jalila wasn’t sure what had happened to

  her slippers, but they and her feet both seemed to have

  become weightless. If it hadn’t been for the soft sway and pull of Nayra’s arm, Jalila wouldn’t even have been sure

  that she was moving. People’s feet really don’t touch the ground when they were in love! Here was something else that her dreamtent and her mothers hadn’t told her.

  Pavo’s confections of plant and crystal looked marvel-

  lous in the hazed and doubled silver shadows of the ris-

  ing moons. Jalila and Nayra wandered amid them, and

  the rest of the world felt withdrawn and empty. A breeze

  was still playing over the rocks and the waves, but the

  fluting sound had changed. It was one soft pitch, rising, falling. They kissed. Jalila closed her eyes—she couldn’t help it—and trembled. Then they held both hands together and stared at each other, unflinching. Nayra’s bare arms in the moonslight, the curve inside her elbow and

  the blue trace of a vein: Jalila had never seen anything as beautiful, here in this magical place.

  The stables, where the hayawans were breathing. Jalila

  spoke to Robin, to Abu. The beasts were sleepy. Their

  flesh felt cold, their plates were warm, and Nayra seemed a little afraid. There, in the sighing darkness, the clean 3 3 2

  B R E AT H M O S S

  scent of feed and straw was overlaid with the heat of the hayawans’ bodies and their dung. The place was no

  longer a ramshackle tent, but solid and dark, another of

  Pavo’s creations; the stony catacombs of ages. Jalila led Nayra through it, her shoulders brushing pillars, her heart pounding, her slippered feet whispering through spills of straw. To the far corner, where the fine new white bedding lay like depths of cloud. They threw themselves onto it, half-expecting to fall through. But they were floating in straggles of windsilk, held in tangles of their own

  laughter and limbs.

  “Remember.” Nayra’s palm on Jalila’s right breast,

  scrolled like an old print in the geometric moonlight

  which fell from Walah and then through the arched stone

  grid of a murqana which lay above their heads. “I’m

  Scheherazade. You’re Dinarzade, my sister . . .” The pebble of Jalila’s nipple rising through the windsilk. “That old, old story, Jalila. Can you remember how it went . . . ?”

  In the tide of yore and in the time of long gone before, there was a Queen of all the Queens of the Banu Sasan in the far islands of India and China, a Lady of armies and guards and servants and dependants . . .

  Again, they kissed.

  Handsome gifts, such as horses with saddles of gem-

  encrusted gold; mamelukes, or white slaves; beautiful handmaids, high- breasted virgins, and splendid stuffs and costly . . .

  Nayra’s hand moved from Jalila’s breast to encircle

  the tideflower. She gave it a tug, pulled harder. Some-

  thing held, gave, held, hurt, then gave entirely. The windsilks poured back. A small dark bead of blood welled at

  the curve between Jalila’s breast and shoulder. Nayra

  licked it away.

  3 3 3

  I A N R . M A C L E O D

  In one house was a girl weeping for the loss of her sister. In another, perhaps a mother trembling for the fate of her child; and instead of the blessings which and formerly been heaped on the Sultana’s head, the air was now full of curses . . .

  Jalila was rising, floating, as Nayra’s mouth travelled

  downwards to suckle at her breast.

  Now the Wazir had two daughters, Scheherazade and

  Dinarzade, of whom the elder had perused the books, an-nals, and legends of preceding queens and empresses, and the stories, examples, and instances of bygone things.

  Scheherazade had read the works of the poets and she knew them by heart. She had studied philosophy, the sciences, the arts, and all accomplishments. And Scheherazade was

  pleasant and polite, wise and witty. Scheherazade, she was beautiful and well bred . . .

  Flying far over frost-glittering saharas, beneath the

  twin moons, souring through the clouds. The falling, ris-

  ing dunes. The minarets and domes of distant cities. The

  cries and shuddering sighs of the beloved. Patterned

  moonlight falling through the murqana in a white and

  dark tapestry across the curves and hollows of Nayra’s

  belly.

  Alekum as-salal wa rahmatu allahi wa barakatuh . . .

  Upon you, the peace and the mercy of God and all this

  blessings.

  Amen.

  There was no cock-crow when Jalila startled awake. But

  Walah had vanished, and so had Nayra, and the light of

  the morning sun came splintering down through the

  murqana’s hot blue lattice. Sheltering her face with her

  hands, Jalila looked down at herself, and smiled. The

  3 3 4

  B R E AT H M O S S

  jewel in her belly was all that was left of her costume. She smelled faintly of vanilla, and much of Nayra, and nothing about her flesh seemed quite her own. Moving

  through the dazzling drizzle, she gathered up the wind-

  silks and other scraps of clothing which had settled into the fleece bedding. She found one of Nayra’s earrings,

  which was twisted to right angles at the post, and had to smile again. And here was that tideflower, tossed upturned like an old cup into the corner. She touched the

  tiny scab on her shoulder, then lifted the flower up and

  inhaled, but caught on her palms only the scents of

  Nayra. She closed her eyes, feeling the diamond speckles

  of heat and cold across her body like the ripples of the sea.

  The hayawans barely stirred as she moved out through

  their stables. Only Robin regarded her, and then incuri-

  ously, as she paused to touch the hard grey melds of her

  flank which she had pressed against the bars of her en-

  closure. One eye, grey as rocket smoke, opened, then re-

  turned to its saharas of dreams. The hayawans, Jalila

  supposed for the first time, had their own passions, and

  these were not to be shared with some odd two-legged

  creatures of another planet and race.

  The morning was still clinging to its freshness, and the

  road as she crossed it was barely warm beneath her feet.

  Windtowered Al Janb and the haramlek behind her

  looked deserted. Even the limbs of the mountains seemed

  curled in sleepy haze. On this day after the moulid, no

  one but the geelies was yet stirring. Cawing, they rose

  and settled in flapping red flocks from the beds of the

  tideflowers as Jalila scrunched across the hard stones of the beach. Her feet encountered the cool, slick water. She continued walking, wading, until the sea tickled her waist and what remained of the windsilks had spread about in

  3 3 5

  I A N R . M A C L E O D

  spills of dye. From her cupped hands, she released the

  tideflower, and watched it float away. She splashed her

  face. She sunk down to her shoulders as the windsilks

  dissolved from her, and looked down between her breasts

  at the glowing jewel which was still stuck her belly, and plucked it out, and watched it sink; the sea-lantern of a ship, drowning.

  Walking back up the beach, wringing the wet from her

  hair, Jalila noticed a rich green growth standing out amid the sky-filled rockpools and the growths of lichen.

  Pricked by something resembling Pavo’s curiosity, she

  scrambled over, and crouched to examine it as the gath-

  ering heat of the sun dried her back. She recognised this spot—albeit dimly—from the angle of a band of quartz

  which glittered and bled blue oxides. This was where she

  had coughed up her breathmoss in that early Season of

  Soft Rains. And here it still was, changed but unmistak-

  able—and growing. A small patch here, several larger

  patches there. Tiny filaments of green, a minute forest,

  raising its boughs and branches to the sun.

  She walked back up towards her haramlek, humming.

  3.

  The sky was no longer blue. It was no longer white. It

  had turned to mercury. The rockets rose and rose in dry

  crackles of summer lightening. The tube-like aliens fled, leaving their strange house of goo-filled windows and

  pipes still clicking and humming until something burst

  and the whole structure deflated and the mess of it leaked across the nearby streets. There were warnings of poison-3 3 6

  B R E AT H M O S S

  ings and strange epidemics. There were cloggings and

  stenches of the drains.

  Jalila showed the breathmoss to her mothers, who

  were all intrigued and delighted, although Pavo had of

  course noticed and categorised the growth long before,

  whilst Ananke had to touch the stuff, and left a small

  brown mark there like the tips of her three fingers, which dried and turned golden over the days which followed.

  But in this hot season, these evenings when the sun

  seemed as if it would never vanish, the breathmoss

  proved surprisingly hardy . . .

  After that night of the moulid, Jalila spent several

  happy days absorbed and alone, turning and smoothing

  the memory of her love-making with Nayra. Wandering

  above and beneath the unthinking routines of everyday

  life, she was a like fine craftsman, spinning silver, shaping sandalwood. The dimples of Nayra’s back. Sweat

  glints in the chequered moonlight. That sweet vein in the crook of her beloved’s arm, and the pulse of the blood

  which had risen from it to the drumbeats of ecstasy. The

  memory seemed entirely enough to Jalila. She was barely

  living in the present day. When, perhaps six days after

  the end of the moulid, Nayra turned up at their doorstep

  with the ends of her hair chewed wet and her eyes red-

  rimmed, Jalila had been almost surprised to see her, and

  then to notice the differences between the real Nayra and the Scheherazade of her memories. Nayra smelled of tears

  and dust as they embraced; like someone who had arrived

  from a long, long journey.

  “Why

  didn’t

  you call

  me?

  I’ve

  been

  waiting,

  waiting . . .”

  Jalila kissed her hair. Her hand travelled beneath a

  3 3 7

  I A N R . M A C L E O D

  summer shawl to caress Nayra’s back, which felt damp

  and gritty. She had no idea how to answer her questions.

  They walked out together that afternoon in the shade of

  the woods behind the haramlek. The trees had changed in

  this long, hot season, departing their urrearth habits to coat their leaves in a waxy substance which smelled medicinal. The shadows of their boughs were chalkmarks

  and charcoal. All was silent. The urrearth birds had re-

  treated to their summer hibernations before the mists of

  autumn came to rouse them again. Climbing a scree of

  stones, they found clusters them at the back of a cave;

  feathery bundles amid the dripping rock, seemingly with-

  out eyes or beak.

  As they sat at the mouth of that cave, looking down

  across the heat-trembling bay, sucking the ice and eating the dates which Ananke had insisted they bring with

  them, Nayra had seemed like a different person the one

  Jalila had thought she had known before the day of the

  moulid. Nayra, too, was human, and not the goddess she

  had seemed. She had her doubts and worries. She, too,

  thought the girls who surrounded her were mostly crass

  and stupid. She didn’t even believe in her own obvious

  beauty. She cried a little again, and Jalila hugged her.

  The hug became a kiss. Soon, dusty and greedy, they

  were tumbling amid the hot rocks. That evening, back at

  the haramlek, Nayra was welcomed for dinner by Jalila’s

  mothers with mint tea and best china. She was invited to

  bathe. Jalila sat beside her as they ate figs fresh from distant Ras and the year’s second crop of oranges. She felt

  happy. At last, life seemed simple. Nayra, now, officially, was her lover, and this love would form the pattern of

  her days.

  *

  *

  *

  3 3 8

  B R E AT H M O S S

  Jalila’s life now seemed complex and complete; she be-

  lieved she was an adult now, and that she talked and

  spoke and loved and worshipped in an adult way. She

  still rode out sometimes with Kalal on Robin and Abu,

  she still laughed or stole things or played games, but she was conscious now that these activities were sweetmeats

  of life, pleasing but unnutritous, and the real glories and surprises lay with being with Nayra, and with her mothers, and the life of the haramlek that the two young

  women talked of founding together one day.

  Nayra’s mothers lived on the far side on Al Janb, in a

  fine tall clifftop palace which was one of the oldest in the town, and was clad in white stone and filled with intricate courtyards, and a final beautiful tajo which looked

  down from garden of tarragon across the whole bay.

  Jalila greatly enjoyed exploring this haramlek, decipher-

  ing the peeling scripts which wound along the cool

  vaults, and enjoying the company of Nayra’s mothers

  who, in their wealth and grace and wisdom, often made

  her own mothers seem like the awkward and recent

  provincial arrivals which they plainly were. At home, in

  her own haramlek, the conversations and ideas seemed

  stale. An awful dream came to Jalila one night. She was

  her old doll Tabatha, and she really was being buried. The ground she lay in was moist and dank, as if it was still

  the Season of Soft Rains, and the faces of everyone she

  knew were clustered around the hole above her, mutter-

  ing and sighing as her mouth and eyes were inexorably

  filled with soil.

  “Tell me what it was like, when you first fell in love.”

  Jalila had chosen Pavo to ask this question of. Ananke

  would probably just hug her, whilst Lya would talk and

  talk until there was nothing to say.

  3 3 9

  I A N R . M A C L E O D

  “I don’t know. Falling in love is like coming home.

  You can never quite do it for the first time.”

  “But in the stories—”

  “—The stories are always written afterwards, Jalila.”

  They were walking the luminous shore. It was near

  midnight, which was now by far the best time of the

  night or day. But what Pavo had just said sounded

  wrong; perhaps Jalila hadn’t been the right choice of

  mother to speak to, after all. Jalila was sure she’d loved Nayra since that day before the moulid of Joanna, although it was true she loved her now in a different way.

  “You still don’t think we really will form a haramlek

  together, do you?”

  “I think that it’s too early to say.”

  “You were the last of our three, weren’t you? Lya and

  Ananke were already together.”

  “It was what drew me to them. They seemed so happy

  and complete. It was also what frightened me and nearly

  sent me away.”

  “But you stayed together, and then there was . . .” This