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  I A N R . M A C L E O D

  hauled him in. Kalal with Abu followed. The door, with a

  massive drumbeat, hammered itself shut behind them. Of

  course, it was only some old mechanism of this house,

  but Jalila felt the hairs on the nape of her neck rise.

  They hobbled the hayawans beside largest of the scal-

  loped arches, and walked on down the passageway be-

  yond. The wind was still with them, and the shapes of the pillars were like the swirling helixes of sand made solid. It was hard to tell what of this place had been made by the

  hands of women and what was entirely natural. If the

  qasr had seemed deserted in the heat of summer, it was

  entirely abandoned now. A scatter of glass windchimes,

  torn apart by the wind. A few broken plates. Some flap-

  ping cobwebs of tapestry.

  Kalal pulled Jalila’s hand.

  “Let’s go back . . .”

  But there was greater light ahead, the shadows of the

  speeding sky. Here was the courtyard where they had

  glimpsed the tariqua. She had plainly gone now—the

  fountain was dry and clogged, the bushes were bare tan-

  gles of wire. They walked out beneath the tiled arches,

  looking around. The wind was like a million voices, rising in ululating chorus. This was a strange and empty place;

  somehow dangerous . . . Jalila span around. The tariqua

  was standing there, her robes flapping. With insect fin-

  gers, she beckoned.

  “Are you leaving?” Jalila asked. “I mean, this

  place . . .”

  The tariqua had led them into the shelter of a tall,

  wind-echoing chamber set with blue and white tiles.

  There were a few rugs and cushions scattered on the

  floor, but still the sense of abandonment remained. As if, 3 5 0

  B R E AT H M O S S

  Jalila thought as the tariqua folded herself on the floor gestured that they join her, this was her last retreat.

  “No, Jalila. I won’t be leaving Habara. Itfaddal . . . Do sit down.”

  The stepped from their sandals and obeyed. Jalila

  couldn’t quite remember now whether Kalal had encoun-

  tered the tariqua on her visit to their haramlek, although it seemed plain from his stares at her, and the way her

  grey-white gaze returned them, that they knew of each

  other in some way. Coffee was brewing in the corner, un-

  der a tiny blue spirit flame which, as it fluttered in the many drafts, would have taken hours to heat anything.

  Yet the spout of the brass pot was steaming. And there

  were dates, too, and nuts and seeds. The tariqua, apolo-

  gising for her inadequacy as a host, nevertheless insisted that they help themselves. And somewhere there was a

  trough of water, too, for their hayawans, and a basket of acram leaves.

  Uneasily, they sipped from their cups, chewed the

  seeds. Kalal had picked up a chipped lump of old stone

  and was playing with it nervously. Jalila couldn’t quite

  see what it was.

  “So,” he said, clearing his throat, “you’ve been to and

  from the stars, have you?”

  “As have you. Perhaps you could name the planet? It

  may have been somewhere that we have both visited . . .”

  Kalal swallowed. His lump of old stone clicked the

  floor. A spindle of wind played chill on Jalila’s neck.

  Then—she didn’t know how it began—the tariqua was

  talking of Ghezirah, the great and fabled city which lay at the centre of all the Ten Thousand and One Worlds. No

  one Jalila had ever met or heard of had ever visited

  3 5 1

  I A N R . M A C L E O D

  Ghezirah—not even Nayra’s mothers, yet this tariqua

  talked of it as if she knew it well. Before, Jalila had somehow imagined the tariqua trailing from distant planet to

  planet with dull cargoes of ore and biomass in her ship’s holds. To her mind, Ghezirah had always been more than

  half-mythical—a place from which a dubious historical

  figure such as the Sainted Joanna might easily emanate,

  but certainly not composed of solid streets upon which

  the gnarled and bony feet of this old woman might once

  have strode . . .

  Ghezirah—she could see it now in her mind, smell the

  shadowy lobbies, see the ever-climbing curve of its mez-

  zanines and rooftops vanishing into the impossible

  greens of the Floating Ocean. But every time Jalila’s vi-

  sion seemed about to solidify, the tariqua said something else which made it tremble and change. And then the

  tariqua said the strangest thing of all, which was the City At The End Of All Roads was actually alive. Not alive in the meagre sense in which every town has a sort of life,

  but truly living. The city thought. It grew. It responded.

  There was no central mind or focus to this consciousness, because Ghezirah itself, its teeming streets and minarets and rivers and caleches and its many millions of lives,

  was itself the mind . . .

  Jalila was awestruck, but Kalal seemed unimpressed,

  and was still playing with that old lump of stone.

  4.

  “Jalilaneen . . .”

  The way bondmother Lya said her name made Jalila

  look up. Somewhere in her throat, a wary nerve started

  3 5 2

  B R E AT H M O S S

  ticking. They took their meals inside now, in the central courtyard of the haramlek, which Pavo had provided with

  a translucent roofing to let in a little of what light there was in the evenings’ skies, and keep out most of the wind.

  Still, as Jalila took a sip of steaming hibiscus, she was sure that the sand had got into something.

  “We’ve been talking. Things have come up—ideas

  about which we’d like to seek your opinion . . .”

  In other words, Jalila thought, her gaze travelling

  across of her three mothers, you’ve decided something.

  And this is how you tell me—by pretending you’re con-

  sulting me. It had been the same with leaving Tabuthal. It was always the same. An old ghost of herself got up at

  that point, threw down her napkin, stalked off up to her

  room. But the new Jalila remained seated. She even

  smiled and tried to look encouraging.

  “We’ve seen so little of this world,” Lya continued.

  “All of us, really. And especially since we had you. It’s been marvellous. But of course it’s also been confin-ing . . . Oh no—” Lya waved the idea away quickly, before anyone could even begin to start thinking it. “—we won’t

  be leaving our haramlek and Al Janb. There are many

  things to do. New bonds and friendships have been made.

  Ananke and I won’t be leaving, anyway . . . But Pavo . . .”

  And here Lya, who could never quite stop being the chair

  of a committee, gave a nod towards her mate. “. . . Pavo

  here has dec—expressed a wish—that she would like to travel.”

  “Travel?” Jalila leaned forward, her chin resting on

  her knuckles. “How?”

  Pavo gave her plate a half turn. “By boat seems the

  best way to explore Habara. With such a big ocean . . .”

  She turned the plate again, as if to demonstrate.

  3 5 3

  I A N R . M A C L E O D

  “And not just a boat,” Ananke put in encouragingly.

  “A brand new ship. We’re having it built—”

  “—But I thought you said you hadn’t yet decided?”

  “The contract, I think, is still being prepared,” Lya ex-

  plained. “And much of the craft will be to Pavo’s own

  design.”

  “Will you be building it yourself?”

  “Not alone.” Pavo gave another of her flustered smiles.

  “I’ve asked Ibra to help me. He seems to be the best, the most knowledgeable—”

  “—Ibra? Does he have any references?”

  “This is Al Janb, Jalila,” Lya said. “We know and trust people. I’d have thought that, with your friendship with

  Kalal . . .”

  “This certainly is Al Janb . . .” Jalila sat back. “How can I ever forget it!” All of her mothers’ eyes were on

  her. Then something broke. She got up and stormed off

  to her room.

  The long ride to the tariqua’s qasr, the swish of the wind, and banging three times on the old oak door. Then hobbling Robin and hurrying through dusty corridors to that

  tall tiled chamber, and somehow expecting no one to be

  there, even though Jalila had now come here several

  times alone.

  But the tariqua was always there. Waiting.

  Between them now, there much to be said.

  “This ant, Jalila, which crawls across this sheet of pa-

  per from here to there. She is much like us as we crawl across the surface of this planet. Even if she had the

  wings some of her kind sprout, just as I have my caleche, it would still be the same.” The tiny creature, waving

  feelers, was plainly lost. A black dot. Jalila understood 3 5 4

  B R E AT H M O S S

  how it felt. “But say, if we were to fold both sides of the paper together. You see how she moves now . . . ?” The

  ant, antennae waving, hesitant, at last made the tiny

  jump. “We can move more quickly from one place to an-

  other by not travelling across the distance which sepa-

  rates us from it, but by folding space itself.

  “Imagine now, Jalila, that this universe is not one

  thing alone, one solitary series of this following that, but of an endless branching of potentialities. Such it has been since the Days of Creation, and such it is even now, in the shuffle of that leaf as the wind picks at it, in the rising steam of your coffee. Every moment goes in many ways.

  Most are poor, halfformed things, the passing thoughts

  and whims of the Almighty. They hang there and they

  die, never to be seen again. But others branch as strongly as this path in which we find ourselves following. There

  are universes where you and I have never sat here in this qasr. There are universes where there is no Jalila . . . Will you get that for me . . . ?”

  The tariqua was pointing to an old book in a far cor-

  ner. Its leather was cracked, the wind lifted its pages. As she took it from her, Jalila felt the hot brush of the old woman’s hand.

  “So now, you must imagine that there is not just one

  sheet of a single universe, but many, as in this book,

  heaped invisibly above and beside and below the page

  upon which we find ourselves crawling. In fact . . .” The ant recoiled briefly, sensing the strange heat of the tariqua’s fingers, then settled on the open pages. “You must

  imagine shelf after shelf, floor upon floor of books, the aisles of an infinite library. And if we are to fold this one page, you see, we or the ant never quite know what lies

  on the other side of it. And there may be a tear that next 3 5 5

  I A N R . M A C L E O D

  page as well. It may even be that another version of our-

  selves has already torn it.”

  Despite its worn state, the book looked potentially

  valuable, hand-written in a beautiful flowing script.

  Jalila has to wince when the tariqua’s fingers ripped

  through them. But the ant had vanished now. She was

  somewhere between the book’s pages . . .

  “That, Jalila, is the Pain of Distance—the sense of

  every potentiality. So that womankind may pass over the

  spaces between the stars, every tariqua must experience

  it.” The wind gave a extra lunge, flipping the book shut.

  Jalila reached forward, but the tariqua, quick for once,

  was ahead of her. Instead of opening the book to release

  the ant, she weighed it down with the same chipped old

  stone with which Kalal had played on his solitary visit to this qasr.

  “Now, perhaps, my Jalila, you begin to understand?”

  The stone was old, chipped, grey-green. It was in-

  scribed, and had been carved with the closed wings of a

  beetle. Here was something from a world so impossibly

  old and distant as to make the book upon which it rested

  seem fresh and new as unbudded leaf—a scarab, shaped

  for the Queens of Egypt.

  “See here, Jalila. See how it grows. The breathmoss?”

  This was the beginning of the Season of Autumns. The

  trees were beautiful; the forests were on fire with their leaves. Jalila had been walking with Pavo, enjoying the

  return of the birdsong, and wondering why it was that

  this new season felt sad when everything seemed to be

  changing and growing.

  “Look . . .”

  The breathmoss, too, had turned russet-gold. Leaning

  3 5 6

  B R E AT H M O S S

  close to it beneath this tranquil sky, which was composed of a blue so pale it was as if the sea had been caught in reflection inside an upturned white bowl, was like looking into the arms of a minute forest.

  “Do you think it will die?”

  Pavo leaned beside her. “Jalila, it should have died

  long ago. Inshallah, it is a small miracle.” There were the three dead marks where Ananke had touched it in a the

  Season of Long Ago. “You see how frail it is, and yet . . .”

  “At least it won’t spread and take over the planet.”

  “Not for a while, at least.”

  On another rock lay another small colony. Here, too,

  oddly enough, there were marks. Five large dead dots as

  if made by the outspread of a hand, although the shape of it was too big to have been Ananke’s. They walked on.

  Evening was coming. Their shadows were lengthening.

  Although sun was shining and the waves sparkled, Jalila

  wished she had put on something warmer than a shawl.

  “That tariqua. You seem to enjoy her company . . .”

  Jalila nodded. When she was with the old woman, she

  felt as last as if she was escaping the confines of Al Janb.

  It was liberating, after the close life in this town and with her mothers in their haramlek, to know that interstellar

  space truly existed, and then to feel, as the tariqua spoke of Gateways, momentarily like that ant, infinitely small

  and yet somehow inching, crawling across the many uni-

  verses’ infinite pages. But how could she express this?

  Even Pavo wouldn’t understand.

  “How goes the boat?” she asked instead.

  Pavo slipped her arm into to crook of Jalila’s and

  hugged her. “You must come and see. I have the plan in my head, but I’d never realised quite how big it would be.

  And complex. Ibra’s full of enthusiasm.”

  3 5 7

  I A N R . M A C L E O D

  “I can imagine!”

  The sea flashed. The two women chuckled.

  “The way the ship’s designed, Jalila, there’s more than

  enough room for others. I never exactly planned to go

  alone, but then Lya’s Lya. And Ananke’s always—”

  Jalila gave her mother’s arm a squeeze. “I know what

  you’re saying.”

  “I’d be happy if you came Jalila. I’d understand if you

  didn’t. This is such a beautiful, wonderful planet. The

  leviathans—we know so little about them, yet they plainly have intelligence, just as all those old myths say.”

  “You’ll be telling me next about the qasrs . . .”

  “The ones we can see near here are nothing! There are islands on the ocean which are entirely made from them.

  And the wind pours through. They sing endlessly. A dif-

  ferent song for every mood and season.”

  “Moods! If I’d said something like that when you were

  teaching me of the Pillars Of Life, you’d have told me I

  was being unscientific!”

  “Science is about wonder, Jalila. I was a poor teacher

  if I never told you that.”

  “You did.” Jalila turned to kiss Pavo’s forehead. “You

  did . . .”

  Pavo’s ship was a fine thing. Between the slipways and

  the old mooring posts where the redflapping geelies quar-

  relled over scraps of dying tideflower, it grew and grew.

  Golden-hulled. Far sleeker and bigger than even the fer-

  ries which had once borne Al Janb’s visitors to and from

  the rocket port, and which now squatted on the shingle

  nearby, gently rusting. It was the talk of the Season. People came to admire its progress.

  As Jalila watched the spars rise over the clustered

  3 5 8

  B R E AT H M O S S

  roofs of the fisherwomen’s houses, she was reminded of

  Kalal’s tale of this father and nameless mother, and that ship which they had made together in the teeming dockyards of that city. Her thoughts blurred. She saw the high balconies of a hotel far bigger than any of Al Janb’s inns and boarding houses. She saw a darker, brighter ocean.

  Strange flesh upon flesh, with the windows open to the

  oil-and-salt breeze, the white lace curtains rising,

  falling . . .

  The boat grew, and Jalila visited the tariqua, although

  back in Al Janb her thoughts sometimes trailed after

  Kalal as she wondered how it must be—to be male, like

  the last dodo, and trapped some endless state of part-

  arousal, like a form of nagging worry. Poor Kalal. But his life certainly wasn’t lonely. The first time Jalila noticed him at the centre of the excited swarm of girls which

  once again surrounded Nayra, she’d almost thought she

  was seeing things. But the gossip was loud and persistent.