Kalal and Nayra were a couple— the phrase normally followed by a scandalised shriek, a hand-covered mouth.

  Jalila could only guess what the proud mothers of

  Nayra’s haramlek thought of such a union, but of course

  no one could subscribe to outright prejudice. Kalal was,

  after all, just another human being. Lightly probing her

  own mother’s attitudes, she found the usual condescend-

  ing tolerance. Having sexual relations with a male would

  be like smoking kif, or drinking alcohol, or any other

  form of slightly aberrant adolescent behaviour; to be tolerated with easy smiles and sympathy as long as it didn’t go on for too long. To be treated, in fact, in much the

  same manner as her mothers were now treating her regu-

  lar visits to the tariqua.

  *

  *

  *

  3 5 9

  I A N R . M A C L E O D

  Jalila came to understand why people thought of the Sea-

  son of Autumns as a sad time. The chill nights. The

  morning fogs which shrouded the bay. The leaves, finally

  falling, piled into rotting heaps. The tideflower beds, also, were dying as the waves pulled and dismantled what remained of their colours, and they drifted to the shores,

  the flowers bearing the same stench and texture and

  colour as upturned clay. The geelies were dying as well.

  In the town, to compensate, there was much bunting and

  celebration for yet another moulid, but to Jalila the

  brightness seemed feeble—the flame of a match held

  against winter’s gathering gale. Still, she sometimes wandered the old markets with some of her old curiosity, nos-talgically touching the flapping windsilks, studying the

  faces and nodding at the many she now knew, although

  her thoughts were often literally many light years away.

  The Pain of Distance; she could feel it. Inwardly, she was thrilled and afraid. Her mothers and everyone else,

  caught up in the moulid and Pavo’s coming departure,

  imagined from her mood that she had now decided to

  take that voyage with her. She deceived Kalal in much

  the same way.

  The nights became clearer. Riding back from the qasr

  one dark evening with the tariqua’s slight voice ringing

  in her ears, the stars seemed to hover closer around her

  than at any time since she had left Tabuthal. She could

  feel the night blossoming, its emptiness and the possibilities spinning out to infinity. She felt both like crying, and like whooping for joy. She had dared the ask the tariqua the question she had long been formulating, and the

  answer, albeit not entirely yes, had not been no. She

  talked to Robin as they bobbed along, and the puny yel-

  low smudge of Al Janb drew slowly closer. You must un-

  3 6 0

  B R E AT H M O S S

  derstand, she told her hayawan, that the core of the

  Almighty is like the empty place between these stars

  around which they all revolve. It is there, we know it, but we can never see . . . She sang songs from the old saharas about the joy of loneliness, and the loneliness of joy.

  From here, high up on the gradually descending road

  which wound its way down towards her haramlek, the

  horizon was still distant enough for her to see the lights of the rocketport. It was like a huge tidebed, holding out as the season changed. And there at the centre of it, rising golden, no longer a stumpy silo-shaped object but

  somehow beautiful, was the last of the year’s rockets. It would have to rise from Habara before the coming of the

  Season of Winters.

  Her mother’s anxious faces hurried around her in the

  lamplight as she led Robin towards the stable.

  “Where have you been, Jalilaneen?”

  “Do you know what time it is?”

  “We should be in the town already! .”

  For some reason, they were dressed in their best, most

  formal robes. Their palms were hennaed and scented.

  They bustled Jalila out of her gritty clothes, virtually

  washed and dressed her, then flapped themselves down

  the serraplate road into town where the processions had

  already started. Still, they were there in plenty of time to witness the blesssing of Pavo’s ship. It was to be called Endeavour, and Pavo and Jalila together smashed the bottle of wine across its prow before it rumbled into the nightblack waters or the harbour with an enormous white

  splash. Everyone cheered. Pavo hugged Jalila.

  There were more bottles of the same frothy wine avail-

  able at the party afterwards. Lya, with her usual thor-

  oughness, had ordered a huge case of the stuff, although

  3 6 1

  I A N R . M A C L E O D

  many of the guests remembered the Prophet’s old injunc-

  tion and avoided imbibing. Ibra, though, was soon even

  more full of himself than usual, and went around the big

  marquee with a bottle in each hand, dancing clumsily

  with anyone who was foolish enough to come near him.

  Jalila drank a little of the stuff herself. The taste was sweet, but oddly hot and bitter. She filled up another

  glass.

  “Wondered what you two mariners were going to call

  that boat . . .”

  It was Kalal. He’d been dancing with many of the girls,

  and he looked almost as red-faced as his father.

  “Bet you don’t even know what the first Endeavour

  was.”

  “You’re wrong there,” Jalila countered primly, although

  the simple words almost fell over each other as she tried to say them. “It was the spacecraft of Captain Cook. She was one of urrearth’s most famous early explorers.”

  “I thought you were many things,” Kalal countered,

  angry for no apparent reason. “But I never thought you

  were stupid.”

  Jalila watched him walk away. The dance had gathered

  up its beat. Ibra had retreated to sit, foolishly glum, in a corner, and Nayra had moved to the middle of the floor,

  her arms raised, bracelets jingling, an opal jewel at her belly, windsilk-draped hips swaying. Jalila watched. Perhaps it was the drink, but for the first time in many a Season, she felt a slight return of that old erotic longing as she watched Nayra swaying. Desire was the strangest of

  all emotions. It seemed so trivial when you weren’t pos-

  sessed of it, and yet when you were possessed, it was as if all the secrets of the universe were waiting . . . Nayra was the focus of all attention now as she swayed amid the

  3 6 2

  B R E AT H M O S S

  crowd, her shoulders glistening. She danced before Jalila, and her languorous eyes fixed her for a moment before

  she danced on. Now, she was dancing with Kalal, and he

  was swaying with her, her hands laid upon his shoulders,

  and everyone was clapping. They made a fine couple.

  Perhaps, Jalila thought, there really is some kind of symmetry in the matching of two sexes which we have lost.

  But the music was getting louder, and so were people’s

  voices. Her head was pounding. She left the marquee.

  She welcomed the harshness of the night air, the

  clear presence of the stars. Even the stench of the rot-

  ting tideflowers seemed appropriate as she picked her

  way across the ropes and slipways of the beach. So

  much had changed since she had first come here—but

  mostly what had changed had been herself. Here, its

  shape unmistakable as rising Walah spread her faint

  blue light across the ocean, was Kalal’s boat. She sat

  down on the gunwale. The cold wind bit into her. She

  heard the crunch of shingle, and imagined it was some-

  one else was in need of solitude. But the sound grew

  closer, and then whoever it was sat down on the boat

  beside her. She didn’t need to look up now. Kalal’s smell was always different, and now he was sweating from the

  dancing.

  “I thought you were enjoying yourself,” she muttered.

  “Oh—I was . . .” The emphasis on the was was strong.

  They sat there for a long time, in windy, wave-

  crashing silence. It was almost like being alone. It was

  like the old days of their being together.

  “So you’re going, are you?” Kalal asked eventually.

  “Oh, yes.”

  “I’m pleased for you. It’s a fine boat, and I like Pavo

  best of all your mothers. You haven’t seemed quite so

  3 6 3

  I A N R . M A C L E O D

  happy lately here in Al Janb. Spending all that time with that old witch in the qasr.”

  “She’s not a witch. She’s a tariqua. It’s one of the

  greatest, oldest callings. Although I’m surprised you’ve

  had time to notice what I’m up to, anyway. You and

  Nayra . . .”

  Kalal laughed, and the wind made the sound turn bitter.

  “I’m sorry,” Jalila continued. “I’m sounding just like

  those stupid gossips. I know you’re not like that. Either of you. And I’m happy for you both. Nayra’s sweet and talented and entirely lovely . . . I hope it lasts . . . I hope . . .”

  After another long pause, Kalal said, “Seeing as we’re

  apologising, I’m sorry I got cross with you about the

  name of that boat you’ll be going on—the Endeavour. It’s a good name.”

  “Thank you. El-hamadu-l-illah. ”

  “In fact, I could only think of one better one, and I’m

  glad you and Pavo didn’t use it. You know what they say.

  To have two ships with the same name confuses the spir-

  its of the winds . . .”

  “What are you talking about, Kalal?”

  “This boat. You’re sitting right on it. I thought you

  might have noticed.”

  Jalila glanced down at the prow, which lay before her

  in the moonlight, pointing towards the silvered waves.

  From this angle, and in the old naskhi script which Kalal had used, it took her a moment to work out the craft’s

  name. Something turned inside her.

  Breathmoss.

  In white, moonlit letters.

  “I’m sure there are better names for a boat,” she said

  carefully. “Still, I’m flattered.”

  “Flattered?” Kalal stood up. She couldn’t really see his

  3 6 4

  B R E AT H M O S S

  face, but she suddenly knew that she’d once again said

  the wrong thing. He waved his hands in an odd shrug,

  and he seemed for a moment almost ready to lean close

  to her—to do something unpredictable and violent—but

  instead, picking up stones and skimming them hard into

  the agitated waters, he walked away.

  Pavo was right. If not about love—which Jalila knew now

  she still waited to experience—then at least about the major decisions of your life. There was never quite a beginning to them, although your mind often sought for such

  a thing.

  When the tariqua’s caleche emerged out of the newly

  teeming rain one dark evening a week or so after the

  naming of the Endeavour and settled itself before the lights of their haramlek, and the old woman herself

  emerged, somehow still dry, and splashed across the pud-

  dled garden whilst her three mothers flustered about to

  find the umbrella they should have thought to look for

  earlier, Jalila still didn’t know what she should be thinking. The four women would, in any case, need to talk

  alone; Jalila recognised that. For once, after the initial greetings, she was happy to retreat to her dreamtent.

  But her mind was still in turmoil. She was suddenly

  terrified that her mothers would actually agree to this

  strange proposition, and then that, out of little more than embarrassment and obligation, the rest of her life would

  be bound to something which the tariqua called the

  Church of the Gateway. She knew so little. The tariqua

  talked only in riddles. She could be a fraud, for all Jalila knew—or a witch, just as Kalal insisted. Thoughts swirled about her like the rain. To make the time disappear, she

  tried searching the knowledge of her dreamtent. Lying

  3 6 5

  I A N R . M A C L E O D

  there, listening to the rising sound of her mother’s voices which seemed to be studded endlessly with the syllables

  of her own name, Jalila let the personalities who had

  guided her through the many Pillars of Wisdom to tell

  her what they knew about the Church of the Gateway.

  She saw the blackness of planetary space, swirled with

  the mica dots of turning planets. Almost as big as those

  as she zoomed close to it, yet looking disappointingly like a many-angled version of the rocketport, lay the spacestation, and within it the junction which could lead you

  from here to there without passing across the distance between. A huge rent in the Book of Life, composed of the

  trapped energies of these things the tariqua called cosmic strings, although they and the Gateway itself were visible as nothing more than a turning ring near to the centre of the vast spacestation where occasionally, as Jalila watched, crafts of all possible shapes would seem to hang, then vanish. The gap she glimpsed inside seemed no darker than

  that which hung between the stars behind it, but it some-

  how hurt to stare. This, then, was the core of the mystery; something both plain and extraordinary. We crawl across

  the surface of this universe like ants, and each of these craft, switching through the Gateway’s moment of loss

  and endless potentiality, is piloted by the will of a tariqua’s conscious intelligence which must glimpse these

  choices, then somehow emerge sane and entire at the

  other end of everything . . .

  Jalila’s mind returned to the familiar scents and

  shapes of her dreamtent, and the sounds of the rain. The

  moment seemed to belong with those of the long-ago

  Season of Soft Rains. Downstairs, there were no voices.

  As she climbed out from her dreamtent, warily expecting

  to the find the haramlek leaking and half-finished, Jalila 3 6 6

  B R E AT H M O S S

  was struck by an idea which the tariqua hadn’t quite

  made plain to her; that a Gateway must push through

  time just as easily as it pushes through every other dimension . . . ! But the rooms of the haramlek were finely furnished, and her three mothers and the tariqua were

  sitting in the rainswept candlelight of the courtyard,

  waiting.

  With any lesser request, Lya always quizzed Jalila be-

  fore she would even consider granting it. So as Jalila sat before her mothers and tried not to tremble in their presence, she wondered how she could possibly explain her

  ignorance of this pure, boundless mystery.

  But Lya simply asked Jalila if this was what she

  wanted—to be an acolyte of the Church of the Gateway.

  “Yes.”

  Jalila waited. Then, not even, are you sure? They’d trusted her less than this when they’d sent her on errands into Al Janb . . . It was still raining. The evening was star-less and dark. Her three mothers, having hugged her, but

  saying little else, retreated to their own dreamtents and silences, leaving Jalila to say farewell to the tariqua

  alone. The heat of the old woman’s hand no longer came

  as a surprise to Jalila as she helped her up from her chair and away from the sheltered courtyard.

  “Well,” the tariqua croaked, “that didn’t seem to go so

  badly.”

  “But I know so little! ” They were standing on the patio at the dripping edge of the night. Wet streamers of wind

  tugged at them.

  “I know you wish I could tell you more, Jalila—but

  then, would it make any difference?”

  Jalila shook her head. “Will you come with me?”

  “Habara is where I must stay, Jalila. It is written.”

  3 6 7

  I A N R . M A C L E O D

  “But I’ll be able to return?”

  “Of course. But you must remember that you can

  never return to the place you have left.” The tariqua fumbled with her clasp, the one of a worm consuming its tail.

  “I want you to have this.” It was made of black ivory, and felt as hot as the old woman’s flesh as Jalila took it. For once, not really caring whether she broke her bones, she

  gave the small, bird-like woman a hug. She smelled of

  dust and metal; like an antique box left forgotten on a

  sunny windowledge. Jalila helped her out down the steps

  into the rainswept garden.

  “I’ll come again soon,” she said, “to the qasr.”

  “Of course . . . There are many arrangements.” The

  tariqua opened the dripping filigree door or her caleche

  and peered at her with those half-blind eyes. Jalila

  waited. They had stood too long in the rain already.

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t be too hard on Kalal.”

  Puzzled, Jalila watched the caleche rise and turn away

  from the lights of the haramlek.

  Jalila moved warily through the sharded glass of her own

  and her mother’s expectations. It was agreed that a mes-

  sage concerning her be sent, endorsed by full long and

  ornate formal name of the tariqua, to the body which did

  indeed call itself the Church of the Gateway. It went by

  radio pulse to the spacestation in wide solar orbit which received Habara’s rockets, and was then passed itself on

  inside a vessel from here to there which was piloted by a tariqua. Not only that, but the message was destined for