“You mustn’t blame yourself. I brought you to this Kalal. I never saw . . .” Jalila shook her head. She couldn’t say. Not even now. Her eyes felt parched and cold.

  “I loved you Jalila.”

  The worlds branched in a million different ways. It

  could all have been different. The tariqua still alive. Jalila and Kalal together, instead of the half-formed thing

  which the love they had both felt for Nayra had briefly

  been. They could have taken the Endeavour together and sailed this planet’s seas; Pavo would probably have let

  them—but when, but where, but how? None of it seemed

  real. Perhaps the tariqua was right; there are many

  worlds, but most of them are poor, half-formed things.

  Jalila and Kalal sat there for a while longer. The

  breathmoss lay not far off, darkening and hardening into

  a carpet of stiff grey. Neither of them noticed it.

  For no other reason than the shift of the tides and the

  rapidly coming winter, Pavo, Jalila and Kalal and Ibra all left Al Janb on the same morning. The days before were

  chaotic in the haramlek. People shouted and looked

  around for things and grew cross and petty. Jalila, torn

  between bringing everything and nothing, and after

  many hours of bag-packing and lip-chewing, decided

  that it could all be thrown out, and that her time would

  be better spent down in the stables, with Robin. Abu was

  3 7 8

  B R E AT H M O S S

  there too, of course, and she seemed to sense the immi-

  nence of change and departure even more than Jalila’s

  own hayawan. She had become Kalal’s mount far more

  than she had ever been Lya’s, and he wouldn’t come to

  say goodbye.

  Jalila stroked the warm felt of the creatures’ noses. Gazing into Abu’s eyes as she gazed back at hers, she remem-

  bered their rides out in the heat of summer. Being with

  Kalal then, although she hadn’t even noticed it, had been the closest she had ever come to loving anyone. On the last night before their departure, Ananke cooked one of her

  most extravagant dinners, and the four women sat around

  the heaped extravagance of the table which she’d spent all day preparing, each of them wondering what to say, and

  regretting how much of these precious last times together they’d wasted. They said a long prayer to the Almighty,

  and bowed in the direction of Al’Toman. It seemed that,

  tomorrow, even the two mothers who weren’t leaving Al

  Janb would be setting out on a new and difficult journey.

  Then there came the morning, and the weather obliged

  with chill sunlight and a wind that pushed hard at their

  cloaks and nudged the Endeavour away from the harbour even before her sails were set. They all watched her go,

  the whole town cheering and waving as Pavo waved

  back, looking smaller and neater and prettier than ever as she receded. Without ceremony, around the corner from

  the docks, out of sight and glad of the Endeavour’s distraction, Ibra and Kalal were also preparing to leave. At a run, Jalila just caught them as they were starting to shift the hull down the rubbled slipway into the waves.

  Breathmoss; she noticed that Kalal had kept the name, although she and he stood apart on that final beach and

  talked as two strangers.

  3 7 9

  I A N R . M A C L E O D

  She shook hands with Ibra. She kissed Kalal lightly on

  the cheek by leaning stiffly forward, and felt the rough-

  ness of his stubble. Then the craft got stuck on the slipway, and they were all heaving to get her moving the last few metres into the ocean, until, suddenly, she was

  afloat, and Ibra was raising the sails, and Kalal was at the prow, hidden behind the tarpaulined weight of their belongings. Jalila only glimpsed him once more, and by

  then Breathmoss had turned to meet the stronger currents which swept outside the grey bay. He could have been a

  figurehead.

  Back at the dock, her mothers were pacing, anxious.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Do you know what time is?”

  Jalila let them scald her. She was almost late for her own leaving. Although most of the crowds had departed,

  she’d half expected Nayra to be there. Jalila was momen-

  tarily saddened, and then she was glad for her. The silver craft which would take her to the rocketport smelled disappointingly of sick and engine fumes as she clambered

  into it with the few other women and aliens who were

  leaving Habara. There was a loud bang as the hatches

  closed, and then a long wait while nothing seemed to

  happen and she could only wave at Lya and Ananke

  through the thick porthole, smiling and mouthing stupid

  phrases until her face ached. The ferry bobbed loose,

  lurched, turned and angled up. Al Janb was half gone in

  plumes of white spray already.

  Then it came in a huge wave. That feeling of incom-

  pleteness, of something vital and unknown left irretriev-

  ably behind, which is the beginning of the Pain of

  Distance which Jalila, as a tariqua, would have to face

  throughout her long life. A sweat came over her. As she

  3 8 0

  B R E AT H M O S S

  gazed out through the porthole at what little there was to see of Al Janb and the mountains, it slowly resolved itself into one thought. Immense and trivial. Vital and stupid.

  That scarab. She’d never asked Kalal about it, nor found it as the qasr, and the ancient object turned itself over in her head, sinking, spinning, filling her mind and then

  dwindling before rising up again as she climbed out, nau-

  seous, from the ferry and crossed the clanging gantries of the spaceport towards the last huge golden craft which

  stood steaming in the winter’s air. A murder weapon?—

  but no, Kalal was no murderer. And, in any case, she was

  a poor detective. And yet . . .

  The rockets thrust and rumbled. Pushing back, aching

  her eyeballs. There was no time now to think. Weight on

  weight, terrible seconds piled on her. Her blood seemed to leave her face. She was a clay-corpse. Vital elements of

  her senses departed. Then, there was a huge wash of si-

  lence. Jalila turned to look through the porthole beside

  her, and there it was. Mostly blue, and entirely beautiful; Habara, her birth planet. Jalila’s hands rose up without

  her willing, and her fingers squealed as she touched the

  glass and tried to trace the shape of the greenish-brown

  coastline, the rising brown and white of the mountains of that huge single continent which already seemed so

  small, but of which she knew so little. Jewels seemed to

  be hanging close before her, twinkling and floating in

  and out of focus like the hazy stars she couldn’t yet see.

  They puzzled her for a long time, did these jewels, and

  they were evasive as fish as she sought them with her

  weightlessly clumsy fingers. Then Jalila felt the salt

  break of moisture against her face, and realised what it

  was.

  At long last, she was crying.

  3 8 1

  I A N R . M A C L E O D

  6.

  Jalila had long been expecting the message when it fi-

  nally came. At only one hundred and twenty standard

  years, Pavo was still relatively young to die, but she had used her life up at a frantic pace, as if she had always

  known that her time would be limited. Even though the

  custom for swift funerals remained on Habara, Jalila was

  able to use her position as a tariqua to ride the Gateways and return for the service. The weather on the planet of

  her birth was unpredictable as ever, raining one moment

  and then sunny the next even as she took the ferry to Al

  Janb from the rocketport, and hot and cold winds seemed

  to strike her face as she stood on the dock’s edge and

  looked about for her two remaining mothers. They em-

  braced. They led her to their haramlek, which seemed

  smaller to Jalila each time she visited it despite the many additions and extensions and improvements they had

  made, and far closer to Al Janb than the long walk she

  remembered once taking on those many errands. She

  wandered the shore after dinner, and searched the twi-

  light for a particular shape and angle of quartz, and the signs of dark growth. But the heights of the Season of

  Storms on this coastline were ferocious, and nothing as

  fragile as breathmoss could have survived. She lay sleep-

  less that night in her old room within her dreamtent,

  breathing the strong, dense, moist atmosphere with diffi-

  culty, listening to the sound of the wind and rain.

  She recognised none of the faces but her mothers of

  the people who stood around Pavo’s grave the following

  morning. Al Janb had seemed so changeless, yet even

  Nayra had moved on—and Kalal was far away. Time was

  relentless. Far more than the wind which came in off the

  3 8 2

  B R E AT H M O S S

  bay, it chilled Jalila to the bone. One mother dead, and

  her two others looking like the mahwagis she supposed

  they were becoming. The Pain of Distance. More than ever now, and hour by hour and day by day in this life

  which she had chosen, Jalila knew what the old tariqua

  had meant. She stepped forward to say a few words.

  Pavo’s life had been beautiful and complete. She had

  passed on much knowledge about this planet to all wom-

  ankind, just as she had once passed on her wisdom to

  Jalila. The people listened respectfully to Jalila, as if she were a priest. When the prayers were finished and the

  clods of earth had been tossed and the groups began to

  move back down the hillside, Jalila remained standing by

  Pavo’s grave. What looked like the same old part-metal

  beast came lumbering up, and began to fill in the rest of the hole, lifting and lowering the earth with reverent,

  childlike care. Just as Jalila had insisted, and despite her mother’s puzzlement, Pavo’s grave lay right beside the

  old tariqua’s whom they had buried so long ago. This was

  a place which she long avoided, but now that Jalila saw

  the stone, once raw and brittle, but now smoothed and

  greyed by rain and wind, she felt none of the expected

  agony. She traced the complex name, scrolled in naskhi

  script, which she had once found impossible to remember,

  but which she had now recited thoughtless times in the

  ceremonials which the Church of the Gateway demanded

  of its acolytes. Sometimes, especially in the High Temple at Ghezirah, the damn things could go on for days. Yet

  not one member of the whole Church had seen fit to come

  to the simple ceremony of this old woman’s burial. It had hurt her, once, to think that no one from offworld had

  come to her own funeral. But now she understood.

  About to walk away, Jalila paused, and peered around

  3 8 3

  I A N R . M A C L E O D

  the back of the gravestone. In the lee of the wind, a soft green patch of life was thriving. She stooped to examine

  the growth, which was thick and healthy, forming a patch

  more than the size of her two outstretched hands ion this sheltered place. Breathmoss. It must have been here for a long time. Yet who would have thought to bring it? Only

  Pavo: only Pavo could possibly have known.

  As the gathering of mourners at the haramlek started

  to peter out, Jalila excused herself and went to Pavo’s

  quarters. Most of the stuff up here was a mystery to her.

  There were machines and nutrients and potions beyond

  anything you’d expect to encounter on such an out-of-

  the way planet. Things were growing. Objects and data

  needed developing, tending, cataloguing, if Pavo’s legacy was to be maintained. Jalila would have to speak to her

  mothers. But, for now, she found what she wanted, which

  was little more than a glass tube with an open end. She

  pocketed it, and walked back up over the hill to the ceme-tery, and said another few prayers, and bent down in the

  lee of the wind behind the old gravestone beside Pavo’s

  new patch of earth, and managed to remove a small por-

  tion of the breathmoss without damaging the rest of it.

  That afternoon, she knew that she would have to ride

  out. The stables seemed virtually unchanged, and Robin

  was waiting. She even snickered in recognition of Jalila, and didn’t try to bite her when she came to introduce the saddle. It had been such a long time that the animal’s

  easy compliance seemed a small miracle. But perhaps this

  was Pavo again; she could have done something to pre-

  serve the recollection of her much-changed mistress in

  some circuit or synapse of the hayawan’s memory. Snuf-

  fling tears, feeling sad and exulted, and also somewhat

  uncomfortable, Jalila headed south on her hayawan

  3 8 4

  B R E AT H M O S S

  along the old serraplate road, up over the cliffs and be-

  neath the arms of the urrearth forest. The trees seemed

  different; thicker-leafed. And the birdsong cooed slower

  and deeper than she remembered. Perhaps, here in

  Habara, this was some Season other than all of those

  which she remembered. But the qasr reared as always—

  out there on the clifface, and plainly deserted. No one

  came here now, but, like Robin, the door, at three-beat of her fists, remembered.

  Such neglect. Such decay. It seemed a dark and empty

  place. Even before Jalila came across the ancient signs of her own future presence—a twisted coathanger, a chipped

  plate, a few bleached and rotting cushions, some odd and

  scattered bits of Gateway technology which had passed

  beyond malfunction and looked like broken shells—she

  felt lost and afraid. Perhaps this, at last, was the final moment of knowing which she had warned herself she might

  have to face on Habara. The Pain of Distance. But at the

  same time, she knew that she was safe as she crawled

  across this particular page of her universe, and that when she did finally take a turn beyond the Gateways through

  which sanity itself could scarcely follow, it would be of her own volition, and as an impossibly old woman. That

  tariqua. Tending flowers like an old tortoise thrust out of its shell. Here, on a sunny, distant day. There were worse things. There were always worse things. And life was

  good. For all of this, pain was the price you paid.

  Still, in the courtyard, Jalila felt the cold draft of pre-science upon her neck from that lacy mashrabiya where

  she and Kalal would one day stand. The movement she

  made as she looked up towards it even reminded her of

  the old tariqua. Even her eyesight was not like as sharp as it had once been. Of course, there were ways around that

  3 8 5

  I A N R . M A C L E O D

  which could be purchased in the tiered and dizzy markets

  of Ghezirah, but sometimes it was better to accept some

  things as the will of the Almighty. Bowing down, mutter-

  ing the shahada, Jalila laid the breathmoss upon the shaded stone within the cloister. Sheltered here, she

  imagined it would thrive. Mounting Robin, riding from

  the qasr, she paused once to look back. Perhaps her eye-

  sight really was failing her, for she thought she saw the ancient structure shimmer and change. A beautiful green

  castle hung above the cliffs, coated entirely in breath-

  moss; a wonder from a far and distant age. She rode on,

  humming snatches of the old songs she’d once known so

  well about love and loss between the stars. Back at the

  haramlek, her mothers were as anxious as ever to know

  where she had been. Jalila tried not to smile as she en-

  dured their familiar scolding. She longed to hug them.

  She longed to cry.

  That evening, her last evening before she left Habara,

  Jalila walked the shore alone again. Somehow, it seemed

  the place to her where Pavo’s ghost was closest. Jalila

  could see her mother there now, as darkness welled up

  from between the rocks; a small, lithe body, always

  stooping, turning, looking. She tried going towards her;

  but Pavo’s shadow always flickered shyly away. Still, it

  seemed to Jalila as if she had been led towards some-

  thing, for here was the quartz-striped rock from that

  long-ago Season of the Soft Rains. Of course, there was

  no breathmoss left, the storms had seen to that, but nev-

  ertheless, as she bent down to examine it, Jalila was sure that she could see something beside it, twinkling clear

  from a rockpool through the fading light. She plunged

  her hand in. It was a stone, almost as smooth and round

  3 8 6

  B R E AT H M O S S

  as many millions of others on beach, yet this one was

  worked and carved. And its colour was greenish-grey.

  The soapstone scarab, somehow thrust here to this

  beach by the storms of potentiality which the tariquas of the Church of the Gateway stirred up by their impossible

  journeyings, although Jalila was pleased to see that it

  looked considerably less damaged than the object she re-