Kitara: A Tale of Leinyere

He rolled, looking up at the boy when suddenly his second wife threw herself across him.

"NO Faisal, he is the father of my child!" the voice of his younger wife cut through the still and he could see Faisal falter.

"Fool woman! Get up! I will have my revenge and we will be away! You were to be mine!"

"You never came! I married him. He is the father of my child..."

Faisal's raised hand trembled, and Mahmoud could see him struggling against the sword, using every fiber of his being to hold back the blade. "Go. Jahane. I can... I cannot stop"

***

Noreah watched her husband's men fall to the terrible blade, then her husband. She screamed, crying out as Faisal booted Mahmoud's head, knocking him to the ground.

"The blade will kill any between Faisal and Mahmoud"

The voice was soft, almost too soft to be heard. "What?"

"The blade. It will kill any between it and Mahmoud. But not that which is behind."

She turned to see a tired, pretty blond woman. Elvish. She opened her mouth to speak but the woman gestured.

"If he kills her, he will never be able to live with it."

Noreah turned, seeing her lover and her husband, the girl on the ground shielding Mahmoud with her body. He tried to push her off and she saw Faisal's control over the blade slip.

Suddenly she was behind him. His hair wrapped in her fist, his head tugged back. The sharp blade she kept for slaughtering lambs had found its way into her hand, and she drew it across his throat. The world was suddenly red, painted with the boy's blood as he fell to the earth.

She fell with him, screaming "what have I done? Sweet gods what have I done."

She looked down at her hand, sticky and red with blood and screamed till her voice was raw. Hands were on her, arms around her but all she saw was blood. Blood and death at her own hand.

***

Eevi had stayed with them after healing Mahmoud. She said it was to keep an eye on his wound so he wouldn't lose the arm, but Jahane knew the woman was doing something to keep Noreah alive. Spells, prayers, talk.

Noreah, for her part, had seemed shattered. She ate little and spoke less as the months wore on and the caravan made its way through Elven lands at the edge of the desert. Jahane was worried, but she had her own concerns. The pregnancy proceeded apace.

It was the pregnancy that finally drew Noreah out. Jahane used it to find reasons to talk to her, and as time wore on a smile appeared, here and there, on the woman's lips if it didn't quite reach her eyes.

Eevi had, for her part, hovered. She seemed as haunted as Noreah, and woke screaming sometimes in the night. Usually, after those bouts, she fussed about the caravan, offering her skills, trying to be as useful as she could.

The group had made its way south, intending to be home in time to deliver the baby, but the child had other plans. They camped in a rocky part of the desert, sheltered inside a mesa with a spring and some trees. It felt somehow familiar, though Jahane couldn't place it. Still, it was good to be in more comfortable surroundings.

For a few days, Noreah had fussed, taking care of the baby, seeming to smile for real. As Jahane curled in next to Mahmoud, she watched the woman with the baby.

"I think she's turning the corner, love"

His strong fingers slipped through her hair and she drifted to sleep against his broad chest. They lay there, enjoying a rare moment of quiet until Eevi brought the baby in. The three chattered a bit, playing with little Ali when Eevi asked "why would your wife be looking for a pair of gloves? She was desperate for them"

Jahane frowned a moment, then slipped up, handing the baby off "I'll go after her. I know what she's after."

***

Noreah heard the fall of rocks before she saw Jahane's face over the ridge. "You should not be climbing you just had a baby" the older woman scolded, though her heart wasn't in it. Jahane sat next to her, looking at her a moment, then glanced at the bowl in her lap

"I just came, to thank you for all you've done for me. The past month, with the birth... but everything before that as well" she reached, but then let her hand fall away, unable to bridge the distance between her and her husband's first wife. She looked out over the desert "When I was a girl, before Mahmoud took me, I used to dream of finding a home in the desert. The desert meant freedom to me. It was the dream of a girl. Now that I am a woman, I know that I did find my home in the desert, but not in the sand and rocks and the scrub. I found it with you" The younger woman wrapped her arms around her knees and stared outward, not inflicting her gaze on Noreah.

"You were the first to love me for who I was, not as some prize to be won or as a sign of manhood. I wasn't the wealthy trader's daughter. I wasn't a symbol. I found my home in your arms. Faisal did not love me. He loved himself and that is why he would not let me go. You... your lips sang to me the secret song of my heart, and if your fingers did not it was because they wrote across my skin poems so beautiful and heartbreaking that I cursed that all I had to offer in exchange was the water of my tears and the sigh of my breath. That all I had to offer you was that skin for you to write upon. You taught me to accept Mahmoud as my husband, but you will always be my first love and I will love you forever."

"For my love for you is like the desert wind. Though you might pass a threshold that I cannot, or part a beaded curtain on a journey I am not ready to undertake, the breath of my love will follow you in your wake, slipping through the door to warm you. Even if it is just a bit."

Noreah dared not look up, though she could hear that the girl... woman now... was doing her best to not weep "When I came here, you were patient. You waited until I was ready to find my home in your arms. I know that you are not ready now. My love, however, is patient. If I have to wait until the end of my days until I am sheltered with you again, then I will wait. I hope... that you will not make me wait so long."

Noreah sat still as Jahane gathered the last bits of her will and dignity so she could stand and turn away. Her chest, tight as a drum, ached as the girl asked her to stay while giving her permission to go. Hot tears dropped into the bowl, one glistening on the waxy purple berry floating atop her porridge.