There was no sign of the scarab.
This, for Jalila and her mothers, was the Season of Farewells. It was the Season of Departures.
There was a small and pretty onion-domed mausoleum on a headland overlooking Al Janb, and the pastures around it were a popular place for picnics and lovers’ trysts in the Season of Summers, although they were scattered with tombstones. It was the ever-reliable Lya who saw to the bathing and shrouding of the tariqua’s body, which was something Jalila could not possibly face, and to the sending out through the null-space between the stars of all the necessary messages. Jalila, who had never been witness to the processes of death before, was astonished at the speed with which everything was arranged. As she stood with the other mourners on a day scarfed with cloud, beside the narrow rectangle of earth within which what remained of the tariqua now lay, she could still hear the wind booming over the empty qasr, feel the uncompliant weight of the old woman’s body, the chill speckle of sleet on her face.
It seemed as if most of the population of Al Janb had made the journey with the cortege up the narrow road from the town. Hard-handed fisherwomen. Gaudily dressed merchants. Even the few remaining aliens. Nayra was there, too, a beautiful vision of sorrow surrounded by her lesser black acolytes. So was Ibra. So, even, was Kalal. Jalila, who was acknowledged to have known the old woman better than anyone, said a few words that she barely heard herself over the wind. Then a priestess who had flown in specially from Ras pronounced the usual prayers about the soul rising on the arms of Munkar and Nakir, the blue and the black angels. Looking down into the ground, trying hard to think of the Gardens of Delight that the Almighty always promised her stumbling faithful, Jalila could only remember that dream of her own buriaclass="underline" the soil pattering on her face, and everyone she knew looking down at her. The tariqua, in one of her many half-finished tales, had once spoken to her of a world upon which no sun had ever shone, but which was nevertheless warm and bounteous from the core of heat beneath its surface, and where the people were all blind, and moved by touch and sound alone; it was a joyous place, and they were forever singing. Perhaps, and despite all the words of the Prophet, Heaven, too, was a place of warmth and darkness.
The ceremony was finished. Everyone moved away, each pausing to toss in a damp clod of earth, but leaving the rest of the job to be completed by a dull-minded robotic creature, which Pavo had had to rescue from the attentions of the younger children, who, all through the long Habaran summer, had ridden around on it. Down at their haramlek, Jalila’s mothers had organized a small feast. People wandered the courtyard, and commented admiringly on the many changes and improvements they had made to the place. Amid all this, Ibra seemed subdued-a reluctant presence in his own body-while Kalal was nowhere to be seen at all, although Jalila suspected that, if only for the reasons of penance, he couldn’t be far away.
Of course, there had been shock at the news of the tariqua’s death, and Lya, who had now become the person to whom the town most often turned to resolve its difficulties, had taken the lead in the inquiries that followed. A committee of wisewomen was organized even more quickly than the funeral, and Jalila had been summoned and interrogated. Waiting outside in the cold hallways of Al Janb’s municipal buildings, she’d toyed with the idea of keeping Abu’s disappearance and her suspicions of Kalal out of her story, but Lya and the others had already spoken to him, and he’d admitted to what sounded like everything. He’d ridden to the qasr on Abu to remonstrate with the tariqua. He’d been angry, and his mood had been bad. Somehow, but only lightly, he’d pushed the old woman, and she had fallen badly. Then, he panicked. Kalal bore responsibility for his acts, it was true, but it was accepted that the incident was essentially an accident. Jalila, who had imagined many versions of Kalal’s confrontation with the tariqua, but not a single one that seemed entirely real, had been surprised at how easily the people of Al Janb were willing to absolve him. She wondered if they would have done so quite so easily if Kalal had not been a freak-a man. And then she also wondered, although no one had said a single word to suggest it, just how much she was to blame for all of this herself.
She left the haramlek from the funeral wake and crossed the road to the beach. Kalal was sitting on the rocks, his back turned to the shore and the mountains. He didn’t look around when she approached and sat down beside him. It was the first time since before the tariqua’s death that they’d been alone.
“I’ll have to leave here,” he said, still gazing out toward the clouds that trailed the horizon.
“There’s no reason-”
“-no one’s asked me and Ibra to stay. I think they would, don’t you, if anyone had wanted us to? That’s the way you women work.”
“We’re not you women, Kalal. We’re people.”
“So you always say. And all Al Janb’s probably terrified about the report they’ve had to make to that thing you’re joining-the Church of the Gateway. Some big, powerful body, and-whoops-we’ve killed one of your old employees…”
“Please don’t be bitter.”
Kalal blinked and said nothing. His cheeks were shining.
“You and Ibra-where will you both go?”
“There are plenty of other towns around this coast. We can use our boat to take us there before the ice sets in. We can’t afford to leave the planet. But maybe in the Season of False Springs, when I’m a grown man and we’ve made some of the proper money we’re always talking about making from harvesting the tideflowers-and when word’s got around to everyone on this planet of what happened here. Maybe then we’ll leave Habara.” He shook his head and sniffed. “I don’t know why I bother to say maybe…”
Jalila watched the waves. She wondered if this was the destiny of all men; to wander forever from place to place, planet to planet, pursued by the knowledge of vague crimes that they hadn’t really committed.
“I suppose you want to know what happened?”
Jalila shook her head. “It’s in the report, Kalal. I believe what you said.”
He wiped his face with his palms, studied their wetness. “I’m not sure I believe it myself, Jalila. The way she was, that day. That old woman-she always seemed to be expecting you, didn’t she? And then she seemed to know. I don’t understand quite how it happened, and I was angry, I admit. But she almost lunged at me… She seemed to want to die…”
“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 that the love they had both felt for Nayra had briefly been. They could have taken the Endeavor 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 was 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 there too, of course, and she seemed to sense the imminence 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.