After three days in the ward at Swinburne Island, Michael Levy’s fever finally broke. The doctors kept him there for another two weeks, feeding him broth and mashed vegetables, helping him walk up and down the drafty halls. He was malnourished, they told him, and dangerously anemic. Get yourself married, they said. You need a wife to fatten you up.
He ate, and slept, and his body healed. A letter came from the Sheltering House board wishing him a quick return, which he took to mean that the House was coming unglued without him. One night the nurses caught him walking around the ward, talking with the patients, encouraging them to petition the Ellis Island officials for reentry. They shooed him back to bed and threatened to tie him down again.
It was almost New Year’s when Michael was discharged. He stood at the ferry’s rail bundled against an icy wind that turned the water dark and choppy. He’d put on five pounds and felt better than he had in months. He’d begun to think of his illness as a strange parting gift from his uncle, an opportunity to rest and be cared for. Not quite taking the waters at Saratoga, but as close as he’d ever get.
The ferry pushed away from the thin pilings, chugging against the current. Night had fallen. Staten Island and Brooklyn slumbered to either side, their clapboard villages battened down for the winter. The tip of Manhattan appeared at the north end of the bay, and Michael’s equanimity wavered. What chaos would be waiting for him at the House? The wind picked up, but he stayed on deck and watched the Statue of Liberty go by, and tried to draw strength from her calm and compassionate gaze.
In the Sheltering House, it was just past lights-out. A hundred and fifty men lay on their cots, covered with thin blankets. Some were awake with fears for their new life; others soon gave in to the exhaustion of the voyage, or a day spent looking for work.
On a cot near the window on the third floor, the man now known as Joseph Schall slept as deeply and peacefully as a child.
It was chance pure and simple that had brought Schaalman to the Sheltering House. After that bureaucrat at Ellis Island had changed his name—any number of revenges had risen to his lips, but he’d pushed them all down again—he’d descended the wide staircase and come face-to-face with the Manhattan skyline, framed in tall windows at the end of the hall. It was a forbidding and majestic view, and it stopped him in his tracks. Ever since his dream of the city he’d known the task before him to be difficult; but now, facing the real thing across the bay, it struck him as flat-out impossible. He spoke no English, was unused to people and crowds, didn’t even have a place to sleep. Were there inns in New York? Or stables? Surely at least there were stables?
A hand touched his arm, and he turned, startled. It was a young woman with a round-cheeked face. She asked, “Sir, do you speak Yiddish?”
“Yes,” he said warily.
She explained that she was a volunteer with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. Was there anything he needed? Could they offer him any assistance?
Were it any other time or place, he would have searched her for weaknesses to exploit, or simply fuddled her mind and then robbed her. But now, tired, depressed, and defeated, he resorted to his most hated gambit: the truth. “I have nowhere to stay,” he muttered.
She told him of a place called the Hebrew Sheltering House and said there was a boat that could take him there. Meekly he followed her out to the dock, clutching his suitcase like a frightened child.
But within a day of arriving at the Sheltering House, he was returned to his old self-confidence. In a way, life at the House was like being incarcerated again. The cots, the dormitories, the foul water closets and the communal meals, the ever-changing roster of faces: here was a place he understood, with overseers to manipulate, and rules to be bent or broken. All in all, the perfect bolt-hole.
There were only two hard and fast rules at the Hebrew Sheltering House: meals had to be eaten in the dining hall at the appointed times, and no man could stay more than five days. Breaking the second rule proved even easier than the first. By luck, the director of the Sheltering House had fallen ill. The cook and the housekeeper had divided his duties between them and spent all day running frantically this way and that, trying to maintain order. On Schaalman’s third day, forty newcomers stepped off the ferry and came through the door, to find only eighteen unoccupied cots. The new arrivals milled uneasily on the landing, while the cook and housekeeper searched for the misplaced roster that would have set everything to rights. Failing to find it and both near tears, they went to each dormitory and asked if the men who’d overstayed would please own up to it. They were met with nothing but blank stares. With so many men coming and going, and so much time spent searching for work or a place to live, even the ones who might have reported the rule breakers had little idea where to point.
But Schaalman had been observing them all for days. He looked about, and found a number of men who’d been there when he arrived. He watched their faces as the women pleaded, and saw the telltale signs of guilt and defiance. He took the women aside for a brief conversation. With his help, they recruited two large men from among the new arrivals. Then they went from dormitory to dormitory and tossed out the wrongdoers while Schaalman looked on, a stern yet mild judge.
The cook and the housekeeper couldn’t thank him enough. He replied that he was glad to help—of course order had to be kept, everyone must follow the rules—and if they needed him for anything else, he was at their disposal. They kissed his cheek like grateful daughters. Later that night Schaalman retrieved the missing roster from under his cot and replaced it in the office, between the pages of a newspaper.
The next day, he volunteered to help with the new arrivals. While the women checked off names and bustled about, he directed men to their bunks and explained the rules of the house. Afterward, with all settled, the women invited him into the office and gave him a glass of schnapps.
“What Mr. Levy doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” the housekeeper whispered, and struck Joseph Schall from the next day’s departure list.
Over the next week Schaalman solidified his position. He took to straightening up the parlor, folding the newspapers, and refilling the teapot. At mealtimes he monitored the queue and told the cook how many mouths were left to feed. He seemed to be everywhere at once, helping with one thing or another, even adjudicating the men’s paltry quibbles.
When he wasn’t insinuating himself into the fabric of the Sheltering House, he was out learning the neighborhood. At first the streets had been overwhelming, a churning porridge of people and wagons and animals; but after a week he could step off the curb and melt seamlessly into the crowd, just another old Jew in a dark overcoat. He’d walk for hours, taking note of the streets and shops, marking in his mind the edges of the neighborhood where the Yiddish faded from the shop windows. As he went he’d make a mental list of the largest Orthodox synagogues, the ones most likely to have decent libraries. And then he’d reverse his steps and go back to the Sheltering House, in time to help settle the newest group of men.
The cook began to set aside a stash of the best food for him, fat pickles and chunks of pastrami. The housekeeper called him an angel sent from heaven, and piled him with extra blankets. And meanwhile, in his battered suitcase beneath his cot, his piecemeal book lay sleeping. If one of his housemates had happened to come across it, the man would have seen nothing special—only a worn and unremarkable prayer book.
The Jinni appeared beneath the Golem’s window a few minutes past midnight. She’d been pacing for nearly an hour—she knew the neighbors would hear, but she couldn’t help it, her entire body ached with cold and apprehension. With each turn she stopped to peer out the window. Would he come as he’d said? Would it be better if he didn’t? And what had possessed her to agree to this in the first place?
When finally she saw him she felt both a burst of relief and a fresh wave of misgiving. She was in such a state that she made it halfway down the stairs before realizing she’d forgotten her cloak and gloves, and had to go back for them.
“You came,” she said to him when she reached the street.
He raised an eyebrow. “You doubted it?”
“You might have thought better of it.”
“And you might not have come down. But since we’re both here, I thought we might go to Madison Square Park. Is that agreeable?”
The name meant nothing to her, and in a sense all possible destinations were the same: unknown places, unknown risks. She had two choices. She could say yes, or turn back.
“Yes,” she said. “Let’s go.”
And with no more discussion, they set off along Broome Street. Suddenly she wanted to burst out laughing. She was outside, she was walking! Her legs were so stiff the joints almost creaked, but the movement felt delicious, like the scratching of a long-denied itch. He went quickly, but she easily matched his pace, keeping to his side. He didn’t offer to take her arm, as she’d seen other men do, and she was glad: it would have meant walking slowly, and too close together.
At Chrystie he turned north, and she followed. They were at the edge of her neighborhood now, the border of her knowledge. The cacophony of the Bowery echoed from the next block. A few men crossed their path, and she pulled the hood of her cloak lower.
“Don’t do that,” the Jinni said.
“Why not?”
“You look like you have something to hide.”
But didn’t she? The euphoria of movement was subsiding; she was growing scared all over again, frightened of the liberties she’d allowed herself to take. They reached Houston Street, and she glanced sidelong at her companion. Was it strange that they weren’t talking? The people she saw walking at night usually talked to each other. But then, he usually traveled on his own. And the silence was not uncomfortable.
They came to Great Jones, and then the electric-lit expanse of Broadway. The buildings here stretched higher, wider, and she pushed her hood back, the better to see it all. Brick and limestone gave way to marble and glass. Shop-front windows beckoned with dresses and fabrics, feathered hats, jewels and necklaces and earrings. Mesmerized, she left the Jinni’s side to peer at a dress-form bedecked with a sweeping, intricate gown in sapphire silk. How long it must have taken to sew something so beautiful, so complicated! She traced the seams with her eyes, trying to learn its construction; and the Jinni, growing impatient on the sidewalk, came to retrieve her.
At Fourteenth Street they came upon a large park, with an enormous statue of a man sitting on a horse, and the Golem wondered if this was their destination. But the Jinni continued on, skirting the west side of the park until it rejoined Broadway. The streets were now eerily quiet and stretched empty in all directions save for the occasional slow-trotting brougham. They passed a thin triangle of empty land at Twenty-third Street, strewn with snow-rimed newspapers that rattled in the wind. The triangle lay at a wide confluence of avenues; in one street stood a magnificent white arch and colonnade. The arch shone with electric lights that turned the colonnade into tall bars of light and shadow, and cast a faint glow along the lowering sky.
Madison Square Park sat before them, a dark grove of leafless trees. They crossed into it, and meandered along the empty paths. Even the homeless had left to search out warm doorways and stairwells. Only the Golem and the Jinni were there to take in the quiet. The Golem left the Jinni’s side to study whatever caught her eye: dark metal monuments of solemn-faced men, the iron curl of a park bench. She stepped across the snow to lay a hand on a tree trunk’s rough bark, then looked up to see the naked branches spreading themselves across the sky.
“This is better than sitting in your room all night, is it not?” asked the Jinni as they walked.
“It is,” she admitted. “Are all the parks this large?”
He laughed. “They come much larger than this.” He glanced at her sidelong. “How is it that you’ve never been to a park?”
“I suppose it’s because I haven’t been alive for very long,” she said.
He frowned, confused. “How old are you?”
She thought. “Six months. And a few days.”
The Jinni stopped short. “Six months?”
“Yes.”
“But—” He gestured at her, the sweep of his hand taking in her adult form and appearance.
“I was created as you see me,” she said, feeling uneasy; she wasn’t used to talking about herself. “Golems don’t age, we simply continue as we are, unless we’re destroyed.”
“And all golems are like this?”
“I think so. I can’t be certain. I’ve never met another golem.”
“What, none?”
“I might be the only one,” she said.
Clearly astonished, the Jinni said nothing. They continued on together, walking the perimeter of the park.
“And how old are you?” the Golem said, to break the silence.
“A few hundred years,” he said. “Unless some mishap ends me, I’ll live another five or six hundred.”
“Then you’re also young for your kind.”
“Not as young as some.”
She frowned. “You hold my age against me?”
“No, it explains much. Your timidity, for instance.”
At that, she bristled. “I make no apologies for being cautious. I have to be. As do you.”
“But there’s caution, and then there is overcaution. Look at us. Walking at night in a park, far from home. And yet the moon doesn’t fall from the heavens, and the ground refuses to tremble.”
“Just because nothing has happened doesn’t mean that nothing will happen.”
He smiled. “True. Perhaps I’ll be surprised. And then you can declare that you were right all along.”
“It would be small comfort.”
“Are you always this humorless?”
“Yes. Are you always this exasperating?”
He chuckled. “You really should meet Arbeely. You two would get along wonderfully.”
She did smile at that. “You keep mentioning him. Are you very close?”
She’d expected him to launch into an enthusiastic description of his friend; but he only said, “The man means well. And he’s helped me, certainly.”
“And yet?” she prompted.
The Jinni sighed. “I’m less grateful to him than I should be. He’s a good and generous man, but I’m not accustomed to relying on someone else. It makes me feel weak.”
“How is relying on others a weakness?”
“How can it be anything else? If for some reason Arbeely died tomorrow, I’d be forced to find another occupation. The event would be outside my control, yet I’d be at its mercy. Is that not weakness?”
“I suppose. But then, going by your standard, everyone is weak. So why call it a weakness, instead of just the way things are?”
“Because I was above this once!” he said with sudden vehemence. “I depended on no one! I went where I would and followed my desires. I needed no money, no employer, no neighbors. None of this interminable good morning and how are you, whether one feels like it or not.”
“But weren’t you ever lonely?”
“Oh, sometimes. But then I’d seek out my own kind, and enjoy their company for a while. And then we’d part ways again, as we saw fit.”
She tried to imagine it: a life without occupation or neighbors, without the bakery and the Radzins and Anna. With no familiar faces, no set pattern to her days. It felt terrifying. She said, “I don’t think golems are made for such independence.”
“You only say that because you’ve lived no other way.”
She shook her head. “You misunderstand me. Each golem is built to serve a master. When I woke, I was already bound to mine. To his will. I heard his every thought, and I obeyed with no hesitation.”
“That’s terrible,” the Jinni said.
“To you, perhaps. To me it felt like the way things were meant to be. And when he died—when that connection left me—I no longer had a clear purpose. Now I’m bound to everyone, if only a little. I have to fight against it, I can’t be solving everyone’s wishes. But sometimes, at the bakery where I work, I’ll give someone a loaf of bread—and it answers a need. For a moment, that person is my master. And in that moment, I’m content. If I were as independent as you wish you were, I’d feel I had no purpose at all.”
He frowned. “Were you so happy, to be ruled by another?”
“Happy is not the word,” she said. “It felt right.”
“All right, then let me ask you this. If by some chance or magic you could have your master back again, would you wish it?”
It was an obvious question, but one that she had never quite asked herself. She’d barely known Rotfeld, even to know what sort of a man he was. But then, couldn’t she guess? What sort of man would take a golem for a wife, the way a delivery man might purchase a new cart?
But oh, to be returned to that certainty! The memory of it rose up, sharp and beguiling. And she wouldn’t feel as though she was being used. One choice, one decision—and then, nothing.
“I don’t know,” she said at last. “Maybe I would. Though in a way, I think it would be like dying. But perhaps it would be for the best. I make so many mistakes, on my own.”
There was a noise from the Jinni, something not quite a laugh. His mouth was a hard line; he stared up beyond the trees, as though he couldn’t bear to look at her.
“I said something to offend you,” she said.
“Don’t do that,” he snapped. “Don’t look into me.”
“I didn’t need to,” she retorted. An unaccustomed defiance was rising in her. She’d given him an honest answer, and apparently it had repelled him. Well, so be it. If he didn’t want her company, she could find her own way home. She was no child, whatever he thought.
She’d half decided to turn back toward Broadway; but then he said, “Do you remember what I told you before? That I was captured, but have no memory of it?”
“Yes, of course I remember.”
“I have no idea,” he said, “how long I was that man’s servant. His slave. I don’t know what he made me do. I might have done terrible things. Perhaps I killed for him. I might have killed my own kind.” There was a tight edge in his voice, painful to hear. “But even worse would be if I did it all gladly. If he robbed me of my will, and turned me against myself. Given a choice, I’d sooner extinguish myself in the ocean.”
“But if all those terrible things did happen, then it was the wizard’s fault, not yours,” she said.
Again, that not-quite laugh. “Do you have colleagues at this bakery where you work?”
“Of course,” she said. “Moe and Thea Radzin, and Anna Blumberg.”
He said, “Imagine that your precious master returns to you, and you give yourself to him, as you say you perhaps would. Because you make so many mistakes. And he says, ‘Please, my dear golem, kill those good people at the bakery, the Radzins and Anna Blumberg. Rip them limb from limb.”
“But why—”
“Oh, for whatever reason! They insult him, or make threats against him, or he simply develops a whim. Imagine it. And then tell me what comfort it gives to think it wasn’t your own fault.”
This was a possibility she’d never considered. And now she couldn’t help but picture it: grabbing Moe Radzin by the wrist and pulling until his arm came free. She had the strength. She could do it. And all the while, that peace and certainty.
No, she thought—but now, having started down this path, her mind refused to stop. What if Rotfeld had made it safely to America with her, and the Rabbi had noticed them on the street one day? In her mind, the Rabbi confronted Rotfeld—and then she was dragging the Rabbi into an alley, and choking the life from him.
It made her want to cry out. She put the heels of her hands to her eyes, to push the images away.
“Now do you understand?” the Jinni asked.
“Leave me alone!”
It rang across the square, echoing from the stone facades. Startled, the Jinni backed away, hands raised—to placate her, or to ward off an attack.
Silence descended again. She stretched her fingers wide, trying to calm herself. The things she’d pictured were imaginary. She hadn’t hurt the Radzins or Anna. There was no reason why she would. Rotfeld was dead; his body lay at the bottom of the ocean. She would never have another master.
“All right,” she said. “Yes. I see your point.”
“It wasn’t my intention to upset you,” the Jinni said.
“Wasn’t it?” she muttered.
A pause. “If it was, then I was in the wrong.”
“No. You were right. I hadn’t considered it like that.” She looked away, feeling guilty and uncomfortable.
They heard the footsteps at the same time. Two policemen were jogging toward them from down the path, their wool greatcoats flapping at their boots. In the sleeping square, with no one else about, their concern for the Golem struck her with almost physical force.
“Evening, miss,” one of them said, touching his cap. “Is this man bothering you?”
She shook her head. “No, he isn’t. I’m sorry, you needn’t have come.”
“You yelled awful loud, miss.”
“It was my fault,” the Jinni said. “I said something I shouldn’t have.”
The policemen were looking from one of them to the other, trying to read the truth of the situation: a man and a woman, clearly not vagrants, out together at this hour, in the freezing cold . . .
She had put them in this position. Perhaps, if she said the right thing, she could get them out of it again.
“Dearest,” the Golem said, placing a hand on the Jinni’s arm, “we should be getting home. It is rather cold.”
Surprise flared in the Jinni’s eyes, but he stifled it quickly. “Of course,” he said, and tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. He smiled at the men. “I apologize, officers. My fault entirely. Good night.”
And they turned and walked away.
“Good night,” one of the officers called halfheartedly after them.
Silently they walked back through the park, the air tense between them. Not until they were at Broadway did the Jinni risk looking back. “We’re alone,” he said, dropping her hand.
“I know. They didn’t follow. They wanted to go back to their precinct-house and get warm again.”
“That’s a strange gift you have,” he said, shaking his head. Then he smirked down at her. “Dearest?”
“It’s what Mrs. Radzin calls her husband when she’s angry at him.”
“I see. That was clever.”
“It was a risk.”
“But it worked. And still the sky hasn’t fallen.”
So it hadn’t, she thought. No lasting harm had been done. For once, she had said the right thing at the right time.
They walked on, retracing their path south. The thin traffic on Broadway was changing: no longer elegant broughams, but delivery wagons hitched to workaday horses, pulling the day’s goods to the heart of the city. On a corner a shoeshine boy set up his box, then huddled in on himself, blowing on his naked fingers.
They’d just passed Union Square when the snow began to fall. At first it was only a thin sleet, but then it grew heavier, turning to clumps of flakes that blew into their faces. The Golem pulled her cloak closer about herself, and noticed that the Jinni had quickened his pace. She had to hurry to catch up. She was about to ask him what was the matter; but then she noticed that his face wasn’t wet, despite the driving snow. As she watched, the flakes landed on him and instantly disappeared. She recalled what he’d said when they were arguing: I would sooner extinguish myself in the ocean.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” he replied; but his distracted tone clashed with his words. And she would have sworn that the glow of his face had dimmed.
Quietly she asked, “Are you in danger?”
His jaw tightened, in anger or irritation; but then he relaxed, and gave her a rueful smile. “No. Not yet. Did you see it, or did you guess?”
“Both, I think.”
“From now on I’ll remember that you’re far too observant.”
“The winter must be dreadful for you.”
“I certainly haven’t enjoyed it.”
They moved to walk under the protection of the awnings; but even so, by the time that they reached Bond Street he was looking pale indeed. The Golem couldn’t help casting worried glances in his direction.
He muttered, “You can stop looking at me like that, I’m not about to perish.”
“But why don’t you wear a hat, or carry an umbrella?”
“Because I can’t stand either.”
“Are all your kind so stubborn?”
At that he smiled. “Most of us, yes.”
Near Hester they stopped beneath the awning of an Italian grocer’s; in the window hung enormous red sausages suspended by twine, next to twisted strings of garlic bulbs. A warm and pungent smell came from the open door. “I can go the rest of the way on my own,” she said.
“You’re certain?”
She nodded. They were only a few blocks from the Bowery, and beyond it her own neighborhood. “I’ll be fine,” she said.
They stood there together, both uneasy.
“I don’t know if we should see each other again,” she said.
He frowned. “You’re still uncertain of my intentions?”
“No, your tolerance. We angered each other.”
“I can stand a little anger,” he said. “Can you?”
It was a challenge, but also an invitation. He had angered her, and made her feel ashamed; but she’d also talked freely with someone for the first time since the Rabbi’s death. She felt something loosening inside her that had nothing to do with her body’s stiffness.
“All right,” she said. “On one condition.”
“Yes?”
“If the weather looks threatening, you must wear a hat. I refuse to be responsible for your ill health.”
His eyes rolled heavenward. “If I must,” he said, but she caught a hint of a smile. “Next week, at the same time?”
“Yes. Now please, find somewhere dry. Good-bye.” She turned and walked away.
“Until next week,” he called after her; but she was already around the corner, and he couldn’t see her smile.
“I told you I would come again,” the Jinni said to the dreaming Fadwa. “Did you doubt me?”
In her dream, they stood together on the ridge near her family’s camp, where she had first seen his palace. It was nighttime, and still warm. The ground was soft beneath her feet. She was wearing only a thin shift, but she felt no self-consciousness.
“No,” she said. “Only—it’s been so long since I saw you last. Weeks and weeks.”
“A long time for you, perhaps,” he said. “My kind can go years without seeing each other and think little of it.”
“I thought perhaps you were displeased with me. Or . . .” She paused, and then burst out, “I’d convinced myself you were just a dream! I started to think I was going mad!”
He smiled. “I’m real enough, I assure you.”
“Yes, but how can I be certain?”
“You’ve already seen my palace once.” He pointed down into the valley. “If you were to ride in this direction, and were lucky in your aim, you’d find a clearing swept clean of brush and rocks. That is where my palace is.”
“Would I be able to see it again?”
“No—it’s invisible unless I choose otherwise.”
She sighed. “You must live in a very different way, if you think this is a reassurance.”
At that, he laughed. Surprising, that a human girl could make him laugh! But she was still frowning, clearly unhappy. Perhaps he’d waited too long, as she said. There was still so much to learn about these brief human lives, their constant sense of urgency.
He reached out, still not quite knowing how he did so. A blur of stars and desert—and then they were in his palace again, among the dark glass walls and embroidered cushions. This time, atop the cushions, a feast: platters of rice and lamb and yogurt, flatbreads and cheese, and pitchers of crystalline water.
Fadwa laughed, delighted.
“It’s for you,” he said, gesturing. “Please, eat.”
And so she ate, and chatted, telling him of small victories, a sick lamb nursed to health, the summer that was proving relatively mild. “There’s even still water at the spring,” she said. “My father says it’s unusual for so late in the season.”
“Your father,” the Jinni said. “Tell me more about him.”
“He’s a good man,” she said. “He takes care of us all. My uncles look up to him, and all of my tribe respect him. We’re among the smallest of the Hadid clans, but when we gather together, others will seek out his advice before bringing important matters before the sheikh. If his father had been the first son of my great-grandfather, and not the third, then my father might be the sheikh himself.”
“Would your life have been very different, then?” He was not quite following all this talk of tribes and clans and sheikhs, but the fondness in her voice and her eyes intrigued him.
She smiled. “If my father were sheikh, then I would not exist! He would have been promised to a different woman, from a more important clan than my mother’s.”
“Promised?”
“Betrothed. My father’s father and my mother’s father agreed on it, when my mother was born.” She saw his confusion, and giggled. “Do jinn not marry? Don’t you have parents?”
“Of course we have parents,” he said. “We must come from somewhere. But betrothal, marriage—no, these things are unknown to us. We are much more free with our affections.”
Her eyes widened as she took this in. “You mean . . . with anyone?”
He chuckled at her astonished face. “I prefer women, but yes, you have the sense of it.”
She colored. “And with . . . human women?”
“None as of yet.”
She glanced away. “A Bedouin girl who did such things would be shunned.”
“A harsh punishment for acting on natural impulses,” he said. This, he thought, was growing ever more intriguing—not the human ideas, which were ridiculous, rigid, and unnecessary, but the push and pull of their conversation, the way he could elicit blushes from her with only the barest mention of a plain fact.
“It’s our way,” she said. “How much harder would our lives be, if we must worry about love affairs and jealousies? It’s better this way, I think.”
“And you,” he said. “Are you also promised? Or will you choose your own mate?”
She hesitated; she was, he sensed, uneasy on this subject. And then—a sharp jolt, as though the ground beneath them had shuddered.
Fadwa clutched at her cushion. “What was that?”
It was the morning. He’d stayed too long. Someone was trying to wake her.
Another shudder. He reached across and took up her hand, pressed it briefly to his lips. “Until next time,” he said, and let her go.
Someone was calling her name. She opened her eyes—but hadn’t they already been open?—and there was her mother, leaning above her.
“Girl, what is wrong with you! Are you sick? I had to shake you and shake you!”
Fadwa shivered. For a moment, her mother’s face had turned sepulchral, the eyes like dark hollows.
A hot breeze billowed the inside of the tent. A sudden noise from outside: the goats braying in their pen. Her mother glanced around, and when she turned back Fadwa saw only her usual face, consternation written in its deep sun-carved lines.
“Now, girl, get up! The goats need milking, just listen to them!”
Fadwa sat up and rubbed her face, half-expecting to wake again in the glass palace, as though that had been reality and this now the dream. All morning, as she worked, she would close her eyes and imagine herself there again, feeling the trail of his lips on her hand, and the glow that had answered it low in her stomach.