The Wings of Ashtaroth

Chapter 15: Dreamers: Section I: Uta

Uta: A Memory: A Dream

Uta was a child. A slave child, and therefore, perhaps, not a person capable of childhood in the eyes of anyone but her fellow slaves. Yet still, a child.

She marvelled at the softness of her hands, turning them over and rubbing them together as though her skin were made of finest linen instead of flesh. Hardness had not yet knotted her hands, scars hadn't dappled the smooth, pale brown of her palms.

And legs—legs were still for running.

She dashed inside the palace riad from beneath the shadow of an open door, feet so fleet it seemed they should sprout wings and carry her up inside the bosom of the sky to soar above the sea.

Other children chattered from beyond the lush palms whose fronds transformed the walled garden into a jungle, and water trickled from a spout in time with their laughter.

Instead of liquid, the pool at the riad's centre was full of music. Uta knelt beside it, torn out of reverie by the sound, and dipped her hands beneath the surface. She felt the vibrations of the music ripple outward from her fingers, the whistle of a ney whispering from of her grip.

It was real. This was real. She'd only imagined being blinded, growing old, her parents' deaths, the collapse of the Hamatri, Zioban and her divided loyalties, her marriage to Samelqo—Samelqo of all people.

Beyond the palms, feet scuffled.

Uta bolted upright, letting the music fall from her fingers and back into the pool. The notes clanged like a chime battering a stone floor.

"We can play fiends and Feislanda. Come on, it's fun." It was a boy's voice, a familiar voice.

"I don't want to play with you anymore," answered Princess Meghigda et-Eshant, the young girl they called Meg.

A long silence followed and Uta crept toward the voices. She stopped beside a potted olive sapling and clutched its wiry trunk, watching the royal children from the arrow-shaped spaces between leaves.

Qanmi eq-Sabaal was standing not two cubits from Princess Meg. He was thin and short compared with Meg, younger by several years if Uta remembered correctly.

He bent his head in shame, chewing his words. "It was an accident."

Meg took a step back. The leaves of a cistus bush scratched against her dirty stola. She was staring right at Qanmi, not afraid exactly. It was more like the step was meant as a final dismissal. "You killed me."

The children of the Semassenqa were always playing at being northern savages at war with each other, crafting horns made of sticks and draping themselves in whatever furs they could find. As King Isir's daughter, Meg probably wasn't used to someone not letting her win.

The leaves and branches of the olive tree obscured Uta's view too much for her to get a perfect look at Qanmi's expression, but there was no mistaking the anger in his walk as he closed the gap between himself and Meg. He stopped short of grabbing the ball of Meg's shoulder, fingers cupped and poised to touch, hand hovering with the tremble of a dragonfly's wings.

"Not really though. Your father fixed it anyway." Qanmi's words tumbled out in an angry plea.

Meg curled her hands into fists, but she didn't move. She was always so frighteningly unexpressive. "My father didn't fix anything. He only breaks things—you'd know that if you were as smart as you pretend."

Qanmi lowered his hand, but his sneer held a violence that Uta had seen too often on the faces of Semassenqa.

Wasn't Meg afraid?