Collaterals

The Slippers

Leila would not remember what the weather was like on the day of the funeral.

She would remember the slippers she wore, though. A comfortable leather pair, one that made it easy to walk atop the paved road, the very same road that had received her entry to Oriac. A very different crowd lined the sides of the road, now. A crowd that wore black and bore the faces of mourning. Yes, a very different crowd indeed. They did not throw flowers. They did not chant songs. But they wailed. Oh, how they wailed, pushing against the clasped hands of the guards securing the road, arms outstretched as four funeral coaches trudged by. 

And how grand the funeral coaches were, made of polished wood that had engraved upon it the drawings of family legacy, entwined with words from holy scripture, coated with gold and imbued with stones and gems. Yes, the funeral coaches were grand: fit for royalty. Even if the royalty were cold dead, even if they were still in their tattered clothes, still with dried blood crusted on their powdered faces. They were untouched, wrapped with a simple white cloth atop their bloodied finery: martyrs, they'd been proclaimed as martyrs. And so it was as martyrs they'd be buried, and as martyrs they would appear on the day of judgement. 

Mother with her throat slit. Ali with a gape in his chest. Zarqa...Leila did not know how Zarqa would appear on the day of judgement. There had been little of her to bury: the remnants of bone and ash. Scraps of fabric that'd been found a little further from where she'd burned. Leila had wondered how the Almighty would speak to her. Would the Almighty make flesh out of ash? Would she be reformed on the Day of Judgement? 

As for father...Only father had been disrobed upon his death. Only father had been washed and perfumed.  Haitham had done it himself; or so the people said. Haitham, who walked three meters ahead of Leila, at the head of the procession, just behind the funeral coaches. His arm was still in a sling, dark circles still sunk well below his eyes, but his back: his back was straight today. The people called his name out, too. Or perhaps they called Leila's name out. She could not be sure, not amidst their screams, not amidst the steps, so many steps, forward: how many more steps forward?

Leila would not remember the mourning of her people. How could she have, when all she'd managed to look at were her feet. Or rather, glimpses of them as they peaked from below her black skirts with every step forward. Forward. Forward.  Where were they headed? Leila had not buried the dead before. Not here, not in Aradia, and certainly not her own dead. Forward. She'd walk forward, forward, how many more steps forward—?

"Princess."

A hand on her back. Khaled's. Leila couldn't be sure it was him, not when that would require her to look up. But she wasn't moving forward, not anymore, and the hand had slipped off her back.

Her breath was fast but regular: in and out with the rise and fall of her chest. She could hear her breath, now, which meant they were no longer wailing. Why had they stopped wailing? Leila was wailing. She was holding Ali in her arms, his blood hot against her chest and she was wailing, she was wailing but they could not hear her—

"Your Royal Highness, the tomb has been opened."

A tomb, yes. They'd be buried underground, a large tomb built atop them, protecting them.

"Your Royal Highness—."

She wouldn't remember what the weather was like, but her feet her sunk just a little into the ground with each step forward and when she'd gone home she'd find that brown rich soil had gathered on the soles and sides of her slippers which meant the ground had been fertile and soft and how good that was for the burial of an entire family, an entire family that she'd not known and that had not known her, and how good that was for Ali, dear Ali who already had a gap in his chest and would have been suffocated, just suffocated if the ground had been hard and unyielding and unwilling and ready, just oh so ready to push onto his gaping, open chest—

"Your Highness!"

Leila looked up.