Hazel-Boy flung away his vest and stepped out of his pants. Something had gone wrong with the merchant’s plan. They had to trust the princess or turn back. He preferred to die in the deep, a clean, honorable death, rather than have his throat cut and drown in his own blood.

Raven undressed Gold Dust, all the time whispering, “I’ve swum the river many times. Control your fear. Or you won’t be able to swim fast enough.”

Gold Dust watched this vision of silver and lilac and gold, her daughter, apply a greenish oil on her body, spreading it meticulously on her face, behind her ears, in the creases of her armpits, under her breasts. This woman who remained a stranger. Now that she was leaving, her fate unknown, she felt her daughter’s love in the caring pressure of her fingers as she rubbed the balm on her body. Gold Dust shut her eyes to treasure Raven’s touch, the warmth of her breath, the closeness. For too long she had longed for this union.

Raven’s lips touched her mother’s shoulder. “Madar, goodbye.”

Gold Dust’s gaze followed the swell of her daughter’s veil, the silver wave of her hair, the pat of her footfalls, as silent as a cat’s. She was gone. Her daughter. The queen.

45

Gold Dust plunged into the river. She swam as vigorously as her bones allowed. Ahead, Hazel-Boy’s body sliced through the water, a beacon for her to follow. Her arms and legs moved of their own accord, no longer at her command. Fear had been replaced by resigned expectation of sharp teeth tearing into her flesh.

She had failed her mother. A daughter, destined to occupy jewel-encrusted thrones, devoured by sharks, so humiliating, so final. If only her mother would have realized that for a short time when she had reclined on Soleiman’s torn mattress, she had truly felt like a queen. Was this not what her mother had aspired to? Love? What was left to propell her forward now? She had tried to please her mother. But the constant paradox of her instructions left her helpless. Rebekah herself could not have followed her own ideals: be ambitious but don’t become hard to the world; seek power but don’t let it cloud your humanity; join a man but refuse to be trapped in the prostitution of marriage; surrender to love but remain the master of your body.

Now there would be no body left, only memories, dreams, longings that had turned into her killers. Her lungs were about to burst. Did longings die with the body, or remain forever in the universe? Tombstones of memories. Her private legacy.

What would become of Soleiman? She was angry with him. She was dying and had never felt his touch. Such lofty beliefs: Absence is the aphrodisiac of the soul. Never rush your emotions. Didn’t he realize danger lay around every corner, and each breath might be the last? Just when she was done with coffee-colored faces and had found her lost love, he had deprived her of his touch. Did he find the meeting of flesh with flesh too binding and final?