“Something’s missing, Adilah,” said Mrs. Tan, looking over the patterned tapestry, eyes hidden behind folds of sun-scorched skin.
Adilah already knew. She examined her works around the stall, bright and technical pieces, woven images of picturesque coasts, joyous gatherings around ambrosia filled tables, and tender moments of lovers. None held the same spark as they used too. Her hands could only go so far without Driss’s visions. Neither alone meant as much. The collective barter and banter of the bazaar washed together to form the tonal background of Adilah’s life.
A somber weight fell over her heart as she took the blanket back and watched Mrs. Tan continue through the market. Farid rocked in his bundle as he awoke into tears of hunger. She took her baby into her arms and bounced him, yet the cries continued.
Daggers of honey-colored dusk light shone over the tiled-brick homes. She sighed, kissed Farid’s head, and said, “Let’s get you some dinner.”
Through the dusty streets of Essauan, her cart full and heavy behind her, Farid tied to her chest, Adilah watched the crowds out front of restaurants, strange and beautiful faces stopping for a day or two before venturing on through the oceans wide. Clashing cups and spilling wine, scraps of food which fell to the dogs, and clouds of smoke from crystal water pipes. She remembered when she and Driss looked at her like those amorous sailors and the jeweled dancers atop their laps.
She fought against the tides of bitterness, lowered her head, and made her way down the last turns towards the small, green-tiled dome near the cliff. The salty aroma of the sea hung stagnant within the house, the interior dim and walls adorned with stunning tapestries from past collaborations. Prophetic moments Driss had seen in the face of the ocean, a family knelt in prayer before a dying matriarch, children chasing fairies along the coast, a mother pulling her son from the jaws of a legless river dragon, and a heart-broken woman wandering alone down a dark road; all moments, Driss said, yet to come.
Adilah left the cart near the door, started to the kitchen, and sliced the last of the dates. Ignoring the groaning of her own stomach, she fed Farid the small slices, and his drooly smile became her own. His eyes fluttered, tired from a day in the sun. She set one more plate, laid him within the crib, and started out back. A cross-legged shadow on the cliff’s edge, Driss sat looking out upon the shimmering teal waters to the west. Around him lay brambles of withered rose bushes, the sweet perfume, which once fueled his visions. Adilah started across the grass towards her husband, carefully maneuvering over the spiky vines, which lay strewn over the path. She had no misconceptions. If he hadn’t spoken to her in the last ten months, why would he now?
At his side, she laid the clay plate and admired his strong—though now gaunt— jawline still visible beneath the lustrous beard. His hair lay slick down to his shoulders, earth-colored eyes glittering in pain. She traced his gaze out to the sea and beyond the thorn-shaped islands, which jutted from the surf. A lady was supposed to be modest, not fall prey to callous hands on soft skin and tender words whispered into the ear. She bit her lips in sorrow and said, “I miss you.”
His eyelashes fluttered, the somber sheen reflecting the near dusk light.
“What did you see?” she asked, easing herself to her knees.
A childhood filled with adventures, six years of marriage, the creation of a child, and now he couldn’t look at her. The waves against the cliff were as usual her answer. Adilah looked back and saw he hadn’t stirred. The pain in her heart quavered into her hands, another night alone. All that was left was the beauteous tune off the coast.
*
A lightness of being, a star over her dun heart, the Watagrim’s tune carried from the porous rock island within the cove. Just like those off the cliff, it jutted like an angled thorn from the water. The creature’s iridescent skin shone softly, his build like the boulder heavers in the quarry. If one didn’t know better, they might have thought the amphibious being was a particularly glossy human , a divine singer tasked with singing to the waves. Adilah sat upon the sands, running her fingers through the soft grains, lulled by the words and notes.
In days beyond and past alike,
Tales written for hearts like yours,
The moon afar cries for your love,
The sun blinding glows not as bright,
Words are drab stones, they do not show,
A hint of the glory that’s you,
Take my days, my mind, my treasure,
Just give me a moment, a look.
Adilah tried not to be jealous, tried not to imagine herself as the red-haired woman who laid at his side, staring into his violet eyes, feeling the touch of his hand on her cheek. The breath caught in her throat as the creature looked across the waters and met her gaze. But he spared not a second thought before turning his attention back to his muse, running his hands downward, and pulling her atop himself.
A lady shouldn’t watch, she told herself. A wife shouldn’t think this.
*
“Two for eight táns,” Adilah called to the market goers, each making a conscious effort to look the other way as they passed.
It was hard not to remember the days when the stall had been surrounded by sailors and townspeople alike, pulled by the supernatural magnetism to her pieces. Something in the air told her Farid was going to start crying. Preemptively, she took him into her arms and sang the tune from the night before. Conflicting songs from koras, marimbas, and bongos rang over the space. Clouds of fruity tobacco and smoked meat. Her stomach tightened into a fist and turned her mind to how much rice she could afford and how she could ration. One blanket and she could buy enough to last the week.
A flash of red caught her eyes through the aisle beyond center stalls. Flowing shoulder-length cherry hair. Adilah’s heart sped as the woman’s cries rang from her memory. She watched the woman browse through the aisles with her wicker basket, a sober look about her that was almost Adilah’s reflection. She noticed her hands were wringing. It was none of her business to ask, none of her business to have even seen what happened. But a desert of time had left her desperate. Perhaps it was a sign. She swallowed her apprehensions, closed the flap of her stall, and with Farid to her chest, hurried after the woman.
“Excuse me!” she called out. Her voice washed into the crowd as she bumped and stumbled below eye-level. “Wait!”
A piercing green stare fell upon her.
“I’m sorry,” Adilah said, catching her breath.
The woman stood taller, eyes narrowed behind her veil and darting about, rightfully wondering if this was a thieves’ trick. She pulled her robe tighter and asked, “What do you want?”
“I…” How could she put it? Forwardness might have been unbecoming, but so was unclarity. “I’m sorry if this is intrusive… I spend a lot of time at Aralian cove. I enjoy watching the sun set there. Listening to the Watagrim’s song.” Her jaw tightened with purpose. “I was there last night.”
The woman’s nostrils flared in masked panic, and she scanned the near faces in furtive discomfort.
“I apologize,” Adilah said, bowing her head. “I don’t mean to alarm you or cause any shame…” Her voice quivered. “But I have to know what was it like?”
In clutching her basket tighter, Adilah noticed a tattooed wedding band. She reached out, grasped the woman’s hand, and showed her own. A somber understanding arose in seeing it.
“Why?” the woman asked.
“I don’t know,” Adilah said. She wasn’t really considering it herself, but the knowledge of how it felt to be loved by something so magical, to know the touch behind the notes. “I’ve listened for a long time—” her voice quavered out.
The woman’s gaze narrowed. “Is your husband still alive?”
“Yes, but he hasn’t spoken to me since I gave birth.”
She looked Adilah up and down, likely wondering if it was a matter of lost attraction. Though she couldn’t say she was exactly the same as before the pregnancy, she was as close as possible for being a year and a child older.
Adilah went on, “Something bigger than myself is troubling him.”
The woman’s head fell in solemn consideration before stumbling, knocked by a drunk. When the man didn’t apologize or even look back, Adilah stepped forward to shout, but the woman shook her head. She understood. A scene, even the consideration of one, was shameful and undeserved.
The uncertainty in the woman’s eyes cleared, and in a dispassionate voice she said, “It was wonderful. Beyond words. And gone.”
“Is there a chance that he loves you?” Adilah asked, in a whisper.
“His love is for the sea and songs. His words and deeds point to the highest beauties, but don’t reach them. His muse is the idea, not the truth.”
But the sounds she’d heard, the unabashed pleasure the woman’s cries testified to, that was no lie.
The woman looked at Farid, who was sucking on his fingers. “Eventually, we all need to feel wanted. But if there is a chance to save what you have, take it. You might find a moment of reprieve in his arms and notes, but the sun will rise the next day, and he will have a new song and new ears to sing it to. If you have a voice now, which will wake at your side and sing to only you, even if it’s gone silent for now, it’s worth everything.”
Driss had illuminated many dark caverns, comforted her with tender lips on cold nights, stood with an unbudging shoulder when she’d buried her mother, and held her with steady arms when her father had forgotten her face. To have those things back, she’d give her life, but it felt she already had. If she could only have just one evening to remind her that she was alive, worth a moment, a look.
The woman wrapped her arms around Adilah and, though fleeting and brief, provided a slight note of what she’d missed.
“I’m sorry,” Adilah said. She wondered if she should ask her name, but figured it best for both to live their own secrets.
They shared a silent moment, the sounds of the bazaar and its people all turning white.
“I loved my husband,” the woman said. “But the sea gives and takes. Don’t make room for regret.”
With that, she disappeared into the throngs.
Adilah stood watching the faces blankly, distant as the moon, heart aflame with hope and the inspiration to try one last time.
*
As always, Driss, the once blinding sun of her life, sat cross-legged near the cliff’s edge. Adilah felt the nerves twisting in her stomach, an adolescent-like fluttering of romantic anticipation. She dropped her blue abaya and felt the roll of the sea’s breeze over her skin. It had been a long time since she’d stood bare in the yard. The sun did its best to warm her. With a shaking hand over her heart, she strode down the path towards and over the tired vines.
“Please, Driss,” she said, drawing to his side. “Look at me.”
A bright glitter welled within his eyes, yet they remained on the horizon. Adilah stepped before him and knelt to block his view. His pupils quivered and jaw held tight. It was the first time she’d seen his eyes directly in months. They were so afraid, so sad. She wished she could kiss the dreams that lay beyond and carry the burden.
“Do you still love me?” she asked.
He closed his eyes, and a sudden chill crossed her skin.
“What’s broken your heart?” she asked.
A tear fell from behind his trembling lids, and a matching one fell down her cheek. Gravity became overwhelming, pressing her deep into the earth, the unconquerable weight of a thousand flaws she couldn’t fix, a force that explained without words she’d never be good enough, her body, her tapestries, her love.
All grew quiet, the wind and waves.
Adilah stood, and as she passed, saw him open his eyes to watch the teal scene which had plagued him for nearly a year. Not one blanket sold, not a grain of rice to fill her up, not a look. The refusal burned worse than all the rest. Perhaps for the hope she’d laid upon it. Perhaps love fades like memories until there is only a recollection.
But she remembered the music.
*
Drift through your days without notice,
Until at last you must cry out,
Adilah heard the words between her strokes, the warm water over her face and body as she glided through the cove.
The day comes where you must be held,
The hole in the earth which you fall,
The surf crashed against the small isle, yet his words cut through the noise. With the final strokes, Adilah laid her foot on the jagged rock and pulled herself up the thorn, the melody strengthening her malnourished arms until at last, she found herself bathed in the Watagrim’s violet attention. In the falling dusk rays, he shone opalescent, his braids ornate and tight.
In which fate catches you and says,
You need not even breathe to be.
Adilah lowered herself to his side and let herself fall into his gaze, deep as the hole in the earth, happy to be spat out. So long as she was. The guilt remained, watching like eyes upon the shore, but its voice had gone mute, and her heart desperate.
*
No candle to light her way, Adilah walked the streets blind, eyes closed, drawn by the scent of the sea and dust. As she reached the green-tiled dome, she noticed a flickering light under the door’s gap. Her brow furrowed as she entered to find her home illuminated by candles, the tapestries all gone, the ground table set with two bowls of jasmine rice, and Driss sitting cross-legged with Farid in his arms.
The shock left her speechless, the guilt breathless, and the uncertainty cornered.
“You’re here,” she said.
Driss met her gaze, solemn yet devoid of tears. Adilah’s lips tightened as she removed her sandals, and she sat at the table.
“Where did you get the food?” she asked, stomach calling out to the floral aroma.
“I sold them,” he said, gesturing to where his prized tapestries had been. “Those moments have passed. It’s time to make more.”
Her hands gripped tightly to her knees to still their shaking.
“It’s okay, Rabbit,” he said, in the deep baritone she’d nearly forgotten. “I forgive you.”
Adilah’s tongue pressed hard against the back of her teeth. “What do you mean you forgive me?”
“You did what you felt you had to,” he said.
The fact that he knew was piercing, but the fact that he wanted to forgive when he’d pushed her to that island… “You’re a bastard.”
His eyes narrowed in offense, though the slight quickly faded.
“I’ve been waiting for you for almost a year, starving myself so you and Farid could eat, embarrassing myself at the market.” Her voice jumped in volume, “I’ve been dying for you, and you have the audacity to forgive me? All I wanted was for you to see me.”
Tumultuous waves crashed beyond the windows.
“Is that’s why you’ve been staring out all this time?” she asked. “Because you saw this?”
“…I can’t control the future.”
Pain shot through Adilah’s grinding teeth. “All it would have taken was a moment. All I wanted, needed was you. To feel you, to work with you, to make something from nothing.” The cramp in the back of her throat twisted her mute. “The sea was ours, but you let it take you. You let it take me.” She covered her face, unwilling to let him see her cry.
“I’m sorry,” he said, bouncing Farid to soothe his small whines. “You deserve more.”
“No. And I don’t want more. Just what we had.”
Driss ran his thumb softly down Farid’s cheek. “He did have a beautiful voice.”
“I’d rather have never heard it.”
“It was the only way?”
The table’s distance seemed infinite. “What if it wasn’t?” Adilah’s gaze turned to her loom in the corner. “You said it’s time to make more.” Angry as she was, hurt by what he’d caused, that didn’t change her heart. “Are there any together?”
He kissed Farid’s forehead, laid him in the short crib beside the table, and took a seat at Adilah’s side. His hands were dry against hers, his lips cracked. Though the muscles of his shoulder had atrophied, there remained a place for her head.
The vibrations of his voice carried through her body. “Beyond our last breath, past the days when the islands fall to the sea, and long after the sun’s eyes shut, there will never be a moment we’re apart.”
She squeezed him with all she had.
“I saw something today,” he said. “I’d like to make it together.”
“What?”
“A valley of grass.”
“Is that it?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
At the growling of her stomach, he handed her the bowl and said, “It holds everything. Lost stars and souls, moments forever held in time, shared on a spring day and winter nights, the bones and hopes of ancestors past, and the seeds of what will come. Each blade, each beetle, each leaf, proof that nothing will ever be missed again.”
replaced to avoid repetition
Mark Manifesto is a writer, teacher, father, and lover of stories. He’s been writing fiction, essays, articles, and poetry the past seven years. He studied Environmental Science, Business Administration, Religious Studies, and Classic Literature at Saint Mary’s College of California. He currently lives in the Bay Area, and should you want, you can find his work published across multiple journals.
