Vessel

Vessel A novel by Sarah Beth Durst

For my daughter and my son,

my Liyana and her Jidali

Acknowledgments

Every book is a journey, and many wonderful people trekked across the sand with Liyana and me. I’d like to thank my spectacular agent, Andrea Somberg, and my magnificent editor, Karen Wojtyla, as well as Justin Chanda, Paul Crichton, Emily Fabre, Siena Koncsol, Lucille Rettino, Anne Zafian, and all the other amazing people at Simon & Schuster for believing in this journey. Many thanks and much love to my family, whose support makes every quest possible. Huge thanks to my mother, who showed me the way by teaching me to love books and to dream of dragons; to my daughter, who named nearly every character that Liyana and I met; and to my husband, who shares every step of every journey with me.

Chapter One

On the day she was to die, Liyana walked out of her family’s tent to see the dawn. She buried her toes in the sand, cold from the night, and she wrapped her father’s goatskin cloak tight around her shoulders. She had only moments before everyone would wake.

She fixed her eyes on the east, where the sky was bleached yellow in anticipation. Shadows marked each ridge, rock, and sand dune. Overhead, a few stubborn stars continued to cling to the sky, and a raven, black as a splinter of night, flew into the wind before angling toward the dark peaks of the distant mountains. Liyana felt the wind caress her cheeks and stir her hair. She’d left it loose last night, and she’d counted the strands when she couldn’t sleep. The wind stirred the sand at her feet, and it whistled over the dunes and rocks. She listened to it so intensely that every muscle in her body felt taut.

She had wanted to be calm today.

She’d heard a tale once about a man who had caught the first drop of sun. He’d kept it inside his lantern, and he never felt fear again. In his seventieth year, he was struck by a cobra, and he embraced the snake and called him brother—and then he died. Liyana thought he should have sliced the snake’s head off so at least the cobra wouldn’t bite the man’s family, too, but then again Mother always said Liyana had a decidedly practical streak in her.

On the horizon, the first drop of sun looked like liquid gold.Liyana stretched out her hands and imagined she were cupping it in her palms. As the light spread, it ran up her arms across her tattoos. She refused to look at the markings, and instead she marveled at the beauty of the sand dunes. In the dawn light, they blazed red.

Behind her, the tent flap was tossed open. Aunt Sabisa burst out of the tent, her chest heaving as if she’d run miles instead of the five steps from the sleeping rolls. “You! You want to kill me!”

A goat bleated at her.

“I wake, and you’re not there. In, in, in!” Aunt Sabisa fluttered around Liyana, shooing her toward the tent.

Liyana murmured the traditional apology to an elder whom one has deeply wronged, and then she commented, “You have a lizard in your hair.”

Aunt Sabisa’s hands flew to her head.

Liyana grinned as her aunt shrieked, danced, and flung the tiny lizard onto the ground. She stomped, still shrieking, as the terrified lizard burrowed into the sand and escaped. By the time Aunt Sabisa quit, at least a half dozen people had emerged to watch the spectacle, and another dozen had poked their heads out their tent flaps.

One of them was Jidali, Liyana’s four-year-old brother, who was stuffing a corner of the tent flap into his mouth in an effort not to laugh. His shoulders shook, and his eyes watered. Liyana winked at him, then pointed to a bare patch of sand and said in an innocent voice, “Over there, Aunt Sabisa.”

Aunt Sabisa pounded the sand, stomping so fast that she looked like a rabid jackrabbit. Jidali broke into peals of laughter that shook his whole body. Aunt Sabisa looked at the little boy who now writhed laughing half in and half out of the tent. She twitched her lips, and then her face broke into a smile. Laughter erupted from the nearby tents, and soon the desert rang with a mix of bell-like laughs and deep-bellied laughs. Liyana laughed with them.

Now that was a far better start to her last day.

Liyana let her aunt shepherd her inside. She squeezed Jidali’s hand as she passed, and his face seized up. She knew he’d remembered what day it was. She wanted to stop and embrace him, but as soon as she crossed the threshold, all her female relatives swarmed her, and she was swept to the back of the tent. She let the chatter wash over her—consternation over the state of her hair, the condition of her skin, the length of her fingernails—as they pushed her behind a blanket that had been strung up for privacy. Still clucking at her, the women removed Liyana’s nightshirt and positioned her, naked, in the center of a shallow, silver basin. Sponges were passed around and then dipped into a clay bowl of milk and honey. Liyana shuddered when the first sponge touched her skin.

“You’ll warm again fast,” one of her cousins told her.

But it wasn’t the cold that caused her skin to prickle. Only newborns and those near death were bathed in milk and honey. She smelled the sweet honey and the oversweet goat milk mixing together in a cloying scent that invaded her nostrils and filled her throat. She closed her eyes and waited for the bath to end.

Dabs of water washed the milky residue off her skin, and she was wrapped in cloth and dried as if she were a child. As they rubbed her so dry that her cinnamon-colored skin developed a pink tinge, her aunts and cousins chattered over her, touching on every topic but today’s ceremony.

When they finished, Liyana’s mother lifted her chin so that Liyana’s eyes would meet hers. “You will wear your dancing dress all day today. Do try not to dirty it.” She held Liyana’s gaze a moment longer than was warranted.

Liyana understood the message: Don’t disgrace us.

“I must attend to the goats.” Mother strode out, knocking aside the privacy blanket. Aunt Sabisa readjusted the blanket, and in the minute that followed Mother’s departure, no one spoke.

Liyana broke the silence. “And I thought the dress was for Jidali.” She knew it was a pathetic joke, but it was the best she could manage today. As if they knew that too, her aunts and cousins broke into gales of laughter. As they laughed, Liyana wondered if she would be spending today comforting her family, instead of the other way around.

She was presented first with the finest undergarments that she had ever seen. She fingered the fabric. It was as light and white as a cloud. “My work,” her aunt Andra claimed. Everyone cooed over the intricate weave. Liyana lifted her arms, and the slip was pulled over her head. It floated down around her body. She felt as if she were wearing a piece of the sky.

Next, the ceremonial dress. Aunt Sabisa brought it from the chest where it had lain, sealed against the desert dust. Everyone gasped as she displayed it, though everyone had seen it many times. Over the last year, every woman in the tribe had added seventy stitches of gold thread, and every man had tied seven knots, completing the pattern that matched Liyana’s tattoos. Liyana forced her face to curve into a smile and she put as much enthusiasm into her voice as she could muster. “It is more beautiful than the sunrise.”

Everyone murmured in agreement at this, and Liyana fought the urge to grab the dress, run outside, and thrust it into the clan fire. She felt her face grow hot, even though no one could hear her thoughts. Truly, the dress was beautiful. The bodice was a masterwork of embroidery, and the skirt was composed of twenty panels, twice the usual number, each dyed a brilliant, jewel-like color. It would swirl around her when she danced. The sleeves