The last thing Safiye saw was a stand of sumac coming up fast.
XVI
Safiye was not badly hurt. More than two breaths could not have been knocked from her before she found both breath and senses again. Broken sumac twigs were sticking into her at odd places, clinging to others, hampering movements, rendering any action uncomfortable, filling her nose with their sharp, bruised smell. But a few tentative maneuvers, though they sank her deeper in among the foliage, and the sumac deeper into her flesh, revealed nothing serious.
The first thing she saw when she was half upright again gave her a serious setback, however. Safiye found herself in something of a hollow and, almost level with her eyes, her mare’s legs thrust towards her like four gray ashwood lances. Even as she watched, the top rear leg quivered once, twice, and then lay still, deathly still.
Unable to grasp what could possibly have happened, Safiye lay back again, gasping for breath and consciousness.
“Allah! Allah! I’ve killed her!”
Murad, having left his own horse at the edge of sight, rushed to the mare. Then, moaning “Allah!” once more, he lifted up Safiye’s gold-brown wrapper that draped the horse’s shoulders—along with the broken nock end of one of his own arrows. The rest of the shaft was buried in the mare’s heart. Now Safiye’s senses truly did spin from her.
She awoke with an ache of black, tightened vision clogging the bridge of her nose. She was caught in her prince’s arms. He didn’t carry her far, only out of sight of the attendants who had rushed up to see to the fallen animal, away from the heavy sound of flies that had already found the place.
He carried her to a less treacherous embankment where he knelt and set her down. As if from far away, she heard him offer praises to his God for her survival. Closer were the protestations for the innocence of his mistake: He saw the deer. He thought to start the hunt early without the crutch of beaters. Such an easy shot. He lost the deer for a moment. He thought he saw it again. He realized, just the instant he released the arrow, that what he saw was his lover’s wrapper instead. And he couldn’t remember that she had shrugged it off.
And now he was closer, promising her a new horse, promising her twenty, promising her the earth and paradise as well if she’d forgive him. There’s always marriage, she thought, but before she found breath to make the suggestion aloud, an ache of hunger crawled through her limbs for the beauty of his speech. And it was hunger, not for a tray of pastries, but for a most basic and hearty pilaf.
And now he was very close indeed. Murad felt her for in-juries she’d already dismissed and her veils had vanished somewhere, tangled up in her exertions. Instead of faint and sumac, bruised masculinity now filled her nose.
When he’d convinced himself her worst injury was a scratch on her cheek, he kissed it better. He unbuttoned her jacket to check her ribs, her breasts—desperately seeking more, hidden ruptures in her love for him.
How Murad is changed since the first evening I saw him, Safiye mused, considering the change her handiwork and loving it for that reason. He was much handsomer now with flesh on his bones. His cheeks—no longer sallow—were glowing from the day’s exercise like oil-filled lamps of which his eyes were the flames.
Marriage, she thought to press again.
And then she saw him no more as a separate being, but as herself. For he was rooting kisses from her like weeds and the soil of her being crumpled in his hands.
Safiye gave a little yelp of surprise as the loss of self swept over her. She was surprised to find all her manifold ambitions focused so suddenly on the hard underridge of her pelvis—she always was. She, who made an effort to avoid being taken unawares.
Once ambushed, however, there was no time for retreat. She was indeed a prisoner, a slave. She groaned that her platform was never firm, or never firm enough. Never enough for the hard press up a hill that love drove her to—either frantically towards something or away. Whatever the desperate goal of that moment was, she didn’t know because she’d never reached it—or escaped its pull.
Oh, she knew orgasm all right, but whenever it came, it seemed a pallid return for the desperation driving her. Some unnameable game beyond tantalized. She never managed to demand quite enough before the softer heart beyond was pierced and the scalding urgency lost itself in a blur like a warm water bath.
Knobs of acorn and chestnut burred under her. She rammed her flesh onto them hard, desperate for the leverage silk on silk failed to give, with no time in the midst of her hunger to remove any garment completely.
Murad’s consummation was quick and bruising, even more so, perhaps, than being thrown from the horse. Safiye was hard-pressed to turn her cries of pure pain into those of a satisfied lover. She bore the fierce weight with patience, however, convinced this was still the path on which her own desires would be met—sooner or later.
A gap of hurtful, brilliant summer indigo hummed with insects over Murad’s turban, which was unraveled once more. Fringes of jagged oak leaf hemmed the blue, like some Venetian dandy’s sleeve.
Safiye felt the acorns and chestnut burrs again, more mortifying than before, though now in her mind they provoked images of deep winter afternoons by the fire, roasting nuts and wine. Imagining such surroundings instead of the present ones, she gently stroked Murad’s red hair, twisting it about her fingers.
Now is not the time for my wants. How to give my prince the words he needs to leave the violence of this place and go on?
She asked some crooning, innocent question, then let him talk.
It was not the first detail he mentioned, but Safiye knew at once
