Wildwood Dancing

Father smiled. “There’s always a black market for these items, purchasers who are not scrupulous about the goods’

provenance. Almost anything can be disposed of covertly, though the profit may not be quite as high. This Portuguese is astute. He knows what he’s after and chooses his targets accordingly. Some of it’s quite legitimate buying and selling.

When it isn’t, he’s expert at avoiding being caught. Nobody’s ever been able to pin anything on him.”

“He must be doing well,” I commented, recalling the size of the vessel that had almost rammed us.

“Indeed. A man doesn’t maintain a ship like that without resources and good planning. Of course, there are actual pirate operations hereabouts, but they’re mostly small, spur-of-the-moment ventures.”

I glanced at him. “If you’re trying to reassure me, Father,”

I said, clutching the table as the Stea de Mare rolled again,

“you’re not succeeding. What would have happened if they’d boarded us?” At the time, it had not occurred to me that the poles and hooks with which the crew of the Esperanca had reached out to fend us off might just as well have been for the purpose of grappling us fast to her side, the better to leap aboard and—and what? Set about slaughtering crew and passengers alike? Sink the ship with all of us still on it? Or go through our cargo with the appreciation of merchants, help themselves to the best bits, say thank you, and sail away into the sunset? “And don’t tell me not to worry,” I added severely.

Father sighed. “There’s always a possibility of violence,”

he said. “The fact that you are a girl puts you at particular risk. It makes me question why I agreed to bring you.”

“Because I’m useful, Father. And because I’ve been asking for years and years. With Gabriel not here, you’ll need me in Istanbul. Father, do you think Duarte Aguiar is after the same thing we are?”

“There’s little doubt that at some point in our negotia-tions we will find ourselves face to face with this pirate. We’ll need to be watchful. It would be exceptionally ill luck for us to be waylaid with the artifact in our possession —that’s supposing we do succeed in acquiring it. I expect Aguiar can be bought off, if necessary, with a payment in gold or jewels, or maybe a fine Damascene blade or two. Such a man cares principally for profit.”

In official documents, the great city was still called by its old name, Constantinople. Poets described it as a city of por-phyry and marble, a jewel among jewels, its mosques and palaces rising above the water as if reaching toward the heavens. It was a place rich in history, a seat of imperial power, the conjunction of great trade ways and a melting pot of cultures.

To a girl who had never traveled beyond the borders of Transylvania, the sea path toward that pale forest of minarets and towers, with the sun breaking through heavy clouds above us and the water surging past the Stea de Mare’s sides, was nothing short of magical. There had once been a great deal of magic in my life, but not recently. I had given up the hope of ever returning to the Other Kingdom, the enchanted realm I and my sisters had been privileged to visit at each full moon all through the years of our growing up. The way in had been closed to us six years ago, when we lost Tati. Today, sailing along the Bosphorus as my father pointed out the fortress of Rumeli Hisari, the landing from which the Spice Market might be accessed, and the high walls and green gar-dens of a grand private residence, I felt brimful with excitement, as if I were on the verge of a great discovery. Maybe the magic was back. At the very least, an adventure lay ahead.

We had come here to buy Cybele’s Gift, the fabled treasure of a lost faith. Somewhere amongst those steep ways clustered with shops and houses, mosques and basilicas, it was waiting for us. If we succeeded in our bid, my work as Father’s assistant would earn me a small share of the profit. I had plans for my earnings. They would enable me to take the first steps toward establishing my book business.

Neither Father nor I knew what the artifact looked like, although I had done some rapid research into the subject before we left home. I had found no physical description of the piece in the writings of scholars, but word of mouth suggested it was extremely old and of great beauty. I envisaged a marble tablet incised with rows of neat writing. It was said to contain a message of wisdom from an ancient goddess, her last words before she withdrew from the mortal world.

Every merchant worth his salt had heard of this artifact, and when they spoke of it, they did so in hushed voices.

Sometimes there is an item everyone wants, an object with some special quality that places it almost beyond valuation.

Cybele’s Gift was one of those pieces.

My reading had told me Cybele was an Anatolian earth goddess associated with caves and mountaintops and bees.

She was a wild kind of deity, her rituals involving all-night drumming and ecstatic dancing. I had not passed on to Father the most shocking detail I had uncovered, which was that her male followers mutilated themselves to become more like women, then dressed in female clothing. The cult of Cybele had long since died out, but the legend of Cybele’s Gift survived. If the artifact fell into deserving hands, the owner and his descendants would be blessed with riches and good fortune all the days of their lives. As is the manner of such promises, the thing worked both ways. In the wrong hands, the artifact would bring death and chaos. This had not been put to the test in living memory, for nobody had known the whereabouts of Cybele’s Gift for many years.

Until now.

If I had been a collector, I would have steered well clear of such an acquisition, for my experience with the folk of the Other Kingdom had taught me the danger of such charms.

However, when Father received word that an Armenian dealer would be offering Cybele’s Gift for sale when a certain caravan came into Istanbul, he quickly secured a potential buyer, a scholarly collector who helped finance our journey.

And so we had come to Istanbul, the city glowing in the sunset above its scarf of water, to purchase this prize of prizes and bear it safely home.

The Stea de Mare made its way across the wide channel of the Bosphorus and into the narrower waterway, the Golden Horn, that opened from it, dividing the city. A rich aroma wafted in the air, made up of spices and sandalwood, hides and salt, and a hundred other cargoes—the smell of a great trading