Ardeth's teeth were as white as the sea in which her black-jewel-cutout-cornea swam as it looked at him with what he would dare to dream could be adoration. He was smiling so big he thought he might shame the moon's own grin as Rick and Evie continued to dance in the night around the roar of the bonfire in swirls of dark charcoal smudges across the star-sewn sky. Boann was playing her drum with her hand now, in a more Middle Eastern style, while Adil had filled a long empty gourd with sand and rocks to create a second source of rhythm. Drostan was humming and hollering out the melody as the other two Medjai tapped their feet with enjoyment.
It was nighttime at the oasis they had stopped at. They had decided to stay there the afternoon and night, take a longer break, enjoy themselves. Rick was most adamantly supportive of this. In truth, he felt that he was so rarely in a time in which he could enjoy his wife's full company, and this was the chance, he thought. Evidently, Evie did as well.
But it was Boann who seemed the most relaxed. She had let her veil down after the O'Connell's caught her earlier that day without it; a sign of trust almost as touching as the fact that she had eaten their food, and was partaking in their music now. Ardeth was completely unable to discern why the woman had lived int his country for so long, served as a domestic to their bourgeoisie, and, apparently, had learned the patterns of their music and their lands, yet seemed to be uncomfortably unaccepting of them.
But she seemed to accept them now. Perhaps it was the liquor, though. Drostan had brought out yet another bottle of liquor (they have more alcohol than water in this trip, Ardeth thought), and the O'Connell's and Drostan had swam their share each in it. Boann was happy to partake of her own bottle, which Ardeth was not surprised to find out was much stronger than the other.
Yet instead of drunk, Boann seemed normal, almost. Normal in the sense that she did not seem to constantly, almost vapidly upset. As if their was an empty sadness within her; a sadness that was felt to deeply it had been sucked of all it's substance and was simply left as a involuntary constant, like blinking.
Drostan was dancing now, and the rest were looking with gleeful anticipation on their faces as he coaxed Boann to stand. She protested colorfully, of course, but she was gone enough to stand up and shuffle her feet a bit. Her movements were rigid, but powerful. Ardeth enjoyed them. They were attractive movements; attracting movements. The very sexuality of dance shining through he hard exterior of the very pious steps of the Irish. Drostan spun her around and around to the shake of Adil's instrument until she fell, finally letting her drunkenness fall through.
She fell soft on the ground, her thickly maned head falling near Adil's folded feet. He laughed with a sparkle in his eyes. Ardeth had noticed that Adil had taken something of a liking to Boann. He was the only other Medjai, besides Ardeth, who had spoken to her conversationally.
Adil had lost his daughter at the age of eight, some year ago. Ardeth could only think that his fascination with Boann was some sort of disembodied affection for any young women. Boann was several years older than his daughter would be now, were she alive, and certainly didn't share a feature to speak of, but the older man's eyes seemed to soften in a paternal way when around her.
After Boann fell the rhythms stopped with a roar of clapping and laughter. Ardeth noticed small crows feet drying out the corners of her eyes as she laughed. She was missing a few teeth in the back of her mouth, and the rest were yellowed and some slightly crooked.
But Ardeth thought he had never seen another woman look so beautiful. She had changed her shirt into the less form-fitting but much cleaner black tunic she now wore. It was painfully obvious that it was borrowed from her cousin, as it hung in near drapes from her torso. She had tucked the slightly torn shirt into her pants in a futile attempt to hide this fact, but it only bulged endearingly beneath the waistband.
As she sat up, it did not pass him that she made sure to scoot herself to sit closest to him. She was adjusting her makeshift patch now, ensuring that as much as could be covered was covered. It was amazing how little he noticed the asymmetry of her face now. He wondered if she noticed it on herself at all. She had a truly thin face, her cheekbones protruding from her face, pushing her flesh to white summits and creating razor-tape shadows in the hollows. Her hair hung down in miraculous ebon curls. She smelled of cigarette smoke, sweat, leather and liquor. Ardeth shifted himself to meet her approach. They sat very close as Evie spoke.
"God, I haven't danced so much in years." Rick clung her soft body close to his own as they sat across from Ardeth and Boann, Drostan sitting very much near them.
"Aye, I 'aven't danced at all much since we left Dublin," replied Drostan, taking another swig of the liquor. He was on his way to being utterly, unbelievably smashed.
Boann's flushed face betrayed her exhaustion, and she took no words from her inhibitions when she leaned her forehead onto Ardeth's shoulder in a futile attempt to balance herself. Her breath crawled down his arms pleasantly, causing hot shivers along his strong arms and back. Years of training in two practices of complete control and a drunken woman's breath can shatter it all.
Adil noticed this closeness, Ardeth saw. But his face seemed to grow even more mirthful at the almost awkward contact Boann had made. Drostan's face, however, showed a different reaction.
Jealousy.
"In fact, I dun think I'd seen Annie dance since Brady died. Have ye, Ann lass? Since you'd dance with Brady?"
Boann's joy faltered as she turned her head to look at Drostan. She was smiling with intoxication, but a different kind than before. A rageful sort of intoxication; embarrassed, almost.
"That's about the seventh time you've mentioned a person named Brady, Stan. Who is he?" Rick asked as he also took another drink.
Drostan didn't look at Rick. Nor did he meet Boann's heedful gaze. He was looking strait at Ardeth, his eyelids slumped over his grey-green eyes.
"Brady? 'Adn't Annie mentioned Brady-boy?" Drostan gaze then shifted to Rick and Evie's. "Brady's Boann's husband."
Ardeth wasn't sure the reaction of the other's at this. He was only aware of his own. His shoulder was cold now with the absence of Boann's head. Her face was flattening out again, growing heavy. She looked so old at that moment, a few more years slipping with every word from Drostan's mouth.
"Brady was a fine dancer, too. Wasn't he Annie?"
"Yes," her voice was barely a whisper as she responded. Her eye was focused on the fire, the black of it rejecting the reflection.
"Oh then, Boann, you are married?" Evelyn innocently asked with a silly smile on her face. There was surprise in her voice as well, and she did her best to hide that. More... unattractive people that Boann are married every day, she would have thought.
"Was," Boann replied, her eyes meeting the other woman's. "I'm a widow. Fourteen years one."
Evelyn's face looked a bit taken aback. In the journey, she had come to assume that Boann was only a few years older than Rick, if any.
"Fourteen years... that means you must have gotten married when you were..."
"Sixteen," Adil replied. Ardeth would spend the next few seconds trying to figure out how he knew her age so well. He would conclude, later on, that she must have mentioned it.
"She was fourteen, actually. That's right, in'it? Fourteen?"
"Yes, I was fourteen when I married Brady. He was... um, twenty-three I think. About." Boann paused to think nervously. Her voice was so quiet at that moment. Quiet, childlike almost. "No, he's that age when he died. Um, twenty-one then, when we married."
In truth, Ardeth, Adil, and the other Medjai were not terribly shocked by the age. Not in the way Evie might have been. Ardeth was simply shocked that she had not said anything about it – naively so, he would admit. It did make sense of her surname, though.
"Yep. Brady was a good dancer he was." Drostan added with a sting
Ardeth's voice was a bit coarse for his words when he asked, "Arranged?"
Drostan, irritatingly, answered for her. "Nope. 'Fact, I think Diarmuid was a bit furious at it, wasn't he Boann?" Drostan spat the unfamiliar name slightly, annunciating the "t" in a hard verbal stab.
"Aye, he was."
"Wouldn't come, would he?" Drostan continued. "Then again, you guys din get married in a church, d'you?"
Boann's face changed now. It shaped itself into a slightly offended expression. "Yes we did, Drostan. Da didn't come, but Bray's folks were there and it was in front of a priest, good and like.
"Brady was the best Catholic I knew of," she finished with.
Rick snorted. "Sorry, but I don't think there is such a thing as a good Catholic."
Ardeth was afraid Boann might be agitated further, but instead she grinned quietly.
"I know. That's why I said the best I knew of." Rick laughed heartily at that.
"How'd he die?" Ardeth asked, trying to mask his concern as curiousity.
Drostan's knowing smirk died at that, a sad face replacing it.
"Killed. Street brawl" was all Boann said – not with disgust or hatred, but with genuine sadness.
Boann took one last swig from her bottle, before setting it down. She stood up without a word, her rosary at her waist brushing against Ardeth's cheek as she turned and left with a slight wobble. Drostan made a successful attempt at changing the subject and livening the mood. But as one of the two younger Medjai left for his shift at the watch, Ardeth also retreated to find Boann taking her nightly smoke by the water.
"Did you love him?" He asked as he approached her seated back. The edges of her curles glistening the moonlight like the blades of knives. He did not sit, but simply leaned against a tree behind her. Ciannait was drinking loudly a few feet away.
"No," Boann said with a sad laugh. "I din love him."
Ardeth moved, and sat beside her silently. Her skin looked sunken and tired as the water danced patterns across her half-face.
"Security then?" Ardeth asked, unsure of how much security she could get with a man like that.
"Yes, security. As I understand it, your families must sell over to security at around the same age."
Ardeth nodded, unsure if he should be upset by the statement. "Sometimes, yes. But..." he paused, wondering if he should be so blunt at this point. "But you were poor, and I don't gather he was rich. Wasn't staying with your father and stepmother a better idea?"
Boann didn't answer. She took a long, heavy drag of her cigarette, coughing lightly as she exhaled.
Ardeth was silent a moment, thinking. He chuckled softly. "I just can't imagine you as a wife," He said, echoing her statement about his short medical career.
Boann's lips crackled with a small smile at that, not taking much offense in it. She knew he didn't mean physically. "Why not?"
"I don't know. Just, doesn't seem very you." He laughed lightly. "Did you want children, at all?"
"No. No children."
"Now, I can see you as a mother." Boann was taken slightly aback by that statement. Ardeth wasn't quite sure why it was true, either. But it was. He saw bits of a mother in her. The way she seemed to take care of Drostan, even though he thought he was taking care of her. She let him think that he was, and that it exactly what a mother would do, he thought. But he couldn't see her a mother to the babe of a drug-addict.
Boann laughed a bit to herself, amazed at the statement. "No lad. Certainly'd be a bad mother. Got the genes for that. Plus, been pregnant enough to not actually want the kid itself." Boann's mouth twitched. The alcohol was taking control over her now innate secrecy
Ardeth was sadly silent at that. He continued with what he impulsively gathered from the statement, "That shouldn't deter you, Boann... Uh, many women have consecutive miscarriages, but it doesn't mean they can't ever bear a child."
Boann smiled mirthlessly, twirling her cigarette numbly between her fingers. "I've never miscarried."
Ardeth's eyelids lifted slowly. "But... you're a Catholic."
Boann paused tensely. Her eye was marble now, hard as stone. "So was he." She said simply. "So was he."
She knew he thought she meant Brady. She knew this, she did.
"In England," Boann said, ensuring that he didn't think this for too long. "you were to be married, weren't you?"
Ardeth was now completely aware of Boann's seemingly other-worldly ability to determine the exact events and feelings of a person. He attributed it to some sharply honed instincts.
"Yes. I was engaged for a year." It was the one time Ardeth had ever considered marriage. It was also what had brought him to the conclusion that marriage, and indeed any real attraction to the opposite sex, was not an "instinct" he would ever choose to react to. Until now, of course.
"She was lovely?"
Ardeth paused, then took a deep breath. "Yes, she was very beautiful. Her name was Lucy."
"Did you love her?"
Ardeth laughed anxiously. "Um. I'm not sure. I thought I did at the time. I've actually never liked the idea of women as romantic figures. My stepmother was always so... goddess-like, I never saw them as objects of love, just as objects of protection and... pain, perhaps." He had partially seen Boann as that. Truthfully, he had not even seen her as a sexual being until he realized she was married. Perhaps it was the wound, or perhaps it was just him. But now, when he thought of it, he could fit her easily into his folds, given the chance. He never felt that way about Lucy. Sex had always been expected. He was expected of enough in his life to want to be married, he decided.
Boann's face was pleasant as she spoke, softly curved to a default expression of contentment. "Did you leave her because she was white?" She asked, her words hard against the softness of her mask.
"No! No, not because she was white." In a way, he might have been lying. He wasn't sure. Perhaps he wouldn't have worded it the way she did.
"But you broke it off long before your real reason for leaving occurred, didn't you?"
"How do you know I had a 'real reason'?"
"Didn't you, though?" Boann asked, her thick Arabic lapping at his growing nervousness.
"Yes, I did." Ardeth took a long breath in, and then out. He wasn't sure if he had ever tried to put this into words. It made him realize that this "real reason" would be impossible to ever tell her. "It wasn't because she was white. It was because... I didn't belong with her."
"You didn't belong there."
"What do you mean?"
"You didn't belong there." Boann said, matter-of-fact. "You went there, expecting to enjoy the 'advanced-ness' of Europe as opposed to the backwards-ness of the desert. But you couldn't. All the time you wanted to be closer to what they would call an animal again, right? Like your father before you, you were trying to fit into something different, trying to be your own person when in fact, no one is their own person, right? We're all someone else's baby. But you couldn't stand it much. You didn't ride their buses, their cars. You wore your hair long, kept your beard. You're mind wanted that stimulation, but your fingers... they were longin' to sift through the sand again."
Ardeth looked ashamedly at the ground. Once again, she had punctured his surface with the ease of a clairvoyant fingernail. "In truth, they are just as primitive as the Medjai and all other tribes are supposed to be." Boann shifted her weight uncomfortably at that statement. Ardeth continued: "They just hide it a bit more. That wasn't my home. That's not why I left, but I knew it all along. I knew that this was my home, despite myself." Ardeth looked at Boann with tender brown eyes, soft with the nakedness of his past. "Don't you feel that way about here? Egypt, this desert that you seem to be so attached to?"
"No. This is my home. This is were my purpose is."
"But what about your people?" Ardeth asked naively. And for the first time he watched Boann's anger fluster. He wasn't sure if it was wholly his words; he would have liked to have attributed a bit of it to the alcohol.
"My people... my people," she said harshly, but very quietly. "My people piss pieces of their brains out overtop their brothers' vomit. My people start wars because of pieces of paper that, if they were honest, they could shit on and not shed an eyelash over it. They just get angry to get angry. My mother served beer to whankers with cigarettes up their arses and sticky stubs in their pants for tuppence, and then fucked the first bastard to greet her with a hello instead of a hand on her arse. Those are my people? You're damn right those are my people. But that wasn't my home. This is my purpose. I will die in Egypt when it is no longer my home."
Her rage, he observed, was a subdued one. One that took power in it's breath rather than in it's volume – in it's putrid air, not it's sound. Her anger was thick and wide beneath her skin, behind her eyes, both of them. They were both silent for a while. Ardeth was unsure if his next gesture was a wise one. His hand crawled and snaked to hers, brushing her pinky finger gently. It was so cold that he didn't hesitate to take the hole hand within his. It both chilled and heated his palm as he held it. It was so small and thin. Calloused and raw skinned and pale. Boann was staring at her hand in his when she said:
"Brady wasn't a bad man, Ardeth. He was a good man. He was the best man I knew of." She said, and he assumed that the "knew of" was as applicable as the same words were when she spoke of him as a Catholic.
All Ardeth said was "Okay," before falling into silence.
They sat there for several minutes. Ardeth was unable to decipher the moments that were passing. Not as a doctor, not as a warrior. Not as a primitive person, not as an advanced person. Not even as an ancient person.
Ciannait rustled her mane, splashing water onto her nose. In the moonlight, she truly did look like a fairy creature. She was the fairy, and Boann was the witch. He wondered who had captured who, though. Had Boann captured the fairy of her mother's memory, or was her mother's spirit keeping her here? Bearing her into the vastness of a country that had offered Kelly solitude, and then tore her away. But how? What was it that made Boann hold so tightly to Kell's red hair and green eyes. Her bleeding thighs and hollow face. Hollow face...
At that moment, Drostan came crashing through the foliage to where the two hand-lovers sat. Boann sighed heavily as his drunk-beyond-belief eyes barely rested upon her face.
Drostan stumbled over to Boann, running a slobbery hand over her scalp. Boann pushed him away, standing and relinquishing Ardeth's hand.
"Eh, Annie... uh... Ann, honey, sweetheart..." Drostan was vertigo, stumbling from side to side, fluid dripping from his nostrils. Ardeth watched, at first amused, as Drostan walked stupidly to where Boann now stood. He reached out a hand and took Boann's face in one graceless move. What Ardeth was unable to anticipate, Boann was painfully aware of. She drew away quickly as Drostan tried to kiss her. When he approached again, his lips flopping onto the side of her mouth, she pushed him away as if blowing him back with the bullets of her hands. When he stood up, still laughing, Ardeth saw, with no amusement, the quiet anger of before beginning to build in Boann. Quiet in voice, but not in action. She flew her fist into Drostan's face, flinging him to the ground like a soiled rag. Ardeth stood up quickly to help the drunken man up, and instinctive gesture.
Drostan held his hand before his mouth as blood began to dribble from inside of it. Ardeth held his shoulders and examined his mouth. Drostan spit blood into his hand, in which lay one partly blackened tooth.
"Boann..." Ardeth said in shock, despite himself. Ardeth had been in his share of fights, seen his share of broken tooths, jaws and noses. But he couldn't understand this. He didn't want to understand that someone who still looked so beautiful to him could do something in any way ugly. He thought it absurd to think this. However beautiful she was to him, her actions were only reflecting her face. She was ugly to the rest of the world, to the sky and even to her horse. He would later realize that it was foolish, and selfish, of him to expect his vision of her to reflect in her every aspect.
Drostan had begun to cry. Pitiful sobs of uninhibited pain, emotional pain. Drostan's uninvited kiss had been shunned. It was clear now to Ardeth; Drostan was in love with Boann.
"I'm... sor... sorry Ann... I'm sorry..." Drostan said through a numb tongue.
"Boann, the man's just drunk. He's just drunk."
Boann stared at Ardeth, a fine mixture of love, regret and anger in her eyes. "Just drunk? Who the fuck do you think you are?"
Ardeth was still holding onto the crying man's shoulders in an almost embrace. "I'm the man who's..." Ardeth stopped himself, unable to find words that did not amount to "I love you".
"I'm telling you that you've done wrong. You can't solve everything with hitting someone." He realized now why she asked who he thought he was. At that moment, he himself couldn't tell who was saying such things to her.
"You're a man to bleeding tell me I've done wrong!" Boann nearly screamed. She was now gaining the attention of the others in the camp. "Sweet Jesus, Ardeth. No wonder you've got the balls to pardon your own duties if you'd pardon everyone." She swept herself over to where they stood, her presence casting Ardeth's limbs into hard rock.
"But don't you fucking bother pardoning me." She seethed into his ear as she took Drostan in her arms, far more tenderly now, bracing him up with the skill of one who has done this many times before. She led him to his tent, soothing him roughly with her voice and hands, leaving Ardeth with an etched face, unsure of what to think of himself or what he was feeling.
Adil was standing behind a small shrub. In his tired, old and ugly eyes Ardeth could see his fate's reflection. He needed to know. He needed to know why she knew so much, yet would tell him so little. He needed to know what she looked like without clothes on, without her hair on, without her guard on.
Without her patch on.
Before Ardeth attempted to sleep, he tried to enter the tent to apologize to her for his words. But when he reached it, he heard from within the strain of a strong voice made to be soft, and the wrinkles of crying costing the voice it's quietness. It was Boann singing, and Drostan crying above it. Ardeth gently pushed the flap aside a few inches to see in. She was rocking him back and forth, back and forth, singing softly in the thick tongue of her ancestors to him. Like a baby in her arms. A drunk, bleeding and in love baby in her one-eyed arms.
