An Evil Eye

73

The Kislar aga rolled from the divan and clutched the babbling eunuch by the shoulder.

“Who is dying? Show me.”

Yashim followed. The fluttering eunuch ran half stooped with outstretched arms along the corridor, like a startled hen. Girls clutched their hands to their breasts and pressed themselves to the wall, their mouths ovals of surprise.

At the foot of the stairs the eunuch seemed to droop, clinging to the newel post for support.

“Up there, aga! The dormitory…”

The aga brushed past him, and they mounted the stairs two at a time. At the top the aga whirled down a corridor. He flung a door back with a blow from his open hand and stood there, panting, turning his head from side to side.

A girl sprang from the side of the bed with a scream of fright, her hands to her ears. Ibou strode forward and grabbed her wrist; the girl winced and bent at the waist, refusing to lower her hands.

“What are you doing?” he hissed.

Yashim saw it all like a tableau from the doorway: the girl squealing, Ibou gripping her wrist in his long hand, his eyes swiveling to the bed under the window, and the bed itself, with a white satin quilt embroidered minutely with multicolored flowers.

Beneath the quilt, black hair trailing wide across the pillows, lay another girl, staring straight at Yashim. Her eyes glittered like black pearls. As Yashim stepped forward into the room, the hairs prickling on the back of his neck, the girl in the bed moved very slightly: her jaw sagged.

“He said-blood!” Ibou shook the girl again. “Where is this blood!”

The eyes of the girl on the bed did not follow Yashim.

“She’s dead,” he said quietly.

Ibou turned his head and his eyes grew wide as they moved from the girl’s face to the flowered quilt draped across her body.

In the center of the bed, between the shape of the girl’s thighs, a new flower was blooming on the patterned quilt, growing larger and brighter than all the rest.