The Winter Thief

39

Running through the dark toward the vineyard where Vali’s light had disappeared, Feride stumbled and nearly fell. She twisted her head in the direction of the sound that had spooked her and tried to calm herself. It was probably a dog, she thought, embarrassed by her overreaction. Just then a powerful arm encircled her waist and lifted her off the ground. She tried to scream, but a hand covered her mouth. Fear took over her body, which in its rage to be free, arched and bucked. She tried to bite, but her teeth only grazed the beefy palm pressed against her mouth. Suddenly she couldn’t breathe and struggled frantically until the man, realizing the source of her distress, moved his hand from her nose.

This brush with death had the effect of banishing Feride’s panic. In order not to die, she realized, she needed her wits. Ignoring her racing heart, she tried to look about her. They were moving through the vineyard, the man dragging Feride under his arm, another man keeping pace beside him. The moon’s dim light revealed the tortured shapes of bare grape stocks. Where were Nissim and Vali and her companions? She had been only a moment behind them. Surely they would notice her missing and return to look for her.

“Are you sure this is the pasha’s wife?” the man holding her asked.

“Has to be,” Feride heard the other man say. “She’s the only woman in the group.”

“Tell me again why we’re bothering with his wife? I don’t think she knows where her husband is.”

“Well, we can’t find him either. Do you want to go back and face the commander with empty hands?”

“I guess not.”

The men spoke in city dialects, Feride noticed. They weren’t peasants or common highwaymen. Who was their commander? Who would even know her, or that she was here? What did they want with Huseyin? She was shocked by the realization that the men holding her had likely murdered the patient in the Valide Mosque hospital, thinking he was Huseyin.

She sagged to her knees, forcing them to stop. The hand over her mouth slipped momentarily, and she managed to emit a loud bleat. She had to alert the others. Nissim and Vali would put these men to flight in an instant. Then she heard it-shouts and the muffled thud of bodies. A man cried out. Was that Vali? Had they been attacked too?

Cursing, the man picked her up and, holding her tightly against his chest, set off at a fast pace toward the edge of a forest. One arm was grasped tightly by the man who carried her, but with some experimentation, she found she could move her head and the arm pressed against his chest. She lowered her head and raised her arm so that she could pluck from the side of her veil the sharp needle that pinned it closed around her face. It took several tries. When the pin was in her hand, she leaned back so she could see the face of the man carrying her. This close up, she thought he too looked afraid. Then she thrust the needle backhanded at whatever it might reach.

He screamed and dropped her. Feride scrambled to her feet and ran. After a moment’s confusion, the man’s partner raced after her. Feride threw off her charshaf and thrust it beneath his feet. He stumbled, kicking his foot to clear it of the tangled cloth. Feride hurtled between the rows of vines down the hill, the grape stocks tearing at her skirts.

In the gray dawn she saw a tangle of bodies between the vines, and the glint of metal. Elif’s thin figure rose above the rest, legs spread wide. She swung a long curved knife before her like a scythe, over and over, and Feride could hear the dull thunk of the knife as it hacked into flesh.

“Elif?” Feride called out uncertainly. She couldn’t be sure what she was seeing. Surely an apparition, a distortion of the mist and dawn.

At the sound of Feride’s voice, Elif looked up, her face invisible inside a helmet of pale hair. The hand holding the knife hung by her side. Nothing else moved.

Feride ran toward her, afraid to speak. Elif’s vacant face stared in her direction without seeing her.

Suddenly, as if she had just awakened, Elif looked down at her feet and her face took on an expression of utter horror. She began to scream, a bloodcurdling cry of anguish that spilled like black ink across the lightening fields.