[b]Socotra[/b]

The natives had let Azima and the children sleep through the morning, and when the evening came they celebrated. A goat was slaughtered and roasted in honor of the Queen, which they served with dried dates and bowls of rice soaked with sour milk. An old man, his skin the charcoal black of central Africa, had arrived in the middle of the day with a string of silvery fish, which where roasted over the same open fire as the goat. Azima hadn't eaten since their plane went down, and now she was hungry. Her stomach seemed to be bottomless, and she ate more than she thought was polite, though nobody seemed to notice. She sat with her guests at the edge of a roaring fire, her body still sore and bruised from the crash. The women had lent her a simple blue dress to replace the torn clothes they had found her in. This was the first time these people had saw a Queen, and in their clothes she hardly looked any different from them. 

A young man plucked an Oud - a string instrument that looked like a large nut that had been cut in half and strung. He played it quick and lively, and its playful resonance reminded her of the Spanish guitar. He sung as he played, and the young people danced around the fire. A young girl, barefoot, wide-eyed, and dressed in colorful scraps complimented by a headscarf, had chosen Tewodros as her dance partner. As a toddler, he was not coordinated, but he tried to keep up with all the grace of a turtle flailing on its back. Olivier stayed next to Azima, more interested in the fire than the dancers.

Socotra was a beautiful island. As the sun went down, it bathed the surrounding hills in an fresh orange light the color of an overripe melon. Umbrella-shaped trees turned to shadowed silhouettes in the dying light, and they stood stark against a vivid sky. Below them were the rocky precipices where green patches of grass draped ridge-tops like blankets of moss.

The natural world seemed to swallow the small village. Here, the buildings were small and humble. They were built out of raw stone and dry thatch, and they blended into the scenery around them. Humanity proclaimed their presence in this natural landscape with the floral scent of burning dragonsblood and the savory smell of roasted goat. They also brought to this place the sound of music and laughter, the soft crackle of the fire and the distant mooing of cattle. 

She sat at the place of honor, the village elder next to her. He was an old man in islamic garb. His skin was red and worn with age and a ragged grey beard sprouted from his face, but his protruding belly told of a life that had not been dominated by hardship.

Azima watched her only son dancing with the girls. It was a beautiful thing. Her entire body felt warm, and half of her thoughts were dedicated to him. She had lost him. Every time she saw him, she remembered that. She had lost him, but he had been returned to her!

She watched him shuffle and knew she would get him to China. She imagined him an adult sitting on the throne of Africa. She would not lose him again.

"They are having a good time." he said, watching the children dance. Some of the adults joined them, but most stayed in the sidelines. People talked, told stories, argued, and laughed. "Look at the good time that they are having." her host bellowed a second time, chuckling as he spoke.

"Yes" she smiled, her eyes centered warmly on her boy. Several courtly responses came to mind, but they did not seem appropriate. This was not a time for Imperial pomp. 

"I do not think Socotra has ever seen a Queen." the elder said. "But I do not know. All of my life our island has been part of Ethiopia."

"Has your island ever been on its own? Did it ever have royalty?"

"I do not know this thing." he shrugged. "We were ruled by the faranj before I was born. Before that, this place belonged to Islam."

Azima nodded. She thought bitterly about the other Queen who should be here. The Queen Dowager, Yaqob's mother. She had left Addis with them, but the sea claimed her now. Elani's death would hurt Yaqob and his sister, who were the only ones left from the family that Iyasu begat. Yohannes' siblings had died young, victims of the diseases and wars that plagued Ethiopia's transition from tribal feudalism to modern nation-state.

Azima wanted to stay and help search for the Queen-Dowager's body so that it could be given a proper burial, but she knew that Yaqob would think his child and his Queen dead as well. She knew he was suffering, and it pained her to be the cause of that suffering. They had to leave the island, to save her husband from total grief and to show the Spanish that they had failed. 

"We will take you to town in a few days, when we think it is safe." the elder explained. "The fishermen say that planes have been seen in the sky, and that faranj ships are being spotted out to sea."

"We want to be safe." she agreed. "Are there any government employees in town?" 

"There were." the elder said. "But they have left. It is just the people who are native to this place. We can access the radios, though. Do not worry. We will make sure you reach the safety in the east."

She studied the villagers and wondered. These were not wealthy people. Their clothes were frayed and dusty, and there was no common fashion to the choice of their garb. The women wore colorful homespun dresses. Some wore head-scarfs, while others let tangled hair twist freely into a wild mess. There were men who wore turbans, while others did not. Some men wore long skirt-like wraps, while others had baggy pants. Azima noticed that half of the villagers were barefoot, and that included most of the kids. Those who did wear shoes had no more than home-spun rope sandals or cheap leather slippers. 

They were thin. Not starving, but thin all the same. The men had bony faces where they wore short mustaches or half-grown wispy beards. They were short as well, and plain. These were not warriors, Azima knew. They had the fire of youth in their eye, but it was not battle that those flames inspired in them. She knew part of it was her; she was still young, and though she had born a child she still had a shape that men liked to notice. Without the tail of guards and courtiers that she was used to, she was more aware of the unknown men around her than she had been for several years. It did not worry her. There was no malice in this place, but noticing the men noticing her made her think about what they could do, and what they could do was not much.

It would only take one Spanish soldier, well trained, well armed, and draped with all the necessary ammunition, to wipe out this entire village. An idiot might bungle too close and get mobbed, but a clever man would know to strafe them so that they panicked. She, the Queen of Ethiopia and Africa, was the only fighter in this place, and it had been many years since she had performed in professional violence. 

Had Socotra ever seen a war?

"How do you people feel about what is happening?" Azima asked.

"The War?"

She nodded.

"Well, we do not think we will see it here." the elder said. "I am not sure what the faranj would want with our island this time. When they were here before, they were barely here at all." 

"Perhaps they might arrive to set up some sort of outpost to watch the red sea. Perhaps they need your cows to feed their soldiers. What happens then?"

He had not seriously considered this as a possibility before now, that much was plain on his face. He looked afraid. What she saw was not the existential fear that the young show, where the eyes go wide and the mouth droops. This was a ponderous fear. The fear in a man who's life is nearly done so that he worries more about the fate of what he will leave behind than his own mortal life. 

"We can take to the hills."

"You already are in the hills." Azima pointed out.

"There are higher hills" he retorted. He had worked through his fear, and he was smiling now. "But do not worry about these things, I will tell you something tonight, when we have put the children to bed."

She was intrigued.

When the last purple sunlight escaped over the sea beyond the hills, the stars came out in endless numbers. People left the fireside one by one, but the children did not seem tired. They danced on, slower than they were before, while the old men and women dosed off. It was only when the fire had burned to embers that everyone agreed to return to their homes.

--

The guest room was a simple room on the side of the Village Elder's house. The floor was dirt, and they slept on beds that were no more than blankets placed on top of straw. The darkness of the room weighed heavy on Azima's heart, and she could feel the anxieties of night starting to prey on her as soon as she found the place that she would rest. She stayed up to talk to the children until they went to sleep.

"I am tired now, ahkist." Olivier piped. He had a whistling voice, almost as empty as air. 

"That is good." Azima said softly. 

"I not tired." Tewodros struggled in his toddler's voice, but the sluggishness of his speech told her that he wasn't telling the truth. "Where setiiyet?"

Elani. That struck her like a punch in the throat. How could she tell her son that his grandmother was lost to them? "She is elsewhere." Azima answered cooly. "And she would want you to go to bed."

"Abat too?"

"Yes." she answered.

"I did a dance." he crooned. She could not see him in the blackness of the windowless room, but she could hear the smile in his voice. 

"You did." she said. "Did the dancing make you tired?"

There was a silence. Somewhere outside, a cow mooed.

"No." Tewodros finally replied. "Or yes. I do no want to be tired."

"You don't want to be tired? Oh Yeh-nay-wehn-deh-lee! What is there for you to do now but sleep?"

"I can dance!" he exclaimed.

"In this darkness? You could not see yourself dance, and I could not see it either."

There was another pause. It seemed like she could hear the volume of the darkness that surrounded them for miles.

"I am tired." he finally gave in. She could not see when he fell asleep, so she sat alone in the silence looking at nothing.

When there is nothing to sense, the mind runs wild. The weight of what had happened began to crush her again. She heard the scream of metal, and the sickly death rattle of plane engines as they dove into the ocean. Worst of all, she remembered the last time she saw Elani. If people die bravely, or if they die peacefully, those who witness their last moments can take some comfort in the knowledge that they had accepted death when it came. The last image Azima had of her mother-in-law was not of bravery or peace. What she had seen was a terrified old woman, elderly before her time and confused about what was happening as her life entered its final seconds. It was a heartbreaking image, and Azima couldn't shake it.

She sat alone in the painful dark and knew she couldn't sleep. Her vigil was cut mercifully short when she heard a whisper, and she remembered what the elder had told her at the fire.

She stood up and brushed the straw from her dress. The room was dark except for the ethereal glow of orange that came from the doorway. She groped blindly until she found herself in the next room, where she was greeted by the elderly man. He held a torch in his hands.

"I am sorry that it is late, but I was afraid the children would not get their sleep. I wanted to talk." His wife stood next to him, an old woman with prunish skin and wiry grey hair. Her eyes looked bloodshot in the light.

"What is it that you wanted to say?" Azima asked in a whisper. 

He shook his head. "I want to show you something first." The torch drank in the air and roared as he motioned toward the door. Azima looked back at the dark room where the children still slept and wondered at leaving them behind. They were in no danger, she accepted. This place and these people are benign.

He lead her out of his modest house into the dirt path outside, and his wife followed them like a silent wraith in the star-lit darkness. Torchlight played across desert stone, and in the eyes of camels restless in their pen. A cool breeze blew in from the ocean, which she could hear humming far away. Somewhere nearby, a cow mooed.

They came to a newer building, built from the same raw stone that formed the rest of the village. It had windows framed with sticks, and there were Arabic words painted above the door. It read, quite simple, "Madrasa." School. They went inside.

The building smelled like dirt and musty paper. There were benches arranged throughout the room like the pews of a church, and they all faced a smaller bench where the altar would be. A bookshelf sat directly behind the small bench, and it left the walls in the back of the room bathed in shadow.

"This is a new place." Azima noted. 

"Yes." the elder said proudly. "We did not have a school when I was a young man. My children did not have a school either, but my grand children have this place." He went to where the small bench was and thrust his torch up so that the back of the wall received light. Her eyes went instantly toward an image she recognized.

In the left-hand corner of the room hung a painting of Yaqob. It was the one that was most often copied and sent to government offices, but she knew that it was even more common than that. He sat regally in a wicker chair, dressed in a brown cape draped over a white robe. It was a portrait from when he was young and new to the throne, and his face was still unbearded.

"Your husband is a handsome man." the Elder's wife said thoughtfully.

"And we are grateful for him. And not just for him." the elder eyed a second painting, this one to the right of the bookshelf. If Yaqob's portrait had been unexpected, then the second one was like seeing a ghost materialize from the shadows.

Emperor Yohannes had always been a serious, long faced man. He stood in his portrait with one hand on a ceremonial sword as he looked onward toward the left. He wore a long white robe tied with a red sash, and on top of his head was the crown his father had ordered made with a crescent at its peak.

There were two Emperor's in that schoolhouse, and they were the only paintings in the entire village. 

The Village Elder surprised her in a new way now; he began to exude strength. His appearance took on an air of nobility Azima did not think possible for the people of this island, and his slumping face seemed to tighten where once his jowls had drooped.

"You wanted to know what I think about what is happening to our country." He began, and he spoke with the confidence of a general giving a speech before battle. "I feel like I needed to take you here first. Our people are different in many ways, so I wanted to show you that we are fellow countrymen. Your people mean a lot to ours."

He took a deep breath and studied her. She looked him in the eyes, but the visages of her husband and his deceased father stole her attention in the periphery of her vision. The old man continued to speak.

"When the faranj ruled us, they built a dock and put in the radios. The Emperors from Africa have done more for us. The father gave us the school, and the son has made it where a school-teacher travels from the town once a week to teach our children how to write and read. Some of the children here can speak two languages, our tongue and yours. One of my grandchildren knows French as well, and he is only twelve." A proud smiled slipped across the old man's lips, and firelight twinkled in his eyes. "I have only known this island, and I do not complain. But my grandchildren? They will be able to make choices that I never knew, and that I could never give to my children. If they want to stay here and know the life I have known, that will be their choice, and if they want to leave, they will have the languages and the skills to find their place elsewhere. Perhaps one of my grandchildren will join the bureaucracy and have a home where the windows have glass. Maybe they will find work on a ship and travel the world. I cannot..." he chuckled. "I cannot even think of all of the things that they can do! And I know who we owe this too."

The old man glanced back at the portrait of Yohannes.

"If all of your Kingdom has enjoyed blessings such as these, then I have no reason to fear. Some of the fishermen, and some of the men in the town, they have went to the mainland to go and fight. My people are not fighters, but I know that my sons watch the ocean sometimes and wonder. I want you to know that your people love you. They will rise up like waves and dash the enemy likes crabs against the rocks. Perhaps, when the people of the world were scattered and afraid, the faranj could confuse them and take control, but our people are united now, and they know. There are not enough faranj in this world for you to worry."

Azima was speechless. Since the war began, she had endured the rises and the falls of the war along with those she knew, but tonight was the first time she felt truly at peace with what was happening. She thought it was possible that things might go back to how they had been before.