"The marid of the sea," I scoffed, lounging on the summit of a hill in Beirutus.
The sun shone gold on the abode of the marid. The sea came alive in a thousand ripples as still more ships made themselves visible in the horizon, making for the docks.
I watched them creep forward from atop my peak with resentment. A shattered being clutching wounds both physical and deep within his soul watching better men return from distant shores with the fruits of their success.
With spoils of war.
It had only been a few weeks since we had abandoned accursed Crete to its own devices, returning to friendly coasts with a fraction of the spoils we had originally earned. With only a fraction of those that came with us to the expedition that ended in disaster.
Yet, the bitter idleness felt like years. Years I was left to rot and wither in a Syrian port city that housed naught but silent locals and barred warehouses. The foreboding greenery, the snow-capped peaks, the lush landscape of this area of the Levant only served to sour my mood.
How dare the lands prosper and the meadows mock me with their lavishness when I wallowed, broken and defeated, at the foot of their mountains?
How dare the sun wink off distant steel and bits of glass, blinding me with its brilliance, while more than half my boys were left to be eaten by the crows in foreign lands?
How dare the gods reside in their heavens so clear and serene over the skies of Mount Lebanon when a lesser man prances about and smirks in my face?
"I ransomed them from the Romans after you set sail," Abu al-A'war had said when he returned here to deposit his war spoils. He was referring to those I left behind. Umaymah, Mundhir, 'Amr. Tariq and Haitham had not survived. "It was a heavy ransom. Spoils far dwarfing what you have collected. You can pay me back."
And a few days later, he was off again, easy as you please. Off to burden the bellies of his ships with yet more plunder. From Rhodes. Storied, fabled Rhodes with its massive statue that reached out to the sky, touching the clouds themselves.
Leaving me with my useless lout of a daughter.
"B-but ... we did what was asked of us – " she stuttered upon touching soil.
"Shh," I halted her, holding up a hand. "You failed me. You failed me."
I turned my back on her, making for the uninhabited hills overlooking the city, paying no heed to her desperate protests behind me.
And it had been weeks since then. Laying sprawled on this damned hill in near isolation like a woman heavy with child. Every day, I watched the skies searching for an omen. A bird flying this way or that. The size of the fish the villagers caught. The number of ships that passed by that day.
All while the scenes of my destruction rewound in my head. Hundreds of bodies laying face first in oceans of blood. Blood-stained beaches. Piruzan being skewered on a spear, straining to pull himself closer still, smearing the wood a horrible red.
Every day, I would catch sight of a woman so pale-skinned that she churned my belly with something that resembled disgust. Her eyes, red and piercing, radiated lust and ... something else. Was that guilt?
She watched my stunned silence from afar. I could not yet register what had happened on Crete. On that hill under the shade of Mount Lebanon, I did not break down weeping for the loss of so many men I saw as younger brothers or sons.
I felt numb. Drained. Spent, as though I had gone through a lifetime of hurt and agony, soaking me down to my very bones.
And I had. Sorrow and loneliness. One can achieve great things in life. One can obtain glory, victory, wealth unimaginable. One can feel powerful, as though a god.
But the former two were one's constant companions. When the smiles faded and the clouds parted, when your friends die and the flower of their youth withers, sorrow and loneliness would stand there, waiting to engulf you in their inevitable embrace.
But now the ships were coming. Greeted by the hoots of those ashore and the dwindling winds, they found their way to a welcoming port and friendly faces.
They would haul the great wealth they amassed from Rhodes ashore, jubilant and thankful to their god.
And they would waste no time in preparing for their next journey.
***
"You can quit your lurking, woman," I yelled into the night as I felt the weight of two red eyes burning like coals on my skin.
Or she-devil or whatever she is.
"I do not lurk," came the response, closer than I'd anticipated. "I observe."
"Then cease your observing before I gouge out the tools of your observation."
I sighed, pounding the back of my head against the soil beneath me, shifting my eyes from dark sea to pitch black sky. The stars littering the night's canvas reminded me of the layout of corpses back in Crete.
I heard the shuffling of sandals next to me.
"It..." Amina began before trailing off. She was right next to me.
"Speak your damn mind," I smacked my face with both hands in exasperation.
"It is not weakness to mourn," Amina said uneasily. It was the first time she spoke of a personal matter, albeit reserved.
"What would you know of strength?" I murmured.
What would I know?
"My father..." she began again before trailing off.
"Should have discharged his seed in a fucking goat," I filled the silence dismissively. I was too taken with making out the positions of the planets that night. "Would have saved me a lot of annoyance."
"He died in battle," she continued as if I had not spoken. "Much like the men in Crete."
I did not reply. The silence engulfed us once more, uncomfortable and awkward this time.
"My mother would not marry, no matter what others said," it sounded as though Amina were speaking to herself. "She had to care for six children all by herself and keep their bullies full all the while."
"Sounds like quite the woman," I commented, remembering my own. Mother had been a woman of warmth and sad smiles before her enslavement. She was never quite the same after that ordeal.
"But then she fell sick," Amina recounted. Was that genuine emotion I heard in her voice? "I was the eldest of the brood. Nine, newly flowered, with all the energy and ambition in the world."
"But that energy soon dimmed," I guessed.
Amina grunted. "The things I had to do to keep my family fed...they were less than honorable."
I spat. "Who gives a shit? Our gods are not like theirs. They wouldn't care."
I sat up straight at the sound of sniffling. To my surprise, Amina was looking down on me with tears in her once fearsome red eyes. My breath caught in my throat as I watched her cheeks soak. I would have bet on the heavens ripping apart and raining gods before seeing the witch act human.
"You still don't understand, do you?" she sobbed, a sympathetic expression on her face.
"Understand what?"
"You clutch onto any fragment of hope for a happy future and cling so hard on it that you forget the nature of your fate," Amina continued in a half whisper. She fell to her knees before my reclining figure. "You forget the tragedies of your past and imagine a fairer future. That's why the tragedies that come next hit so hard. That's why you're so blind to reality."
"Reality?" I repeated, incredulous. I cleared a stray hair dangling on her face and wiped her tears with my comparatively gigantic fingers.
If you ignore her skin, she might actually be pretty. I cupped her cheek.
"My reality," she whispered.
"You're a witch that needs a fucking to be shown a future," I smiled. "What else is there to know?"
She put her arms around my shoulders and blew air out of her nose in the closest thing I had ever seen her get to laughter.
And then our eyes locked, brown on red.
And again, I saw the guilt in them. Or perhaps that is my view on the memory in retrospect.
"Then let's find out my future," I spoke. "Without having it feel as though a duty this time."
She scrambled atop me, her hair falling loose and wild, shrouding her face in eerie shadow.
"Your future," she pinned me down by the shoulders, beginning to motion back and forth. "It will not do for Hanthalah to keep rotting on this hill. Hanthalah's future is to board a ship. Hanthalah's future is to hold sword and shield again."