“He has forced you into making this ruling. It’s regrettable, but you can’t not protect her.”
How often had he found himself butting against the idea of accepting her counsel? How often had he told himself she knew nothing of his people and their ways?
Too often.
Her insights were exactly what he needed to hear, and for a man who was used to relying purely on his own counsel, the realization that he’d enjoyed discussing this matter with his wife brought him very little pleasure.
She hadn’t laughed so hard in a very long time.
“She’s adorable,” Sophia said, trying to emulate the tone of the dialect she’d been hearing that day.
‘She’ was a two year old girl with chubby legs, a rounded tummy and dark ringlets that sat close to her head like a little mop. Her eyes twinkled and her cheeks had dimples scored deep within them.
“She is trouble, more like,” the little girl’s mother responded, sitting down beside Sophia on a vibrant blue blanket. The little girl clapped her hands and danced some more, so Sophia laughed, and clapped along with her.
The little girl’s mother put her finger out, touching Sophia’s hand, tracing a line across her knuckles.
Sophia turned to face her.
“I have never seen skin like this,” she said simply, smiling, her expression enigmatic. “You are like one of the ancient souls said to wander the desert.”
Sophia laughed. “I have heard this before. Really, I’m not so pale, am I?”
“It is beautiful,” the woman complimented. “Your highness.”
She wanted to implore the woman to call her Sophia, but Malik had been right. She was the Sheikha, she also had a role to play.
“Thank you.” She smiled though. “What is your name?”
“Fatima.”
The little girl
fell onto her bottom and for a moment, Sophia thought she might cry, but then she threw her head back and laughed and stamped her feet, before seeing a line of ants crawling past and stopping to investigate them.
Sophia could have watched her all day – she had been watching her for the better part of an hour.
It was hot, but she’d become a little more used to it, and one of the tribeswomen had provided her with a fan of sorts, made of lace and delicate branches, just the slightest movement circulated air around her face.
“She is like my shabat,” Fatima said. “My grandfather.”
Something spiked in Sophia – a curiosity. Would their child be like her? Her mother or her father? Her heart squeezed. Or like Malik?
“It must be lovely to see traces of someone you love in your daughter,” Sophia murmured, as the little girl stood up on those impossibly sweet little legs and tottered towards Sophia.
“It is the way of life, is it not? The continuity of things.”
Sophia’s chest was weighted by grief. Not all things continued. She thought of her father and Addan, and sadness was pervasive.
But that was all the more reason to persist with this – to ensure she fell pregnant. Life was the only antidote to death. All those people would live on in their child, in some way. Perhaps it would be a little girl with fire in her soul, like her sister Arabella, and a kind heart like Addan, and a love of games and Christmas, like her father.
Their child would give life back to those who had lost it.
“Yes,” Sophia whispered, turning to Fatima and smiling wistfully.
“You have a baby,” Fatima asked.
Sophia shook her head. “No, not yet.”