Secondhand Sorcery

Doktor Soylu, Nadia’s host, was on his way to retirement. He visited his clinic three days a week to advise patients on their foot problems; the rest of the time he was at home, cooking, reading, and tending his increasingly large garden. Since Nadia’s first surgery was behind her, and she was doing well, the doctor had given permission for her to spend a little time out in the garden today while his family cleaned and aired out her room.

It would not be as long a time outdoors as she would like. February was wearing on, but they were still in the mountains and so it was still quite cold even in the middle of the afternoon. Nadia sat where the ladies left her, on a little bench, bundled up in coats and hats and blankets, watching her breath turn into clouds in the air. The plants in the garden were still half-buried in snow, only a few aggressive early buds poking out, but she had a cup of hot tea, the sun was out, and she felt alive. Even the pain, which never left, did not trouble her so much as it might have.

The house was on a slope; past the garden’s ornamental iron fence she could look down and see a little town or village, still mostly asleep in the snow. No sheep on the mountain slopes, few cars on the roads. Everything was waiting to come to life. This area—she’d forgotten its name—was in Free Kurdistan for the moment, but that wasn’t always important. People like doctors were still allowed to move across borders at need. She’d crossed over herself, with only a little fuss, three times since she woke up and began her recovery. A bit of money had changed hands, nothing more.

The wind rattled through bare tree branches, flicking wisps of hair out from under her wool cap into her face. She resisted as long as she could the urge to push them back; it would require her to let go of her cup. But they tickled her cheeks, and in the end she compromised, lifting it up to sip and tucking the errant tendrils away with alternating hands. The tea was already starting to cool down, and soon they would take her back in to her close little cell. All the more important to enjoy the time she had.

There were still multiple surgeries ahead of her, and no guarantee they would go well. She could accept that now. She could accept many things that she hadn’t been able to before. She had gone into Tutak with anger in her heart, looking to hurt and kill, and paid the price for it—was still paying the price now, for that matter. The whole center of her body was still an angry tangle of twisted pain, the antibiotics made her queasy, and she could hardly move unassisted. All part of the cross she had built for herself with her own carelessness and pride. Now she was on that cross, but people didn’t stay on crosses forever. It was never too late to learn from her suffering.

The sound of a car engine disturbed the winter silence. The noise came from behind Nadia, towards the front of the house; somebody was coming to visit. She couldn’t think who. They had a good store of medical supplies laid up for her, and the hospital staff who helped her move around were already present. Perhaps it was only people coming to talk with the doctor. As long it wasn’t more soldiers trying to pester her for help, Nadia didn’t care. She’d already told them she wasn’t going to consider any military activity until she could at least walk a bit without assistance. That should have gone without saying …

The car pulled up, and she heard argument. The visitors, whoever they were, spoke halting Turkish with a worse accent than hers. And not a Russian accent, either. Bother. She’d been expecting this, but not so soon. Even so, she still had some tea, and a little bit of time. It was not in anyone else’s power to deny her the smallest piece of happiness she chose to claim.

The visitors won out, as she knew they would, and she heard a ruckus as they made their way into the house, then through it, and the door opened behind her. Nadia didn’t look around; that would hurt too much. She waited, looking at a little dry-stick shrub with a few of last year’s leaves still hanging off it, until one of the intruders came around the back of her bench and she could look up without straining herself.

It was a woman, on the young side—a black woman, even, which surprised her. Full-lipped and round-cheeked, not as dark as some people she had seen in magazines but still obviously out of place in the middle of Anatolia. Her hair was neck-length and frizzy under a wool cap much like Nadia’s own. She had one hand on the back of Nadia’s bench, looking down with a hesitant smile and not saying anything at all.

“Hello, Beelzebub,” Nadia said at last, when it was clear that there had to be a conversation, and that she was expected to start it.

“My actual name is Keisha,” the stranger said, a little bashful. Apologetic, even. Her voice was deep for a woman’s, but nothing like the neutral male voice of the fly. And her accent was just strange—broad, earthy, almost comical. “You can call me Keisha, if you like.”

“I don’t want to call you anything.”

“I did call first. Multiple times. When you ate every bug I sent as soon as it talked, that didn’t leave me much choice but to come in person. It was past time for us to meet up for real.”

“I don’t see why. I have nothing to say to you, whatever your name is. Hold on.” She called Ézarine, just long enough for the familiar to adjust her in her chair a little bit. “So say what you want, then leave. I was enjoying the fresh air, until you got here,” she said, just before dismissing the familiar.

“We have a lot to discuss,” Beelzebub informed her, unruffled. “Starting with this.” She passed Nadia a sheet of paper with a photograph printed onto it. It was the upper half of a man lying on his back on bare concrete, with clear gunshot wounds to his chest. The light was harsh, but good, and his face was turned to face the camera. “Do you recognize this man?”

Nadia frowned at the image. “It looks like Aziz. One of the Russian agents who controlled us. When did he die?”

“Early yesterday morning, in a raid outside Istanbul. At least one other person got away, I’m told. A woman.”

Mila, maybe. Nadia found she didn’t much care. “Fine,” she said. “What else?”

Beelzebub bit her lip. “There’s no use putting it off. I’m afraid I have to tell you that Hamza died the day after your departure from Ankara. Aziz and his allies informed the authorities of his presence, and he was shot by local law enforcement, then killed by a Turkish familiar.”

“Is that so?” Nadia said, still looking up at the woman.

“I know you don’t have much reason to believe me, and I know you don’t want to. I can’t make you believe. All I can do is tell you the truth. I saw it happen.”

“You saw it. But you didn’t stop it. Yes, that’s very believable. It sounds just like you.” She turned her face back to her tea, took a sip. Her eyes stung a little in the cold, and belatedly she remembered to put up her wall. It was easy, by now. “I know I might be the last of the Marshalls left alive, no matter what you saw, or say you saw. This country is very dangerous, and we do dangerous work. I would be sorry to know that Hamza is gone, or Yuri, or anyone else. But I would not be surprised.” The words caught ever so slightly in her throat, but she did a good job forcing them through anyway.

“What about Fatima?”

“Is there anything else you wanted?” she asked, abruptly in a louder voice. Fatima was none of this woman’s business. “You’re wasting my outside time.”

Beelzebub took the hint. “There are only a few more things we have to discuss. I might as well get to the important one: what do you intend to do, when you get better?”

“If I get better, I will do what I have been doing: I will use the power I have been given to protect any innocent people around me who need protecting. I have no plan to take sides in your stupid war. Not your side, not Russia’s.”

“But you’ve already chosen sides, Nadia. Just by being here in Kurdistan, you’ve taken the Russian side of the conflict. Even before they escalated hostilities, Russia was channeling a lot of money and weaponry to Kurdish separatists. There’s no way they don’t know you’re here; if they haven’t bothered you, it’s probably because you’re doing what they’d want you to already. Are you okay with that?”

Nadia tilted her head enough for Beelzebub to see her smirk. This chat wasn’t totally useless; they’d never have let her stay out this long if she didn’t have company they were scared of interrupting. The cold air felt so clean and sweet, after the musty indoors! “They can believe I’m helping them if they want, right up until I do something they don’t like. I’m not going to betray these people who took me in, and help you launch more helicopter attacks against Kurdish peasants, just so I can tell myself I’m on the ‘right side.’ That would be stupid.”

“But you do accept, don’t you, that if you’re going to be trying to interfere in this war, that we are going to have something to say to you about it?”

“’We’ meaning the large countries which are also interfering, if not outright causing it? Yes. Of course you are. And now you are going to threaten me, aren’t you?”

“I didn’t come here to make threats. I’ve only ever wanted to see you free and safe. But I do have to be honest. I’m just one woman, and if they order me to end your life … well, I really don’t know what I’m going to do about that.”

“Mil-zebub,” Nadia said with a smile.

“Pardon me?”

“You’re just like Mila, aren’t you? It’s your job to pretend to be my friend, like a big sister talking sense, and I’ll be so happy and grateful I do whatever you want. Except their Mila is actually pretty good at what she does. You’re terrible at it. They should fire you.”

At that the woman came around the bench so she could look at Nadia more directly. “Are you trying to make me angry so I’ll go away?”

“No. Only telling the truth as I see it.” But that reminded her of something. “That thing you taught me to do. Putting up my wall. It’s basically just me starting to call Ézarine, isn’t it? Like turning a car’s key halfway. The engine doesn’t turn on, but there’s power inside the car.”

The woman blinked. “I’ve never heard it put that way, but it’s a very clever analogy.”

“Thank you,” Nadia said, and left it at that. She’d had Ézarine out earlier, and been rude on purpose, and this woman hadn’t acted at all irritated while standing barely a foot away. Now she had confirmation from the woman herself: unless there was something else Nadia hadn’t been told about, Beelzebub was an emissor as well. It was a useful thing to know.

“I’d ask if I could sit down,” Beelzebub went on after a moment of silence, “but we both know you’d refuse.” She went down on one knee in the snow instead, so that they were more or less at eye level. The woman was tall. “Let’s be honest: my government understands Turkey won’t be going back exactly the way it was, and we can accept that you and the other Marshalls have a role to play. We understand that some bad, uh, some bad things went down here, and you do have a right to be angry about it.”

“So nice of you to give me permission,” Nadia said.

Beelzebub ignored the interruption. “At the same time, you’re a teenage girl, Nadia. The simple fact that you have an emissant does not make you a legitimate actor on the international stage.” She put up a hand before Nadia could interrupt. “And by ‘legitimate’ I mean that the community of nations, run by men and women who’ve spent decades trying to find a way to get along and get by, aren’t going to think that you have a right to do whatever the hell you want. And if they get sufficiently angry, you really can’t stop them from killing you. Regardless of how you feel about me, or Mila, or whoever, can you understand their perspective?”

“I suppose,” Nadia said. “But that doesn’t mean I think they’re right. I have my own duty, to God and my conscience. That doesn’t change because of the opinions of some men in suits, men who order murder and pay for it but never get their own hands dirty.”

“If you keep looking at it that way, and acting the way you’ve been acting, you will get yourself killed shortly,” Beelzebub told her. “And then things will go on how they were going to go anyway. Is that what you want?”

“Of course not.”

“Then work with me here, girl! Yes, we were wrong to employ Titus! Yes, the Turkish army was wrong to attack civilians! There, I said it. What else do you want?”

“What do I want?” She set down her cold mug so she could count off on her fingers. “I want very many things, and I can’t have any of them. I want to live a normal life, but nobody will let me. I want to go home, but I have no home left. I want to have my family back, but they are probably dead and it might be your doing. Oh, and I also want to walk again, and go to the bathroom without three helpers. I might actually get part of that one, if the surgeries go well, but I could also simply die of infection. Don’t interrupt, I’m not finished!

“I want to go back to church, and give an honest confession, and be human again, but Ézarine is stuck to my soul now and I can’t shake her off and I can’t honestly repent for half the things that I do because the same evil thing that drove me on is trapped inside me and I don’t even feel shame about most of the people I killed anymore. I’m just angry. I’m angry, all the time, about everything, and it’s only going to get worse. So I let myself be angry, as long as I am doing something helpful with it, and hope that God will understand even if nobody else does.

“There. Those are Nadia’s Problems. That’s the short list. Fix it for me, why don’t you, if you’re so helpful? Then we can talk about your international politics.”

Beelzebub, as she’d hoped, was speechless. No criticisms, complaints, deflections, or snide remarks. Plain silence, and a shocked expression. Tears, even, brimming around the edges of her eyes. Good. Let her be the one to cry, for once, even if it was probably all an act. Nadia didn’t enjoy it as much as she might have, because her chest was hurting now as well as her abdomen, and her eyes stung again. She concentrated harder on her wall. It didn’t help; if anything, it made the feeling worse.

Someone close behind Nadia’s back, a man, cleared his throat. Nadia jumped, then winced at the twinge in her belly; she hadn’t realized anyone was back there. She knew better than to try and turn around to look. “I think maybe it’s time now, Chief,” said a growly American voice.

Beelzebub bit her lip, and nodded, then pushed herself back to her feet. Receding footsteps sounded behind her, then a door opening, and the male voice muttered something she couldn’t catch. Time for what? For them to go? She sure wasn’t going to keep them—

More footsteps, multiple people now. In spite of everything she’d learned she started to twist around, hissed and fell back panting and clutching her middle. Oh, how she hated this! A hand came down on her shoulder from behind, and she slapped it away. “Whoa! Easy there, sister!” a female voice said.

“I don’t need your pity,” Nadia gritted back, still focused on her innards.

“Hey, I was just thinking I could help you out a little.”

“What are you talking about—“ She stopped her mouth, her body, and very nearly her mind all at once as she recognized the voice, and the familiar, horrible, but very welcome smell of tobacco that came with it. Slowly, very carefully, she sat upright and tilted her head back, so that she wouldn’t twist or move her hips at all.

A girl’s face, light brown and upside down, everything around it swaddled in black hijab. A few acne scars, a slight smile. It was hard to read that smile, upside down. It could be hard to read her smiles the right way up, too. She was a hard person to read. And rude, and foulmouthed, and bad-tempered, selfish, dishonest, lazy, flippant …

“Hey, girl. Been a while. I gotta say, you don’t look so great.”

Nadia stared up into the smiling brown eyes. It was suddenly very hard to breathe, for some reason. The smile faded, and she said something else, something Nadia didn’t catch because it had become vitally important for her to reach up, as best she could, and run her hands over her face, her scarf, her hands, everything she could reach, and know that she was real and alive.

Nadia was laughing now, and she couldn’t say why. She was laughing too hard, and it hurt. She kept laughing, because she couldn’t stop, and the world was blurred with tears and the wind was biting at her face and the entire moment was magnificently, perfectly, absolutely real. Then Fatima was on the bench beside her—she didn’t see it happen, time moved in great blurry lumps—and squeezing her too hard and in the wrong places, so it hurt, and Nadia gave a little scream, and Fatima jumped like she had touched a hot iron, and it was so funny that Nadia laughed and hurt herself some more, but all the while she felt that a great weight had come off her, with forty years of age and pain and care, because her sister had been dead and was alive again, was lost and now was found.