Bone Ash Sky by Katerina Cosgrove Page A

that always came to him as clear – even clearer – as the first time they had sex. The sex had been rushed, icy, awkward. Painful for her. A death-knell for him. It was better not to remember.
    Neither of them had smiled as they stood outside his father’s house and waited for the priest to arrive. Such an honour, to be the first in the quarter married according to the old rites. ‘And not a moment too soon,’ the neighbouring women exclaimed, crossing their ample breasts. ‘We arrived here fifty years ago.’
    It had been hard, they conceded – chattering among themselves while Selim burned with boredom – what with the French occupation, famine in the twenties and two wars. They openly marvelled at the composure of the bride and groom. Selim and Anahit stood side by side, almost touching at arm and hip. First cousins, joined by blood. Behind them, fluted columns were festooned with tinsel and flowers, even the crazy outside plumbing draped with wreaths. ‘Too much expense,’ the muttering went. ‘Who’s Minas trying to impress?’ Bougainvillea had been cut back to form a perfect bower, where Selim and his bride now stood. A shrewish wind rose high above roofs and aerials, away into the city. It flung petals onto Selim’s shoulders, little flags of protest he brushed onto the ground. He didn’t want to marry this girl – this cousin he’d known since he was born, seen bathe and eat and toilet, fought with and ignored. He looked at her belly under her wedding belt, still flat. He looked at the small, pinched mouth. He knew she’d been vomiting all morning, bending over the bathroom sink, quietly so nobody would know. Her cheeks were grey and white, ash and salt.
    She didn’t look at him. Guilty, maybe. She knew she’d trapped him now – with her mother’s whispers, her pregnancy, her helplessness. She watched intently as the priest prepared to slit the throats of two white doves. The old man muttered, so the women had to lean forward to hear him. Give the good news to the bride of light; thy groom is risen, go forth before him bedecked with adornments; sing a new song to him that is risen, to the fruit of life to them that are asleep. He threw his beard over his shoulder in a way they thought far too irreverent, rolling up his wide black sleeves. The birds flapped in his hands, unblemished and perfect. Selim and Anahit . Sacrificial doves. Minas leaned over and whispered in his son’s ear, clear and authoritative.
    â€˜Be good to her, my son. Don’t shame me again.’
    Selim had thought his father at least would take his part against the others. But no. There was something secret between Minas and his sister, something shiny and complicit. He’d seen his father’s face darken when Anahit told him Selim had made her pregnant, but it was more in disapproval of his own son than in judgement of his sister and her daughter. Everyone blamed Selim. They said he was reckless, always had been, even as a child, that he should have known better. Everyone blamed him, except for his mother. He watched Siran now as she stood a little apart from Minas and Lilit, her face arranged into a studied neutrality. For the first time since he was born, he saw that her ears were naked.
    Lining the street in a trailing circle were familiar faces, grinning under a trifling drizzle. Someone unfurled an oiled umbrella over the bride. She touched her rain-damp hair, smoothing it at the temples, checked to see the earrings Siran had given her still dangled cold and significant at her neck. Thickly gold as the hairs on her legs, turquoise as the veins at her wrists, the thin white skin over her breasts traced with blue. Her mother sighed.
    Selim glanced at Lilit for a moment and a shadow of doubt passed over both their foreheads. You forced me into this. Now you owe me everything, you owe me my life. He knew what she was thinking in turn: Will I