Black Bird, Blue Road: Part One

But Ziva and Pesah had been in the same room for two years while Pesah had been sick, and Ziva hadn't developed any of the lesions or white patches that covered Pesah's body.

Well, she was also responsible for unwrapping all his careful bandages and looking at how his disease was slowly eating him away. And she was accountable for amputating his fingers and toes as they succumbed to his illness.

Before she left, Ziva grabbed her favorite brooch from the table beside Pesah's bed, where she'd put it the night before.

Inside, she observed the messed-up bedsheets she'd arranged the night before, then made the bed haphazardly.

Her mother had bought her the latest hair baubles from Byzantium—combs with jewels and carved ivory figurines affixed to the top—but Ziva had put them in a drawer and never worn them.

Ziva frowned as she pulled the gauzy curtains over the windows, obscuring Pesah from anyone who might be near his house, but leaving enough light to see by.

They were working on salves that might help Pesah's illness, but two weeks ago Ziva hadn't been paying attention and Pesah had burned his finger.

Did he look worried? Frightened? Apprehensive?

Bull's gall. I bet we can get some from the butcher.

The bandages were there to keep the lesions across his cheeks and chin clean, and to cover up his missing nose, his scarred skin, his scourged lips.

She affixed his kippah to his thick brown hair, the kippah was red, like her brow band and braid ribbon were red, to mark their ancestral lineage from the steppe.

His kaftan, celestial blue, like his eyes, like the sky—but then Ziva imagined him all in white, what was left of him, interred in the earth, missing so many pieces.

Ziva got to her feet, ready to yell for them to come back so she could chastise them.

The burial plot held the simple graves of Ziva's forebears, with simple stone markers bearing their names.

She'd been taken with Byzantine fashion, so when she swept past the graves it was in a long red dress with a pink shawl draped across her shoulders. Both the dress and the shawl were patterned with repeating circles of blue and green. The colors were so garish they made Ziva wince.

Ziva's mother sighed wistfully. "I remember when I turned twelve years old. My parents threw me a marvelous party! I met your father that night. He was too shy to speak to me. Isn't that funny?”

Setareh looked profoundly disappointed behind her.

She knew why Reuven didn't come visit their home. Pesah. It was beyond Ziva's comprehension how Reuven could forsake Pesah the way he had, when the boys had been such close friends when they were younger.

Ziva hurried in, feeling like a trespassing thief, and crossed the room to her mother's vanity near the wardrobe that held all her colorful Byzantine gowns.

Ziva's chest froze, her breath stagnating in her mouth.

Pesah was enthralled by these stories.

"But they're different colors."
"One's tarnished a little," Pesah said. "It oxidized."
"Should we use the one that isn't oxidized?" Ziva asked, not entirely sure what "oxidized" even meant.

When they were done, Pesah's house was thick with the pungent odor of the medicine.

"Yes, fire," Pesah said. "Passion and spunk and stubbornness. You've got so much of it, and I've got none."

He extended a hand with a small gift in it, without any of the pomp and fanfare that her mother would have included.

"Plus, she brought some baklava," Pesah said, motioning to a platter with the sweet, flaky pastries on it.

"Good. Now Ziva, let's get going to your party, hm?"
Ziva balked, but managed to coolly say, "I'll be there soon, Baba. I have to give Pesah his birthday gift."

He managed to get ahold of himself, stifling his laughs, and he said, "Ziva, you look very pretty. Even in those colors."

"You look like you're capable of withstanding humiliation with grace and poise in the name of social decorum."

"You look like you're capable of withstanding humiliation with grace and poise in the name of social decorum."

Tall vases full of flowers sat on long tables festooned with platters of food interspersed with carafes of various drinks.

Tall vases full of flowers sat on long tables festooned with platters of food interspersed with carafes of various drinks.

Pesah was stock-still, hands splayed, the careful gauze applied to them unraveling.

She would sneak into it and go through his ledgers and law books and even furtively run her hands over the dark robes he wore to court, imagining herself in those very robes one day, sitting with other judges.

He let his hands drop to his sides, listless. "He's going to die, Ziva. There's nothing we can do."

She needed to tell him something, too. That Baba wouldn't let her tend to him anymore. That he was not only going to go to Samkarsh to live in a colony with other lepers until he died from an infection or from the cough that rattled his chest, but that he wouldn't be allowed to see Ziva while he was still in Atil.

Maybe not a prophecy, then. A vision of the future. A premonition of his own death.

Her mother had gotten Ziva some small trinkets and jewelry, which Ziva never wore, but now she grabbed them and stuck them in her pockets.

Darkness. Ziva hated how it swallowed and obscured.

She slapped the reins on the horses' flanks, and they pulled the old red wagon out of the stables and into the night.