Sleep had not easily to Maha since arriving in Lawley. If she wasn’t out gathering, then she was tending to some midnight emergency. It had gotten to the point where she had quit trying to sleep before midnight. It always took her much longer to get out of bed and dressed then to simply put down whatever she was doing to keep her awake.

But her sleepless nights were beginning to take a toll on her. She was tired in the day, and had even taken a nap once or twice in the middle of the afternoon. It was now difficult for her to fall asleep at the proper time in the late evening, and now that her cataloging was almost complete, she was left with almost nothing to do.

Which was why she had left the inn to wander. When she was younger, she had been warned about the dangers of wandering out alone at night, but Maha honestly felt somewhat secure walking alone at night here. The most dangerous thing to her, large mobs of angry people, typically were asleep at this point. Provided she kept away from the taverns, she was relatively safe.

The night sky was cloudy, and it made Maha feel the humidity even more. Damn the island—heat was nothing to Maha, but the humidity made her feel a little sick. The air felt too thick to breathe, almost tangible here. But for a moment, the moonlight glimmered through a break in the clouds, and Maha realized where she had wandered to.

The graveyard.

Maha did not care for graveyards. It was bad for her reputation, as only witches chose to play in the graveyard. Graveyards had always unnerved her, even in Arabia. She was about to turn back the way she came, but then she heard something.

A young woman had died today. Early in the morning, two days after a long, hard labor--as so many did... the midwife had called him in toward the end, but only in order to make a decision regarding Caesar's operation. Thomas had done it before, and he'd tried it again, cutting into the woman's body. She was by this time near death, but he had tormented himself for hours. The baby was alive. That was his only consolation. He had even managed to finish stitching up the wound he had left in her belly. She survived.

And then, days later--this morning--after falling into a fever and lingering, weakly, unable to feed the infant--all of her muscles had seized up, and she had died in convulsions.

Thomas was not a man of many words or many tears, and he had seen too many tragedies to care much any longer, or so he sometimes thought. But he had to excuse himself when the family called him in again. Too late, too late. He had gone out behind their shed and bitten down on his tongue until it bled to keep from screaming. At least her body, so abused in life, could provide some clue--if only he knew what it was that had killed her at last. Had he let in some infection while he did the stitching?

He brought a shovel used often in the stables. It sunk easily into the damp earth. Her family had, of course, been unable to afford a stone, but the wooden marker and the fresh grave were clear indications of her whereabouts. Her name had been Eloise Dale. Silently, Thomas knelt over her fresh grave, setting down his box of dissection tools, and said the Kaddish. It was a strange and beautiful thing, he thought, that the Mourner's Kaddish made no mention of death.

He unearthed her plain coffin and opened it, then lifted her stiffening body out and carefully laid it on a cloth. There was little chance anyone could come by, and he was in a dark corner of the graveyard in any case. His sketching equipment laid by, he began his incision, just over the place where he had put in his stitches--and froze. There was a noise. Thomas looked around, but his eyes weren't what they'd once been, and all he saw were sparkling bits of the night. All he heard was his own breathing.

A grave robber, it had to be. Maha was torn; should she go and stop him, or leave him be? One was right, and the other safe. If she fled now, no one would know that she had been there, and her reputation safe for just a little while longer. But what kind of person would she be if she just let someone’s grave get pillaged? Much as she disliked most of the people here, she had been taught to respect the dead, no matter whose dead it was. She hoped that people would do the same for her. Hopefully, someone would be kind enough to her if she were to die in this Godless country to bury her, and face her to the east.

It was a weak hope, but hope was hope, and he who had hope had everything, right?

Maha swallowed, then decided. Even if she would have to run in the morning, she had to stop whatever was happening. Maybe it was only a poor son whose mother had been lost, and they had forgotten to bury her with a favored item. She took one trembling step, then another, slowly nearing the figure…

Figures. Or rather, one figure with a dead body. The body of a woman was laid out on a cloth, the figure bent over it. She watched his actions slowly, almost in a daze. She had heard of this before—dissections and the study of human anatomy up close, but had never seen it. It was severely frowned upon in Damask, and absolutely forbidden elsewhere.

And then Maha realized who the figure was.

“Ustaz,” she said slowly, her voice trembling almost as much as her knees were at this point. “What in God’s name are you doing?”

Thomas caught his breath, and his hand tightened on his scalpel--then loosened. It was only Maha.

"You can see what I'm doing," he said, his voice calm. For just a moment he was back in the lecture halls of the maristan, or in the surgery, speaking to students after he had become a physician. "I am dissecting this woman, Eloise Dale. She died of infection after I cut into her body to save her life and that of her child, who lives still. The area around the stitching internally has, you can see, become black and sticky, and there is a quantity of infected fluid. It is my fault." His tone was scrupulous, bitter, and oddly calm.

"I neglected to sterilize the inside of the stomach cavity. But it's clear from the internal bleeding that she would have died anyway. I had to know."

He looked calmly toward the pale oval of Maha's face within her hijab, and held up his bloodied hands. "I know... it's against everything our religions have taught us. But who showed you healing, Maha? God--or men?"

Maha swallowed. Thomas was speaking to her as Mohammad had, years ago, when he was teaching her about something new. Maha couldn’t help but listen and watch in horror. What did he think he was doing? The woman had died in childbirth—the most tragic and yet most honorable death a woman could have! She deserved to rest in peace.

“God gave the man’s body the ability to heal. Man learns from other men how to heal, but he is only able because God gave him an ability to learn such knowledge.” Skills and trades were often passed down from father to son, mother to daughter, but it would be impossible to have anything with the mercy and wonder of Allah.

The child, but what had happen to this woman’s child? A noble death, but more tragic then noble when the child was left behind. Maha looked away from the body—it made her stomach clench to look at the dead woman. What gave him the right to dig her up? Was it her family’s wish, or was it his own conscience that compelled him? “Does her family know? Is it her wish to be examined, ustaz? If she desires to be buried whole, then why are you cutting into her? You ‘had to know’, you say...is it for science, or to ease your conscience?”

Thomas looked down at the body in front of him and sighed.

"I always do it for my conscience," he said, at last. Carefully, he reached for a needle and some fine thread, and began sewing up the gaping tissue. "There's no other master I serve, really, because I think conscience is what God gave us... and I think we can't know what He really wants from us except by following it."

He paused in his stitching and shrugged, looking back up at Maha. "This might save someone else's life, and that's all that matters to me. If we go by nature we're going by death, and I can't--" He shook his head. "These are complicated ideas and I'm not a philosopher. Just a physician. I know what I have to do. Will you tell the local priest?" He watched her calmly. "It's as your conscience demands, of course."

“A thief’s conscience tells him to steal, so is it correct for him to steal instead of making an honest way?” How could he be so calm!? He was handling a corpse, and that thought alone mad Maha squirm. Was he not concerned about being caught? If he were found piddling around with her corpse, regardless of why, the best thing that could happen to him was expulsion from the village, but just as likely was death.

“I will not tell the priest, or anyone else for that matter. Who would believe my word against yours? You are eccentric, but you are still one of them. No, when the rumors turn into action, it will not be your head they go for, ustaz.” Maha sneered.

“If I am blamed for your folly, ustaz., then may God curse your conscience. Say what you will to excuse your actions, but it will be Allah who decides if you are wrong.”

"Let him." Thomas felt his chest clench with the beginnings of anger. "Do you think I haven't thought about this, and spent sleepless night on it? My best friend, before he died, told me I could cut into his body. He was of your faith, and he understood--let God do whatever he likes to my soul after I die. If my work saves even one life, grants even one person a few more years on Earth and not in Heaven, as glorious as it may be, then I'm satisfied."

Throughout all this he kept calmly stitching, his hands long since become competent on their own, regardless of any preoccupation he might feel. Now he finished stitching the stomach cavity, pulled down the woman's dress, and reached for the sides of the shroud, wrapping them around her tightly.

"And I am not one of them." Before he picked up the corpse to put it back into the coffin, he turned to look at Maha. "I may not wear my Jew's hat here, but I've never been one of them, or one of anything."

“Then he consented, and there is very little I can say to that. But have all the others consented? I do not believe that you thought to ask her, or her family, nor do I believe that any would have consented.”

He was a Jew? Maha was only half surprised—it was difficult for a Christian, regardless of his race, to exist in Arabia. She had only seen one before arriving in Scalia, and he had been a protected guest. Maha emphasized with him for his struggles, as she shared many of the same, but he passed as a Christian! She could not remove her hijab—one put on the hijab, not take it off. Removing it would cause men to sin, and her by proxy.

“Perhaps, for those few, it is the best that you have the knowledge. But you said it yourself, you could not have done anything for this woman. Why fight against God? It is His will that this happen, it is ours to accept her death, not to fight it.”

Thomas sighed.

"A wise philosopher wrote that we cannot argue about God. Reason and God are separate... I wish you understood, but there is nothing I can say that will change your mind." He paused to stand up, groaning a little, and picked up the stiffening body, to place it as carefully as he could in the dark recesses of the coffin. Blowing out his breath and straightening up carefully from his stoop, he rubbed at his own lower back.

"There. No harm is done, I hope. As for fighting God... if everything is His will, then we should never even try to heal. I cannot understand..."

He shook his head and bent to cover the coffin.

"Your beliefs are your own. I just wish that you could understand my way of thinking, or at least not--you may of course leave my home if you wish, but I'd prefer it if you decided to stay." There it was, that flash of loneliness surfacing.

“Healing, no matter how it is done, can only go so far.” Maha did understand Thomas’s desire, his urge to fight. One of the few deaths that had happened on her watch was likely out of her hands, like this woman had been out of his. Maha had been distraught for days—it had only been a little child, with so much yet to do, but now he was buried. Maha could do nothing but mourn.

She looked down, sighing softly. “I do not think we shall come to terms on this. I will not speak of it to anyone, you may trust, but I will not lie.

Maha tried to smile. She was certain it looked awkward. “I will continue to reside with you, ustaz. If we disagree about the Prophet, but live peacefully, then we can surely disagree over this. Besides, you are becoming old! If you were to fall, who would pick you up?”

"Ha!" Thomas laughed breathlessly, and slid the coffin back into the empty grave. "As you say, I'm old. I may have to curtail my grave-robbing soon anyway, simply because of the ache in my back, so you need worry doubly less."

He picked up his shovel and started to replace the damp earth. It brushed against bits of sand and rock, and he gritted his teeth at the sound. Below, hollow thuds resonated as the dirt hit the coffin-lid. By morning it would look just as it had tonight. A fresh grave, a scar on the land, but packed tightly into place. No one would see what lay beneath, and anyway, she remained whole. He had heard that during a plague in Duain the graveyards had been so full they had dug up bodies and piled the bones in catacombs. And she could claim his work was worse than that!

She was young, and she had faith. Maybe she was right.

Finished, he picked up his case and turned back to her.

"But what are you doing out so late? Come, I'll walk back to the house with you. I'm not sure I trust all of the men about to leave you unmolested."

“Well, then hopefully you will not fall while you are out in the graveyard then. It would be difficult to explain that, yes.” The idea was mildly humorous, but the reality wasn’t quite so amusing. Maha shook her head free of that idea. It would be best to not remember what had just happened, what had been happening, or what would happen in the graveyard if she wanted to live a little happier.

“Ah, I could not sleep. So many have come at night, my body refuses to fall asleep just to awaken in a few hours! I appreciate business, but not as much in the night. And I would not worry about men. Most are too afraid of my supposed magic to actually harm me. The last one that tried to rob me liked my fish too much to actually do it.”

Thomas glanced sideways at her, not quite sure if she was serious. Probably.

"You shouldn't be about the graveyard at night, you know. The people around here are too caught up in their own business to be very suspicious, but when something goes wrong, it'll be you or me they'll blame. I can--" He stopped, stricken. He couldn't do anything for her; the best he could do was stay away, in fact. It didn't do her any favors to live with an unknown and suspicious man; even if he knew their relationship was anything but venereal. And if she had come about him in the graveyard, so might someone else.

"You know, I think--" He was lonely. Thomas faced the fact. But his was a lonely lot. "It might be for the best if you did leave... at least my home. I would hate it if you were to come to harm on my behalf." His words were calm, eminently so, and inside something was shutting itself, tightly, darkly.

“I am good cook! You know that, ustaz.” Maha said, lightening her dark mood for just a moment. “He is not very gracious, he did try to rob me, but you cannot rob someone who makes good food.” She almost smiled then.

“It is not a habit of mine to wander about the graveyard at night. I do not know how I wandered here, just that I began to walk. Perhaps then, this meeting was His will.” She hesitated for a moment. Did her no longer want her to live in his house? It was understandable—it would be an absolute scandal if they were in Arabia. Then again, if they were in Arabia, Maha wouldn’t have been worrying about any of this. She would have been married, and probably have a child of her own by now.

If she really thought about it, her reputation was shot to all Hell anyway. While she had managed to protect herself so far, not everyone would believe her. Besides, she was getting old. While it wasn’t uncommon to marry a little older in Arabia, a woman could only go so long without marrying before she was no longer desirable. She looked down. How long was Ali going to take? She could wait a very long time, but she could not wait forever. She was still young enough to run, but one of these days, she would not be able. One of these days, she was going to find that she had been run out of every town, every village of Thiasa, and then where could she go?

“I am in danger on my own, ustaz, I am in danger with you. It really does not matter after a time, all I may do to help myself is watch. Unless you are caught yourself, the blame will fall on me. If the rebellion fails, that will fall on me. If there is a storm, and a tree snaps and falls on a house, the blame will fall on me. I will have to leave sometime, that is the way it is.” She bit her lip. She liked staying with Thomas, he was good company. It also helped that she did not have to pay such a high rent in Thomas’s house as she did in the inn. She was slowly building up funds, which was a first for Maha. But if he no longer desired to keep her in his house, then what could she do?

“If you wish me to leave, I will leave in the morning. The inn is not terrible, they will let me back. But if it is my reputation you worry for, there is nothing to be done. People will believe what they want, not what is true.”