Excerpt of The Desert Of Souls by Howard Jones

1

The parrot lay on the floor of his cage, one claw thrust
stiffly toward the tiny wooden swing suspended above him.
The black olive clenched in his beak was the definitive
sign that Pago was a corpse, for while he had fooled us
all by playing dead in the past, he had never failed to
consume an olive. To be sure, I nudged the cage. It shook,
the swing wobbled, and the bird slid minutely but did not
move a single feather of his own accord.

“He is dead,” Jaffar said simply behind me; simply, but
with the weight of the universe hung upon the final word.

I turned to my master, who sat with his back to me upon
the stone bench of his courtyard. The second-story
balcony, from which the cage hung, draped Jaffar in
shadow. Beyond him, sunlight played in the rippling water
that danced from a fountain. Flowers blossomed upon the
courtyard plants and wild birds warbled gaily. Another
parrot, in a cage upon the far wall, even called out that
it was time for a treat, as he was wont to do. But my
master paid no heed to any of this.

I stepped into the sunlight so that I might face him. Upon
another bench, nearby, the poet Hamil sat with stylus and
paper. There was no love in the look he bestowed me, and
he returned to his scribblings with the air of a showman.

“Master,” I said, “I am sorry. I, too, was fond of Pago.”

“Who could not be?” Jaffar asked wearily. He was but a few
years younger than my twenty-five, but due to time indoors
looked younger still, no matter his full beard. His face
was wan, from a winter illness that had also shed some of
his plumpness.

“He was the brightest bird here,” Jaffar continued in that
same miserable tone.

“Brighter than many in your employ,” Hamil said without
looking up.

“Too true,” Jaffar agreed.

“Is there some way that I can help, Master?” I was the
captain of Jaffar’s guard and sometimes his confidant; the
matter of bird death, however, was outside the field of my
knowledge, and I did not understand why he had summoned
me. It is true that I had found Pago entertaining, for in
addition to playing dead, he could mimic the master and
his chief eunuch, and even sometimes answered the call to
prayer by bowing thrice. He did this only when it pleased
him to do so, which, as my nephew Mahmoud once noted, was
far too much like many men he knew. Also Pago had once
perched upon the poet’s chest when Hamil had passed out
from consuming the fruit of the grape, and pinched his
long thin nose heartily. That had pleased me so that I
brought Pago the choicest of olives whenever I knew I
would pass by his cage.

“Do you suspect he has been killed?” Jaffar asked.