contact killed it, but Parvez had told him that you can’t kill the dead, and Parvez was right. Adnan could touch this reef for hours and he’d never harm it because … you can’t kill the dead. Parvez had pointed to the resort islands, where tourists stayed in sprawling beach bungalows. “You can only give them rest. Let them dream. Let them sleep. We are coming.”
* * *
Starlit, Rafan crept alongside Fatima, Musnah, and Senada to within whispering distance of the cemetery.
“Wait behind there.” He pointed to two towering palms that rose inches from each other.
The three women in headscarves crouched down. Rafan took a steadying breath and walked to the entrance. An Islamic inscription had been chiseled into the arch centuries ago: ALLAH GIVES LIFE, AND ALLAH TAKES IT AWAY.
He headed directly to where Basheera’s body salted the earth with minerals and blood. He did not sink down, as he had earlier that day. Instead, he listened with the ears of a sentry as his eyes studied the commanding stillness, looking for those who would condemn him and the three women by the palms.
Slowly, he walked back to the gate, hanging his head as a bereaved man. But he was still searching for what he did not want to find.
* * *
Adnan had stopped snorkeling more than a decade ago, when the reefs began to die. He’d been sickened by the disappearance of batfish, with their bold stripes and wing-shaped bodies; and the loss of speckled green puffer fish with their long, snoutlike faces, bulgy eyes, and professorial airs. So many whimsical species—angelfish and triggerfish and the grumpy-looking grouper—had vanished as quickly, it seemed, as the tiny tessellated schools that had darted away in flashes of yellow, pink, blue, and orange.
Only this whiteness remained. This blankness. Adnan touched the coral again. White was the color of death. Not black.
Swimming over the reef, he peered down into the small caverns where moray eels once lurked, evil-looking and sly, and nattily attired parrot fish had nibbled contentedly on algae. The emptiness shocked him.
He circled back over the reef to swim to shore. He would tell Parvez what he had seen: nothing. The blank white face of nothing.
A shadow passed so swiftly on his left that it didn’t register fully. Then he turned and saw that the shadow had a body fifteen feet long and a mouth that could crush his skull.
* * *
Fatima, Musnah, and Senada stepped away from the palms. None of them spoke, but Rafan saw light in Senada’s moist eyes, and thankfulness. Basheera had been at Senada’s side when she gave birth to a stillborn son; and his little sister, who had always been the quiet one, had stood up to Senada’s husband when he had screamed at his grieving wife, “Murderer. Murderer.”
To be out at night with Rafan and two women was dangerous for Senada. Not so much for Fatima and Musnah: As single women, they did not have threats to fear in their homes. Only threats from those who might be spying on the cemetery.
“You are sure no one is there?” asked Senada, half a head taller than the other two.
“I am sure,” Rafan said, though certainty was never possible with so many followers of Allah searching for the sins of others.
They did not pass under the arch. Rafan walked them along the perimeter, four hunched, hurrying figures moving through starlight and shadows until he turned and led them to Basheera’s grave. The women gathered side by side. Rafan stepped back to keep watch.
A murmur of prayer arose. Rafan’s surveillance revealed not a trace of movement in the cemetery. A stillness as absolute as death.
Fatima, Musnah, and Senada reached into a woven bag and released handfuls of lush pink petals. They glittered and floated to Basheera’s grave like the snow the women had never seen. A blanket, luminous and pure, covered the freshly dug earth.
* * *
Adnan stared at the massive tiger shark and tried to tread water with the slightest movement possible, torso and legs dangling in the water like bait from the great hook of heaven. Dozens of shark species lived in the seas around the Maldives, most no more threatening than a squid, but tiger sharks attacked swimmers, divers, even boats.
This one swam so close that Adnan felt water shift against his stomach. Then the shark moved on.
No, it was turning back for another pass. Hunting. Adnan looked wildly for a fisherman, sailor—anyone—to haul him aboard, but saw only a fin cutting the