Bone Ash Sky Read Online Free PDF Page A

the face of violence. Self-determination. Self-rule. Self. Self. Count on city dwellers to be selfish. Writers of fantasies and lies. Setting up printing presses, talking of freedom and sovereignty from empire. That composer Komitas always big-noted himself; well of course they’d send him to a labour camp just to shut him up. They laughed at the paltry joke that did the rounds of town, shook their heads, went on with their patient work, the daily caress of the familiar.
    Nothing much had changed in Van. The Pakradounians lived on the outskirts, to the east of the walled citadel. It was cleaner, Mamma said. And safer too , Minas mouthed, but didn’t dare speak aloud. They lived in Aykesdan, the Garden City of fields and farms, where there was a great deal of space to run and hide. It had once been the granary and pleasure quarter of the old town, now reduced to a hamlet of huts and orchards clinging to the slopes. Nothing had changed there since the war began, except for the shape and colour of their worries. Minas still fed their pet lamb – the runt of the flock – with warm milk each evening, taking comfort in the small round head resting against his knee. Mamma continued to bake holy bread every Saturday night to be carried under Papa’s none-too-clean jacket, and Lilit still put the sacrificial hen to roast slowly on the coals before they left for church. She twisted her hair in curl papers the night before, at her mother’s insistence, and had angry, vengeful dreams from sleeping on her stomach with her face buried deep in the pillow.
    Mamma was always pale from the early morning’s work, her lips shut tight on her secrets. Papa strode well ahead, calling formal greetings to all his friends. Lilit halted every few paces to pull up her summer stockings, surreptitiously, under cover of her voluminous skirts. The stockings were old and thin, much darned, too loose for her now. She’d grown since last summer, cast off baby fat, and her legs were longer, trim-ankled, shapely. Minas trailed behind his parents, stepping on his sister’s heels deliberately each time she stopped: a small diversion from the boredom of the long walk from home.
    She uttered whispered yelps of protest each time but never looked behind or raised a hand to her brother. Yervan sauntered behind them with his parents, whistling his secret signal so she’d know he was there. She could feel his gaze burning into the flesh of her buttocks, hidden by her lawn tunic and layers of undergarments. She wore a linked belt her papa had made, embossed with inscriptions promising a good future and many children. She knew that if she married Yervan the belt would widen then diminish as she became pregnant, gave birth, whittled down to her girlish shape again. It would be her fortune: the only record of her life, years written in silver and underlined in gold.
    In church she contrived to stand opposite Yervan, able to see across the thicket of heads to where he lounged against a wall among all the other men and boys, avoiding her eyes. A frescoed Christ rose behind him, robed in cloth of gold, pomegranate buds twined in his unruly hair. Woven designs of flowers and fruit, constellations of earth. Black skin from so many burning candles. His three fingers were raised in benediction, touching the top of Yervan’s perfect head. She breathed a prayer: Please let nothing happen to him. In the next heartbeat, halfashamed of herself for such frivolous appeals: Forgive me, Jesus. But I meant it.
    She mingled with the other women at the end of the service, eating her morsel of blessed bread, careful not to scatter crumbs, when all she wanted to do was fling away those trappings, bread and all, stride across the courtyard to Yervan and kiss his half-open lips. The sun shone on snowy scarves and upraised faces, where whispered gossip bred darker each year. He loitered past her, head down, hands in his pockets. She turned to listen to