It had been three days since they had been discovered in the hedge maze, and Hawwa now found herself in a black scratchy niqab that covered her entire body, hot, coarse sand slowly being packed around her. She hardly noticed the men jeering at her as they worked at burying her neck deep into the earth. All emotion seemed to have left her in the previous days so that now near the end, she was only an empty shell.
Her eyes never left his face. Alanzo was chained to a platform more than twenty feet from her. His face was swollen and misshapen from the beatings he must have taken, but it seemed that they had not broken his will. He was yelling at the sultan about how this was a mistake and the implications of his death would result in terrible repercussions on their trading alliance. He was still fighting, and she loved him for it, but she knew it was hopeless.
Manara, her sister had been very thorough at collecting the evidence against her. They were both adulterers, and her father’s hands were tied. She was a harlot and he was an infidel and now they were both dead, he just didn’t realize it yet. Alanzo believed that he could still talk his way out of this, but his misunderstanding of the severity of their crimes worked against him. She knew that they should have been more careful. While she knew that Alanzo’s own bias’s blinded him, she should have known better.
The sand rose higher around her and the heat radiated off of it causing her to sweat uncomfortably all over and she felt the tickle of a droplet of sweat fall down her face. Her hands were already pinned under the sand and she could not move to wipe it away. Instead it fell on her mouth and she tasted the salt on her lips, realizing it would be the last thing she tasted.
Finally, as the executioner stepped onto Alanzo’s platform he looked towards her and their eyes locked. She looked and saw the fear that she had ceased to feel the day before. For a moment feeling returned to her as she longed to tell him that she was sorry. He looked at her straining against his chains his jaw set in a hard line. He tilted his head to the side slightly, reflecting her apology back at herself. She smiled sadly trying to send him comfort before she realized that he would not be able to see it. She held his eyes nonetheless so that he did not notice when the executioner stepped up behind him. She watched as a long curved sword was slid across his throat and the life drained from his eyes like the blood draining from his neck. She didn’t register the stones that were beginning to rain down on her until one hit her in the temple. As she sank into the black abyss of unconsciousness a singular thought bubbled up from the depths. ‘I wonder what they serve for dinner in hell.’
and then Add to home screen.