Hammer of Witches (9 page)

The next time I
awoke, it was dusk. Sidelong shadows prowled the slanted lines of architecture above me, and music thumped in from under the floorboards: guitars and drums playing some gypsy dance I had heard once before.

Jinniyah was bent in a bow on the floor, chanting something under her breath with her hands flat against the ground. Her knees rested on my bag, which she used as a pillow. Her flaming black hair waved gently on her head as she chanted, casting blackish lights across the attic’s walls.

I kept watching her strange ritual as I reached for the tray waiting for me on the dresser. Despite my previous accident, there was still some cold, greasy soup left in my bowl, and for that I was grateful. I hadn’t eaten for more than a day now, and my stomach was quick to remind me of it.

“I can warm it for you,” Jinniyah said, referring to my bowl of soup.

I sat with it on the edge of the bed. “What were you doing?”

“Praying,” was the answer. The girl floated over to me and
cupped her hands under my bowl, her rings clinking against the ceramic as she touched it. Within seconds I could feel heat traveling from the bowl to my hands, and greasy yellow bubbles popped across the soup’s surface.

“Thanks,” I said, blinking back my surprise. Careful not to drip any soup on to the covers, I balanced the warm bowl on my legs so I could remove the loaf of Serena’s bread from my bag. I ripped off a hunk for myself and handed a piece to Jinniyah. She sniffed it, picked a crumb off the top, and popped it into her mouth.

“What
are
you?” I said at last, unable to think of a better way to ask it.

The girl smiled in her grandmotherly way and pointed at her fiery black hair. “Ifritah. God made us out of subtle flame and smokeless fire. In Europe they sometimes call us genies. Like ‘genius,’ you know, because we’re all very smart.” The girl wagged a ringed finger at my face. “But don’t think I’m going to start granting you wishes! Only attention-starved genies do that, and I am
not
attention-starved!”

“A fire genie,” I said, trying to make sense of it. “And that’s why the water hurt you before. Because you’re a fire spirit, and fire and water —”

“Don’t mix,” Jinniyah finished. She picked another piece of bread off my loaf. “But don’t worry about all that water business. I’m fine now! We ifritah aren’t fragile like humans.” The girl put her arms in front of her with her wrists facing the
ceiling. The skin on the undersides of her arms was completely clear, with no signs of the burns that had previously scarred them.

“So you’re immortal,” I remarked, and I slurped up some soup.

“Uh-uh.” The girl shook her head at me. “We ifritah are good at healing, but you
can
kill us. Actually humans have killed genies a bunch of times. But Allah — praised be His name — gave them magic swords to do it, so that made things easier for them.”

With difficulty I choked down the piece of bread I was chewing on. Allah? Wasn’t he the Moorish god? And he sent warriors to slaughter genies — innocent little girls like this one? The Moorish horse riders of my nightmares returned to me then, their features growing grotesque as they rattled their curved blades. And with them, Amir al-Katib rode across Granada, cutting down Spaniards in the name of his vengeful god.

“But those genies were evil,” Jinniyah continued dismissively. “Anyway, I can heal, and I can fly a little, and I can change shape if I want to. Not into objects or anything like that. And not animals — ick, so dirty. But I can make myself look like a human if I need to! Not a specific human, of course, but human enough.”

Skeptical, I munched on my bread. “I guess that sounds helpful.”

“It is! Why? What can you do,
Baltasar
?”

I laughed as I brushed the crumbs off my tunic. “Not much. My Uncle Diego’s been teaching me to make books.” Suddenly I fell quiet. “I mean, he
was
teaching me to make books . . .”

I trailed off, unable to speak of the man any longer.

“What happened to him?” Jinniyah said in small, sad voice. “What happened to
you
?”

I shook my head, unable to say a word. But I supposed it was my duty to tell her everything I knew. We were in this thing together now, whatever it was. So, unsure of where to start, I told her about the eyes at the window, the golem and the capture, Diego’s story, and the gift of the necklace. And when I reached the part where I had to leave my aunt and uncle behind, I plunged through as if it were a fable, a myth — a fairy tale that had happened to someone else and not to me. And Jinniyah, who had been so talkative before, fell mute as tears fizzled down her face.

“Did David really say that Amir left my necklace for your protection?” the girl said after a time.

It took me a moment to place the name. “You mean Diego. Yes, that’s what he said.”

A huge, fang-toothed grin broke out in Jinniyah’s tear-burned face. “Baltasar! Do you know what this means? Amir didn’t abandon me after all! He left me to protect you, to help you!” The girl knocked herself in the head with a tiny fist as
the tear-burns faded from her cheeks. “Stupid, stupid Jinniyah! I should have known he had a good reason! Amir is the best person. The very best person in the world!”

“So I take it you don’t hate him anymore?” I said, dubious.

“Hate Amir? Never!”

I tried to smile, but there was little joy in it. If only I could forgive as easily as Jinniyah could. Maybe if you’re near-immortal, being abandoned for fourteen years isn’t a big deal in the scheme of things. But I was fourteen years old, and I could never forgive Amir al-Katib.

Done with her bread, Jinniyah patted the crumbs from her hands, planted her bare feet on the floor, and pushed herself up to face me. “Well, that settles it! We have to find him. Right now.”

Find Amir? I swallowed my last bit of soup with difficulty. “Uncle Diego said that too. But —”

Jinniyah jumped up in the air and stayed there. “But nothing! He’s your
father
!”

I shrugged, not willing to agree with that one.

“And he’s in trouble!” Jinniyah went on. “Why else would he come to your house the other night? He must need you for something — something important!”

I placed my empty bowl of soup on the dresser, took the girl by the shoulders, and pushed her gently to the ground. “Even if that were true, how are we supposed to find him? Even the Malleus Maleficarum can’t figure out where he is. For all
we know the man’s in Africa by now.”

I was glad to see that my question had Jinniyah stumped. Unfortunately she was only stumped for three seconds. “That’s easy!” the girl said with a grin. “We’ll ask the Baba Yaga.”

I frowned. This sounded like the beginning of another story, and I was getting sick of stories by this point. Being part of my own was about more than I could take.

“She’s a Storyteller,” Jinniyah explained. “A very powerful Storyteller! The Baba Yaga’s so famous that people in Russia even make up stories about
her.
They say she’s an evil old witch, and Amir says she’s a kind of a ghul. You do know what ghuls are, don’t you?”

“No . . .”

“Arabian desert demons. The men live around cemeteries and dig up the graves to eat the corpses. And the women, the ghulah, lure men to the desert so they can eat them all up.”

My face pulled itself back at the thought. “And you want to go visit one of these people?”

Jinniyah nodded with vigor, sending black sparkles springing from her hair. “Oh, yes, yes, yes! The Baba Yaga knows the answers to all sorts of questions. She can see the past, the future. She’ll know where Amir is, easy!”

Exactly what I was afraid of. I turned away from Jinniyah toward the closed window shutters. How could I tell her that I had no interest in finding Amir al-Katib, that I had liked the man a lot better when I thought he was dead — and not my father?

On the other hand, a meeting with this Baba Yaga did sound tempting. A wise fortune-teller who could answer any question? Maybe it was exactly what I needed. Lately everything I knew as true was disappearing, melting away. What I needed most was answers, someone who could help me separate the truth from all the stories. A person who could tell me, without qualification or doubt, exactly what I needed to do.

Jinniyah took one of my hands in both of hers. “Come see the Baba Yaga with me, Bal. Please?”

I looked down at the girl and sighed. Oh, how could I say no to that guileless face, that hopeful smile? I took Jinniyah’s hand and led her toward the attic door.

“So, ‘Bal,’ huh?” I said, smirking at her.

The girl grinned back at me. “Baltasar’s too long.”

“All right, but I’m going to have to call you Jinni.”

Jinni made a face but didn’t seem too put out over it. “That’s what your
mom
used to call me.” Before my eyes the ifritah transformed into a human girl with curly black hair and the threadbare clothes of a peasant. And before I knew it, we were galloping down the inn’s staircase, pushing our way through the crowded tavern — where there was still no sign of Antonio de Cuellar — and bursting out onto the dusky pier.

Outside the sky had changed to a lilac-indigo hue. Above the
Santa María
and its sisters, the first stars began to twinkle. Jinniyah stopped us short in front of the ships and raised her head to the sky.

She started sniffing.

I followed her lead but found I couldn’t smell anything at all — only the normal salty-fishy aromas of Palos’s port.

“Is this some kind of genie thing?” I asked her.

“I’m trying to find an entrance to the Baba Yaga’s house. People from all over the world always want to visit her and ask her questions about the future, but she lives very very far away. So the Baba Yaga created magic doors all over the world so people could come visit her more easily. There used to be a door in Palos that she created for Amir. But that was before . . .”

Though Jinniyah trailed off, I knew exactly what she meant. She meant before Amir had trapped her in the necklace. Before he had abandoned us.

But Jinniyah got over the thought quickly — much quicker than I did, anyway. “I can sense magic, you know,” the girl said, out of nowhere. “It makes my skin all prickly. Especially right here, on my nose.” She tapped the tip of her nose and went cross-eyed. “The entrances to Baba Yaga’s house are highly, highly magical, so it’s always easy for me to find one. In fact, they’re so magical, they even make me sneeze sometimes!”

I chuckled through my own nose at the thought of Jinniyah sneezing her way through Palos, but quickly my face hardened. Not far away, three Malleus soldiers were gathered, holding spears, sharing information — searching. For me.

“Whatever you’re doing, make it fast,” I said to Jinni.

“Got her!” the girl cried, and she raced off through the port with me still attached to her.

The girl scurried down the road and into the empty market, zipping this way and that with such certainty that an onlooker would have been sure that she was the Palos native. By the time we reached Amir al-Katib’s house, I hoped she’d take a second to pay her respects and catch her breath. Instead she darted forward even faster, propelling me on at speeds I hadn’t felt since being tied to the back of a horse. At least at this rate the soldiers would have a hard time keeping up with us.

Jinniyah stopped us abruptly in front of a crumbling hovel not far from the edge of town. I bent over and gulped down as much air as I could. Drab, moth-eaten curtains covered the hovel’s tiny window, and tortured branches like chicken feet poked out from under the building’s grimy walls.

“This is the entrance to the Baba Yaga’s house?” I said. I gave the hovel door a light knock. No answer. I tried again, knocking a little harder. This time the door yawned open to reveal a dark, cobwebbed room devoid of human presence.

“Looks like no one’s home,” I said into the shadows.

“Looks like,” Jinniyah said with the haughtiness of knowledge.

“Well, we came this far. We might as well go inside and wait for her.”

With a final glance at Jinniyah, I strode into the building.

I was overwhelmed by
a wall of heat — not the humid heat of Palos but the roasting heat of a fire. The door to the house slammed shut behind Jinni, and instantly the interior transformed. No longer were we standing in a dusty, empty hovel, but a cozy one-room cabin, walls bright with the orange light of a fireplace. About a million dripping candles covered the cabin floor, along with piles of books and scrolls and crumpled pieces of parchment. In the middle of the room sat a large table carved from a single piece of wood, and in the corner lounged a fur-covered bed.

Impressed by the transformation, I stepped farther into the house, then flipped through one of the cabin’s many books. “Do you think the Baba Yaga will be back soon?” I asked Jinni.

The cabin door immediately squealed the answer. A freezing gust of wind brushed up against the back of my neck from outside. That was when I saw her, a dwarf of an old woman made larger by the pile of scarves and shawls draped over her
rounded back. The woman hobbled into the room with a gnarly oak cane. “Come in, come in,” the dwarf said as she shut the door behind her, letting a final gust of wind blow in from outside. The wind was biting cold, as if the woman had entered not from Palos in the summer but some far-off mountain town in December. I stretched my neck to see out the cabin’s only cloudy window, which was almost completely obscured by a pile of books. Sure enough, I could see no hint of the buildings of my hometown, nor could I hear crickets, nor could I see the sea. All I could see through the window was a gloomy pine forest and flurries of gray snow swirling through the trees.