The Fire Wish (10 page)

Rahela was halfway through with the first hand when the guards rotated their posts. The retiring guard stopped by the door.

“Princess,” he said. “We will be there in a few hours.” My heart beat quickly, but I managed to look him in the eye and nod. When he left, I started shaking. There was no way anyone would think I was human. They were going to kill me. I was going to die. And then Faisal was going to kill me again.

“Be still, or this will look horrible,” Rahela said. “I have to cover up this tattoo.” She colored over the owl eye and turned it into a flower petal. Amazingly, the blue didn’t show through.

Although everything around me was falling apart, and the mark I’d had for only a day was covered, I was fascinated. She made such small lines. They swirled and joined in what seemed the perfect places. It was nothing at all like what Shirin and I had tried to do. Ours had been childish and random. This was real. I had a
princess
hand.

“Have you done this design before?”

Rahela humphed. “This morning.” Of course. She would have to repeat the design. She finished the hand and looked up. “When Zayele disappeared, did she go home?” Her voice was clear, as if the answer didn’t matter to her one bit.

“I think so.…” I trailed off, looking away. Any other jinni would have kept herself alert, never to be at the mercy
of a human. I had let my guard down with this woman. “Why haven’t you made a wish from me also?”

“I tried,” she said coldly, “but nothing happened. It’s good you feel solid and human in my hands. The prince will need to believe, without doubt, that you are the same woman our tribe sent to him. If not, our tribe will lose all honor. And you will be killed.” She wiped the brush and picked up the other hand. I held the completed hand palm-up and watched the henna change colors.

Would the prince believe I was human? Would he believe I was Zayele, and play music for me? The thought was disturbing, and I shook it away.

“Are you going to do my feet?” I asked.

“If you
have
feet.”

“I have feet,” I said weakly.

She huffed, and then paused before dabbing the brush back into the henna and wiping the excess against the rim of the jar. She finished my hand without saying another word. Outside, the barges slid along the river, taking us past fields of grain. The guards stood ready, their swords strapped across their backs and daggers on their waists. What was in the other barges? More women to wait upon the princess?

Rahela pointed at my feet. “You must remove your slippers. I won’t do it for you.” I nodded and did as asked. “Your toenails are red?”

I blushed. No one, other than my mother, had been this close to my feet before. I had painted them as I’d heard humans sometimes did, but had kept quiet about it. I nodded, pretending it was common for a jinni to have red toenails.

While she decorated my feet, I watched out the window. We traveled on a river as green as jade. The current was slow and thick. The closer we got to Baghdad, the more often we passed groups of farmers bending over in the dirt of the fields, or a mud-brick home set high on the riverbank. Children were everywhere, running around the houses, chasing each other across the small gardens against the walls. Their laughter made it over the water and through the slats in the window. Every time we passed a group of them, they stopped their chasing and stood, mouths gaping, and stared. The adults, too, stopped their work to watch us pass by. They did not bow their heads, smile, or wave. Instead, they kept themselves fully still, only moving their eyes as we glided past.

We had traveled miles from where I had first encountered Zayele and Rahela. Barley field after barley field stood between where I’d first arrived and where we were on the river. If anyone from home had noticed I was missing, by the time they followed my trail to that spot above the river, any impression I might have made would be gone. It would be as if I had dissolved in sunlight.

My stomach dropped. No one would know how to find me. And if they couldn’t find me, I would not be saved. But still, I didn’t want to send an image. Not until I was certain I wouldn’t be able to make my way home. Again, I thought of Kamal and forced myself to think of the sphere he’d shown his father. I needed to stay focused, like Faisal had said. Getting distracted was what had gotten me stuck here.

Rahela finished my feet. “Don’t touch anything yet. You can’t wear the gown Zayele was meant to wear, as she took
it with her, but there is her second-best gown.” She stood, stretched her legs, and opened the chest. The inside of the lid was covered with writing, the script moving like water from side to side.

“What’s that?” I asked, pointing a paste-covered finger at the lid. She lowered it, so that I couldn’t read the words.

“It’s nothing,” she said. Then she pulled out a gown made of pale green silk embroidered in sky blue at the hem and wrists. The neckline was also embroidered in sky blue, but embedded in the thread were tiny lapis lazuli beads.

I gasped. “It’s beautiful.” Nothing in Faisal’s artifact room, not a single veil or bit of jewelry, compared to this. It was flowers and air and all that lived on the earth—in a dress.

“What do jinni women wear to meet their bridegroom?” It was more of an accusation than a question.

“You don’t know about jinni weddings?” I asked.

“It was never my job to know about jinn,” she said. Before I could explain how a jinni woman chose her husband, she grabbed one of my hands, checked that it was dry, and then scraped off the paste with a wooden blade.

“Ow!” I said.

“Sorry,” she said, but she didn’t sound sorry.

My skin was transformed. Roses and swirls of reddish orange covered my palms. I rubbed at them, but the designs weren’t just on my skin; they were within it. I rubbed my hands together as she scraped the henna off my feet and put my slippers back on. “If you’d undress, I could help you get into this.” She lifted the green gown off the bench.

I hesitated. When I had woken this morning, I had been
eager to fly up to the surface and find a flower for Faisal. I had thrown on my clothes without thinking, choosing my most comfortable gown over my nicer ones. And now, only hours later but in another world entirely, I was going to shed my clothes to dress like a princess. It was as frightening as it was exciting.

I slid off my clothes and let Rahela pull Zayele’s gown over my head and tie it at the back of my neck. It went to my ankles, narrowed at my chest, and wrapped around my body as if designed for me. Even my shoulders were Zayele’s in shape and size.

Rahela must have been thinking the same. “Fits you just as well. I was worried it wouldn’t be the right length, but you’ve copied her looks well enough.” She thought I’d copied the girl’s form. What did she think I truly looked like?

“Can you—can you see any differences between us?” I asked. She cocked her head and studied me.

“Yes, but I doubt anyone else would notice it.”

“What difference?”

“There’s the owl eye on your hand, but we covered it up.” Then she gave a sly grin. “Also, you’re more anxious.”

DARK SMOKE SUCKED me out of the cabin, a small whirl of fury, and pulled me away, away, away. I was twisting, a cloud of fire and ember. My stomach flew into my throat, but I wasn’t afraid.

I was free. The wish had worked.

When the spinning stopped, I gulped in a deep breath, but the air was too hot and singed my throat. I coughed, and my eyes watered. I brushed some sand off my face and shook it out of my hair. Then I opened my eyes.

In all the stories, there was one place that made me tremble in excitement at the briefest of descriptions. This was the one place my father refused to speak about, which convinced me I needed to hear more about it. It spurred stories, nightmares, and back-and-forth whispering with Rahela and Yashar. And there it was, the nightmare, with all its shining, pointy rocks.

Hell itself. The kingdom of jinn.

A cavern, as huge as a mountain turned inside out, curved up around me. A waterfall fell from a gap in the cavern wall
and poured into a canal that ended at a bubbling, flashing lake. Fire twisted in the air above the dark water. In every direction, thousands of tiny homes dotted the cavern’s sides, each lit with lamps. The whole place glowed.

I gasped. The jinni kingdom glittered. And it was alive. Hundreds of jinn rushed about, some running along the lake and some walking into golden-framed buildings.

Why was I here? Why hadn’t I gone home? Had the second part of the wish not worked?

A thousand feet above, crystal shards and golden spires hung from the ceiling. Birds swooped in the air. Birds with leathery wings and clipping wingbeats. Bats.

I tried not to look at the fires on the lake. It was like watching a campfire—beautiful and mesmerizing. Blinking, I turned my back on the lake and saw that I was in a courtyard. Tall, pillared buildings circled the fountain I stood beside.

There were people all around me.
Jinn.
A group of them were walking past, laughing together.

I froze, almost unable to breathe, until the crowd passed. No one approached and demanded a reason for my presence. No one looked twice at the human standing by the fountain. No one noticed the sweat beading on my forehead.

Jewel-toned robes trailed behind them as they went along tiled walkways. Some jinn were hand in hand and others rushed about, chasing each other. The ones running were short. Children. They had
children.
A few leaned over a narrow bridge that crossed the canal and tossed rocks into the water.

One child ran past, followed by another, who bumped into
me. She turned, flashed a grin, and then chased after her friend. Her eyelids were rimmed in gold, and her hair was braided with ribbons studded with precious stones.

When I found the courage to move, I went as purposefully as I could manage to the bench on the other side of the fountain. When I sat, I looked across the expanse at the buildings, all of various colors, sliding up the cavern’s side. There was something at the edges of my memory that had once looked like that, and while I searched the walls for any sign of a way out, I tried to remember. Where had I seen houses like these? Like caves, or birdhouses. Ah, yes. Swallows. The jinn’s houses were like so many swallow nests, clinging together.

But they weren’t. Right before my eyes, one of them changed shape and color. In seconds, the transformation was over and a jinni stepped out to admire his emerald home. He put his hands on his hips while he did this, then went back inside and shut the door. A minute later, when I still hadn’t moved, I saw another house change shape. Its color stayed ocher, but it grew taller and a window of yellow glass grew from the middle. No one came out this time. Maybe they only needed more light. I shivered again. These were the homes of thousands of jinn. As the idea spread, so did my goose bumps.

A mixture of anger and terror washed over me. The wish hadn’t worked at all. I was in the wrong place. It was all so wrong, wrong, wrong!

“There you are!” A woman was towering over me, and my stomach dropped. They had found me. “I went to your little hiding place, but you weren’t there.” Her lips were colored with
some sort of crushed gemstone, and she wore a matching shawl with green lines. The lines glowed a little, and wiggled. They were glowworms.

I swallowed back panic. “My hiding place?”

“Najwa,” she said, taking a step closer, “I’ve known about that place for years. Anyway, after Irina left, I went to find you. When you weren’t at your usual spot and I couldn’t find you anywhere else, I had to go tell Faisal. Where were you? You couldn’t have been here the entire time, because I walked past this fountain not ten minutes ago.”

I had no idea who Najwa was, but at least this woman didn’t know who I was.

“I was just walking around,” I lied.

She tilted her head, like a lizard. “What’s wrong with your hair? I thought you liked the diamonds.” She whined the last few words and held up her own hair, beaded in white-and-pink crystals. Another jinni with hair like that flashed across my mind. The girl in my cabin. The one I wished on. Was she Najwa?

“I was trying something new.”

She frowned. “It looks terrible, but we can take care of that later. First, you have some explaining to do. And not just to me. Faisal is concerned now.”

I followed the woman and her shawl of woven glowworms and tried not to stare at the pinned-on beasties. They were still alive. She looked back to see if I was coming and caught my gaze.

“Isn’t Irina a great designer? She gave it to me for helping
her with her last project.” She prattled on about a game, and how she’d won round after round. “I know you don’t approve, but you haven’t the faintest idea how dull my job is. I don’t get to go to the surface and get any human thing I want. It isn’t fair.”

I still had no idea what she was talking about, and the more I followed her, the more my stomach felt like it was going to drop out of me. If I ran off, she’d know something was strange. But the more I stayed with her, the more terrified I felt. I kept looking for a way out—a tunnel, a staircase, anything—but there was nothing. There
had
to be tunnels, though. I followed the woman through a bronze door held open by a male jinni with a bare chest and belted trousers, not knowing what else to do. He led us down a hall and into a torchlit room covered by rugs from different regions. Human-made rugs. They had to be stolen.