The Fire Wish (12 page)

I BARELY GOT any sleep that night. Laira kept talking about a student of hers while glopping jinni food onto my plate, and then she wouldn’t leave me alone until I told her for the third time that I needed to sleep. Jinni beds weren’t any different, but they had too many blankets. I kicked them off, and then I couldn’t sleep without the weight of them. And it was so
still.
Najwa’s bed was carved out of stone and I had spent too many nights on the barge.

Halfway through the night, I woke without knowing I’d fallen asleep. I sat up and stared at the curtain hiding Laira’s bed. Her fingertips peeked out from beneath the jeweled hem, and her gold-dust-encrusted nails glittered in the light from the lamp on the table between our beds. Her skin was smooth, never marred by the wind and sun.

I set my feet on the floor and reached across the empty space until my fingers hovered over hers. All I needed to do was press my fingers against her skin and make another wish. If it didn’t work because she was asleep, then I would have to
try something else. I closed my eyes, made a silent prayer, and then touched her.

“I wish to go home,” I whispered. Then I waited for something to happen. A swirling feeling in my stomach, a bolt of lightning, a cloud of sand. Anything. But she mumbled something in her sleep and pulled her hand back behind the curtain, leaving me crouched beside her bed in the weak lamplight. Leaving me in the Cavern.

It didn’t work. But I was not going to give up and take Najwa’s life as my own. She could have the one forced upon me, but I was going to get home. I was going to get back to what my life should have been.

When I got into Najwa’s bed again, I thought of her. She’d be in Baghdad by now, with the prince. They’d be married by now. I pushed the thought away. It wasn’t a prison sentence for her. She could use her wishes to make herself more comfortable. And whatever bed she had in the palace, it was certainly more comfortable than this one.

I woke up to the sound of Laira banging a metal spoon against a pot. She was dumping more of her glop into a bowl.

“Najwa,” she sang, “time to get up.” She set the pot on the table and waved at the sconces on the wall. Their flames grew bigger until the room was filled with the brightness of morning.

I groaned and rubbed at my face. “I really don’t want to get up.”

“Well, that’s new for you.” She looked at me sideways while I sat up and took the bowl from her. Najwa’s mother was intolerable. She was noisy, didn’t brush her hair, and left piles of
yarn all over that caught on your heel. My own mother … I swallowed. What if I never saw her again?

“There’s another thing.” She paused. “Atish sent a message this morning. He’ll be here soon. I had forgotten that you had a holiday today.” I had no idea what she was talking about, but I nodded anyway. “You’d better get dressed.”

I tried to copy the way Laira styled her scarf. She looped it around her neck instead of over her hair, letting it drape down her back. I had just finished tying mine when someone rapped hard at the door.

“Go on. Don’t make him wait.”

I opened the door and found a boy wearing nothing but a leather vest and trousers. He had a strong face, golden-brown eyes, and short-cropped hair. The profile of a golden lion was tattooed on his left shoulder—the emblem of the Shaitan, the most destructive arm of the jinni army, according to my father. They were evil and bloodthirsty. They took their captives to the Cavern—
here
—and dipped their bodies in the Lake of Fire. But he didn’t look evil or bloodthirsty.

He leaned into the doorframe, and I sucked in a breath, trying not to give myself away by leaning away from him. “I was going to show it to you last night, but no one knew where you were,” he said, turning his tattooed shoulder toward me. Was it new, then?

“That’s … nice.”

“I had always thought it would burn, but it didn’t. I don’t know why they don’t tell us this before we go through it. There’s no point to the surprise,” he said.

I couldn’t think of anything to say in response, but he didn’t seem to care. He reached out for my hand and pulled me out of the house.

“I can walk on my own,” I said flatly. No man had touched me since I was a child. And he was a
jinni.

He grinned. “That’s not why I hold your hand.” It was useless. I’d have to hold his hand if I was pretending to be Najwa. At least his palm wasn’t sweaty.

He stepped around a large rock that lay on the path. Had it fallen from somewhere? I looked up, but jagged crystals swept the ceiling, and there weren’t any holes. I managed to get my hand out of Atish’s as we moved around the rock, and then I wrapped my arms around myself.

“Are you cold?” he asked.

“No.”

He looked as though he was going to say something, and then shrugged and smiled. “Good, because you don’t want to start today off shivering.”

“Why? Are we going somewhere colder?”

“Najwa!” a girl shouted at me as she ran up from a side trail. She hopped over a smaller rock and landed beside me. Her long braided hair, dipped in purple dye, swung behind her. “Where did you go yesterday?”

“Uh …”

“Faisal said she was working on something for him,” Atish answered.

“Yes,” I lied, taking the opportunity to move a step away from them.

She grabbed my arm and pulled me closer. “Well, now you’ve seen Atish’s mark. He was all depressed when he couldn’t show it off to you yesterday.”

“Shirin, please,” he groaned.

She grinned. “You were. Admit it.” He glanced at the ceiling. “Anyway,” Shirin continued, “can you tell me where you went, or is it a Corps secret?”

Again, I was lost in the dark, so I shrugged.

“Lovely. Between the three of us, I’ll be the only one who can talk, and our conversations will be all about wounds and diseases.”

Atish chuckled, but I didn’t respond. I was trying too hard to figure out what was going to happen next. We wound between jinni houses and ended up in the same courtyard I had arrived in. This time, there were more jinn wandering around, and half of them were our age. It must have been because of the holiday Laira had mentioned.

When Atish and Shirin stopped by the fountain, I thought maybe that was as far as we would go. I didn’t want any more surprises. What I needed now was a way to get out of the Cavern before someone noticed I wasn’t their Najwa.

Shirin sat on the edge of the fountain and gestured for me to join her. Atish paced like a cat.

“They should get here soon,” Shirin said.

“Right.” Maybe she wouldn’t notice I had no idea who “they” were.

She leaned in close. “You seem more relaxed than I thought you’d be,” she whispered.

“Why wouldn’t I be relaxed?”

Her eyebrows rose. “I can think of one reason.” Clearly, there was something secretive going on between Shirin and Najwa that Atish was not supposed to know about.

Atish turned around and stopped. “When they get here, we’ll have to divide into groups. Shirin, you want to go with us or with them?”

“You have to ask?”

“She isn’t that bad, you know.” Atish sighed, then resumed his pacing, stopping only when a group of boys passed by. One of them separated from the group and approached Atish with an adoring smile. He was short and thin, and looked to be about twelve years old, if jinn aged the same as humans. He looked like the sort of boy Yashar would have played with, before he had to count his steps and hold my hand.

The boy waved. “Atish! I heard you got your mark yesterday.” He smacked Atish’s shoulder, right where the Shaitan mark was. “I can’t wait till I get mine.”

Atish crossed his arms, took in the boy, and grinned. “Good to see you, Farhad. I’m sure you’ll get yours soon enough.”

“So, what are you doing today?” He squared his shoulders in the way boys do when talking to men they want to impress. He did it naturally, without any of the arrogance of Destawan.

“Going out on the lake. Where are you boys off to?”

Farhad cleared his throat. “We’re going to climb to the topaz point,” he said, gesturing at one of the inward-curving walls of the Cavern. The crystals there were more jagged, and milky white except for one of the longer shards, which ended in a golden-yellow tip. It had to be a hundred feet above the
houses. Anyone who climbed that high had to cling to the slick crystal upside down, like a caterpillar beneath a leaf. I looked at the boy, certain that either he was joking or he had lost his mind.

“Are you, then? Be careful,” Atish said, bowing his head at Farhad.

“Oh, we’re always careful,” Farhad said. Then he smiled at Shirin and me before skipping away to join his friends. They disappeared in an alley between two tall buildings.

“They’re climbing
that
?” I asked Atish.

He shrugged. “It’s not that hard.”

Shirin rolled her eyes and bumped her shoulder into mine. “It’s easier than dealing with
her
,” she said.

“Right,” I said, pretending I knew what I was agreeing with.

I didn’t have to wait long to find out, because a minute later three jinn walked up to us. Two were men a few years older than Atish, with the same Shaitan mark. The other, a girl, must have been the person Shirin had referred to. She stood like a lioness, ready and watching for prey. She was wearing one of those ridiculous glowworm shawls, and her hair was weighted down by twice as many jewels as Laira’s.

“Hello, Atish,” the lioness said. She practically purred. “Your mark looks good.”

“Uh, thank you,” Atish said. He looked to the two Shaitan. “You want to go in the same boat as her? I’ll take Najwa and Shirin.”

“Sure,” the taller of the two men said with a shrug.

“But, Atish, I thought we could go together,” the girl said. “I don’t really know them that well.”

“Oh, um, I …”

I stood up. “We already have our group ready, but thank you for being so welcoming.” I could tell this girl was not going to be good for Atish. I brushed off my skirt and looked at him. “Should we go?”

The girl’s mouth opened, but she said nothing. I led them away from the fountain, even though I didn’t know if I was going the right way, and everyone followed. Fortunately, Shirin bounced up and took my arm again. She pulled me away from the courtyard and toward the lake.

“You should talk to Irina like that more often,” she whispered. So that was Irina, the girl Laira was teaching. She didn’t look half as sweet as Laira had made her out to be. “I heard she can’t stand Cyril because he’s smarter than her, and she thinks Dabar is boring. She’s going to have
such
a wonderful ride.”

Shirin grinned the rest of the way to the lake, which wasn’t far. When we got there, I realized Atish had said we were getting on boats, and I couldn’t help but think of the barge. And Rahela.

I’d left her alone with a jinni. And here I was, surrounded by the rest of them.

Shaking my head, I took in where we’d stopped. We were at a rounded stone that peaked up from the ground. It was covered in moss, but not in a natural way. The moss had been cultured, and spread out in a series of diamonds. I traced over them with my fingers. The moss was spongy.

“You always do that,” Atish said. He had gotten too close.

“Oh?” I followed Shirin to a little stone building on top of a wall that lined the lake. We all gathered there, and Irina crossed her arms and glared at me.

“Gal?” Atish called out. A large woman in scarlet and green plodded out from behind the building and smiled.

“Dear, dear, you’re here for your boats,” she said. She hugged Atish, who nodded and slipped out from underneath her arms. She was as tall as he was, and almost as big around. Her cheeks were circled with crushed, sparkling stone, and I stared until I saw she was coming for me next. I stepped aside.

“Najwa, I must congratulate you too,” she said. She took my hand and held it up, inspecting the henna around my thumb. “Why did you cover it up?”

“Cover what up?” Shirin asked. She peered over my shoulder.

Gal smiled, revealing large golden teeth. “Her mark. Faisal marked her for the Corps last night. Right there on her hand.”

“He did
what
?” Shirin squealed, and she took my hand, flipping it over to stare at it. “You didn’t tell us? And you
covered
it?”

I freed my hand and pulled my sleeves down over my knuckles. “There didn’t seem to be a good time to say it,” I said. “And it’s small.” I hoped it was small. I hadn’t noticed anything on Najwa, but then, I hadn’t been looking.

“You could have told me when I showed up,” Atish said. He was glowering. “That would have been a good time.”

Gal grabbed a set of oars that had been leaning against her stone building and handed them to Atish, then gave another set to Cyril. “Don’t harass Najwa. She needs this holiday at
least as much as you do. Now get on your boats and go have a good time.” She ushered us down to stone steps that led to a pier set into the enflamed lake. Six rowboats lined the pier, each made of wood. Or something like wood. I hadn’t noticed many trees in the Cavern.

Atish jumped down the steps and climbed onto the first boat. The bottom was painted in blue and yellow flowers and streaked with mud.

Gal said to me, “I know it’s not your favorite, but that one’s already taken out.”

“It’s beautiful,” I said, while Gal helped Shirin and me climb into our boat. Then she helped Irina, Cyril, and Dabar into theirs.

Atish picked up the oars and shoved off. The boat rocked and I felt my stomach lurch. The barge hadn’t been as wobbly. I looked out at the lake, which didn’t help. It was coated in wisps of flame that danced across the shallow ripples. Some of them lifted up into the air and wavered before disappearing. Others gathered more flames around them, building up into giant swirls of fire that twisted across the surface. I prayed they wouldn’t harm the rowboat.

I gripped the edge of the boat, taking comfort in the familiarity of something made of wood. I needed any comfort I could find, because I was sitting in the Lake of Fire, stared at by a boy with a fierceness to him that matched his Shaitan tattoo.