The Fire Wish (24 page)

“I DON’T REMEMBER when I met your mother. She—Mariam—was always there,” Faisal said. “We were a Dyad—a bonded pair, united to multiply our power. She was the Shaitan, and I was the magus. They had paired us up even before we took our first transport test. Then, when that day came, we were all supposed to find a plant and return with a part of it. But something happened to Mariam that first trip, and she kept returning. After a while, she admitted she had fallen in love with a human. She swore me to secrecy, and of course I agreed.” He smiled, wistful. “When she told her father about the human, he banished her to the surface. I visited her whenever I got the chance, and this is what I want you to see. Look into the shard. Remember, you will be in my memory, so you will be watching as though you were me.”

I was pulled into the crystal. Faisal’s voice lulled me until all I could hear was a woman humming.

I listened, listened, listened. And then I blinked and I
was
Faisal.

A woman leaned back against a bolster with an infant in her arms. She had tumbling black hair, a straight nose, and wide green eyes. Mariam. I was sitting in front of her, also holding an infant. My hands were larger, callused, and tattooed with an owl eye between my thumb and forefinger.

We were in a tent, and she was cooing to the babe in her arms. The infant in my arms was tightly wrapped in a blanket and was asleep. She had pomegranate cheeks and long lashes, just like her mother.

“I wish he would at least look at them,” Mariam said. She was talking about her father, who had scorned her daughters before they were even born.

I shook my head. “You need to wait. At least until the caliph dies and his son takes his place.”

Mariam bounced her baby, who had started to twist and pull against the blanket. “They’ll be grown by then.”

“Perhaps. But it is better for them to grow here, don’t you think? No one will know what they are.”

She nodded, then started to sing to the fussing baby.

“The sun hid behind the moon,”
she sang.
“The water turned blue.”
She continued, and I stared in awe and love. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen, and even though she loved a human, I still loved her. I hadn’t expected that when I’d arrived, but it was a pleasant surprise. More surprising still was that the moment I held her daughters in my arms, they felt like extensions of me. I was not their father, of course, but was something more than an uncle.

Mariam kept singing until Najwa was asleep and I grew drowsy, cuddling the child she had named Zayele.

Then the mist returned.

When I opened my eyes, they were wet, and so were the wrinkled ones looking into mine.

“You were so tiny,” Faisal said. “And after everything, I couldn’t give up this memory. I had to keep it for myself.”

“That was me,” I said. “And Najwa …”

Shirin sniffed. “You should have warned us,” she said, wiping at her cheeks.

I was holding back tears, biting my lip as hard as I could bear. “What happened to her?”

“I have kept only a few memories from Mariam herself,” Faisal said. He held out another crystal, but this one was heavier, and blue as the sky. “Look into it, but be warned it does not end well. These were the last memories I was able to get from her.”

“Why doesn’t it end well?”

“What you have heard, about the night your village was attacked, has never been the truth.”

“You mean Hashim didn’t save me?”

Faisal spat on the ground. “Hashim didn’t save you. I saved you. Look into the crystal, and watch.”

I took the crystal. It was heavy and cold. “Is everyone watching, or just me?”

“I will,” Atish said. He reached over and placed his hand on mine. “You shouldn’t do this alone.”

“Atish, I can understand why you want to accompany her, but I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Faisal said.

Atish nodded and looked down at his lap, but he didn’t let go of my hand. “We’ll be here when you’re done, Zayele.”

A moment later, I was twirling around in an orange grove, breathing in the scent of young blossoms. My skirts were a full circle, swirling with me, catching on the weeds between the trees. I ran along a row of trees, reaching out as I passed to brush the blossoms. A trail of loose petals followed me, dropping like flakes of snow.

I ran like this until a man came around the last tree in the row and stopped in his tracks. I halted, breathing heavily. Then I turned away and tried to run, but he called out to me.

“Wait!” he shouted. “Don’t run.”

I looked over my shoulder.

“I know what you are,” he said. “But I won’t hurt you. I won’t even touch you.” He reached out to one of the trees and picked a handful of orange blossoms. With a tentative step forward, he held them up to me.

The image blurred, then was clear again. I was with the man somewhere else, but this time I knew his name. Evindar. I leaned in his arms, watching the village men make a fire. My dress rounded out in front, revealing my pregnant belly. Evindar whispered in my ear and smiled, then pulled me into the darkness of a tent.

Again, the image shifted, but now everything was rushed. I was wrapping a child in a blanket when a woman came in with worry lines etched into the corners of her mouth. A little girl, Rahela, had followed her into the tent, and she pushed her back outside.

“You don’t have to go,” Rahela’s mother said to me.

“I
do
have to,” I said. I laid Zayele on the floor along a wall and went to a pile of blankets. Najwa was there, wiggling free. She began to whimper, and I lifted her up to my breast. The whimpering stopped. “Hashim is coming tonight. Last time, he
saw
me. If he touches me, then—”

“Just go away for a little while. Till he’s gone back to Baghdad. I’ll watch the babes.”

“I won’t leave them. No.”

“Then let me go talk to my sister. I won’t tell her what you are. Just that Hashim has made … advances.”

I nodded, and Rahela’s mother disappeared out the door.

Alone now, I looked at my daughters. One was nestled in my arms, nursing, and the other lay on the floor, asleep. How could I leave them behind?

Just then, Evindar rushed in, flushed and sweating. “He’s here. Now.”

I felt faint. “But—”

He picked up a bag and handed it to me. “Go, Mariam. Take the girls, and go.”

“Evindar,” I said with a croak. I had frozen in place, staring at the man behind Evindar.

Hashim stood there, holding the flap open. He held a sword in the air and knocked Evindar to the ground with the blunt side of it. His eyes were bright and glaring, and when he looked from me to the baby in my arms, he growled.

Evindar struggled to his feet, but Hashim slashed at him with his sword and he fell again, clutching at his side.

I screamed and backed up against the wall. Najwa slipped
off my breast and was crying now, clutching at the strands of hair that fell across my face.

“I came back to check on you, Mariam,” Hashim snarled. “I thought we had agreed you would not bring these abominations into the world.”

“No,” I said, standing up straight. “We did not agree.”

“Then I will have them,” he said, holding out his hand.

“I’m going home. You won’t have to see us ever again.” I looked at Evindar, who lay on his side. Blood flowed freely onto the rug, faster than the weaving could soak it up. My nostrils flared, and I swallowed. “Please.”

He shook his head. “I can’t let that happen. Allah would not approve of me letting you live.”

“Who are you to say what Allah approves of? You aren’t his messenger.” I turned toward Zayele, asleep on the floor. “You will not have us.”

The air between us glimmered. A lick of fire flashed across the room, and Faisal stood with his blade drawn, poised above Hashim’s head. He looked tired, but seeing him flooded me with hope.

“Faisal!” I cried. He nodded and swung at Hashim, who had taken a step back.

“Another jinni? Oh, your dyad. Of course. How good of you to come,” he said, bowing his head a fraction of an inch. Then he swept his sword at Faisal, who blocked it with his long dagger. The blades struck, each sliding down to the hilt of the other, and the men pressed hard until they were face to face. “I’ve been waiting for this moment ever since I was betrayed by Mariam’s father. I was the one who freed him, you know.”

“Let. Mariam. Go,” Faisal grunted.

“I will. But she must give me both of her children first.”

Evindar had pushed himself up off the ground and crawled toward Hashim, who was busy with Faisal. I stood still, afraid that if I moved, Hashim would notice. Evindar lunged with the last of his strength and stabbed a small knife into Hashim’s foot.

Hashim wailed in pain and backed out of the tent. In a second, he was gone, and Faisal and I stared at each other in shock before I ran to Evindar and lifted him onto my lap, cradling Najwa.

He was already gone when I got to him, and my heart splintered. He couldn’t be gone. Not like this.

“No! Evindar, I just can’t. I can’t!” I wailed.

“We need to go,” Faisal said, watching the door. “He is going to come back.” I ignored him. “Your husband is dead, Mariam, but your daughters are alive. You need to save them.”

I looked up at him. “Take them, Faisal.” I handed Najwa to him and pointed to Zayele, asleep on the floor.

“I will take you all,” he said. He pulled me off Evindar and was reaching for Zayele when Hashim burst through the door with two other men behind him. Their swords glinted like lion teeth in the air.

“There’s the jinni!” Hashim shouted, pointing at Faisal. “He murdered Evindar!” Faisal’s eyes widened in surprise, but he jumped to his feet and braced himself. Hashim rushed at him, sword held straight at Faisal’s heart. But he was holding Najwa.

“No!” I pushed myself into the space between the men,
right before Hashim’s sword came forward. The blade sank in before I felt anything. And then pain. Indescribable pain. And silence.

Hashim pulled his blade free, and I fell. I couldn’t hold myself up, and I knew. I knew what was happening. I looked over to Faisal. I tried to speak, but I couldn’t. As a Shaitan, I’d been trained for this, but I’d forgotten. I’d forgotten all of it the moment I saw Evindar.

Hashim made another rush at Faisal, and he disappeared with Najwa.

This time, the blade sliced into a whirlwind. Hashim shouted out in anger, but I didn’t care. I only had eyes for the baby left behind. I was leaving her too now. Zayele slept on, but my blood reached out to her.