The Fire Wish (27 page)

“Is that a jinni journal?”

“Uh—yes,” I said. “That’s why it’s so fascinating.”

He smiled. “May I see it?”

Maybe if he read it, he’d discover the truth about Hashim. Maybe he wouldn’t suspect me at all. I hesitated, then went to the wall and passed the book through the cutout. “Of course.”

Just before our fingers touched, a tiny spark flashed between them. I dropped the book, and he caught it. “Are you all right?” he asked.

“Yes. Are you?”

He was still holding the book between our gardens, like it was the one solid link between us. He kept it there, until I asked, “How is your father?”

The book slid through the cutout into his garden, and he frowned. He looked away, then up at the darkening sky. “His heartbeat is weak, and the physician is having trouble getting
any water in him.” He pressed against the wall. “I’m afraid, Zayele. If he dies, I won’t be the only one affected.”

“You mean, because he is the caliph?”

“Yes. My brother wants to be caliph next, and I don’t think Baghdad is ready for him.”

“Why?” I asked. I had heard his brother was a soldier, the kind who thought of nothing but battles and sieges, but I hadn’t heard anyone say he wasn’t a good man.

“It’s the war. He and Hashim had been pushing my father to take the next step—”

“The next step?” Finally, I would learn something.

He shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about it,” he said, sighing. “The truth is, Ibrahim wants this war to continue. He wants to keep fighting the jinn. He wants to bury them.”

“And—and you don’t?”

He hesitated. “Well, I don’t want them to destroy us, but I would like it all to end. I barely remember it, but before the war, they were here, in the House of Wisdom.
Jinn.
We learned so much, working side by side. Even Hashim has to admit that.” He brushed his fingers over the journal, as if pining for a lost friend. “If Ibrahim becomes caliph, he will never stop fighting them.”

His words chilled me. And not even the moon could soothe my own fears. If Ibrahim became caliph, and if he discovered me, it’d be all over. He’d have a jinni to command, and I would have to attack my own people if he so wished.

“Then your father mustn’t die,” I said.

“Yes. I will pray throughout the night for him. Will you?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“And if you are not offended at the idea,” he said, still looking at the journal, “would you also pray that the jinn will once again be our friends, rather than our enemies?” Then he looked up, right into my eyes.

My insides were in a flurry, like a spinning cloud. Right there, on the other side of a very thick wall, was a human who did not want the war. I felt an urge to run my fingers across his sharp cheekbones, feeling the face of someone who thought differently. Someone who, like me, was not put off by differences in race or power. The moment I realized I wanted this, I pulled my hand back abruptly, scraping it against the edge of the cutout. Now both of my hands were raw and reddened.

“I’m not offended by peace,” I said.

“Of course not,” he said, smiling. “War brings only death and lies. But when people work together, they can do great things. When the jinn were here, mathematics was advancing faster than ever before. And, strangely, so was our music.”

I looked behind him, trying to climb out of his gaze. “Have you brought your oud?”

“It’s always here,” he said. He went to his room and came back with the oud, then sat down. He set the instrument on his lap and laid his hand on the strings before turning to face me. “I wish you could sit by me.”

Then he ran his fingers over the strings and played. I was instantly saddened. The music pulled out all the parts of me that had been afraid, or lost, or hidden, and my heart grew heavy in my chest. He bent his head further over the strings and furrowed his brow while the pain I’d felt slipped down
my cheeks in two streams of tears. My life had been stolen by Zayele, and I had no way yet to get home. I’d disobeyed Faisal by seeking her out. I had caused all this trouble. I thought of the man who’d written the book, the man who had stayed back to keep the flame going. He’d given his life for nothing. No one had listened to his warnings, and the Lamps had been snuffed out anyway. I thought of the caliph, and how his death might give greater power to a bloodthirsty prince. I thought of how Kamal had been meant for Zayele, of how he only knew me by her name—if I told him who I was, he would never look at me again like he had tonight. Even if he claimed he wanted friendship with jinn, it did not mean he wanted me.

He slowed his fingers and looked up, then stopped. “You’re crying,” he said.

I wiped away my tears, but he had already seen. Quickly, I pointed at one of the stars that shone so brightly beneath the moon. “Does that star have a name?”

He smiled, and it was like he’d been transformed. The darkness within him dissolved, and he put down the oud and came over to the wall beside me.

“That’s not a star,” he said, grinning. “It’s the planet Zuhra. She’s one of the brightest.”

“A planet.” I had heard of there being other worlds, but I’d never looked at one before. I’d never known it was possible. “What sort of planet is Zuhra?”

He blinked. “I don’t know. It’s bright, and it’s close, but that’s all I know. The reddish one below it, just to the right? That’s Merrikh. The Greeks associated them with their gods. Zuhra was the goddess of love, and Merrikh was the god of
war. War always chases love,” he said. His voice faded, like he’d just thought of something.

This was what I had always yearned for—the stories behind the real things in the world—and for the first time, I was with a person who knew about these things. “And that one? It’s not as bright.” I was pointing at a star halfway between the planets, but off to the left.

“That one
is
a star. It’s al-Dabaran, part of a constellation.”

“They look so much alike,” I said. “How can you tell it’s not a planet? And how are they different?”

“That’s what I’ve always wanted to know,” he said, looking up at the stars and planets. The crescent hung over them, leading them in a line up the sky, surrounded by a wash of dimmer stars. “What are stars, exactly? I’ve been discussing it with the astronomers in the House of Wisdom, but no one knows. They just want to know exactly when each star will rise so they can set the clocks by them. I understand the importance of that, but I want to know more. Unfortunately,” he added, “Hashim doesn’t think I should spend much time on it. He has me working on other things.”

“I know how you feel.”

“You do?” He turned back to me, surprised.

“I have an interest that people have always told me to ignore,” I admitted.

“I suppose it doesn’t have to do with the stars,” he said slyly, “or you’d have known their names.”

I laughed. “No, not stars, but stories. My entire life, I’ve been fascinated with stories. To everyone else, it seemed like the story itself was enough. But I wanted to know
why
someone
told the story in the first place. Had something happened? Or were they only wishing for something to happen? But when I started asking this, everyone told me there wasn’t any need to know. Stories just were, and that was that.”

“Like the stars,” he breathed. He wasn’t looking at the stars anymore, though. He was only a few inches away, with his eyes locked on mine. “Everyone says, ‘They’re just stars, leave it at that, and go calculate their locations.’ But I want to know why they’re there, and what they’re made of. I want to know why they move like they do, not just that they move.”

“Yes,” I said. I was smiling now. No one had understood this before. Not Atish. He had been amongst those telling me to forget it, that I should focus on the problems in the world instead of the world’s discarded dreams. But Kamal, this prince from Baghdad, this human boy, understood. “Just like the stars.”

In that moment, with his eyes reflecting the light from above us, I knew. I was in love with him. And like the pain of Zayele’s wish, it was suffocating. I could never be loved by him. Not truly. Not if he knew who I was.

“Zayele,” he murmured. He started to reach for my hands, but I tore myself away from the wall, stumbled over the bench, and slipped past my billowing curtain, where I could cry without him watching.

“THE FIRST THING you need to know about wishes is that there are two sorts,” Faisal said. We were in a large garden behind the school, with walls of granite blocks studded with rubies. There weren’t any actual plants in the garden, only sculptures covered in white moss. Shirin and Atish had come with me, while Rashid had gone off to ready the Shaitan. “The first kind is the easiest to make, but it requires that you memorize certain words. The second kind is more difficult, because you have to translate words into an image in your mind, and push it out into the world to make it so.”

“I have no idea what that means,” I said, biting at my thumbnail. “So there are magical words that make some things happen, but you can also make things happen just by thinking them?”

“More or less. Today, we will work on teaching you a primary wish. I believe that once we get you to the palace, this is the one you’ll need the most,” Faisal said. He gestured for Shirin to come closer. “Shirin, will you show Zayele the wish?”

Shirin grinned, waved at me to back up, and whispered,
“Shahtabi.”
She vanished.

I gasped. “Where did she go?”

Atish chuckled beside me. “She’s right there, unless she moves fast.”

“I didn’t go anywhere,” Shirin’s voice said. It came from the empty air right in front of me.

“We can
do
that?” I asked.

Faisal cleared his throat. “It’s a simple wish, if you can remember the word, pronounce it correctly, and maintain your focus,” he said. “The only weakness of this wish is that once it has been made, you cannot make the wish again until the wishpower has been replenished. For some, it can take an hour or more. Shirin, you can reappear now.”

“Rashatab,”
she said. The air wavered, and then she was there, winking at me.

“That’s amazing! I think Najwa used that spell, but it must have worn off. Otherwise—”

“That’s another important difference between the two kinds of spells. The first kind is temporary. It’s weaker, but it requires less energy to use. The second kind is permanent, but it can leave you exhausted.”

My mouth went dry. “Like the wish I made with Najwa?”

Faisal’s face was grim. “A Fire Wish is permanent until the one who made the wish recalls it.”

“Then why don’t I just undo the wish right now?”

Faisal set his hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “Zayele, for you to recall the Fire Wish, you must be in the same place as Najwa. To do it here would be too much of a risk. You could
both end up trapped somewhere between the palace and the Cavern.”

“In the earth?” I asked. He nodded, then took his hand away. “So if you’re going to teach me just this invisibility wish, how am I going to get there?”

Shirin squealed. “The Lamps! You’re going to light them, aren’t you?”

“I will try. But first, we must teach her how to go unseen in the palace. If she cannot do that, there is no reason to send her there.” He motioned for me to stand apart from the others. “Now, before you try making this wish, you must clear your mind. It will be difficult at first, but you can do it. You’ve made a wish before, even though you didn’t realize all it entailed.” He paused, then asked, “Is your mind clear?”

“I don’t know. Maybe,” I said.

“Crystals above, Zayele! Just calm your mind, and think of only one thing.”

I had been keeping my eyes closed, but opened one to look at him. “What?”

“
Shahtabi.
Invisibility. Say it now.”

I shut my eye again and tried to think of nothing. Of emptiness.
“Shah-tabi,”
I said. Nothing felt different, and when I looked around, I could see they were all staring at me. Shirin fidgeted. “Did it work?”

“You didn’t say it right.” Atish looked amused.

I sighed. “It feels strange in my mouth. Is it a jinni word?”

“You don’t want to know what language it is,” Shirin said. “It’s creepy. But it works.”

“Let me try again.” This time, I tried to think of something see-through, like an icicle.
“Shahtabi.”

“Whoa!” Atish said. “You’re not quite invisible.”

I looked down. I could see through my hands. “What do you mean?”

“You are clear, but visible. Like water,” Faisal said. He tugged on his beard. “I’ve seen worse on the first day of lessons, so do not be discouraged. A few more times, and I think you’ll have it.”

I didn’t want this to take forever.
“Shahtabi.”

“You got it!” Shirin said, and she jumped and clapped. “That was quick. Just like Najwa. She always got this stuff before anyone else did.”

“Now you’ve got to undo it,” Faisal said. The creases in his forehead had gotten smoother. Could he actually be
proud
of me? Or relieved? My father—my uncle—had never once looked at me with pride. He was always watching for something. Now, I realized, he must have been watching for some sign of my mother’s blood in me. No wonder he’d hovered over me.