The Fire Wish (17 page)

I shut the door before they had a chance to see it was open and slipped between them. It was only my third
shahtabi
amongst humans, and I was doing rather well. I padded down the cold marble hall to another, and found the Lamp. Servants bustled past it, barely giving it a glance.

At night, the surrounding lamps lit its bronze sides, showing its curvature and grace. I rubbed the metal, imagining how brightly it would have shone when it was lit. It would have illuminated the whole area.

Behind the Lamp lurked a darker hall, guarded by four men, each with a sword as long as my arm. Whatever was down it was twice as important as all the women in the harem. Quietly, I walked around the guards.

Two sconces lit the hall: one where the guards stood and one beside a set of heavy double doors. I slid open a door slightly and saw that the entire room was glowing. Lamps
clung to the walls every few feet, and some hung from brass chains suspended from the ceiling. Every one of the four walls was lined with waist-high shelves, which held stacks of paper and bound books, as well as baskets brimming with stones and jars of powder. A young man in a yellow robe, with a head of thick curls, bent over a table, reading from a sheaf of papers and sliding the beads on an abacus. A cat lay curled on the table, stretching over the other half of the man’s papers and pawing at a selenite sphere, which was far too heavy for the cat to move. It was identical to the one Kamal had shown his father. The man’s quill scratched at the paper while I slid the door open just wide enough to slip in, then shut it again.

The door slapped closed, the man turned around, and I saw it was Kamal, without a turban. He looked at the door, confused, and then wiped his brow with a sleeve and returned to the paper. My heart was beating loud enough that I was sure he could hear it if he stopped scribbling. The cat looked up at me, narrowed his yellow eyes, and then went back to flipping his tail. Kamal shrugged and swept his hand along the cat’s back.

This was not the same laboratory he had been in that morning. This one was larger and colder, and didn’t have the fragrance from the garden wafting in.

I tiptoed over to the table, across from Kamal, and watched him. He tapped his quill against the paper and rubbed the space between his eyebrows while he reviewed the numbers and circles he had drawn and the red beads of the abacus. A circle had been cut into the sphere, and the removed piece lay
beside it. I bent over and peered inside the sphere, careful not to touch anything.

The sphere was empty, but the inside was not completely hollow. A metal bowl half the size of the sphere lay suspended within, and it had a faint dusting of white powder. What was this meant for? With a glance at Kamal, I reached in and wiped gently at the dust. The sphere was heavy enough that it didn’t roll when I touched it. He could have used anything, so why selenite?

I rubbed my fingers together. My mind flashed with a series of images Faisal had shown us of all the human creations, and I’d never seen anything like this. Kamal moved two beads on his abacus and an expression of relief came over his face. The crease between his eyebrows disappeared and he leaned back and sighed. Lamplight flickered on his lashes and a lock of hair that had fallen down—it illuminated his skin so that it shone. And through it all, his green eyes stared at the selenite ball.

Whatever he had been working on was done, and he pushed back the chair. It scraped against the floor, and the cat stood up on the desk, arching his back.

“All done,” Kamal said to the cat. “I wish I hadn’t said I’d do this. If I’m wrong, everyone will know. They’ll laugh at me.” The cat rubbed his nose against Kamal’s hand. “At least
you
don’t expect me to save the caliphate, Hamza.”

The cat meowed, and Kamal smiled. Then he paced back and forth across the room. I made sure to back up against the wall. The cat could see me, and he tracked me lazily. For some reason, he didn’t care that I was there.

“I keep thinking about the princess,” he told the cat. My
body flushed. “She’s pretty. But there’s something there, deeper than that.”

Hamza jumped off the desk and sauntered toward me. I froze, hoping he wouldn’t come any closer. Just then, the door opened and Hashim strode in, flashing his long robes. The cat ran off and disappeared in the darkness of the hallway.

“Kamal,” Hashim said. “Have you solved it yet?”

Kamal shook his head. “No.” Was he lying? He had just told the cat he was done.

“We got a report that your brother is in the middle of a battle near Basra. He won’t be able to leave until it’s over. Apparently, we’ve taken some losses.” Hashim waved a sheet of parchment in the air. “We need good news, Kamal. Surely you have something to tell me?” Hashim strode to the table and ran his fingers over the paper. He picked up the ball and closed the lid, then rolled it between his hands. “If we want the element of surprise, we need to be ready when it’s time to send it through the Lamp.” The Lamp? But no human could light it. Hashim must have known that, and I studied him, wondering.

Kamal sighed and rubbed his temples. “I’m just not sure if it’s a good idea.”

“Of course it’s a good idea!” Hashim snapped. “You have to put doubt aside and do what you know in your heart to be the best action for all of us. For the caliphate. For Allah.”

Kamal sighed and went to the door. “Maybe, but I still don’t feel good about it.” He was preparing to leave, and I didn’t want to be left in the room alone with Hashim. It was too dark, too late. I raced on my toes to the door and stood behind Kamal. He still smelled like cinnamon.

Hashim dropped the ball on the table, letting it fall with a thud, and whipped around. “Doubt is an emotion, Kamal, and you must not let it make you blind.”

“Good night, Vizier,” Kamal said. He walked through the door, and I followed. Hashim left the room and slammed the door shut behind him. He barreled down the hall, and without thinking, I followed Kamal. The guards at the end of the hall snapped to attention, and he marched through without any acknowledgment.

He went in the direction of the harem, but he passed it, stopping at a white door painted in gold birds and leaves. He paused, and then opened the door and shut it quickly behind him.

I leaned my ear against the door but could hear nothing, and after a minute passed, I went back to the harem. Once within, I went past the peafowl, who hadn’t budged, and slipped into my room.

The moonlight was gone. I felt my way to my couch, let myself become visible again, and crawled between the sheets of a princess’s bed. It was another hour before my heart settled.

I THOUGHT I was going to vomit. I ran out of the Corps building, past the fountain, and spun around. Somewhere in this Cavern were tunnels that led to the surface. I needed to find one. Now.

I took a breath and decided to run into the city, which was on the other side of the canal. Beyond the city, the wall was darker. It could just indicate darkened crystal buildings, or maybe there were tunnels. I took off, not caring now what anyone thought. I had to move fast. I had to get out of sight before the Corps realized I was gone.

I dashed over a stone bridge that went across the canal, and almost ran into a pair of cane sticks that had moved out in front of me. I skidded, grabbed a lamppost, and looked up the sticks to see that a man was standing on the top. His feet were tied to the ends, making the canes an extension of his legs.

He reached up to the top of the lamppost and lifted off a glass cloche, whispered to the flame, and put the cloche back on. Then he looked down and saw me.

“Sorry if I scared you there,” he called down. “It was almost out. Had to wish it back.” I nodded knowingly, noticing now that some of the lamps weren’t lit. So they had to wish their fires into existence. Some of them anyway. And the wishes weren’t permanent. I was about to move on, then hesitated.

“Sir? Do you know where an unguarded tunnel might be?”

“What do you need to know that for?” he asked, scratching his forehead.

“I’m supposed to do a study. For the Corps. Just got a little lost.”

“Well, I do think there’s a tunnel behind the waterfall. It goes up to a place that’s hidden from humans. Or so they tell us. Maybe it’s just to keep us happy,” he said. He shrugged.

“Oh!” I smiled widely. “That’s right.”

“Glad to help the Corps,” he said, then pointed to the next lamp, indicating he had to get on with his work. I looked behind to see if anyone had come out to follow me, but the guards were standing in place. The Corps building was halfway across the Cavern now.

I exhaled in relief and ran along the canal toward the waterfall, passing a group of small children and their mothers. When I reached the waterfall, I paused. It fell from a split in the crystal wall and poured into a pool, where it stirred up blue-green foam. There was a space behind the waterfall just wide enough for a person. I snuck behind, careful not to slip on the wet stone.

There was no one there. It was like being on the edge of the cliff overlooking the valley at home—only I was hidden and saw nothing but clear water and stone. There was a break in the
waterfall only a few inches wide, where the water split, cascading down two sides of a crystal that poked out ten feet above me. Through the break, I could see a strip of the jinn’s city. Jeweled homes studded the land beyond and along the canal that led to the lake.

I turned and took the last few steps to a narrow gap in the wall. On the ground beside it lay an old rock lamp filled with oil. It was almost too simple, like someone had known I’d need it.

I lit the lamp with a flint that dangled from the handle and then stepped into the tunnel.

“Hello?” I whispered. The sound started small but echoed, stronger, until it grew louder than the waterfall. How deep did the tunnel go?

I took two more steps. A strand of hanging lichen brushed against my hair, and when I wiped it away, it fell into my hand. It was spongy and gray, as if it hadn’t seen light before. I waited, letting my eyes adjust to the lamp in the darkness.

But I couldn’t adjust to blankness or see past the lamplight. The waterfall and the tunnel blocked the light from the Cavern, leaving me alone with my single flame. My mind raced with all the things that could go wrong. I could get lost. I could get caught. I could fall into a pit full of spiders.

I shook the thoughts away. This was going to be exciting, not frightening. I had survived a sandstorm. I’d manage
this.

Last autumn, we’d snuck off on one of my father’s camels, riding her down the gorge and past the barely green fields. I’d never seen the desert, and this was the time of year it came the closest. Because it was my birthday, it hadn’t been hard to convince Yashar to ride with me. Borrowing a camel was
forgivable, but I would have gotten whipped if I’d gone alone, so I brought my younger brother. It was the first, and last, time I’d gotten away from my father’s scrutiny.

We left the foothills and raced the camel over the dead tufts of grass, around monster-sized boulders flung off the mountains, and into the windswept golden realm of the desert. We ran until the camel stopped. The desert spread all the way west to the horizon, where it met up with the bluest blue sky and turned into a dark, churning cloud.

“What is that?” I asked Yashar. He had been here before, with Father, so I thought he’d seen everything.

He stiffened. “I don’t know. A storm?”

“Should we go back?”

“Yes. Quick.”

He turned the camel around, and she suddenly picked up her speed. But the wind was faster, and in minutes we were surrounded by a cloud of stinging sand. The camel stopped and settled down onto the ground. Baffled, I tried to grab the reins from Yashar.

“Get off the camel!” he screamed through the trailing bit of his turban that he held to his face. Quickly, we climbed down and curled up against the camel, away from the wind. With my face shielded from the sand, I could see a little further ahead. A huge boulder stood there, braced against the storm.

“There!” I shouted. “Better than a camel!”

Yashar shook his head, and through the tiny crack in his turban, which was now pulled down over his face, I could see he did not want to move.

“Come on!” I could barely hear myself over the roaring
wind, so I grabbed him, and he came with me. We stumbled toward the boulder, leaving the camel behind.

I should have listened to Yashar. I should have trusted him and Father’s camel. Instead, I dragged us out into the open sand and we lost our way after ten steps. The sand was too thick, too fast, and dug its way through the fabric we had pressed against our faces. I could taste blood on my lips where it’d torn the skin away, but I kept pushing forward, holding Yashar’s arm tight against me.

“Zayele!” he screamed. “Back!”

It was too late to turn around. We had to keep going forward. Then I slipped in the sand and we were down. A wave of sand blew over us, pulling our clothes away with it. My hijab was gone, and my face was bare, but I couldn’t stay there. I was not going to let the sand bury me, so I stood and pulled Yashar off the ground. We climbed over the deepening sand as fast as we could.