The Fire Wish (20 page)

His arm dropped, and when he lowered the lantern, shadows shifted and stretched along the tunnel. “Then tell me. How can I help if you keep secrets? You’ve got to trust me or we’ve got nothing.”

“It’s just … I’m sorry. This was my own fault. I should have been more careful.”

He tightened his grip on me. “You don’t need to do everything alone, Najwa. No matter what the reason is.” He shook his head, then froze. He was staring at my hand, confused. I slid it behind my back, but he had seen. His eyes narrowed. “Hold out your hand,” he commanded. When I hesitated, he grabbed it and held it up to the lamp. “Where in Iblis’s name is your mark? Gal said Faisal had marked you, but I don’t see it.”

I pulled my hand free. The henna had worn off a bit in the water, leaving the design looking like shredded embroidery. “I don’t know. It faded.”

“Marks don’t fade.” Atish’s skin turned to gold and lit up, the light rippling like a raging current across his arms and face.
His eyes shone like coals, and they were huge, and I pulled, scrambling to get away. This must be what the Shaitan looked like in battle. “I can tell you’re lying, Najwa.”

His skin burned, brighter than the lamp, and I stepped back, shielding my face. The tunnel walls were bare in the brightness, with only the cracks and rough patches holding on to the darkness. The cracks were too small, and my ankle was too weak. There was nowhere to go, and I could not outrun a Shaitan.

“I’m not Najwa.” There was no point in hiding anymore. Not in this light.

His fists tightened and released, slowly. “What are you talking about?”

“My name is Zayele.” In this tunnel, in the land of jinn, the word sounded more like an echo of someone else, not my name.

He blinked in confusion. “If you’re not Najwa, then where is she?” The lamp was inches from my eyes, but I didn’t dare turn away. I stared back at him, as defiant as I could pretend to be.

“She’s in Baghdad. In the palace.”

His jaw twitched. “Jinn can’t get into the palace.”

“Apparently, she can, because Faisal just ordered me—her—to go back. She’s been there before.”

“
What
? Who
are
you? Are you even from the Cavern?”

He still didn’t know? I thought about making up a story about being from a different group of jinn, but he looked so concerned, and the brightness was fading into a glow now. I couldn’t lie to him anymore.

“I’m not from … here. I traded places with Najwa.”

He swore, cursing the tunnel, the Cavern, and everyone in it. “You’re not jinni?”

“No, but I wasn’t going to hurt anyone!” I said. “I just want to go home.”

“When did you trade places with her?” He leaned closer. His irises were golden-brown again, as if the anger had consumed itself. I couldn’t look away from them, remembering how only this morning he’d looked at me with hunger. Seeing the difference was like finding a knife in my chest.

“Yesterday,” I said. “I caught her, and made a wish.”

“You
wished
on her? What did you think, that you could just change places? That her life was easier?” He rubbed at the back of his neck and then peeled away from me.

“I didn’t want her life,” I said, hobbling closer to him. “I only wanted to go home. And I’d never seen a jinni before. I didn’t even know you were
people.
I thought jinn were …”

“Soulless? Mindless demons, alive just to give humans whatever they want?” He swung the lamp away and dropped it by his side. “You’re right. We’re people, and we have lives. Lives that humans are so quick to take.”

“I didn’t know I was taking a life! I was just trying to get home. It’s all I want.”

His lips curled up in a sour smile. “So this was your plan? Kiss me and then run off to the tunnels?”

“I … no.” My ankle hurt more than anything I’d felt before, but I couldn’t let him see the pain. If he tried to help—if he touched me—I’d melt into him again. And the thought that he wouldn’t help was more than I wanted to face now. “You weren’t part of any plan.”

He shook his head and sighed. “I can’t believe my first kiss was with a human.”

Najwa hadn’t kissed him before? A blush spread across my face and I turned to the wall to hide it. I wanted him to know I’d never kissed anyone either, but anything I could say would sound childish or desperate.

Besides, he knew who I was now. He could bring me to the Shaitan, and they’d kill me on the spot.

“So now what? Are you going to take me back or kill me right here?”

The lamp began to waver, and when he whispered, it flashed back into life.

“I don’t know what to do with you,” he muttered. He stared at me for a long time.

The wall was cool against my cheek, and I welcomed it because it was solid, and real, and just as I’d expect. Everything else in my life had been turned upside down. There wasn’t anything I could do to help myself now. I couldn’t talk my way out of it. I couldn’t even walk.

“I kissed you. A human.”

“You had never kissed Najwa before?”

“No,” he said. His face was a mixture of curiosity and frustration, which probably mirrored my own. “I never really wanted to.”

“And you’re a jinni. In the Shaitan, even,” I said. My heart was pounding in my chest. All of a sudden, I didn’t want him to leave me. Not only because I was stuck in a tunnel. I wanted him to forget I was human. I brushed my fingers over my lips, remembering.

He was staring at my fingers, at my lips, before he curled his hands into fists. “I can’t—I have to go.” He thrust the lamp into my hands, careful not to touch my skin, and ran down the tunnel until he was nothing but shadow.

I was alone with only the bubble of light he’d left behind. I sank to the floor, set the lamp beside me, and cried into my knees. The world hadn’t wronged me this time. Everything—all of it, even Atish—had been my fault. I had ruined someone’s life to avoid a marriage. Even still, I didn’t want to go to Baghdad.

It didn’t matter anymore. I was unable to walk, and the flame would go out eventually. I would die here, in the coming darkness.

IT WASN’T DIFFICULT slipping out of the harem. When Rahela decided to take a nap, I turned myself invisible, ducked behind the curtains that shielded the door, then skipped past the guards. Because it was midafternoon, they were barely paying attention to the harem door anyway.

Even so, the thrill of slinking down the corridor buzzed in my veins. I still hadn’t found a way out of Zayele’s wish yet, but I was able to do something. I didn’t have to stay locked up with the other women. I could do what I was trained to do.

I remembered a little of the map Delia had shown me, so I knew which direction to go, even if I didn’t know which hall to take. As long as I was back before the
shahtabi
wish wore off, I would be fine.

I ran down the corridor, around the darkened jinni Lamp, and down the opposite hall. I passed the laboratory Kamal had been in the night before, then kept going. Twice, I slowed down, careful not to disturb the air around people who were walking along.

A giant door of interlocking stars and triangles stood at the end of the corridor. It was closed, but after I waited a moment, the door swung inward. A gray-bearded man walked out with his arms overloaded with books, so I took the chance and darted in. I was getting good at sneaking through doors.

I had been hearing about the House of Wisdom my entire life. Faisal had been a student there prior to the war, and he had clearly fallen in love with it. He said that in the House of Wisdom, there were more books than I could count. More educated men than anywhere else in the world. More minds willing to see both sides to an argument. And there had never been anywhere else where humans and jinn worked side by side.

Before the war, the sciences had blossomed, and a large part of that was due to the open discussions between our races. According to Faisal, if it weren’t for his brother and Jafar al-Jabr, one of the caliphate’s best mathematicians, we’d be lost in a world of confusing numbers. And since the day the jinn left, there hadn’t been any new discoveries.

The door closed behind me and a puff of air blew my skirt, but I barely noticed. I was in the House of Wisdom, and all I could think about was that no jinni had been there in ages, and a female jinni had never been allowed to enter. I was the first.

Thousands of books, with spines of red leather or black or brown linen, sat on shelves two stories high and a hundred feet long. The scents of ink and glue laced the air, and I breathed them in deep. At least thirty men, all in long robes, were in the library. Some sat at low tables, bent over opened volumes. Others stood in a small group, listening to two men discuss
something. A few roamed along the walls, pulling books off the shelves and tucking them beneath their arms. The room was heavy with stories, and I ached to read them.

Faisal had once been one of these men, with access to all these books. All these minds. No wonder we built the Lamps—the bridge between the worlds. No wonder we gave the humans cartloads of jewels to set foot in it. No wonder Faisal fell in love with this place.

I spun around, taking in the sight of so many books. Where would I begin? Where
could
I begin? Scanning the spines of the books would take too long, and I couldn’t go up to one of the men and ask him for their books on jinn.

But there was a map of the library. It sat propped up on a tall, skinny table and outlined different areas of interest, showing where the books were located. I ran my finger over the ink, but none of the descriptions pertained to jinn. Then I saw that there was a tiny section on the second floor labeled “People of the Lamp.” I almost pressed my nail through the paper when I found it. That had to be about us.

Quickly, I found a set of narrow stairs and climbed to the second story of bookshelves, then braced myself before looking over the railing. The men below me were oblivious that a jinni was practically floating in the air above them. Thankful for my invisibility, I stepped along the balcony and found the corner I’d come to see.

One shelf, on the bottom of a bookcase. That was all they had set aside for my people, and it had only four books. A brass lamp held them up against the side of the shelf, and I couldn’t help but grin at that. It was something Faisal would have done.
I knelt and read the spines of the books, but none of them looked like they could help me. Most were just records of what the jinn had studied while they were in the House of Wisdom. I pulled one out and flipped through the yellowed pages, then tucked it into the pocket in my gown.

That was when I saw them. A row of Memory Crystals, individually tied with a strange twine. These crystals were how we recorded our histories and honored our dead. But how had they gotten here? They were supposed to be kept in a special place in the Cavern, never removed. I picked up a dark green one with equally dark smoke that swirled, suspended, within.

My nose started to itch, and before I could try to prevent it, I sneezed. Then I gasped, because the sneeze echoed across the open space. I leaned into the bookcase and away from the railing, hoping no one would look up, because for a moment, I forgot they couldn’t see me anyway. Maybe they would assume the noise I’d made had come from someone downstairs.

But then I heard a man ask, “Is someone up there?” He must have been pointing, because another man answered him.

“I didn’t see anyone. What books are up there anyway?”

I could feel the blood draining from my face. If they came up here, there’d be nowhere for me to go. I couldn’t slip around them, because the balcony was too narrow, and by then it wouldn’t matter if I was invisible or not. I couldn’t turn myself into a book.

The men’s voices were getting louder.

“The map says it’s where they keep the old records,” said the first man.

“Let’s go. Maybe there’s a kitchen boy hiding up there,”
said the second. I could hear the scowl on his lips, and I started to panic. I stood up, looked over the railing again, and held my breath. I couldn’t climb down, and it was too far to jump. But there was a window at the end of the balcony, by the stairs. Maybe I could stand on the windowsill while they passed.

I sprinted to the end and climbed into the window just as they crested the stairs. The sill was barely six inches wide, but it was enough. I clung to the top and held my breath as two men with long dark beards walked past. They didn’t stop to look out the window.

I was like a lizard, crouching between sky and house. Outside lay a dirt field pocked with scrubs of grass and one long trough for horses. At the other side of the field was a fence, and it was swinging open. At that moment, a horde of horsemen trotted in. Their weary faces were striped with sand and blood, and their armor showed signs of fire damage. One man fell off his horse and landed on his side. Another man dropped his spear, then ran to help the fallen man get to his feet.

These weren’t just ordinary horsemen. They were soldiers, coming back from a battle with my people. The scorch marks on their round shields proved that.

I knew I should not feel any sort of pity, but I did. The man who had fallen was now being carried off by two men, and many others were climbing off their horses and limping across the field. A man in a clean, unbloodied blue tunic helped some men guide the horses to the water. He called out to another man dressed in black, and when that man turned, I almost let go. It was the vizier, Hashim. Even from afar, he frightened me.