The Fire Wish (23 page)

THEY THRUST ME into a stone cell and slammed the iron door shut. Everything in the room was covered in ash, as if this were where the world had burned to dust. The place was lit by a single lamp outside the door’s tiny window, and a weak light spread across the floor. Hot tears rolled down my cheeks and splattered my tattered dress. I wiped them away.

I was more angry and broken than when my father had handed me over to Hashim. And this time, it was my own fault. I sniffed, determined not to cry anymore, but then I thought of Yashar. I was going to die here, and he would never know what happened to me. He was waiting to hear if I’d found a place for him in the palace, and I hadn’t even tried. All I’d managed to do was get myself mixed up in the war. Yashar was stuck at home without anyone. But at least he was at home. Rahela wasn’t. Najwa wasn’t.

My chest shuddered, and I pushed myself backward until the wall stopped me. Then I curled up and tucked my chin, holding back the sobs that were building up.

Dust floated in the broken beams of light, rising up. I watched it, to calm my nerves. If I could only transfer back, like a jinni, I could change things. I would marry the prince, even though the thought still made me sick. I’d give Najwa everything back. She deserved her friends, while I did not.

I was lost in the dust and light when someone rattled the door and pushed it open. I scrambled upright as Faisal rushed in, followed by Atish and Shirin. He stopped in front of me, with worry spreading across his face.

“Zayele,” he said. I nodded. He sighed, put his hands together as if in prayer, and shook them. “I knew your mother.”

“Know,” I corrected, but the slight tremor in his lips said otherwise. “What are you getting at?”

“Come with me. I’m going to take you out of here. I need to speak with you. With all three of you,” he said.

Faisal had spoken with the Captain of the Shaitan before he came to my cell, and whatever they’d discussed must have been interesting, because I was out of there only a few minutes later. A few of the guards raised their eyebrows when they saw me escorted out, but Faisal ignored them and ushered us out of the small prison, across the jinni city, and to the school. I was flanked on each side by Atish and Shirin.

In his office, Faisal took a chunk of frankincense off a shelf and put it on a thin sheet of metal set above burning charcoal. A sliver of white smoke rose and curled in the air. Faisal squinted through the smoke, looking into my eyes.

I didn’t want him to look at me like that, and I fidgeted.
It was as if he could see inside me. Was he using a sort of jinni magic to read my mind?

“What do you want to tell me? Do you know how to get me home?” I asked.

He took one of my hands, turning it over so that my thumb was at the top. That was the place Najwa had her mark, I guessed, but on my hand there was only a bit of worn-off henna.

“What are you doing?” I asked. I meant to sound stronger, but he had unnerved me, and my voice came out cracking, unable to hold itself together. Even though they’d taken me out of the stone prison room, I was still on edge.

“There can be no other explanation.” He dropped my hand and ushered me to one of the floor cushions. I sat between Atish and Shirin and watched him go to his desk and bring out a shard of green crystal the length of my arm. “I never thought I’d see you again.” Then he sat across from me and laid the crystal on his lap. “Why don’t you tell me how you got here. And where you’ve put Najwa.”

The incense was growing thick, and the smell made me woozy. I fanned it away and said, as nicely as I could, “She came to me when I was in the barge—”

He cursed under his breath, and I paused until he motioned me to go on.

“Anyway, I didn’t want to be there, and suddenly there was a jinni. I thought it was a gift.”

“Did you wish on her?” His words became fire in the air, and I backed away, almost falling off my cushion.

“Yes,” I squeaked. “But she was a jinni, and I needed to get out of there. I didn’t know—”

“What did you wish?” Faisal had grown red-faced, glaring at the crystal.

“That she take my place and send me home.” His eyes were so hot I could feel them heating up the room. “I didn’t want to marry the prince,” I said lamely.

“I don’t think Najwa wanted to, either,” Shirin said.

Faisal looked grim. “No matter your reasons, you had absolutely no right to make a wish on your sister.”

The room was silent. I shook my head and stared at the flame beneath the incense, trying not to look at the others. I was afraid of what I might see in their faces. “You said Najwa is my sister,” I said as softly as I could. I waited for him to correct himself, but he only stared, tight-lipped.

“Najwa is your twin.” I opened my mouth to protest and he held up a hand, silencing me. His face was changing—the skin was turning dark blue across his cheekbones. “Your mother and I—”

“You haven’t met my mother,” I said. “Have you?” I couldn’t imagine my mother consorting with a jinni, but so much had happened since I left home that I didn’t know what to believe anymore.

He rubbed at his wrist and frowned, as if he’d expected something to be there. “The woman you think is your mother is, indeed, not your mother.”

“Yes, she is.” I’d been with her my whole life! And I didn’t have a twin. Rahela had known me when I was a baby. She would have said something about that.

“I think it’s time you looked at this,” he said, holding up the crystal. “I meant to show Najwa first, but she isn’t here. You
will have to be the first, come what may.” He pressed his hand over his heart and looked at the floor.

“You’ve just said I have a jinni for a sister and my mother is some other woman, and you want me to—look at a crystal?”

Two tears ran down his cheeks, leaving shining streaks as they fell. He nodded and held out the crystal. “Take it, Zayele. It’s one of my memories, and it’s about your mother.”

I held back, staring at the green shard, realizing now it wasn’t entirely solid. The crystal was clear, and something greenish swirled inside, as the frankincense was doing in the room.

“What is it?” I whispered.

“It’s a memory,” Shirin whispered, her voice full of awe.

“We look at these to learn about our history,” Atish added. He moved closer, sitting only an inch away from me. “It won’t hurt you.”

“Watch and listen to what it has to say,” Faisal said. His voice reminded me of my mother’s. It was soothing, lilting, and made me ache for home.

BY THAT EVENING, I still hadn’t had a chance to read the book I’d taken from the library, so I waited until Rahela was asleep, then went back into my garden. I couldn’t bear to pick up the Memory Crystal, so I carried only the book with me, then stood in the middle of the courtyard, waiting for the moon to rise. So far, I had seen the sun, felt rain on my fingers, and found out what peacocks did when startled, but I hadn’t seen a moonrise.

In the Cavern, one of the bridges over the canal was made of alabaster bricks. It had been there for centuries, but the bricks were older than that. They had been used for something else, something no one remembered. Each brick had a tiny moon carved into a bottom corner. Some of the bricks had full moons, some had crescents, and some had half-moons. When they built the bridge, they paid attention to that and put them in order, even though we didn’t have the moon. When I was much younger, I never stepped on the bricks with the full moons, because they were darker than the others.

Now I would see the real moon hanging in the sky, and I didn’t even know which phase to expect.

A sliver peeked above the stone wall, slippery and silent. Then I heard footsteps on the other side of the wall, in Kamal’s garden.

Whoever was on the other side thumped a hollow object and began plucking at the strings of an instrument. It had to be Kamal, with his oud. He tested the strings, then began playing. The music was delicate and haunting, like night. I sat on my bench, set the book aside, and twisted a feather on my lap while I listened.

He played faster now, and a tingling feeling spread down my arms. I was sitting in a human palace, listening to a prince play music beneath the moon. There was nothing real about my situation.

The song ended, and he began playing another. The notes clashed, and he sighed. He started the song three more times, then stopped. He had been silent for a while when he called out tentatively, “Zayele, is that you?”

I cleared my throat. “Yes?”

He must have heard me, even though I was sure my voice hadn’t been louder than a mouse’s, because in the next second, his face appeared in the cutout in the wall. His eyes swept over me and I checked to make sure my veil was in place. He held up the oud to the hole in the wall.

“They told me your room was that one, but I wasn’t sure if I believed them. Anyway, did you hear?”

“Yes. It was beautiful.”

He shrugged. “It wasn’t as good as it should be. I’ve been
playing for a year now and I sound like I just started. But that’s not the point.” He bowed his head.

I stood up and went to the wall. “Then why do you play?”

“When I’m playing, I have to pay attention. I can’t think of anything else or I’ll make a mistake. So it takes my mind off things.”

“Do you play in front of other people?” I asked. It wouldn’t matter how much I paid attention; playing for others would make me too nervous. I’d mess everything up.

He laughed, shaking his head. “I can’t imagine what they’d say if I held a concert, out in public. No. It’s just for me.” The moon lifted off the wall and hung in the air. “And for those who listen in,” he said, grinning at me.

My face was burning. “I’m sorry. I was out here waiting for the moon—”

“Waiting for the moon?”

“Ye-e-s,” I said, drawing out the word while I thought of an excuse. “I hadn’t seen it in Baghdad yet.”

“Is this something you do often?”

“Yes,” I lied. “And we always had music while we looked at it.”

“Right. And I suppose you all sang ‘My Mother’s Garden’?”

How did he know that song? It was one every schoolchild in the Cavern knew. It was the type of song that tiptoed into your soul and danced on it while you slept—lilting, romantic, and a little sad. “That song,” I whispered, “I haven’t heard it in a very long time.”

He looked surprised. “I think I can play it.” He picked up the oud. “Want me to?”

I wasn’t sure I did. What if it wasn’t the same? What if it
was
? “You don’t have to.”

“No, it’s fine. Just don’t laugh when I mess up.” He went to the bench, sat down, and bent over the oud.

The song was the same. I shivered, feeling the same ache in my heart that it had always given me. He was humming the tune, keeping his lips pressed together. They were thoughtful lips, full of the tune but not willing yet to let the words out.

When the music slowed, he glanced at me. The music and moonlight had left me open, and something dove into me and squeezed my heart.

“Sing,” he whispered.

I would never have agreed to it before, but something in me wanted to hear the words, so I sang, clutching my fingers around the cutout’s frame:

“He left me at the well,

saying his soul was dry.

I grew, I breathed,

I danced, I cried.

The sun hid behind the moon.

The water turned blue.

He came home with pockets of silk

but his soul was dry.

I took him to my mother’s garden,

gave him hope to drink.”

I sang the last line three times, and was done. The oud lay still on his lap, and I stared at the carvings on its body. They
swirled, like the carvings along the palace walls. I could feel his eyes on me.

“That was beautiful.”

I shook my head. “Is it the same as you sing it?”

“Yes, but we say ‘love’ instead of ‘hope.’ ” He tapped the strings, and they shook, making a rich sound. Then he stood up and spun on his heels. “I think I better go now. See you in the morning?”

I nodded automatically, and he bowed and retreated to his room. I sat back down on the bench while the rhythm of the song pulsed inside me.

Gave him love to drink.

The words echoed in my mind till long after I had climbed into my bed.