The Golem and the Jinni (48 page)

But of course none of that mattered now: she was with the Jinni, safe inside his glass walls, bathing in the starlight. Her eyes were clear, the shadows lay still at her feet. Nothing could hurt her here.

“A mate,” she said. “You mean, a husband.” She sighed, wishing they’d talk about something else, but it would be rude to change the subject. “My father will find a husband for me, someday soon. There are men in our tribe looking for wives, and my father will choose from among them.”

“How will he choose?”

“He’ll pick the one with the most to offer. Not just the bride price, but the size of his clan, their grazing, their standing in the tribe. And, of course, whether others think him a good man.”

“And attraction, desire—that figures nowhere in his decision?”

She laughed. “Women in stories have that luxury, perhaps. Besides, my aunts tell me that desire comes later.”

“Yet you’re frightened.”

She blushed; had it been so obvious? “Well, of course,” she said, trying to sound adult and unconcerned. “I’ll be leaving my family and my home, to live in a stranger’s tent, and be a servant to his mother. I know that my father spoils me, and I’m not so thankless as to think he will force me to marry someone horrible. But yes, I’m frightened. Who wouldn’t be?”

“Then why marry at all?”

Again his ignorance surprised her. “Only ill or feeble girls take no husbands. A girl must marry if she can, or she becomes a burden. Our clan is too small to support an unmarried daughter, not when there are growing children to feed, and wives to find for my brothers and my cousins. No, I must marry, and soon.”

He was watching her with pity now. “A hard life, with so few choices.”

Pride rose in her breast. “But a good life, too. There’s always something to celebrate, a wedding or a birth, or a good calving in spring. I know no other way to be. Besides,” she said, “we can’t
all
live in glass palaces.”

He raised an eyebrow, smiling. “Would you wish to, if you could?”

Was he toying with her? His face gave no hint. She returned the smile. “Sir, your home is very beautiful. But I wouldn’t know what to do with myself in a place like this.”

“Perhaps you wouldn’t have to do anything.”

She laughed then, and it was a full laugh, a woman’s laugh. “That, I think, would frighten me more than any husband.”

The Jinni laughed too, and bowed his head to her, a gesture of defeat. “I hope that you’ll allow me to visit you, after you’re married.”

“Of course,” she said, surprised and touched. “And you could come to the wedding, if you’d like.” How funny, she thought: a jinni emissary at her wedding, as though she were a queen in a story!

“Your family wouldn’t object?”

“We won’t tell them,” she said, and giggled. It didn’t seem immodest, with him.

He laughed too, then leaned back, gave her an appraising look. “A wedding. Indeed, I’d like to see that. Fadwa, would you show me what a wedding is like?”

“Show you?” Had he meant
tell
? She frowned, unsure. But he reached out a hand—he was sitting next to her now; when had he moved?—and smoothed the creases from her brow. Again, the unexpected warmth of his skin; again that strange blossoming in her stomach.
Show me
, he whispered. She was so tired, all of a sudden. Certainly he wouldn’t mind if she curled up and went to sleep (and a part of her whispered
silly girl, you’re already asleep
, but that was a dream and she ignored it), and his hand on her brow felt so wonderful that she didn’t even resist, but gave herself to the fatigue as it pulled her under.

Fadwa opened her eyes.

She was in a tent, a man’s tent. She was alone. She looked down. Her hands and feet were painted with henna. She was dressed in her wedding gown.

She remembered her mother and aunts dressing her in the women’s tent, painting her hands. The negotiation of the bride price, the display of her possessions. Singing, dancing, a feast. Then the procession, with herself at its head. And now she waited, alone, in a stranger’s tent. From outside she could hear laughter, drumbeats, wedding songs. Before her was a bed, heaped with skins and blankets.

A man was standing behind her.

She turned to face him. He was dressed as a Bedouin now, in black wedding garments, slim and elegant. He held out his hands, cupped together, and in them was a necklace, the most amazing necklace she’d ever seen: an intricate chain of gold and silver links, and disks of flawless blue-white glass, all woven through with filigree. It was as though he’d taken his palace and turned it into a bauble to be worn around her neck. She reached out and touched it. The glass disks shifted and chimed against her fingers.

Is this for me
? she whispered.

If you would have it.

His eyes danced in the lamplight. She saw desire in them, and it didn’t frighten her.
Yes
, she said.

He clasped the necklace around her throat, his arms almost embracing her. He smelled warm, like a stone baking in the sun. His fingers released the clasp, to trail down her shoulders, her arms. She wasn’t scared, she wasn’t shaking. His mouth lowered to hers, and she was kissing him as though she’d been waiting for years. His fingers buried themselves in her hair. Her dress was gone now, an embroidered heap at her feet, and his hands were on her breasts and she felt no fear. He lifted her effortlessly, and then she was on the bed and he was there too, and he was inside of her, and it didn’t hurt, not at all, not like her aunts had warned her. They moved together slowly, they had all the time in the world, and soon it was as if she had always known how. She kissed his mouth and twined herself around him and bit her lip in joy, and held on as the whirlwind that was her lover carried her far, far away—

Wake up!

Something was wrong.

Fadwa! Wake up!

The ground shook beneath them, a tremor first, then harder and harder. The tent began to collapse. He was trying to pull away, but she clung to him, she was terrified, she didn’t want to let go—

Fadwa!

She held on with all her strength, but he ripped himself away and was gone. The tent, the world, everything went dark.

Above the Bedouin encampment, the Jinni reeled on the winds. He’d never before been in such pain. He was torn, shredded, near dissolution. Dimly he realized he’d let himself go too deep, drawn in by her dreaming fantasies. It had taken everything he had to escape. A lesser jinni would’ve been destroyed.

He hung there for a while, recuperating as much as he could before the journey home—weak as he was, he’d be easy prey, and vulnerable until he reached his palace. And if the wind carried to him a commotion of terrified human voices, the wails of women and a father’s cries, then the Jinni tried not to hear them.

19.

T
he Jinni ran, the Golem in his arms.

He was taking her to the Bowery, thinking to hide her among the crowd, or in the warrens where the police didn’t dare to go. He found a fire escape and climbed, and began to run rooftop to rooftop, eyes tracking him from the shadows. She was a heavy weight, still in the fugue that had fallen over her. Had he injured her too deeply? If she needed help, where could he possibly find it? Perhaps he could hide her at Conroy’s . . .

She twitched once in his arms, and then again, making him stumble as he ran. Slowing, he found a dark and deserted corner behind a chimney. He lowered himself to the tar paper, cradling her, wincing at the sight of her ruined shirtwaist and underclothes. Her hair lay tangled across her face, the rose-carved combs having fallen out somewhere along the way. With her cool skin, and neither pulse nor breath, anyone would think he was holding a corpse. The burns above her breasts had already faded, the outlines of his fingers smoothing away as he watched. Was that why she’d collapsed, so her body could heal?

He moved to gather her up again, and something sparkled from beneath the scraps of cotton: a golden chain, a necklace. At its end was a large, square locket with a simple latch. A memory rose to his mind, of standing with her on a water-tower platform, and the words that had so disturbed him:
I must never hurt another. Never. I’ll destroy myself first, if I have to
. She had raised one hand toward her throat, and then dropped it, embarrassed. As though he’d seen too much.

He touched the latch, and the locket sprang open. A square of paper, thick and folded, fell into his hand. As though it had been the key to waking her, the Golem began to stir. Quickly he closed the locket and slipped the paper into a pocket.

Her eyes blinked open, and she struggled to look around, her movements stuttering and birdlike. “Ahmad,” she said. “Where are we?” Her words were oddly slurred. “What happened, why can’t I remember?”

Had she truly lost all memory? If Anna had been unconscious, and any other witnesses were too far away to see clearly . . . “There was an accident,” he said, improvising desperately. “A fire. You were burned, and you collapsed. I brought you away, you’ve been healing.”

“Oh God! Is anyone hurt?” She tried to stand, wobbling on her feet. “We have to go back!”

“It’s not safe yet.” His mind raced ahead, trying to smooth away any objections. “But everyone is accounted for. No one else was injured.”

“Is Anna—”

But then she paused. And he could see, in the focusing of her eyes, the return of her memory, the images of Irving’s pummeling at her own hands.

From her mouth came a wordless wail. She sank to her knees, her hands rising to clutch at her hair. Instantly he regretted the story he’d told. Grimacing, he tried to put his arms around her, to help her stand again.

“Let go of me!” She ripped herself from his reach, got to her feet, and backed away. With her knotted hair and torn clothing, she looked like a wraith-woman he might once have encountered, one he’d have tried hard to avoid. “Do you see now?” she cried. “Do you
see
? I killed a man!”

“He was alive when we left. They’ll find a doctor, he’ll recover, I’m sure of it.” He tried to evince a confidence he didn’t feel.

“I wasn’t careful enough, I let myself forget—Oh God, what have I done? And you—why did you carry me away, why did you lie?”

“It was to protect you! They were calling for the police, they would have arrested you.”

“They should have! I should be punished!”

“Chava, listen to what you’re saying. You’d go to jail, and explain to the police what you’ve done?” She hesitated, imagining it, and he pressed the advantage. “No one needs to know,” he said. “No one saw, not even Anna.”

She was staring at him, aghast. “This is your advice? You’d have me pretend it never happened?”

Of course she never would; it would be beyond her. But he’d backed himself into a corner. “If it were me, and I had attacked a man by accident, with no witnesses, and if there were no way to confess without revealing my nature—then yes, perhaps I would. The harm has been done, why compound it?”

She shook her head. “No. This is what comes of listening to you. Tonight I forgot my caution, and this is the result.”

“You blame
me
?”

“I blame no one but myself, I should have had better judgment.”

“But it was my evil influence that led you down this path.” His concern for her was turning to resentment. “Will you also blame Anna, for tempting you to the dance hall?”

“Anna doesn’t know what I am! She acted in innocence!”

“Whereas I tricked you knowingly, I suppose.”

“No, but you confuse me! You make me forget that some things aren’t possible for me!”

But tonight you were happy
, he thought; and heard himself say, “If this is how you feel, you needn’t ever see me again.”

She reeled back, shocked and hurt—and for the second time that night he wanted to undo his words. “Yes,” she said, voice shaking. “I think that would be best. Good-bye, Ahmad.”

She turned and walked away. Unbelieving, he watched her go. Halfway across the rooftop she paused: and he pictured her glancing back, the barest hint of regret in her eyes. He’d call after her then, apologize, plead with her not to go.

Instead she bent down and picked up a discarded blanket, wrapped it about her shoulders, and kept walking. He watched her figure dwindle until he could no longer distinguish it from the others that moved about the rooftops, and not once did she look back.

A little while later, the Golem came down from the rooftops and looked for a quiet alley where she could destroy herself.

It was a simple decision, quickly made. She couldn’t be allowed to hurt anyone again. And in this, at least, the Jinni was right: no one would be any safer if she sat in prison. Even if she managed to stay hidden, how long before captivity overwhelmed her and she went mad? Which would be worse, waiting endlessly for the breaking point, or the horror when it finally happened?

She clutched more tightly at the stinking blanket; it scratched at the remnants of the burns on her chest. She had never felt pain of her own before. Until the Jinni injured her she’d been somewhere far away, watching calmly through her own eyes as she grabbed Irving and shattered his bones. She’d felt no anger, no rage. Her body had simply taken over, as though she’d been built for no other purpose. The Jinni had appeared, horror in his face, and she’d only thought,
why, there’s Ahmad.
His hands on her then, and the pain—and then waking on the rooftop, in the Jinni’s arms.