I wake as the sun peeks through gray clouds. Layala is gone from beside me, but I can hear her in the cottage below, cups and plates clinking as she sets them on the table.
I lean over the roof’s edge, looking for pomegranate seeds, but the ground is bare save for leaves, stones, and dirt, and our footprints from the day before.
“Not even one,” I say to myself. Not even one seed, one soul to help pass through death. An emptiness flashes through me, like a part of my own soul is missing. To be willing to do work and have that taken from you … I shake my head to clear myself of the feeling.
But worry creeps back in. Without the dead passing into Mote, the Waiting Place in death can only hold so many souls. And when it becomes overrun, those souls spill back into life, without bodies, hungry to return to the lives they had before. And those desperate souls prey on whichever bodies they can find.
I find myself clutching the blanket tight against my chest, as if it could protect me from the hungry dead when they decide death isn’t big enough for them and start forcing their way into life.
Cool, fat raindrops wash my face before they come pouring down over me. I gather up my blanket and head down into the house, shutting the door to the roof behind me to keep the rain from soaking through to our floor.
I have only one story of what happens to the hungry dead—one story my maman told me, when she was teaching me the responsibility a hakawati has, the obligation to be hakawati, even if unwilling. But I shove the story down my throat and swallow it into my stomach.
Layala’s skin looks less feverish, less red and more of her normal healthy pink.
I bend over and touch my hand to her forehead. She’s warm but she’s cooler than she was yesterday.
“How are you feeling?”
“Better,” she says and twists away from my touch. A pang shoots through my heart for her hurt, her confusion, even her anger. But she will understand one day, when she is older. She will understand and she will accept.
A few minutes later, the tea is brewing, olives and oil are laid out on the table, along with two-day old flatbread that’s still fresh with herbs, and some jams and balls of cheese I was keeping on the windowsill to cure the past few weeks.
“I am going for a walk,” Layala announces after she has eaten, and she doesn’t wait for my reply. I let her go, knowing she needs time to be alone. When she leaves, I unlock the old trunk and bring out the small metal lamp filled with sloshing smoke.
I unstopper the bottle, rub the metal with my hand three times, and smoke curls out of its long open spout.
I’m sorry, maman. I know you are weary. But the dead aren’t passing. If the dead do not pass, they will escape into life. Here, they’ll steal bodies, wearing them and discarding them like the furs the fancier women in other towns do.
My maman’s ephemeral body stands before me, her face gray and wispy. Still, a smile curls on her face, and she reaches a hand out to me. She’s more unsteady on her feet than the last time I saw her; each time I release her from her prison, she’s more faded, less of who she was and more smoke. My insides gnaw with guilt, but I need my maman.
I reach out my hands to her, but of course my flesh brushes through her smoke. The smile on her face drops, and she nods at the table and chairs.
“Hakawati,” she greets.
“I know you prefer your rest,” I say.
She smiles again. “It’s always a joy to see my beautiful daughter.” Her voice is weaker than before, and her face is strained, as if she’s focusing all her energy on not fading into the air. The guilt rises again like bile in my throat, but I force it back.
“Ah, maman,” I say, as she sits on a chair. She hovers an inch above the wood, more a pretense of sitting than anything. “I wish this was just a pleasure visit.”
My mother’s face darkens in worry. “What is it, hiyati? What’s happened?”
“The dead,” I say. “There haven’t been any seeds, and death won’t let me enter it.”
My mother’s shoulders tense, but then she’s turned back at the table, drumming her fingers above it, as if she were as solid as the wood. “It’s been a long time since that happened. I remember hearing of it in my great-great-great-grandmother’s time, when she was young, and her own grandmother was Hakawati. She was storyteller to a king who married her because of the stories she spun.”
“How can I fix it?” I ask. “What can I do?”
“I don’t know, Hakawati. But I do know a story.”