The golem limps ahead, one foot dragging slightly behind as he leads us through a clay garden. It’s filled with statuettes of animals, creatures, plants. None I’ve seen or heard of before. A fountain made of clay rises in the center, its center column spouting water. The water mixes with raw mud, leaving a pool of wet clay behind, waiting to be molded into something.
“She likes pottery,” Rami states matter-of-factly, as he gestures around us.
“I always wondered where jinn clay magic came from.”
“Jinn are forged from fire, and so are clay beings,” he says. “And ash is of the earth, so jinn and golem both come from the earth itself, though in different ways.”
I nod, running my fingers down one of the arms of a statue of three women. The women are joined at their backs, though they each have their own set of limbs. Each woman’s face holds a different expression, one wide-eyed in fear or shock, another’s lips downturned in a scowl, the last, her hands clasped tight over her mouth, as if muffling a scream.
“Her sisters,” Rami says, when he notices my gaze lingering on the three women. “There were four earth sisters, one to rule each season. Mother Earth turned the other three into clay and took over all seasons.”
“Why?”
He shrugs. “Why does Mother Earth do anything? Why does she cause floods and lightning, thunder and volcanoes? Earthquakes, monsoons? She does because she can.”
I hold back a shiver and hurry my pace behind the golem, wanting to get out of the garden now.
“Why ask her for help?” I question. “You can’t trust a woman who turned her sisters into statues.”
“I can trust her power,” he says, “and that’s good enough for me.”
The golem swings open a clay door and steps aside to let us into a glass greenhouse. Vines are curled against the glass panes of the walls and ceiling, leaves sprawling all around. It smells like wet earth and scented petals, like grass in the early morning still wet with dew, and even of sunshine. But there’s something else under it all, a sort of rawness, like meat I buy from the butcher, still red with blood. The air is heavy and cloying, and I taste metal in the back of my throat.
I sweat as the golem leads us through, and the sensation that the plants are closing in tighter creeps up on me. I want to slice at them, to hold them back, but I have no blade on me. And even if I did, I’m not sure the plants wouldn’t fight back. So instead, I keep my arms lifted from my sides to create more space around my torso and follow the golem.
“Gall,” a woman’s voice calls out. I hear snipping, as of scissors, and the crack of thin branches.
“Yes, Mother,” the golem calls out, hurrying off and leaving us behind.
He reappears a moment later, though, and gestures at us to hurry behind him.
The leaves are wider here, as big as my head, or bigger, and they hang from vines and stems as thick as my forearms. Some of the stems are only as wide as my thumb, but I can still imagine someone wrapping them around a neck and … but I shake my head of the thought.
What is wrong with me?
“I felt you eat my fruit,” a woman’s voice says. The golem holds back a few leaves to create a path for Rami and me. We pass through, and the golem lets the leaves fall like curtains behind us. It’s a bit darker here, the foliage pressing around and above us.
A woman stands with scissors in her hands, clipping at plants and branches. I notice pockmarked areas of her skin, as if small fruit, like berries, were plucked right from her flesh.
She glances up at me, her eyes boring into mine. “Who is this?” she asks, taking a step closer as she snips at the air with her scissor blades.
“Hakawati jinn,” Rami says, stepping around me, as if to protect me from Earth’s blades. “She’s a friend of mine.”
His voice is weaker, as if words are getting caught in his throat. I’ve never seen him frightened like this before, even with Kamuna, and my blood runs cold and sluggish in my veins.
“A friend?” Earth says, closing her blades with a single sharp snip. She tucks the scissors tip-down into a belt at her waist and steps forward again. “Those are hard to come by, especially in these times. Enemies, though,” she says with a long breath, “those are more fruitful.”
Rami bows his head slightly, as if in acknowledgement of what Earth has just said. I don’t mirror him but stare at the woman with the leaves caught in her thick hair, the tattoo of ferns and vines running up and down her bare skin. Her face is tanned by the sun, her eyes as green as moss. Her hair is as brown as tree bark. Twigs stick up out of the strands. But the twigs are intentional, thin but strong, and holding her hair back in a loose, low bun.
“What is it you want?” Earth asks.
“I need to pass through your realm to the holding waters,” Rami says.
Earth slits her eyes at me. “And this one. Why is she here?”
“The holding waters have Death’s daughter in it,” I start.
Earth sighs and glances up to the glass ceiling of the greenhouse. “Once again, jinns prove themselves to be more trouble than they’re worth.” She levels her gaze at me. “Then what do you need me for?” Her voice is languid, as if bored by the conversation.
“To let us through,” Rami says.
“And what do I get for it?”
He squeezes his eyes shut for a moment. “Please, just let us through.”
Earth draws her eyebrows together. “The waters are mine, and everything in them are mine.”
“Please,” Rami repeats. “Let us through.”
“I didn’t raise your annoying little clay family when you asked me to, or even demand that Death do so, and yet you think I would allow you into my realm?” Earth says, then snorts. “Why would I help you now?”
“Please,” he says yet again, so weak I bend my head closer to hear.
Earth shrugs and moves to prune more of her plants.
I notice Gall, the golem, standing with his eyes to his feet.
“Let us through,” I tell him under my breath.
But he either doesn’t hear me or pretends not to.
Earth snaps her fingers at Gall. “Get rid of these pests from my realm.”
“We’re jinns,” I say. “We’re no more trouble than we need to be. I want to raise my child from the dead and Rami here wants to raise his family.”
Earth blinks once, then throws her head back and laughs. Her neck is ruddy, lined with dark veins that look like smudges against her skin. “I don’t do anything for free.”
I glance at Rami, who’s standing too still.
“We only want—”
“Want, want, want. All anyone comes to me for is something they want. Well, what I want is to have you out of my realm.”
“My child is dead!”
“So?” Earth’s voice is thick, as if clogged with dirt. “Things live, things die. That is the way.”
“She’s young,” I argue.
“So are saplings, so are the seeds they grow from, the leaves in the spring, so are the dew drops that die as the sun climbs the sky. All things are young at one point.”
“She won’t grow old. She is dead and will stay dead if I don’t—”
“What makes her life more valuable, jinn, that you would seek to command me in my own realm?”
“She is my daughter.”
“And she is nothing to me. Just as you are.”
I try again. “Rami needs your help.”
“I’ve said no,” Earth says and turns her back on me.
“We will owe you a favor,” I offer.
She snorts.
“Please,” I say. “Rami’s—”
“—my son, you little jinn fool.”