I stare down at Sayil’s lifeless body while I cup Layala’s seed in my palm.
I kneel over her body, trying to find any resemblance she might have to Layala, but though I thought they shared something, I no longer do. The girls are like night and day. Where Layala’s features are strong and dark, her brows bold, her hair a wild mass of dark curls, Sayil is light. Her skin is alabaster, her hair more the color of copper than coal. I resist the urge to lift an eyelid and see what color her eyes are.
“You are not my Layl,” I whisper. “But you will be her soul’s vessel. And with that, I will have to live.”
Then I eat my child’s soul seed.
A flower grew in a field of grass, and it stood taller and thicker than anything around her, save for the trees. The grasses, plain and green and slim, made fun of the flower for her tall stem and colorful petals.
“You have a strange head,” they told her, laughing, “So many petals and so many colors. Why, we have just one head and one color and that is enough for us.”
The flower would bend in the wind and rain and would try to shrivel up against the grasses, just so she wouldn’t tower over them. But with each passing day of sun and rain, she grew and grew, until her stem was as thick as twenty grass blades and her flowered face was as wide as a person’s fist.
The flower was miserable, for even though every person who passed by her stopped to remark on her beauty, she didn’t fit in with the grass.
One day, a girl and her friend were running through the field, and they came upon the flower.
“Oh, how beautiful!” they exclaimed, dancing around the flower that stood as tall as they did. “We should take it home! We would win the town prize for prettiest plant!”
And that is what they did. They cut the flower at her feet, and she bled and cried at the pain of it all. They wrapped her in cloth and suffocated her, carrying her all the way home.
There, the girls planted the flower in a pot of soil, and they fed her with water from their well. The flower stood as tall and proud as she could, but she felt lonely without her grasses and even missed their teasing.
Even so, everyone who saw her admired her and claimed she was the prettiest flower they ever saw.
The day of the town fair came, and the girls won the prize for prettiest plant. With their blue ribbon attached to her, the flower gazed upon the sea of faces who walked by, staring for but a second or two before going on their way.
As the weeks passed by, the flower grew weaker. Her leaves shriveled, her petals fell, and the girls no longer bothered to water her. The flower was the most miserable she’d ever been.
A bird noticed her plight and came over to her.
“I can help you,” the bird said. “Just give me some of your seeds, and I will plant you somewhere else.”
“But then I won’t be me,” the flower said. “My seeds are part of me, but they’re not me.”
“If you don’t give me your seeds, then you and your kind will die. You are already dying, so let me help you.”
The flower thought for a moment, then bent her head to the bird. The bird pecked and pecked at her until it stole some of her seeds and flew off. True to its word, the bird scattered the seeds among the grasses so that many flowers grew tall and beautiful. The bird and its friends took more seeds, scattering them far and wide, until the entire field was covered in these flowers.
People would come by and take walks through the field, admiring the flowers and trampling the grass as they did so. And though our mother flower died, her kind lived on because of her.
“Oh Layl,” I say, and then I’m crying. “My beautiful Layala.” Have I done this to her? Have I made her feel like that flower?
My head feels too heavy, and I let it hang against my chest. “I’m so sorry you felt this way, Layl. I’m so sorry I didn’t realize.”
I want nothing more than to hold my child again, and to tell her, to tell her she is beautiful and doesn’t have to sacrifice herself to be worthy. That she is worth more than gold already, simply being her.
But mostly, I want to tell her I’m sorry for forcing her into a pot, just like that flower.
There is nothing more to do but to wait. But I don’t move.
I run my fingers along the wood of the floor, feeling how solid it is. I close my eyes and breathe in deeply, inhaling the scent of spiced bread, warm tea, and … us. Layala and me. I imagine Illyas’s scent is lingering in the air, mixing with ours.
My eyes trace the curve of my pot-bellied stove, the one I’ve boiled so many pots of tea and coffee over. The clay oven in the corner, where I’ve baked bread for my child and fed her all these years. The floor, covered in carpets made of fibers twisted by my maman’s, and her maman’s hands, each one colored and layered over the other.
I turn to look at Sayil, who still hasn’t uttered a word to me. I want to hear Layala’s voice, even if the words are Sayil’s, but the girl won’t even look me in the eye, only burrows herself into her mother’s side.
“I know this is not the time,” Kamuna says. “But there is still the matter of passing on my mantle.”
“I have lost my love today, and I am raising my child in another’s body. This is not the time; you’re right.”
“With Sayil alive,” Kamuna continues, “and Layala, well, yet to be raised—but I have no doubt she will be—I will need to decide what to do.”
“You have your child,” I say. “You have her to pass the mantle to. Just as we discussed with Rami.”
Kamuna glances down at Sayil. “But she is so alive.”
“She is in another’s body. My daughter’s body.”
“She is alive, Hakawati. I—” Death bows her head. “I remember now what it feels like to truly mourn. To mourn not the dead, but the living.”
“You don’t want to send her back into death,” I say softly, understanding what she is saying. I feel so tired, and though I want to argue, I don’t.
Kamuna shakes her head. “This is life, Hakawati. Life. And she is here, alive.”
I glance at Sayil’s body, still showing no signs of life.
“When Layala returns, what will you do?” I ask. “Because I will kill you myself if you lay a finger on her.”
“I don’t know, Hakawati. I really don’t. But I know I am dying, and someone has to take my place.”
“Well, it won’t be my daughter,” I say. “So, it will have to be yours.”
Kamuna is hunched over, I realize now, her skin gray. Sayil is staring at her mother, but her eyes look blank. As if she is neither here nor elsewhere, as if being in death for so long has robbed her body of being able to hold life, no matter the seed in her.
“I’m dying,” Kamuna says again. “My magic is weak. Even with a sacrifice, I wouldn’t be able to raise a fruit fly from the dead. I don’t think I can even return to death easily. And I feel …”
But I don’t wait to hear how Kamuna feels. I turn my back to both Death and her child and stare at Sayil’s body, waiting for my own child to return to life.