The next morning, my skin was sticky from the air, my hair still damp from the night before. Remembering the evening—my time with Raheemah, Saalim’s confession—I smiled and curled into myself.
On the day before, when Raheemah and I had left the men, she took me back to her living quarters.
I followed her across the suspended bridge, each step making me grip the ropes more tightly as I bounced. How strange it was to be hosted by my young sister. We were close to the treetops here, and each brightly colored bird and flower pulled my attention.
“It is so different from home, eh?” Raheemah said, watching me as we crossed the bridge. “I love it,” she continued as I nodded at her. “But I missed home, and still do sometimes.”
Why did she sound so sad?
“It is why Jawar let me bring so much of our home here. Now if only I could share some of the wetness with the rest of the desert. We’d all fare better.” She smiled, wiping away the hair stuck to her temple.
“The air is so thick, I can barely breathe,” I said once I’d reached the end of the bridge.
“You get used to it.” Raheemah led me inside, and I was surprised to see we were not alone.
Leaning forward, embroidering a long swath of linen, was Raheemah’s mother.
“Sasha!” I cried. When she heard my voice she tore her gaze from her work and beamed at me.
“Emel!” She stood slowly, wincing as she straightened her knees, and wrapped me in a long hug.
“Once the stories of Father’s death reached me, I begged Jawar to let us return home to get her.” Raheemah said it so pragmatically. Did anyone mourn him?
Sasha caressed my face, cooing about how much I looked like Isra, how much she missed me. My chest squeezed with longing for my own mother, for the soft embraces of the harem.
Over tea, we told each other stories of our lives.
“Traveling with the king of Madinat Almulihi?” Raheemah was surprised, understandably. I told her a story of coincidence. I worked with the healer at the palace so, of course, I encountered him frequently. No jinni found his way into the tale.
“I am useful to him on this journey,” I lied. “Because I know something of the desert.” She did not need to know the bit about Kassim. She did not need to worry.
Raheemah and her mother told me about their village, how they had acclimated. There was an undercurrent of tension, though, which I could not understand.
“Jawar is a good man,” Raheemah said after a long pause. She stared out a net-covered window. “I . . .” She paused and sipped her tea. She left it lingering there, never picking up the rest of her thought.
“What is it, Emah?” I looked from her to her mother, waiting for an explanation.
“He will be marrying another soon.”
That did not suffice as explanation.
“Mama and I will be moved to the guest lodgings. His new wife will stay with him. Three moons and it will be a year since we were wed. I have not yet carried a child.” Her eyes met mine meaningfully, and I understood then what she was telling me.
Now I began to understand the hurt.
Was the pregnancy all that time ago her last? Had the tonic she had taken from the healer harmed her womb? I thought about that choice she had made. Her life was beautiful and happy now, but she could not have a child to share it with. Had she known this would be the result of the tonic, would she have taken it? Or would being isolated from the palace—for she surely would have been cast out by our father, alone with an infant—have been any better? Unseen consequences lingered like shadows around every choice made.
Sasha said, “Jawar has been kind, but he needs children.” She caressed Raheemah’s hair with tears in her eyes.
“I am so sorry,” I said to them both. Raheemah would still be his wife, but she would carry with her a lifelong burden of feeling as though she had failed.
After seeing her mother, she took me to bathe under the cool water, and we found ways to laugh despite her harbored sadness. We reminisced about our life before, comparing it to our lives now. How different things were.
Now, in the guest-house bed, I rolled onto my side, thinking of Saalim. What would have happened last night, had Tamam not come in?
Sitting up, I looked around the empty room. My gaze lingered on the vivid wall hangings and smooth wooden cups and bowls sitting on the nearby table. These things were so much like home, yet so different. I rose, wanting to find Saalim. I needed to tell him how I felt.
When I reached the clearing, Tamam, Amir, Nassar, Saalim, and an unfamiliar woman all glanced toward me as I approached. My eyes were fixed on Saalim, feeling like an ahira at dawn, wondering if the muhami would want to relive the night. Tentatively smiling, I moved toward him. He smiled in return, but his eagerness did not match mine. My pace slowed. There was something else in his eyes. Something had changed.
Saalim gestured to the woman. “Emel, this is Edala, my sister. She is ah . . . the one who helped us, who helped me.”
Much had changed, indeed.
Her smile was genuine. “It is nice to meet you without disguise.”
Amir scooped gruel into a bowl and handed to me. Then, he turned back to Edala. By the way he looked at her, I understood that I had interrupted something.
“Let me see your map, and I can show you,” Edala said, taking the map from Amir. “The cave is here.” Edala pointed to a blank space.
“And you think Kassim will be there?” Tamam asked. He stared at Edala, watching her hands, her face, the cross of her legs.
“If he is anywhere in this desert, it is there. Zahar spent much time in this cave. I suspect it is where the Darkafa live.”
“Do you think it possible the woman he is with is Zahar?” Tamam asked.
“I do.” She looked at him swiftly before she turned away, brushing back her hair.
I had missed so much. The gruel sat uneaten in my palms, and I stared at Edala nearly as intently as Tamam, as Nassar and Amir.
I remembered the drawing of Edala in her room. Though this woman was older, she looked the same. Clearly bred from royal blood, she had the high angles of face just as Saalim had, except her coloring was darker, like the Hayali.
“Emel,” Edala said as Saalim and Amir discussed the suggested route to the cave. “Might we talk alone?”
Following Edala off the path, we walked through the trees, passing mud-crafted homes with families inside preparing for the day.
“I can change my form,” she said when I asked her to explain her appearance. When we were away from listening ears, she added, “I am a si’la.”
A si’la? I had not believed such things existed.
“Do you know what you are?” she asked me.
“I don’t understand.”
“The magic you carry, do you know of it?”
Though I stared at the ground, careful to step over every stick and bush and root, I still managed to catch my foot. “Masira’s mark?” I asked as I gathered myself.
“Yes. It is much more than a change to your skin, though. The goddess herself has chosen you—for what exactly, I don’t know. But because you carry that mark, you can do anything you desire with magic, should you choose to. You could become a si’la, like me. Maybe even more.” Her eyes glittered like Altasa’s had when she tried to sway me.
I would not let this illusion that I had any interest in magic go on longer than needed.
“I have no desire to be a conduit for Masira’s volatility.”
“A si’la does not pull the reins of Masira’s fickle desires.” She seemed smug. “The magic is mine to do with as I please. Do you see the difference? It is nothing like jinni magic.”
She said jinni magic like she knew I was familiar. “You sound like Altasa. She tried to coax me to do the same.”
“Altasa?”
“The healer of Almulihi.”
“She knew magic?” she sounded doubtful.
I told her about the cricket.
Edala hummed to herself, running her fingers through her hair. “Do you know what else Masira’s mark has done for you?”
A lizard sashayed up a nearby tree. In the canopy above, two bright red birds perched side by side.
Edala said, “Magic cannot affect you—or the things you care about—directly. I have seen it myself.” She sounded so excited, I looked away from the birds back to her.
“Many times I tried to make you all do something. You and Saalim were untouchable.”
“Saalim?”
She nodded, smiling warmly. “Because he is protected by you, I suspect. It must be the reason Zahar and Kassim have been unable to remove him from the throne.”
I recalled all the occasions Saalim had nearly lost his life: the attacker on the ship who had taken him by surprise, the storm that ravaged the boat and yet left all the passengers alive, the night the guards went suspiciously missing from the palace and the Darkafa slipped in. Was it all me who had saved him?
Out loud, my thoughts continued. “But there was water on the journey, when our stores were depleted. I could not have done that . . .”
“Well, no. You aren’t the only one who cares for Saalim.” There was a glint in her eye. “Emel, have you not wondered why a jinni could not simply magic Saalim away?”
I had wondered that on our many nights of journeying.
“Magic cannot affect him, not if you don’t want what it is asking. That tells me so much more about how you feel for him than words ever could.” She placed her hand on my back. “For that, Emel, you have my gratitude and my promise that I will do whatever I can to help you. You have saved my brother twice now.”
Twice.
“Because you loved him, he lives and Almulihi stands.” When I finally met her eyes, I saw that there were tears. How did she know? “Anything you want. Anything you need. I feel it my duty to fulfill it.”
I said finally, “You, too, saved Saalim. And I am just as grateful, if not more—”
“I could not find my brother only to lose him again.”
“If I want anything,” I said, taking a deep breath, “it is that I want nothing more to do with magic. I don’t want it happening to me nor around me. I don’t want it in my life.”
She looked at me suspiciously. “You fear it?”
“I fear the shroud Masira covers us with when it’s used.” I thought of Saalim, a history he knew nothing of. Of Firoz and Rashid, living as though they had committed crimes they could not remember. Of all the ways peoples’ lives were changed without them having any say at all. Thinking of my life as an ahira—a life I had no control over, a life I never chose. Magic did to people what my father did to me. It took away choice.
It was wrong.
The rest of that day I spent with Raheemah. Each moment with her a little harder than the last, knowing our time together was dwindling. During our midday meal, we pulled out my map.
“I’m so embarrassed,” she laughed, pointing at the R she had drawn almost a year ago. “My hand is much steadier now.” She looked behind her. “Oh, where is Jawar? He will think this hilarious.” She took the map from me and ran it across the bridge.
“Look at this!” I heard her cry. Though I could not make out his words, I heard the teasing in his tone and then their laughter.
I was still smiling when Raheemah tumbled back in.
“He said we are not even close. It’s here.” She pointed to an empty spot north.
“Yes, Amir has told me,” I said, pulling the map away from her.
Later, we walked back to the waterfall. The villagers we passed smiled to Raheemah, waving, and bowing to her. Akama they called her.
“What does it mean?” I asked.
“It is what I am here. It means ‘parent of the adult.’ It is like a queen, but . . . Jawar explained that here they do not have kings and queens. Instead, he is their guide, their ears, their tongue should they need help. He is the one they seek should something need resolution, but otherwise he lets the villagers do as they see fit.”
“I like that,” I said.
“Me, too. Though it feels strange to be an Akama to women three times my age.”
When we reached the fall, those who sat at the river’s edge moved aside for Raheemah and me to lay down our things.
“I cannot believe you can bathe somewhere like this every day. I have never felt so clean,” I said, untying the wrap Raheemah had provided for me.
Raheemah stripped off her clothes without pause, just as she had the evening before. Wading into the river, I let myself enjoy the pull of the current on my legs, the soft bed of mud beneath my feet. When I stood beneath the fall of water, it pounded my skin so hard it stung. I could hear nothing around us.
“Emel, come,” Raheemah called into my ear. She tugged hard on my wrist and led me into a very narrow space between the rocks and the water that fell. The splash of water was so loud around us I tensed, squinting as the spray of water reached my face.
“What is it?”
“Your friends.” She tilted her head to our left.
Though it was blurred through the water, I saw figures moving slowly down the river’s edge. They were with two brightly-dressed figures. From what I could tell, none of the women bathing seemed bothered by their presence.
“What is it like, traveling with all of them?” Raheemah asked. “I know it is unfair of me to say, but something about Nassar makes me shiver. He is kind to you?”
My laugh was muffled by the splashing water. “He is very loyal to Saalim and Madinat Almulihi. He would do me no harm unless he thought me a traitor.” The rocks scraped my back as I leaned against them. “They are all good men.”
“And what of Saalim? Are you going to tell me about him or continue to lie?”
Her arms were crossed, one eyebrow raised.
“There is nothing—”
“You’re lying to me. I know he did not take you on this journey because you ‘know the desert.’” She leaned out from the water. “Come, they’ve left.”
We passed through the wall of water.
“Edala said you are a pair.”
My gaze snapped toward her. She called her Edala like she had known her forever. The same magic Edala used to disguise herself now blended the past and present, brushing away incompatible memories. None in the village were surprised to see a new woman with us. In their minds, it was always Edala.
“Fine,” Raheemah said, misunderstanding my scowl. She looked up at the break in the trees. It was growing dark. “Don’t tell me anything. I don’t want our last moments together to be . . . whatever this is.” She folded her wrap around her and tied it closed. Slipping on her sandals—the same ones we wore back home, I saw—she took my hand.
“I don’t want to say goodbye to you again.”
“This time,” I said, “we know it won’t be goodbye. I will come back.”
“Promise me one thing.”
“Hmm?”
“That you will be as happy as I am.”
“But what about . . . ?” I pressed my hand to my stomach.
“Look at my life,” she said quietly, trailing her fingers under the waterfall. “It does not serve me to dwell on that which I do not have when I have so much.”
“Since when has my baby sister become so wise?”
We left Raheemah and Jawar that evening with warm goodbyes and packs stuffed with fresh fruit. More than we could eat, I told Raheemah. But she did not care, she said she felt better knowing I had something.
We found our camels still tied near the river crossing, just as Edala had promised.
“See,” Edala said as we took their reins in hand. She claimed someone from the village came to care for travelers’ camels several times a day, but now I wondered if it was all lies, and she had simply magicked their well-being.
With Edala leading the way, we began our journey to the cave of the Darkafa. If they weren’t there, if Kassim couldn’t be found, we would return to Madinat Almulihi and wait for him to find us.