Jauhar bounced Lin from side to side, swaying as he giggled and tapped her chest with his tiny fist. He was so beautiful. His warmth against her skin and the little hum he was making vibrating across her chest were a soothing balm. Jauhar held him close and shut her eyes, whispering a prayer of thanks to the great spirits for preserving this precious life.
“One day,” she whispered to him. “You will grow big and strong like your baba. You will carry on his legacy and be the most powerful man in all Maltuba.”
Jauhar heard sniggering but paid it no mind. The jealous always mocked. She knew what they thought, that Jauhar only loved Lin because Zuberi was not alive to call him his favorite, but that wasn’t so. This baby was as much Jauhar’s as it was Zuberi’s. Lin might not be alive, but for Jauhar.
Sabra had been wasting away under Zuberi’s control. Even after his death, she hadn’t wanted her child for the first months of her pregnancy, but Jauhar helped her through. She nursed her, brought Sabra’s faith back into the house, gave her a reason to live. She brought Lin into this world. Just because she hadn’t carried him in her own womb didn’t make him any less her own.
He was a second chance. Her Gitonga reborn. She felt her heart burning and tears clawing their way towards freedom. But Lin giggled, and Jauhar couldn’t help but smile. She could never hate this child. At last the spirits had allowed her to bring a son into this world.
Zuberi would have been so pleased. It would have banished forever the memory of their little boy, born without a breath in his body. The little boy she had not been allowed to name lest she offend the spirits. He was Gitonga in her heart, and always would be, though she could never speak it aloud. She rarely felt the need to say it clawing at her being now that Lin had been born. It would have been the same for Zuberi. Lin would have banished the memory of Jauhar’s failure to protect her child. She wouldn’t fail again.
“She’ll hate him as much as she does Asha, if she lives to see him take over her home.” Jauhar overheard Oni saying. “You notice Asha isn’t here tonight.”
There was a bit of laughing at that, and Jauhar felt herself smiling along. No, Asha was not here. Jauhar had seen to it.
Jauhar had Lin in her lap as she sat before the sand circle Sabra used for prayer. Zuberi never allowed Sabra to have this in the mansion. He was born Ga'ogo and did not worship the old spirits like Sabra’s people, the zi’on. He had not allowed Sabra to practice her religion, but it had little to do with his own beliefs and everything to do with controlling his new wife. Even when they had lived in the mansion, Jauhar had called the girl away from Zuberi when it was time for her prayers; she simply had to pray without an alter of sand to stir. Zuberi knew what Jauhar was doing; he’d smiled at her in that smugly fond way of his, enjoying that Jauhar exerted control in the home, so he let it be.
But after his funeral, after Jauhar realized that Sabra was pregnant and wasting away partly because she wasn't sure she wanted Zuberi's child...well then Jauhar made it her mission to help that girl and to preserve that baby. She’d sent Asha on foot twenty miles away to the grasslands where the stone for these alters were carved and traded her own gowns to get them. She'd made Asha build the alter and go three times to Ether for the sand. Just like today, she was making Asha walk to the village to request camels from her uncle to take them to the ball.
She could see that eager look in Asha's eyes as she raced out of the but towards the city. She wanted to be at the ball; she would do anything to be at the ball. To meet strangers from all over the world. To outshine her sisters. To steal every bit of attention and devour every love. And just like when Jauhar sent Asha after the materials for this alter, and when she made her cook and clean for her sisters and mothers, it was nothing but what Asha owed them. A ll of them. A ll her life Asha had been Zuberi’s favorite, escaped punishment and received every treasure that came into the house. Received nearly all of his smiles. For nothing. Not for raising his children. Or nursing his dying second wife. Or cleaning and cooking and weaving for him. Not for standing beside him and being a testament to him. Asha did nothing and earned everything costing her sister's love, and attention, and punishment for not living up to her beauty or intelligence. Costing Sabra her freedom, her family, and her religion by loving her too much for Zuberi to bear. A ll of it was Asha's fault. And Jauhar would make her pay.
Jauhar watched until Asha was out of sight. She looked a fright already. Her face sweaty and dusted with dirt. Her fingernails torn and dirty from where Jauhar had made her beat out every rug that lined the floor of their hut and fix the crumbling wall of stone that protected their fires from the winds. She looked terrible, but there was something about that girl; she would find a way no matter what task Jauhar set before her. She was racing away faster now than Jauhar had ever seen her move; she was bound to be back quickly. Then she would bathe and look beautiful, and she would be rewarded again. She hadn't earned it yet. She hadn't even finished paying what she owed. A year and a half in no way made up for the sixteen years in which she'd been pampered and exalted over Jauhar's children.
Jauhar kissed Lin on the head and left him by the sand alter. Sabra and Hadhi were braiding Nuru's hair and adorning it with thread. Jauhar slipped quietly into the hut. She made her way through the main room that used to be the entire hut before Kafil made his improvements. She walked down the wide stairs into the coolest part of the house, the rooms below ground. She had to admit Kafil was clever in ways his brother was not. This home sat in the warmest part of Jaccada, but its mud walls and below-ground rooms kept it cooler than many of the homes in the city.
Jauhar slipped into the room the three girls shared and found the silk Asha had laid out to wear to the ball. It was a bright orange silk with golden threads making reflected lines like the outstretched arms of the jungle. Symbols of the women of the Tikoo. Her mother's silk, worn when she took Asha and presented her to the queen and king. Something that had never been offered to Jauhar, as if to say Asha was better than her daughter. As if she deserved more.
Jauhar sat quietly, humming to herself as her fingers played with the gown, her nail caught on one of the gold threads, tugging it up. That would never do. Jauhar tugged gently, twirling her finger to catch the thread around it as she unwound Asha's silk.
Jauhar wandered the grand room now, with Lin at her shoulder and a smile on her face, because she knew Asha was at home, sobbing over her ruined gown and her ruined adventure. Their neighbors were wrong about her feelings towards Lin, but they were right about Asha. Jauhar was nowhere near finished with that girl; every wish she ever had Jauhar would destroy.
Nuru was among her friends, smiling along as they talked and laughing, but her heart wasn’t in it.
Hadhi never has been easy to love.
There were moments when she hated her mother. How could she speak of her own daughter so? And to someone who had made Hadhi’s life miserable for years.
“Your hair looks lovely, Nuru,” Arya said brightly. “My mother would never let me use golden silk that way.”
Nuru’s hair had been braided into what felt like a hundred tiny braids and gathered into a blooming bun at the apex of her head. She occasionally wore it in these sorts of braids; they could last for weeks and looked quite fetching on her. But today was special. Today there were golden threads of silk wound through all of the outside braids, rags of every color at the end of the inside braids, as well as rings and beads strung through at different spots. Hadhi had stood over her since near sun up, braiding her hair with Sabra’s help when she put in the gold. Spending so much of the day getting Nuru ready that there was barely time to brush out her own dry hair into clouds around her face and place a headpiece of wooden beads atop it to adorn it.
How could it possibly be hard to love someone like that?
“Hadhi did it,” Nuru said proudly. “We were at it all day, in the sun.” Nuru sighed and shook her head. The others all nodded sympathetically. It was a very warm spring.
“Well, it was well worth the hours,” Neema remarked. She was two years older than Nuru, and this was her third year among the Spirit Dancers; she’d danced as a vulture tonight. “Perhaps if she offered to do the same for the Spirit Dancers Eshe will allow you to dance with us.”
“Do you think?” Nuru said excitably. “Many people do braids like this.”
“Many people do the braids, but not like that. You look like a princess,” Arya said brightly from her stool. One of Arya’s legs was crooked from a troubled birth; she couldn’t support her own weight without crutches, and just now she was taking a break.
“You look even prettier than Asha tonight. Where is she?” Neema looked around, her voice nearly bitter. “I thought the king wanted all the women of age to marry here to tempt his son. How did she get out of it?”
Nuru bit her tongue and hid her roiling stomach with a soft smile and a shrug. “She took ill earlier today. Ugh, Mzaa’s glaring at me. I have to go talk to one of the foreigners.”
“Me too,” Arya agreed. “We’ll talk at dinner,” she promised and stood, slipping crutches under her arms and departing with a grin and an eye roll, off to find a man to satisfy her mother’s hungry gaze, just as Nuru was.
Nuru walked away with a bright smile on her face, but a sick feeling under her skin. She tended to wear her hair with her tight curls peeking out from under a scarf. But she’d asked her mother again and again for a week to do something special. When Hadhi had woken her; she’d been at first a bit annoyed to have to rise so early, but then thrilled when Hadhi said she would prepare her hair like Nuru wanted. All day, they’d sat outside, braiding one tiny section after another, Hadhi dipping her fingers into a thick goo that softened the hair and held it together in the braids. They had all been sweating and tired. So it hadn’t really struck Nuru at first that Asha had been working since dawn as well. She’d washed laundry at the river. Beat rugs. Repaired a hole in the wind wall. Prepared Mzaa’s hair and Sabra’s. Done sewing repairs to Sabra’s and Nuru’s gowns. She’d even prepared their meals. It was more work than Asha usually had in a day, but many of the chores were so much Asha’s that none of it had seemed odd, until Asha came back with five camels borrowed from their uncle and Mzaa demanded Asha get mud from the river to patch a hole in the roof.
“What if the prince comes?” Mzaa said when Asha protested for the first time. “We cannot let him see our home in such shambles.”
“I...I think it unlikely the prince will come here, Jauhar,” Sabra had interjected. She was holding the gold threads high, as Hadhi braided around them. Even Hadhi had looked up in surprise. For a moment, she’d smiled, an angry, satisfied smile. Then her eyes had met Mzaa’s and she’d raised a silent brow of reproof.
“It is a small hole,” Hadhi said without inflection.
“Indeed,” Mzaa agreed. “Small enough that it should be a very fast repair, if you stop protesting and get to it, Asha. But large enough to let in half the desert in a sand storm.”
Hadhi looked back to Nuru’s hair and set about her work.
“Of course, Mzaa Jauhar. It will be my honor.” Asha smiled sharply and raced away to the river.
“She’ll be an absolute sight if she even has time to dress.” Sabra pressed once Asha was gone, forgetting her part in Nuru’s hair until Hadhi nudged her.
“She has no desire to win the prince, only to see the strangers. And she can do that in any state.” Mzaa said dismissively and turned back into the hut.
Asha was nearly done patching the roof when Nuru’s hair was finished and she ran back in to dress. That was when Nuru had seen Asha’s dress lying in shreds with all of its golden threads missing.
Nuru ran her fingers down the ends of on braid that hung near her neck, her stomach clenching. She could still hear Asha’s cry when she’d seen it.
She’d fallen to the ground next to her bed and cried. Her gaze shooting to Hadhi in the doorway.
“Why won’t you ever let me be happy?” She’d sobbed. “I had just as much right to go as you. Answer me!” She’d shouted, but Hadhi just stood in the doorway, looking on silent and impassive as usual.
“She didn’t do that,” Nuru rushed to defend her sister. “She wouldn’t. Come, wear —“
“Of course she did it! Where do you think she got the threads for your have no gold silk. You’re hateful and ugly and it won’t make a difference if I’m there or not. Everyone will see how ugly you are!” Asha had screeched and took the remnants of the silk and run from the hut in tears.
Nuru had watched her go horrified. And hurt on both sister’s behalves. She didn’t believe Hadhi would do that. Not to that silk, it had belonged to Asha’s mother. Hadhi wouldn’t destroy something like that. Hadhi didn’t like Asha, especially when she said such things to her, but Hadhi never went out of her way to hurt Asha. She was their sister.
Nuru let her hand fall to her side and tried to smile as she walked up to a stranger. But inside, she was churning with worry for her sisters.
Hadhi never has been easy to love.
Asha was speaking with a man named Tadeo, but his words kept drifting out of her ears. She watched Nuru out among her friends showing off Hadhi’s handiwork. Who knew Hadhi had a talent beyond hunting and scowling? No one could scowl like sour-face. Asha bit her tongue to remind herself to stop being distracted by her family. This was her night; they didn’t matter. She smiled up at the man before her, but as she moved, she heard the golden rings in her hair jangle against one another and had to glance at Nuru again.
She’d been scraping down old cracked mud to make room for the new stone she was fitting into the wind wall to repair it. This hole had needed patching for three months, and every day Mzaa Jauhar mentioned it. But it was never important enough for her to see to until today. Until she had a reason to make Asha do the work. Asha grumbled to herself as she did the work, but she was working hard and fast because tonight she would see the world.
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Hadhi standing over Nuru in the little open area near the bathing hut. Nuru’s hair had been combed out wide and long so any curl to her hair was pulled straight. Hadhi held most of it out of her way with little ties as she worked a tiny section into a braid. She was working from the center of Nuru’s head out, with a little stool nearby covered in beads to adorn the hair and colorful strips of old silks to braid into different bits.
Asha knew she wasn’t Hadhi’s favorite person, but they hadn’t really fought since Baba died. Everyone was too grief stricken to fight; they just lived together with their resentments simmering under their pain. But tonight was special. They were all going to a ball at the capitol palace. There wouldn’t be time for Hadhi to do anything so intricate with Asha’s hair, but maybe she would do a little something special, or maybe she would paint Asha’s face for her.
Maybe tonight they could be like real sisters.
Asha shook off her earlier idiocy. Of course they couldn’t be real sisters. None of them were a family. She focused on the man describing homes suspended between trees higher than buildings. She could barely picture trees that high, much less homes suspended between them. It should be the most fascinating, diverting thing in the world. But all she could do was see the golden threads dangling from Nuru’s braids bursting between slightly thicker strips of purple and green and orange, and dangling with carved wooden beads.
Hadhi had taken, found golden threads, and by adding it to rags, made her real sister look like a princess. And Asha had marveled at it and fooled herself into thinking she could have even a fraction of anything similar. Until the very last moment. After she’d patched holes in the roof that could have waited another three months, made food, dusted, and done every other chore that was asked of her. Not as the hours passed and it became clear there wouldn’t be time to do anything but change the scarf that hid her hair, so she wouldn’t look special, and wouldn’t be dressed by her sister, it wouldn’t matter. She would still stand with them, they would present themselves to the world as a family, and she could hold her head up knowing all she did to provide for them. Nothing had shaken her hope and her tiny foolish fantasy.
Not until she’d stood over her bed, sweaty, hot, messy, and hopeful, and found her mother’s silk in shreds—with every single golden thread unwound from the pattern.
She had never hated Hadhi so much. What sort of evil must live in her heart to destroy something so precious?
Asha was no one’s sister. No one’s daughter. No one’s family. She felt like sobbing all over again. Like rushing to them and shouting out all her rage and hate and—longing. Asha’s eyes tore across the room to her other sister and found Hadhi looking her way as well. Asha smiled superiorly at her sister. Asha leaned into the man with her, interrupting him.
“Do you know what’s wrong with that sour-faced woman over there? She keeps glaring at me. Am I about to be eaten?”
The man laughed uproariously and offered to take her somewhere safer. Asha took his arm and happily let him lead her away.
She made her own way into this ball, and she wouldn’t let her father’s family ruin it for her.
Sabra had kept Hadhi’s arm and followed her to a new collection of foreign men. Hadhi didn’t know what she was playing at. Sabra was a beautiful woman; she didn’t need to be on Hadhi’s arm to look more lovely. And she kept trying to encourage Hadhi to speak. But this whole evening was setting Hadhi on edge.
They were nearer the mystery woman now, with her musically tinkling gown and her bright laugh. Hadhi was hard-pressed to look elsewhere. The woman was so compelling.
“Long before I met Prince Azize, I was intrigued by your nation.” Mikhail was saying. “As a boy, I heard tell of your king Otutta and his daughter who could take gold and spin it so thin it became thread that she clothed herself in.”
Hadhi rolled her eyes, looking away so they would not see. She used to love that story too, the trickster princess who swindled entire nations and was acclaimed for her brilliance. She was no longer fond of it. It reminded her too much of Baba.
“And look at so many of you clothed in gold like goddesses. I’d love to see the process.”
“Of clothing them, or turning the gold into thread?” Kane slipped into another conversation Hadhi was involved in. She did not like that man. She’d felt him following her and Sabra around, and he had eavesdropped on Hadhi and her mother earlier. There was something wrong with him.
“It is not gold,” Hadhi snapped unnecessarily loud. Around them, a tense sort of silence fell for a moment. “It is gold-colored silk. A bug makes it, not a princess,” Hadhi finished, her skin prickling with embarrassment from all the stares.
Hadhi had learned from years of hunting to control her breathing and her pulse. She had learned to take light, almost imperceptible steps and hide her scent from her prey. And she had always been talented at holding her tongue. But there were two things she’d never learned to control: her sour expression, and when she spoke, her sharp tone. She saw people noticing the force with which she corrected the two men before her and felt uncomfortable for yet another reason.
Her gaze was pulled to the mystery woman, observing her as well. The mystery woman smiled smugly and leaned in to whisper some joke about Hadhi to her companions. Hadhi knew it was about her from the way the men looked her way before laughing. Hadhi tore her eyes away and found Azize’s incessantly smiling friend, Noam, looking her way from another group. He gave her an odd...almost encouraging smile before he glanced away. Hadhi fought the urge to walk away. She should not need soothing from a complete stranger. She should not be calling enough attention to be mocked by one either. Mzaa would be furious. Hadhi had not meant for her words to come out so firmly, but Sabra kept touching her, and a stranger had been passing on her right, and Hadhi did not want to hear one more word about swirrle worms or their silk threads. Particularly not the gold.
Collecting it in secret and planning how she would decorate her sister’s hair had been literally the first thing to make Hadhi feel like herself in over a year. It was the first thing that gave her hope that somewhere in the future, she might be...at ease, content even. But it was ruined now.
“Yes,” Sabra rushed to soothe their uncomfortable male companions. Was she not tired yet of soothing men? Hadhi knew Sabra had hated Baba and everything he made her do. Why was she seeking another husband?
Perhaps it was for Lin’s sake. Hadhi wondered if it would make any difference to her if Hadhi told her she would not let anyone take her son away. She doubted it. They were not close. Why would she believe Hadhi about that? No one believed her about anything else.
“The swirrle,” Sabra went on. “Maltuban weever worms. I think one of our past kings made up the story about it being spun gold in order to,” she giggled, “swindle another king into marrying his daughter.”
Both of the men laughed.
“Now we...” Sabra searched for a word, glancing at Hadhi.
Hadhi looked away and pretended not to hear her. What were the chances she would know the word?
“It seems silly to say farm,” Sabra said with a shy laugh. “But we intentionally raise the worms that produce the gold willoomi as it is the most popular for foreign trade.”
“Cultivate, perhaps,” Mikhail suggested.
That felt as good a word as any, Hadhi supposed. She ought to pay attention. But her mind was far away. She felt her hands unwinding the willoomi, as she had done in her free moments for the last week. It had to be a secret, so she could not take it home. She snuck to the cave when Nuru was in town with her friends, and Mzaa was off pestering Uncle Kafil to release her daughter’s dowries. She felt the tiny hopes that had built up in her heart.
She had imagined herself and her sisters, all together sitting in the morning light, arranging one another’s hair and laughing. She doubted any of them remembered, but the year Nuru was born just after Aunt Lolia married Uncle Kafil, she came to the mansion to prepare for the Festival of Ether. It was such a lovely day. Mzaa carried Nuru against her chest in a little wrap, and Aunt Lolia was so proud to have joined the family. They all sat together, with no men around. Mzaa prepared Lolia’s hair, and Lolia prepared hers, and they both prepared Asha and Hadhi. Everyone was happy. Just for that little while.
It was Hadhi’s favorite memory.
She thought of it all this week as she snuck up to the cave and unwound the thread. Thought to herself that maybe, with Baba no longer looming between them, they might have happy moments like that again. She had imagined laughter and sisterhood. And love. She wanted them to love each other again.
But it was not to be. Mzaa was maniacal in her quest to see that Hadhi married the prince. She had spent every moment breaking down Hadhi’s flaws and pounding into her the need to smile, the need to be sweet, the need to be anything but herself. When they were discussing what she would wear, and Hadhi mentioned styling her hair up with a scarf that matched her gown and perhaps a single small braid to hold some beads to the side her mother had looked her over with somehow furious pity.
“We have been over this, Hadhi. Before you were scarred, you might have worn such a style, but you cannot have those hideous marks be the first thing a man sees about you. It is hard enough to combat your personality alone. If a man starts out seeing those scars the only things he will ever feel for you are pity or disgust.”
Hadhi should be so used to such words from her mother. But somehow, she had let herself believe that they had more to do with the way Baba criticized Mzaa for every one of Hadhi’s failings. Like she had convinced herself that Asha’s teasing were brought on by Baba’s prompts, until she watched her half-sister’s hidden grin and amusement at Mzaa’s rebuke. Every day of this week, more of Hadhi’s fantasy died at her own hand. She kept grinding it up, wanting to lash out at her sister instead of pulling her close and trying to build a bond between them again.
But it was not until she stood over her sister as she sobbed; it was not until she saw the ruined gown and felt Asha’s rage and her certainty that it was Hadhi who had destroyed it that Hadhi realized the truth. Her father might be dead, but his shadow loomed over all of them. They would never be free of his legacy.