TWELVE BELLS

Bong.

The mystery woman slammed hard into Hadhi, her breathing labored with delight and her eyes bright with amusement and desire. Hadhi fell into the wall with a thud that went entirely unmarked. The woman ran past, giggling, leading the prince into the night as the first bell of midnight tolled.

Hadhi leaned against the wall and watched Azize run past, not even noticing her presence. Like Hadhi was nothing. She could not stop her eyes from following the couple, just as every other pair of eyes in the room were. Mzaa would be so disappointed, Azize was captivated, just not with Hadhi. Azize was reaching out for the woman; his hand just missed her elbow as she yanked up her gown, revealing a lovely pair of beaded slippers of matched blue and gold to her dress that shaped into wings around her heels. Everything about her was so beautiful, so free— desirable.

Hadhi turned away. Half the ball’s guests were pressed up to the windows and doors along the veranda to watch, as if it were a performance by the Spirit Dancers. Even the strange bird that had been circling the ceiling followed the couple into the night. Hadhi moved through the crowd unnoticed. Let the others stare. Hadhi felt nothing curious, nor even envious.

Not of Azize’s interest anyway.

Bong.

How many bells was that?

“Stop,” he shouted, panting. “Please, tell me your name.”

Asha smiled to herself. She would be so much faster barefooted. Her grassy-eyed, buttoned-up, pampered pursuer, would have no chance of catching her then.

But where was the fun in that?

“Only if you catch me,” she called back.

This was life. This was adventure! She hadn’t felt this good in so long. Her heart pounded with delight, her breath tickled and her spirit flew! She was alive!

Baba always promised her adventure. When she followed him to the docks and counted the sails on every ship, watched the passengers, and the cargo, and the commotion. Felt the cool breeze slip across her face, smelling of salt and sun and far off worlds.

They would stare together, or he would nudge her shoulder, asking, “where is that one going, Asha? What do you think they’ll find?”

She was likely an infant the first time he took her, and for years after, he would carry her in his arms and tell her all the things he thought waited for him in the world beyond their own. But the first time he asked Asha, she was just seven; she looked up at him with wide, honored eyes and couldn’t utter a word for the longest time.

Bong.

Zawadi flapped outside with her bright plumage and settled on the lip of a column to watch. Asha stood frozen, poised before a plunge into darkness. All that separated her from the night was a flight of ten stairs. The moon was partially hidden behind thin clouds. Not a herald of rain, just a layer of mist separating Maltuba from the heavens.

Azize had caught up, but stopped, his eyes devouring the bright star before the darkness. Zawadi would not have predicted these two coming together. Enzi’s frightened son and Zuberi’s fearless daughter. It didn’t quite fit in her mind. But humans would do things their own way.

She noticed soldiers were hidden, watching, as were some of Azize’s traveling companions and both Zuberi’s wives. But neither of his other daughters.

When Zawadi looked on his youngest girl, all she could think was how young she was and of all the other lost children: Sylph, Honeycreeper, Babbler—Kiwi. The list went on. It wasn’t right. So Zawadi could not approach her.

His eldest, however, Zawadi would approach without qualm. But with her every thought one of anger and resentment, Zawadi wondered what form her gift could possibly take.

She ought to go inside and find her answers. But she couldn’t move. She must see the moment Zuberi’s beloved finally understood.

Bong

“Well, Asha?” Baba prodded her that first day. Nodded at the dark wooden ship, bobbing as the waves bumped against it. He prompted her once and never had to again. “What’s it to be?”

“A monster,” she said in a voice quiet with twisted glee. Baba would understand, and indeed he crouched beside her, a desert-wide grin growing slowly from his lips. He only smiled so for her. “It will have a furry face, with pointed ears like a hyaena, but ten times as big.”

“Oh my!”

“And it will have a hundred sharp teeth!”

“A hundred?” He sounded appalled, but Asha knew it was only for show, letting her words impress him. Baba loved her words.

“And a body of giant glistening scales that turn color with everything they pass,” Asha’s voice grew in volume, rising to match her enthusiasm. “And it will have wings, Baba! Wider than the whole ship.”

“My goodness, how will they fit it on board?”

“They won’t. They’ll give it a harness and make it fly behind. And when it gets tired of flying it will just lay down on the ocean and swim, with tiny little duck legs.”

“HA! Ha. Ha. Ha.” Baba’s laughter, when it truly came, when Asha called it forth, was a booming thing like thunder or a stampede.

Bong.

Darkness cloaked the city with its empty, unlit homes awaiting their occupants, and the full ones dark with families long abed. It appeared as though the dark void stretched out before Asha, painted in varying hues of shadow. But Asha was light! Asha was awake. And though she knew a few moments would bring an end to her adventure, there was one more thing she wanted before the mystery woman died, and she was everyday Asha again. She tried to look behind her and run, but stumbled down the steps.

She hit the fifth step with a thud that vibrated across her bones and tumbled down the rest of them into the dirt. Dust flew everywhere, clouding her vision and choking her throat.

“Ethee Oxtia! Are you injured?” There was no playful hesitance to his steps as he rushed to her side.

He cursed in Maltuban? Asha tried to stand and dust herself off Wasn’t it just like the real her to be lying in the dust at the feet of this fine, pampered boy. Before she reached her knees, he was there. His arms slipped between hers and around her back, so swiftly and gently she barely had time to catch her breath. He cradled her against his chest and lifted her from the ground, like so much laundry.

Bong.

“Are you well?” His voice was quiet, against her ear, like they were back in an alcove in the palace again, not alone in the night.

Asha loved the desert at night. The quiet expanse full of possibility. It was a different sort of magic, the way the darkness folded in around you until you felt like a star in the heavens. So far from every other being like you—reaching out.

“Fine,” she lied. How could she be anything but wonderful, and alive, and beautifully chaotically lost, when his arms were around her and his breath was a warm breeze against her ear?

She might never feel so again. She was so lucky. So special. Tonight—at last—when she reached out, she’d finally been touched.

“You know,” his voice was slow in coming, one of his hands rubbed a circle into her lower back. “If you wanted me alone, all you had to do was ask.”

“No,” Asha sighed, and leaned closer to this near-perfect stranger. “I could never ask.”

“No,” he chuckled. “You could only whisper ‘catch me if you can’ and run away, so I chased you like a child.”

Asha smiled up at him as he slowly inched nearer. There was no time to waste, but this incremental pull between them was so lovely.

Bong.

Jauhar watched the couple out in the night like everyone else, captivated. She felt her heart beat, softening in her chest. Remembering.

When Zuberi first wooed her, he would hide in the tall grass along the river to wait for her to come to wash laundry, then grab her wrist and drag her laughing away. Or after they were married, when he would walk to her so slowly, his eyes intent on her own, and a pulse building between them, their hearts joining before their skin ever touched. She could feel it still, in her quiet moments, that pulse, that pull towards him. She felt it now.

Jauhar watched the young couple and felt grief burning through her.

That is done for me. Sabra had said it about herself, but it resonated inside Jauhar. She felt it and shoved it far away from her conscious mind. But she couldn’t shove it away now.

That powerful, all-consuming passion. That bliss— was done for her. She would never feel so again.

Jauhar turned away, her eyes falling on her sourfaced daughter across the room. Hadhi. How? How did someone so dour, so different from both her parents, come out of something as lovely as the display outside?

Rage ate away at what had been bittersweet nostalgia only a moment ago.

Bong.

Eight bells. Asha must be gone when it struck twelve.

His hand traveled up her back to play with her bare neck. Asha didn’t suppose this was what Baba wanted for her when he promised her adventure. But she rather thought there wasn’t any real adventure without a bit of danger.

And what Asha wanted was dangerous beyond any monster she could imagine.

She wanted a taste of this world she could never enter. These lips. She wanted one moment, where he was hers.

To keep the magic living—after she woke up.

“What is your name?” He pulled his head away from hers, just far enough to peer into her eyes.

“It doesn’t matter,” Asha smiled at him, though she wanted to cry. It couldn’t matter. This magic, this wonder, this adventure, was only a moment stolen. A treasure to carry with her for the rest of her days.

While she was with him, she had truly forgotten the...vengeance she wanted against her family. She’d forgotten the heartache and the loneliness. She’d lived as though she was someone wholly new. Someone who belonged only to herself. But that wasn’t reality.

She glanced back at the lokoki bird she’d arrived on. What if she was flying on its back when the bell tolled? Would she fall from the sky?

Bong.

Asha shuddered slightly, something like desperation licking across her skin as her fear of losing the magic grew.

“I want to know,” he pressed. Asha did not know his name either, only that he was among the court of the returned prince. Whatever his name, he was far and away outside of her life without this magic.

And she had barely moments of it left to bask in.

“I am midnight and laughter, and adventure,” she said through a sad smile.

He chuckled, setting her just a bit further away. His hands grasped both her shoulders, but left her standing completely on her own. She didn’t realize until he set her down that he had been holding her above the ground.

“I’ve heard that song. Are you a nymph? Come to grant my wildest dream, but only for the night.”

“Not even that long.” Asha stepped back, off-kilter. She glanced to the ground; one of her lovely beaded slippers lay in the dust. Beads of gold and deep blue fit neatly together to make a winged shape around the foot. It looked as magical as it was. All she needed to do was stretch out her foot and slip back into it, but she stared at it in the dirt and her lips curved. “Do you believe in magic?”

Bong.

“With you,” he whispered playfully. “How could I not?”

“Do you know how you cheat a nymph’s clock?” Asha asked.

“Very carefully, or they’ll cheat yours, stealing all the years you have left.” His eyes were smiling, but his right hand tightened on her shoulder. He did believe.

“You do not cheat their clock at all. You take what is given,” Asha stood on the toes of her barefoot, and the pad of her beaded slipper, stretching up towards the one bit of magic she had yet to taste. “Then you hold onto it forever.”

“Tell me your name,” he whispered. His breath rushed out to tickle her lips, so close.

“Why? This moment is perfect without it?”

“No, it isn’t. Because it’s only one moment.”

Asha was suddenly panting, and her heart ached with excitement and fear.

Because it is only one moment.

It couldn’t be anything else. But oh how it sang inside her that he longed as she did—for more.

“I will find you, I promise. Just give me one clue, and I will trace you to the ends of the earth.”

Asha laughed at such a pronouncement. They had only just met. Was it the magic, calling the words forth? Was it this other Asha, this wild, free woman she was allowed to be tonight?

Bong

Or did he mean it? Could something of her words have so impacted him, something of the feel of her in his arms, so touched him, that this was... love? Already?

“You cannot cheat a nymph’s clock.” Asha felt the power beneath her skin preparing to flee and was desperate to hold onto it. “But...” she led his eyes to the shoe. “You can leave a bit of magic behind.”

She wouldn’t be getting that last taste of magic she hungered for. Asha stepped lopsidedly away.

This was madness. The sort of madness Zawadi warned her of when she granted her wish. The kind that, rather than leaving you with a treasure to keep, left you with a great longing that could never be filled. The madness of hope.

She could have had anything from Zawadi. She could be across the sea or never have to work another day in her life; she could have become an animal, or a star.

But not Asha.

“Never long for the ordinary, Asha, You were meant for wonder and adventure. Like your Baba You are untamable.”

Asha could not have made a simple wish. Did not even wish to go to the ball. She wished for only one thing: to feel, for as long as the spell lasted, a true taste— of magic.

Bong.