Asha made her way home slowly. One hand treasuring her slipper against her chest. The other swinging at her side as she danced her way heavily forward. Her body was exhausted. Starved. It moved not with energy, but with the force of her delight alone.
Was this love?
She wasn’t sure. But it was definitely adventure. And she hungered to taste it again. For that, she would need Zawadi. She had tried calling, but the woman had not come. How had she come to Asha at just the right moment earlier this evening? Why? How could Asha find her again if she didn’t understand how she came to find her at all?
Was it her heartbreak and devastation that brought her? Or was it only coincidence that her presence had so altered Asha that she barely felt that pain now?
It seemed such a small thing to have been hurt by, with the power and wonder and excitement of this night still coursing through her. She’d never known her mother after all. Asha wouldn’t even have known her dress existed had not Aunt Lolia told her about it. It should be such a small loss. But earlier this evening, with its threads unwound and her every hope dashed, losing that dress had felt like the most devastating thing since Baba died.
Asha had come in to find the beautiful gown her mother had left for her utterly destroyed and she’d felt that same destruction in her own heart. Felt the hopes that had carried her through the day, of standing beside her sisters, beside her father’s wives like a real member of the family, of truly belonging among her family at last. She felt all of that curl up and split apart within her. So she collapsed on the ground sobbing.
She had cried over pains she should be long-past feeling, over a sister’s love she would never have, and a mother she barely remembered, over a ball that had felt like the fulfillment of all her father’s promises. And that was where Zawadi found her, outside in the dirt by the stove, sobbing with her ruined gown turning slowly to embers, and devastation weighing down her heart. She found her, just when Asha needed something to bring hope and light into her life.
“I am not sure this is the right home.” The cool, disinterested female voice startled Asha right out of her tears with a hiccup. She sat up quickly, wiping her face with a dirty hand, so it was streaked with dirt as well as tears.
“Who are you?” Asha demanded. The woman was drowning in lovely black fabrics, every piece was of a slightly different shade, and all had intricately woven patterns in silvery-grey thread. Only her eyes were visible, and so striking they seemed to be made of a liquid form of the same silvery-grey as the thread. Asha could not take her eyes off them.
The woman jerked her head at Asha critically. “Not terribly polite, are you?”
“You’re the one who barged in without permission.” Asha pointed out, slowly coming to her feet to stare the woman down, her anger and pain leaving her short on patience.
“I wouldn’t think the daughter of Zuberi would care overly that someone had barged in unannounced. But then,” her tone took on a contemptuous snarl, and she walked to a low stool near Asha to sit, “it is a different matter entirely when someone barges in on you, isn’t it?”
Asha held her tongue. Baba always said it was best to be silent when you weren’t sure what was going on. Be quiet. Watch. People will give you clues to defeating them if you wait long enough. She was a lovely woman, for all Asha could see of her, her vaguely foreign voice was smooth and rich. And she knew Baba’s name; perhaps she had been one of his women. He never traveled far from home, but she could have been someone he met. Baba loved foreign women. Foreign anything ready.
Of course when she spoke of him, her voice was not kind. It was different when someone barged in on you, implying Baba or even Asha had barged in on her at some point. Asha was certain she would have remembered such a woman, so it must have been Baba.
“Who are you?” Asha repeated at length when the woman only stared. She seemed to know this game as well as Asha, perhaps better.
“You may call me Zawadi.”
“But that is not your name?” Asha pressed.
The woman merely raised a brow.
“What do you want here?” Asha drew her shoulders back and raised her head as unease grew in her stomach, making it swirl. The question sounded too weak to her own ears. But she was here all alone, defenseless and exhausted.
“It is best that a woman sound weak with a man and strong among other women,” Baba insisted as he led her up the steps of the palace. “Trust me on this, my best beloved.”
“But what if there is a woman and a man present?”
Baba smiled, long and wide, so all his teeth showed and his eyes nearly disappeared into his cheekbones. “Now I know you know the answer to that. What do you do, Asha?”
Asha grinned. She loved it when Baba expressed pride in her skill, loved it when he smiled only for her. “I perform for whoever has the most power.”
"Thats my girl.”
The woman, Zawadi, leaned back a bit and looked Asha up and down. Her gaze was at once warm and cool, seeming to leave a shiver wherever it touched. “Your father performed a great service for his king. A service that touched my people. I am here to return the favor. I only wish I had found him alive. So he might have seen me do this.”
“What favor?” Asha felt a rush of pride. Baba had been a great man! But she felt a bit cheated, not knowing all his great deeds?
“I did not travel all this way to answer questions. Are you Asha? He spoke of his best beloved" Was it Asha's imagination, or did the woman sound angry when he said that? “Of his own self reborn. His legacy. Is that you?”
Asha felt the glow of her father's praise lighting her from within. She felt his love wrapped around her again. How she'd missed being loved. Asha raised her head to the air and let it dip once.
“Good.” An unnatural silvery light settled around the woman.
Asha caught her breath, and excitement such as she had never known filled her. The woman was fey. Baba had promised to give Asha adventures, to find her the magic and wonder! Now his promise would be fulfilled!
“I will grant you a wish. Any one thing you desire, be it within my power.” The woman offered in a deep soothing voice that swirled around Asha like softly beating wings.
Anything. Asha’s skin tingled, and her mind ran away in a thousand different directions. She could travel the world. She could go beyond it, into the fabric of the universe. She could take her entire family and make them wealthy once more, always cared for. She could make herself queen.
“Ha. Ha.” Asha all but forgot the woman before her, giggling at the course of her own mind. She could do anything be— “anything?”
“I cannot wake the dead, if that is what you are thinking.” The woman’s eyes gave nothing away, but her tone was judgmental, as if she knew Asha had not been thinking this. Asha’s heart plummeted. She should have been thinking that.
But...Baba would not be angry that she hadn’t thought of him. He sent her this gift to make her happy, to give her adventure. And she had to assume her mother had been an equally selfless being- they would want Asha happy.
“Have you seen the world?” Asha demanded of the woman, most likely a nymph. She wanted to change the topic, but also, she simply had to know.
“Much of it. It is impossible to see the entire thing.”
“Why?” Asha demanded, it was perhaps her only goal, to see the entire world. It had been Baba’s goal as well, and if Asha could do it, his own self reborn, it would be as though he was doing it.
“The world keeps changing.” The nymph leaned her hands on her knees and pushed off the low stool. She rolled her neck and the silvery glow began to pulse with impatience. “In the time it took you just to greet me, the world around you has already changed. But you never do look at what is before you, do you, daughter of Zuberi? You look to the horizon and beyond, look to what you cannot see and cannot have. You will always want more.”
“Not if you give me my wish,” Asha whispered eagerly.
In the silvery light, Asha could see the barest hint of the woman’s lips beneath her scarf; they were curved at one end and her eyes crinkled. “Out with it then, what is it?”
“I wish to be like you.”
Zawadi’s eyes settled into quiet pools of silvery calm. “By that, I suppose you mean beautiful, intelligent, and sought after?”
Asha ignored the woman’s sarcasm. “By that, I mean magical. Answering to no one, able to do what you want, when you want. Powerful!”
“Ah, yes. You would he Zuberi's daughter." It was a though she could not make up her mind if she was angry or pleased; the light around her grew so powerful it fluttered her clothes like a raging silent wind. Her eyes were so full and sparkling that they gave Asha her first real sense of the danger such a creature could pose to a young girl all alone.
Asha took an involuntary step back and struck the stone wall shed repaired earlier. She stumbled, her hand reaching out for purchase fell straight into the flames. Asha cried out and jerked forward to get away from the pain cradling her hand.
“You want to be all things. A ll powerful.” The woman advanced on Asha, uncaring of her injury. “To be maker of your own fate, as you think magic beings are,” She wasn't questioning but nor did the words sound like a spell. It felt a bit like being read a lecture. She spoke in the voice o f many women, and all of them unimpressed.
It was the most horrifying thing Asha had ever seen. The wind of her power shook Zawadi, and Zawadi alone. The light surrounding her at once pulsed and swam like the surface of a boiling hot spring. She was power.
“It is beyond you, human, to be as midnight and laughter and adventure,” Zawadi said, her voice not falling on the air but taking it over. There was no air in the world but her words. “Your mind is too small, and your body too limited. Were I to give you all you desire, you might have a few short hours to marvel in the vastness of the world. Then you would explode. Ceasing upon the course of your life so selfishly that not even your body is left for the earth to devour.”
Asha gasped. Zawadi could split her apart with a thought. Asha could die simply for saying the wrong thing to such a woman. But the more Asha saw or heard, the more her body shivered with fear, and the more desire chased after it. What must it feel like to be so powerful? Asha entirely forgot the searing pain in her hand as her being hungered for the true danger.
“How many hours?” The question slipped out of Asha's lips on a whisper.
“Um, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!” Zawadi threw her head back, and the folds of her voluminous dress shook out like the branches of a tree, swaying with a happy breeze. With a suddenness that stole Asha's breath Zawadi's every motion and amusement halted. Her eyes pierced Asha with their flickering silver intensity. “Fifteen, at most. But one moment more and you will surely cease to be.”
“Alright,” Asha could not seem to touch her own mind, words simply fell out of her, and she stood, unaware that her right hand was blistering from being in the flames. “So give me only five hours.”
Slowly Zawadi lifted her hand to the scarf. Hiding half her face, she pulled it free of some fastening Asha could not see. It fell to the side of her face, revealing the brightly curved lips rounded cheekbones, and wide nose of the nymph. With her face revealed, she looked to be older than Jauhar, perhaps as old as sixty and very kind, even mischievous. Completely gone was all sense of danger about her. She only looked like a tickled aunt, come to bestow a great gift.
Zawadi stepped forward and took Asha's face between her palms. "Have a care with that hunger dear.” She kissed Asha's left cheek, and magic darted from the patch of skin, dancing through her veins. “It will consume all that is human within you.” She kissed Asha's other cheek, as before the feeling raced through her body. When the two bits of magic met lights of every color imaginable exploded before Asha's eyes.
She felt buoyant, as though her feet were not touching the ground. She felt every tingle and brush and breath of the air around her. She saw lights from across the world. And the music, of night, and the animals, and the earth itself, all pulsed within her.
“I am daybreak and music and wonder.” Asha could not stop smiling could not banish the joy within.
“Well, you've only five hours,” The nymph raised the scarf to hide her lips again, but Asha was not so easily intimidated now. “What will you do?”
Asha looked down at her blistering stinging hand, all she did was think of it as it should be, soft and smooth, like Jauhar's, and at once, it was healed. It was perfect. No bum, no soot beneath her nails, no scratches from patching the roof, or calluses from where she carried the water each day. She could be beyond beauty with this power, could put Jauhar and her daughters to shame with her beauty and perfection and finery. Make them regret not appreciating her.
No sooner had Asha thought it than colorful light slid down her in waves, transforming her. She wore a gown of deep blues and shining golden threads, as hungry as nature itself And her hair bloomed atop her head like a crown, surrounded in golden hoops and chains and tiny blue gems. And her feet were clothed in the loveliest winged shoes, made of blue and gold beads. She might as well be a queen as finely as she was garbed. A goddess.
“A ball. Truly?” The nymph seemed genuinely puzzled. She stepped away from Asha raising a quizzical brow. “I give you all the magic your body can hold, and you will take it to a party?”
"Half the world will be there.” Asha effervesced.. “I can see the world in five hours.”
“Ummm. And showing up your sisters, your mothers, this has nothing to do with it?” Zawadi inquired blandly.
Asha shrugged. "Only a little.”
“Then I suggest you take a look here.” She waved her hand and produced a looking glass that looked like it was held in the death grip of a vulture's claw.
Asha bent before the low mirror and stared in absolute shock. Someone else’s face was gazing back at her. It was a lovely face, large green eyes, plump smooth lips, and just a hint of dimples. But it was not her own.
"Where has my face gone?”
"Nowhere,” Zawadi’s tone smiled at Asha’s ignorance. “Magic skins do not show what is, they show what...” She shrugged as if she did not know how to complete the thought. "What is seen.”
Asha wanted to ask more questions and pick the magic apart, but she could feel time passing. Soon she would be Asha again. No magic, no longer anyone’s best beloved. A servant. And since her family had taken all the camels, it would take half Asha’s time just to get to the ball.
Asha grinned, remembering the story of Nur descending from his home in the heavens to announce himself as ruler of all humankind, riding on the back of an eagle with a golden saddle. Colorful lights filled the night, latching onto a beetle flying by. It caught in the web of light and began to grow. It grew until it had been transformed into a colorful green and purple lokoki parrot. And it continued growing— until it was as big as an elephant. Asha walked right up to the bird and lay a hand on his beak. He knelt low, so Asha could climb on, and a golden saddle sparkled into existence on its back. Asha climbed on with a broad grin. She only wished Baba could have seen this. The bird took off and Asha giggled in delight and exhilaration as it carried her into the night, to the ball where half the world waited—for her.
In that moment, she had been so consumed, so awestruck by the power within her Asha had completely forgotten the nymph. Forgotten her questions about the woman and her curiosity about the magic. She was so certain that this adventure would fill her up that tomorrow and yesterday had seemed unreal and those five hours had felt like a whole lifetime.
Now she felt hungry, and tired, and more than a little foolish for not having asked more. For not having taken a moment even to see if the nymph would come again. Or to consider her point. She should have, as it seemed Zawadi was right—
Asha wanted more!
Surely there was a way to find the woman. A way to have the magic again. Asha cradled the shoe close and begged the universe to send the woman her way once more!