Asha couldn’t help watching her half-sister as they rode to the capitol palace. Sabra was becoming quite the useful family member. Twice now, they’d been lent camels because she was a new mother. Asha hadn’t noticed motherhood affecting Sabra’s ability to walk, but it was useful, so she felt no need to comment. What really puzzled her was how Hadhi attracted such a friendly man. It made no sense. It made even less sense than realizing the man Asha had danced with, tempted, and played with had been Azize. Had he changed so much? Perhaps all was seeing the world.
Asha was anxious to see him again, anxious to know if she had been right about him last night or as a girl. He was looking for her, had set up an entire ball, simply to find her. That said something.
But what?
Asha had planned to take the second slipper out of its hiding place with Baba’s things, but when she snuck into Jauhar’s room this morning, it was missing. If Jauhar had found it and knew it was Asha who had come to the ball, Asha surely would have heard about it. Asha was terrified that it being missing meant that the magic had faded away, and Azize would not have his slipper either. She had been calling and calling, every moment she got alone, she called for Zawadi, but the nymph had not come. Now Asha would not be going to the ball as the woman Azize had known. Nor would she have her other slipper to prove herself. What if he didn’t like the ordinary Asha?
Her eyes darted to Hadhi again. Hadhi’s stiff, unyielding back, to be more specific. She said Noam had heard bad things of Asha from the prince. It wasn’t precisely surprising. Asha hadn’t liked him either, but it was a bit scary.
It shouldn’t be. She had no great desire to marry a prince. But he wasn’t just a prince, was he? He had seen the world. He was not content with Maltuba alone. He had stories that took her with him. He made Asha hungry, like Zawadi’s magic. And he loved her.
She needed him to...give her a chance. She needed his love.
“What bad stories?” Asha burst out, into the near-silent traveling party, startling Lin awake. He screeched, and four angry pairs of eyes swung Asha’s way. She shrugged, just barely catching the pleasure that darted across Hadhi’s face.
Sabra lay her lips right next to his ear as she urged her mount on ahead of the group.
Nuru looked like she was falling asleep on her camel.
Jauhar glared at Asha as though ready to kill her for the tiny offense. “Do try to act as though you were taught a little decorum when you are in the king’s presence.” She snapped and urged her camel ahead as well.
Hadhi kept her pace, waiting. She knew what Asha was asking, and the malicious smile at the corner of her lips said she meant to have fun with it.
“Well,” Asha prompted.
Hadhi only smiled. “Well what?”
“What did the prince have to say to make me infamous?” Asha ground out.
Hadhi shrugged. “I do not know exactly. Something about you being a pest. Seemed pleased that you were not at the ball.”
“Oh.” Asha wasn’t sure how to take this. A pest? Well, she was a child, and he was hardly sweet. Surely the past was something they could forget. “Did he speak of me often?” Asha asked, oddly hopeful. Even if it had not been well, leaving a lasting impression on a man was a good thing.
“Now you want a prince?” Hadhi demanded coldly.
“It is not as though you will catch his attention,” Asha fired back, perhaps unkindly.
Usually saying such things would not disturb Asha. Hadhi had no love for her. Why should Asha put an effort into loving her half-sister. But Noam’s words and Sabra’s played at the back of her mind and made her notice things she rarely did, like the glisten of tears in Hadhi’s glaring eyes before she looked away.
“I already have his attention,” Hadhi remarked.
Asha laughed. “Now you are the mystery woman? Try to impress me with better lies.”
“That woman left at midnight,” Hadhi snarled. “I did not. I am not the only one with his attention. But you.” Hadhi looked her half-sister up and down critically. “Have only his...dislike.”
Hadhi stuck her nose in the air and continued on, she made no effort to pass Asha, but it was clear she would speak no more. Asha was struck again by how odd it was that Noam, a very nice man, if a poor storyteller, should like Hadhi at all.
Asha had tried to befriend her when they were young. Several times. But Hadhi never wanted a thing to do with Asha.
“You cannot sneak into the palace. It is guarded. You will be punished,” Hadhi had informed Asha coldly. Asha was about ten, making Hadhi fifteen, and already well on her way to being the most sour woman in Maltuba, yet still, Asha tried to make them sisters in truth.
“I know the way around them,” Asha explained. “Baba showed me. Let's go see the menagerie. They have a foreign beast!”
“Have Baba show you, when he comes home. It is not safe.” That was her favorite thing to say. Nothing was safe if Hadhi was to be believed.
“Come on, it will be fun,” Asha begged.
“You are not going, Asha. If you try, I will tell Mzaa, and you will be cleaning with the servants for a month.”
It always ended the same. Threats and tattling and Asha’s joy ruined. Sabra was wrong; Hadhi had been offered adventure; she just preferred to be unhappy and to make everyone around her unhappy too.
Asha and Hadhi did not speak for the remainder of the journey. When they reached the capitol building, Asha was unsurprised to see many a woman had the same plan as Mzaa Jauhar. There was a line at the doors of the palace at least twenty women long. They dismounted and Hadhi led all five camels to one of the servants at the side of the palace. Jauhar nodded to the line, glaring at Asha as though it had been she and not her own daughter who held them up.
Asha planted her hands on her hips and looked away, waiting for the doors to open. Waiting for the sight of him. Perhaps it had all been the work of the magic. Perhaps she had not even liked him as much as she thought. But the fluttering wings in her stomach at only the thought of seeing him said otherwise.
Hadn’t she loved making him chase her down the halls? Hadn’t she been charmed by how pampered he was? Delighted by the bright wildness of his eyes? And near desperate for his lips on her own?
Azize had grown up. She liked him as a man, in ways she would never have imagined liking him as a boy. He was adventure. And Asha meant to have him.
But she was not the only one. Who would have thought Hadhi would be interested?
Behind them, the line began to stretch. If they did not open the doors soon, it might reach into Ether before long. They had been standing in line for near twenty minutes, women, silent, chattering, young old, fat, thin, with child....it was endless the types and the looks, they emerged from all around to take their place in the line. All for Azize. The more she saw, the more Asha’s stomach churned. She would have no chance would she? He would see only the girl of her childhood and hate her. And one of these... greedy, ugly women, like Hadhi, would claim Azize in the absence of Zawadi’s magic.
Silently Asha begged whatever power existed in the universe to send the woman to her, to give her magic, so she could claim her prince. And rescue him from all these vultures.
There was a little girl, perhaps seven, hanging by her knees from a branch of an old tree across from Asha. She swung back and forth, smiling knowingly, her eyes all for Asha. With a giggle, she let her hands trail the ground and hummed to herself as she swung, Asha had never heard the song before, but it was familiar.
Asha started forward curious and hopeful.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Jauhar snapped, yanking hard on Asha’s elbow.
“Over to the tree for a moment.” Asha yanked her arm back.
“All of us would like the shade; you are not special. You will wait.”
“I am not going for shade. I want to speak to the little girl,” Asha protested.
“Your father is no longer here to spoil you. You will stand with your sisters as he should have made you since birth. And be grateful I allow your presence here.”
“I am going to speak to the girl. Not because my father thought I was special, but because you cannot stop me,” Asha said with calm superiority. “You do not allow my presence here, the king demands it.”
Asha stomped off through the dust, feeling Jauhar’s glare drilling into her. More even, she thought she felt Hadhi’s and Nuru’s glares as well. Their jealously would not stop her; she was special. Baba knew it; that was why he sent Zawadi to her. Only to her. Sabra’s words wouldn’t stop her either. She knew nothing of how this family had tortured Asha. She owed them nothing.
The girl did not stop swinging when Asha reached her, but she stopped humming. “Ready to rule are you?” She asked playfully, and Asha knew at once she was right. This was Zawadi, in a new form again.
“Please, you must help me.”
“I said one wish,” Zawadi said in a playfully tempting voice.
“I know.” Asha nodded vigorously as she prepared to beg. “I do, but he will not know me as I look.”
“I cannot help you forever. It will wear on you. Make you hunger,” she spoke in a joyful sing-song voice that sent a chill racing up Asha’s spine. “Make you crave. And then, when it all but fills you up with power and knowledge and life—then it will rip life from you. Pulling you apart in all directions.”
“I don’t care.” Asha shook off the chill; she needed the magic. “If I am not in there, he may marry one of them.”
“The women who come as they are?” She teased and swung back towards the tree quickly. Grabbing on with her hands, she swung around the branch, freeing her knees, and landed on her feet in the dust. Just watching it made Asha dizzy, but the girl just smiled, revealing the gap of her two front teeth.
“I...I am not lying to him. I promise I will tell him. But he will not give me a chance as I am now. He hated me as a girl.”
Zawadi bobbed her head this way and that. “He was a boy then. Now he is a man, and you are lovely. Generally all a man needs to forgive is a glance at loveliness. You knew this last night.”
Asha did know that. But her stomach churned with fear that Zawadi meant to refuse her. An ordinary man would forgive almost anything for a bit of beauty, and Asha knew she was beautiful. But, her gaze found the line, there was a great deal of ugliness among them, but there was plenty of beauty as well.
He had no reason to forgive her when the world was full of lovely women who had done nothing to alienate him. Hadhi thought she already had his attention. What if she was right?
“I cannot risk it. What if he likes one of them better? Is there nothing to be done?”
“I don’t know,” child Zawadi tilted her head back and forth as though this were a game she was playing. “The king has ordered you there, and I cannot transform you where so many can see? What do you propose?”
Asha looked again at the line of glaring women. Jauhar watched her with enraged eyes, and her half-sisters looked resentful. Even the other women looked angry at Asha, for the moment at least free from the heat. They were only jealous that they had not thought of it first. But even for something so small most of them would enjoy finding revenge. “Could you not meet me inside? After I have gone through the line, I will slip away so the king can have nothing to say.”
“I might be able to,” Zawadi said slowly, like she were one of Baba’s friends, waiting for payment before promising help.
“Please, Zawadi,” Asha begged. “Hadhi has already caught his attention, and she will be—”
“She has certainly caught someone’s attention.” Zawadi interrupted with a giggle. Asha spun to face her half-sister just in time to see the group of men who’d lent them the camels walking by. Noam was at the back of the group, and as he passed Hadhi, he reached out casually and squeezed Hadhi’s fingers. It was only for a moment, but Hadhi’s eyes grew wide, and her features softened into a sweet smile, and Asha would swear her half-sister’s fingers climbed through the air after Noam’s.
“But... she said—”
“I will meet you inside. This all looks too fun to resist.” Zawadi smirked, climbing back into the tree. Just before she would start swinging, she paused. “Have you ever seen your sister before this day, daughter of Zuberi? I think not. It is often the way with sisters. But I wonder, did you ever care to meet her?” She waited a long moment for a response, but Asha had no idea what to say. “Perhaps you should use the magic for more than just capturing a prince.”
I am midnight and laughter and adventure.
I am a life embraced.
I am the darkness banished.
I am daybreak and music and wonder.
I am a love claimed.
I am desire—manifest.
You who dwell in the twilight
Longing ever to be whole,
Look upon me and marvel
I am the answer to your eager soul.
I am drought and desolation and hunger.
I am your greed chased.
I am the quiet defeated.
I am storm and rage and danger.
I am a hope abandoned.
I am desire, void of thought.