Gaia: Daughter of Aladdin

by Armitage, J. A.

  I was new. I also felt new on the inside, more powerful, somehow healthier.

  “Was I reborn with you, Asher?” I asked the bird, who’d hopped up onto my shoulder. Far from being bald and ugly like most newborn birds, he was stunningly beautiful. We both were.

  Asher nodded his head then gave me an affectionate nip of my ear. If I was worried that the new phoenix wouldn’t really be Asher, I could feel better now. I was still me. I had all my memories, and apart from a shine that made me look like I’d spent hours in a beauty salon, I was still the same old Gaia.

  I popped him back on the fig tree and dressed quickly, wanting to see if my father was still in the palace. If he was, I was going to bring him up to my mother. If she saw him, she’d know who he was immediately. She had to. He was the love of her life.

  Taking a route through the palace that was as far away from Genie’s room as possible, I moved stealthily, not wanting to be seen. Unfortunately, luck was not on my side. I was collared by a guard long before I got to the cellar door.

  “Her Majesty has been looking for you. She’s in the dining room.”

  “You know who I am?” I asked the guard pointlessly. Obviously, he did, or he wouldn’t be telling me my mother was looking for me.

  He tipped his head to the side. “Ma’am?”

  I ignored him and went straight to the dining room. My mother remembered me. I’d been worried she wouldn’t.

  “Daughter, where have you been?” My mother asked with quizzical eyes as she took a sip of juice from the gold-trimmed stemware.

  “Asher. He’s transitioning. He had me worried, so I didn’t want to leave him alone.”

  Well, it was kind of true.

  “You are looking beautiful today. What’s your secret?”

  “A good night’s sleep,” I lied.

  “It’s done you a world of good.”

  I fidgeted in my chair, not enjoying the small talk. There had been a time not so long ago when I could talk to her about anything, but now, there were so many secrets I was keeping. My magic, my father, hiding in the cellar. My worry that Genie would forget who I was.

  I stood up to leave.

  “Where are you going?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at me. “I thought we’d have breakfast together.”

  “I thought I’d go out for a bit.”

  “Out?”

  I braced myself for her to tell me I couldn’t, but she didn’t. “Take some guards with you. The streets of Kisbu are not as safe as they once were.”

  “You remember that?” I asked, hope rising in my chest. “You remember that things were pretty safe in Kisbu until this year?”

  She studied me curiously. “Of course, I remember. One cannot be too careful these days.”

  “No, they can’t,” I agreed, heading out of the room. She was not herself at all. I wanted to ask her why she had canceled trade, but I had a feeling she didn’t know herself.

  Down in the cellar, my fears came to fruition. My father was gone.

  I sat on the blankets feeling bereft. I’d lost my father, but he was the one who’d lost everyone else. No one remembered him.

  There was one person who would know the answers, even if he didn’t like talking about it. In all the time I’d known Genie, he’d shunned away from talk of magic, and I’d let him. Before now, I’d had no more than a passing interest in it myself.

  I raced up to his rooms and knocked on his door for the very first time. Usually, I just walked in, but now I didn’t even know if he knew who I was.

  Butterflies raced in my stomach as I waited for the door to open.

  “Gaia,” he said when he opened the door. “I’ve been hoping for a while that you’d come to see me. I wanted to come to you, but in my position...”

  “What position is that?” I asked, waltzing past him and taking my familiar place on the chaise. The pattern on it had worn away long ago, thanks to the hours I’d spent there reading books and discussing life with Genie.

  Genie didn’t answer my question, and I wasn’t sure that he could. Now that my father no longer existed to him, he had no reason to put up a barrier between us.

  “You look different.”

  “Asher was reborn today,” I said, not particularly wanting to talk about Asher. I cast a quick glance at the bookshelves beside me, wishing he wasn’t so afraid of magic. The answer to all this could be on his shelves if he wasn’t so against it.

  “You were reborn with him? I’ve heard such things happen.”

  “I didn’t come here to talk about my bird,” I said, ignoring the feeling in the pit of my stomach. I stood and walked over to where he’d perched himself on the edge of his desk. I was at his exact eye level.

  “Why did you come here?” he asked quietly. I saw something in his eyes, something I’d not seen before. Longing. His breathing deepened as I reached out and touched his cheek. Maybe I had seen the look in his eyes before and not believed it, or maybe I knew more after my rebirth. His lips parted slightly, and I could feel the beat of his heart quicken. Something had changed me that morning. It wasn’t Genie that was different; it was I.

  “Do you want me?” I whispered.

  The familiar expression came over him as though he was reaching into his depths. I could almost see the cogs whirring in his mind, but what I was asking him was beyond reasoning. He either wanted me, or he didn’t.

  In the back of my mind, I knew I should be out looking for my father, for a cure or for a solution, but I knew in my heart that if only Genie truly wanted me, then the rest would fall into place. He’d always been my champion in the past. Now I wanted him to be more.

  My own breathing quickened, matching his. His stare penetrated my eyes as though he was searching my soul for something.

  “I’ve wanted you for a long time,” I said to him when he didn’t speak. I moved my fingers slowly down his cheek, feeling his warm skin beneath my own. He reached up and clasped my wrist.

  “Stop!”

  One word, but it sent my whole world crashing down around me. I’d lost my father, my mother wasn’t herself, and now I was losing Genie too.

  “I can’t,” he said, slipping out between me and the desk.

  “Why can’t you?”

  “I just can’t. You are young. I am old.”

  “I’m eighteen. I’m old enough.”

  He ran his fingers over his head, causing some of his hair to come loose from the gold tie holding it in place.

  “It’s not just that. You are forbidden to me.”

  I moved forward toward him, and he held out his hands to stop me. “Please stop.” He turned from me and placed his hands against the wall, lowering his head.

  “I’m forbidden? Why? I’m of legal age. I want you. There is nothing forbidden about this.”

  He turned, and this time I saw something else in his eyes. Not quite rage, not quite confusion, but a mix of the two.

  “You come in here, looking as beautiful as you do, which is bad enough, but then you blow me away. Constantly. You always have, with the power of your mind. With your questioning. With the way you speak. Do you have any idea how hard it is to watch you leave after we’ve talked for hours? Do you not think I want you to stay? Do you think I’ve not thought what it would be like to have you in my bed?”

  My heart pounded at his words. I’d not imagined it. He did want me, so what was the problem?

  “I’m here. You can have me. All of me. My body, my mind. It’s all yours. It’s always been yours.”

  “But I can’t have it!” he said, his voice rising an octave.

  “Why not?” I bellowed back at him.

  “Because you are Aladdin’s daughter,” he screamed. “Because you are my best friend’s daughter. I cannot do that to him.”

  “You remember? You remember my father?”

  “I...” He ran his fingers through his hair again, and this time, the gold tie fell to the floor, and his long black hair came loose around his shoulders.

&nbs
p; “I think you should leave,” he said, throwing the door open. Hot tears flooded my eyes and spilled out down my cheeks.

  “I can’t leave now. Who is my father, Genie?”

  A crazed look came over his face. “I don’t know,” he screamed. “I don’t know who your father is.” He pushed me out of the door and slammed it shut behind me. I heard the key turn in the lock for the first time ever.

  “You ok?”

  I turned to see Jamal running down the corridor to me. “I heard what Genie said. It was foolish to even try. You know he doesn’t remember.”

  “He did remember. For a second.”

  I fell into his arms and sobbed onto his shoulder. If he wanted to think I was crying because Genie didn’t remember my father, I wasn’t going to dispel him of the notion.

  Genie had hinted that nothing could happen between him and me before, but he’d never shouted at me. He’d never before told me he wanted me. Somehow, it made it all the worse. If he’d just told me he didn’t think of me that way, it would have broken my heart, but the crushing pain settling in my chest eclipsed mere heartbreak. I felt like all of me was broken.

  “Do you want to go and look for your father again? I’m guessing you didn’t catch up with him last night.”

  I got my sobbing under control and nodded my head. Part of me wanted to head back to my room and hide under the blankets, but what good would that do? I needed to be proactive.

  “Come on, let’s go.”

  I took his hand and let him lead me out of the palace. Freya came along with us as before, but whereas she had once been my servant, she had become more of a friend. She was one of only two people I was wading through the muck of this curse with.

  We combed the streets in much the same way we had done the day before, but this time, I had no heart left in it. My father didn’t want to be found, and if I did find him, what was I going to do with him? He didn’t even know who I was. If he was truly back to being a street rat, he would stay out of everyone’s way, and that meant mine. I was under no illusions that my nightly prowls around the streets meant I knew Kisbu better than he did. He’d survived a long time on the streets before. There was no reason to think he wouldn’t again.

  “We should stop,” I said, feeling the weight of defeat on my shoulders.

  “We can’t give up,” Freya protested.

  “I don’t mean give up entirely. I meant give up looking for my father and start looking for a solution instead. There is a reason that this is happening.”

  I gestured to the streets around us. Rubbish was piled up along the edges of the street, and no one was bothering to pick it up. In the distance, a couple of men fought over what looked to be a sandwich.

  A few weeks ago, they would have simply gone to the palace, and my parents would have fed them. Now, no one dared go close. We’d shut our gates. I’d not asked my mother outright if she was still planning to do this month’s feast for the hungry, but it didn’t look likely. My mother had gone back to the way things were run before my father became sultan. It wasn’t just the memory of him that had gone, but all the good that he had brought to Badalah. It, too, was being erased.

  “Where would we even start looking for a solution?” Freya asked.

  “Your mother said that my grandfather’s vizier hypnotized people. He put them in trances. Don’t the people all look like they are in a trance to you?”

  She looked around the street. People were going about their daily business as they always did, but they did it with blank looks on their faces.

  “They do look hypnotized,” Freya agreed. “But it’s impossible to hypnotize a whole kingdom. No one is that powerful.”

  “Not even The Vizier?”

  “Not even The Vizier,” Freya said, “but it doesn’t matter. He is long gone.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so. I think he’s back, and what’s more, I think he’s more powerful than he ever was before.”

  * * *

  Read more in Heiress of Shadows

  Heiress of Shadows

  1

  24th June

  The whole kingdom had forgotten Aladdin, or so it seemed.

  My whole world had descended into chaos, and the shifting of magic within me swirled, churning in my stomach, distracting me from everything. I clicked my fingers and watched as they lit up, sending shadows dancing around my bedroom’s walls. Asher squawked appreciatively, then flew across the room and landed on my fingers, extinguishing the flames.

  “You like that, don’t you?” I said, patting him on the head. At least, something was going well. Since Asher’s rebirth, he was now flying again, something I’d not seen him do in the days leading up to his disintegration into ash. I lifted my hand, and he took off, his brand new feathers giving him lift as he flew around my room before settling back on his perch. I’d noticed he was attracted to the heat and light of the flames I produced, so I’d been producing them more frequently. It also helped dispel some of the energy the magic produced, which meant I was less likely to spontaneously combust in front of people.

  After getting dressed, I headed downstairs. I found Jamal eating breakfast with my mother. I was about to join them when I saw my mother lean forward and hand Jamal a piece of toast, except she didn’t put it on his plate, but fed it to him. I’d seen her do that before. Both she and my father fed each other from their own plates. I’d never seen her do it with anyone else. Fire churned in me, but I took a couple of deep breaths to quell it. It wasn’t her fault. She wasn’t herself anymore. At least, Jamal looked uncomfortable with her flirting with him because that’s exactly what she was doing. His cheeks were a cherry red, and he didn’t know where to put his eyes.

  “Ah, Gaia!” he said, standing to greet me as I made my presence known. “Please, join us....please!” He hissed the last word quietly and swiped a side-eye at my mother.

  My mother didn’t speak as I sat at the table, but the way she looked at me caused me to shudder. She looked at me the way any woman would do if I was about to steal her man. But Jamal didn’t belong to my mother any more than he belonged to me. I wondered if she even knew who I was. I watched as she scooped sugar into her tea blankly. She usually took it without.

  “It’s a nice day,” I said airily, grabbing some meat. Jamal raised his eyebrows, but I only shrugged in response. What else was I supposed to say? Ask my mother if she knew who I was? Ask when her wedding to Jamal would be? The weather seemed like the safest option.

  “Hmm,” my mother murmured noncommittally.

  “I think we should go for a walk,” Jamal said, tugging at my hand and nodding at my mother. She didn’t even look up from her tea.

  I grabbed a piece of bread to put with the meat I’d already taken and made a quick sandwich before following Jamal out into the corridor.

  When he was certain we were out of earshot of both my mother and the guards, he spoke. “Your mother asked me to come to her rooms after breakfast, and I don’t think she had a discussion of the weather in mind if you know what I mean.”

  I almost spit my sandwich out as I took in his words. A nervous giggle erupted from my throat. The idea of my mother, seducing Jamal was preposterous.

  “You think it’s funny? She was running her leg up and down mine before you walked in.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m only laughing because it’s so unreal. I’m nervous and scared, and my body seems to be betraying me. Before I walked in, I almost ignited. I don’t seem to have control over anything anymore.”

  “I promise, I would never...”

  “I don’t believe for a second you would take advantage. I’m not mad at you. I’m upset and confused. My mother shouldn’t be by herself.” I made to head back to the dining room, but Jamal stopped me.

  “I don’t think you should go back in there. Get your court physician to see her if you must, but I think it would be better for both of you if you had a little time apart.”

  “She’s my mother, Jamal.” I tapped my toe on
the floor, a nervous habit I seemed to have just picked up. It was better than setting myself on fire, I supposed.

  “I know she is, but I’m not sure she knows that anymore. I just don’t want you getting hurt. Why don’t we find Freya and go out and do another search for your father? Your mother is in no danger here in the palace.”

  “My father doesn’t want to be found,” I said, but then, I realized I wasn’t ready for the time when my own mother didn’t recognize me. If I could put it off just one more day... “Ok, come on, let’s go out.”

  Freya jumped at the chance to join us, although she didn’t think we had much chance of finding my father any more than I did.

  We walked through the town easily. Even with no guards by our sides, no one stopped us, nor paid us any attention. It was a marked difference from a week or so ago when people had come out of their houses to gawk at us. I wasn’t looking out for my father. I knew he would be alright wherever he was, but I wanted to see a spark of recognition in my subjects. I’d been on the front cover of the Badalah Beacon so many times that everyone should know my face, but even as I caught the eyes of many, none gave me a second glance. It was almost as if I were invisible. I was a complete nobody in my own town. It was both liberating and terrifying in equal measure. I was becoming as forgotten as my father.

  We’d not gone very far when I heard someone shouting. I turned to see a couple of older teenage girls staring at me. After feeling invisible, I should have been happy that someone recognized me, but the look in their eyes told me that they weren’t too happy to see their princess strolling through the streets.

  “There’s that spoiled-rotten brat!”

  The first one hollered from across the street.

  “She and the Sultana, and all of the aristocrats, for that matter, simply want to see us all in their servitude forever,” the other said loudly enough that I could hear them all the way across the dusty street.