Parvaneh emerged first, and Soraya followed. Outside the mountain at last, Soraya stood with her head back and filled her lungs with the night sky. And then she looked around her and was convinced she had stepped into a different world.
“Where are we?” Soraya asked with a mixture of alarm and awe.
“The forest, of course,” Parvaneh said flatly.
But Soraya had never seen forestland like this before. She had never been inside a forest at all. From the roof of Golvahar, she could see the sparse forestland at the south of the mountain—where her mother had first encountered a div. But the land there was dry, with clumps of trees scattered across the landscape, more brown than green. That was not the forest Soraya was standing in now.
The trees here were so tall, so densely packed, that Soraya could barely see more than a short distance in their direction. She didn’t even recognize these trees, with their long vines and leaves hanging down and their trunks twisted into different shapes. Even in the moonlight, she could tell how green it all was—it felt green. It smelled green. The air was thick with moisture, and everything around her felt vivid and alive, like she was standing on a pulse. It reminded her of being in the golestan, except the golestan was only a shadow of the lush forest around her.
“I didn’t know such a place existed in Atashar,” she said, walking toward the forest. She took slow, hesitant steps, like she was afraid of waking something up.
“This is the forest to the north of the mountains,” Parvaneh said behind her. “Few humans have walked here.” That explained why Soraya had never seen it from the roof. The mountains had always blocked her view of anything farther north.
A sound like fabric tearing made Soraya turn back to Parvaneh, and again, she was struck with awe. Parvaneh’s face was tilted up to the sky with a look of pained joy, like she thought she’d never see it again—and Soraya understood now why keeping her buried in a dungeon had been a terrible punishment for her. Parvaneh seemed to be made of the night. She wore it like a gown, draped over skin that shimmered in the moonlight. The sound Soraya had heard must have been Parvaneh making a tear down the back of her shift, because now her wings were free and unfurled. The moth patterns on her face were almost luminescent, not dull and faded as they appeared in the dungeon. Strands of moonlight caught in her black hair like ribbons of silver, and her eyes—those hawk’s eyes—burned like firelight. Soraya had never seen her look so inhuman—or so beautiful.
That could have been me, she thought. If she had stopped trying to hide the veins of poison under her skin, if she had pulled back her hair and shed her gloves and not been ashamed to look anyone in the eye, then would she have had this same aura of majesty? She felt a pang of resentment toward her mother, not for cursing her, but for hiding her away and not telling her the real reason why—for letting her think she was made of shame instead of beauty.
But resentment was a familiar path, one she had already taken further than she had ever thought she would, and it had brought her to this prison. If she kept taking it, where would it lead her next? As if answering her question, she heard Azad’s voice: Do you want to know why I brought you here? Because I know this is where you belong.
“Where should we go now?” she asked loudly, trying to drown out that insidious voice in her head.
“I’m not sure,” Parvaneh said with a note of worry. “I know he keeps the pariks here, but this is a large forest, and we don’t have much time.”
“We don’t have to find them tonight,” Soraya offered. “Az—the Shahmar won’t know I’m gone until he returns tomorrow night.”
Parvaneh shook her head. “You haven’t considered something. When the Shahmar returns to the palace, he’ll likely notice I’m missing. And once he does, he won’t leave the pariks unattended, or he might move them somewhere else entirely. This is our only chance.”
Parvaneh charged into the forest, and Soraya was glad to let her take the lead, because as soon as the trees enveloped her, she knew she could easily forget her purpose and wander deeper and deeper into this forest until it swallowed her whole. The beams of moonlight filtering through the canopy draped over the trees like pale silk or cobwebs, giving the forest the impression of being ancient and untouched. But I can touch it, Soraya thought. The leaves and roses of her golestan had cradled her since childhood, never refusing or shying away from her touch, and so when Soraya reached up a hand to pass through the leaves dangling above her head like diamonds, she felt like she was greeting a dear friend.
Ahead of her, Parvaneh seemed to feel the same. She had dived into the forest with purpose, but now her pace was slower, and she often reached out to lay her palm against the thick, knotted tree trunks that they passed. Her dark wings and hair blended into the forest, and she moved around trees and over roots without pause, already knowing where they would be.
Soraya didn’t have the same confident familiarity, and yet she didn’t mind when she stumbled over the uneven ground or when her hair became tangled in the slender branches of a birch tree. These brief stumbles only brought her into closer contact with the forest, allowing her to know the paper-like texture of the bark under the pads of her fingers, the rich, earthy smell of the soil, the brush of leaves against her cheek—the forest returning her caresses.
They started to pass through rows of trees with twisting trunks, their thick, ropy branches reaching across to each other, creating a kind of latticed arch overhead, when Soraya called for Parvaneh to stop.
Parvaneh turned to her. “What happened? Is something wrong?”
Soraya shook her head, but she couldn’t speak, the tears stinging her eyes threatening to overflow. She only gestured to the scenery around them—to the clumps of moss glowing in the moonlight against the dark wood of the trees, and the silhouettes of the branches tangled with one another. Somewhere in the distance, an owl was hooting, low and reverberant.
Parvaneh’s face softened, and she nodded. “I understand.”
A few stray leaves had wound themselves into Parvaneh’s hair, and her eyes glowed with bliss and moonlight. Her wings fluttered behind her, the sound as soft as the rustle of wind through the trees. If Parvaneh told her she was the forest made flesh, Soraya would have believed her.
Unable to look away from her, Soraya murmured, “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”
Parvaneh started to come toward her, the air around them heavy with dew and silence—but then she stopped and turned to her right, suddenly alert. “The wind just changed,” she said.
“What do you mean?” Soraya asked, feeling slightly breathless.
“Can’t you smell it?”
Soraya lifted her head and inhaled deeply, and a familiar feeling of safety wrapped around her. That scent …
“Esfand,” Soraya said, her excitement building. “If the pariks are being held prisoner—”
“The Shahmar would need esfand to weaken them and keep them from transforming,” Parvaneh finished for her.
Parvaneh took the lead again with renewed purpose, and Soraya followed, struggling to match her quickened pace in the dark. But even though her skin was damp from perspiration and the humidity in the air, and she kept scratching herself on branches and shrubs, and she heard the ragged sound of her own breath, Soraya wasn’t tired. On the contrary, she was invigorated, like she was coming to life with every step deeper into the heart of this forest.
“We’re getting closer,” Soraya said. “The smell is getting stronger.”
“I know.” Parvaneh panted beside her. “I feel weak. You have to go on without me.”
Soraya spun in the direction of her voice with a disbelieving glare. “You’re going to leave me?”
“I’ll wait right here. But you have to put out the esfand first—I can barely breathe. As soon as you do, I’ll find you. I promise.”
It was foolish to trust the promise of a div, but Parvaneh hadn’t broken a promise to her yet, and Soraya was the one with a secret. Soraya nodded and walked ahea
d, following the scent of the esfand.
To her immense relief, she went only a little way farther before she stepped out into a clearing where the moonlight streamed down unfettered. But there was more than moonlight floating in the clearing. Smoke, she thought. The entire clearing was thick with smoke and scent.
And yet it was empty. Soraya walked to the center of the clearing, waving the smoke away, but there was nothing there for the smoke to be coming from. Help me, she asked the forest. Show me what doesn’t belong here. But the forest didn’t answer, of course, and she made it to the other side of the clearing without finding the source of the esfand.
And then she heard a strange noise from above, like a sigh, and she looked up.
The smoke was thicker here, but through it, she saw an iron cage hanging from the high branches of a tree. Hanging below the cage was a brazier, the smoke wafting upward to surround the cage. The brazier was clearly the source of the esfand—although it couldn’t have been the only one, given the amount of smoke and the strength of its effect on Parvaneh—but it was the iron cage that caught Soraya’s gaze, because through the veil of smoke, she saw someone asleep inside it.
Soraya backed away toward the center of the clearing again, and now that she knew where to look, not even the smoke could hide the truth from her. All around the edge of the clearing was a ring of cages. There were a dozen of them, each hanging from a tree, and each with a brazier of esfand pouring smoke from below it. And inside each cage was a sleeping form. Long hair spilled from some of the cages, and Soraya thought she saw the shape of wings in others.
The pariks. She had found them.
19
Twelve sleeping figures in twelve iron cages, wrapped in smoke and moonlight. Soraya felt like she had stepped into one of the illustrations in her books. She wondered how she was supposed to climb up and free them, but then she remembered that she only had to put out the esfand before Parvaneh could come and help her.
When she went up on her toes, she could reach the brazier enough to overturn it, sending a shower of coal dangerously close to her head. One by one, she went around the ring and put out the braziers. As the last coals came tumbling down and the smoke dispersed, some of the pariks began to stir, awakening from their forced slumber. Soraya moved away from the cages, hoping that Parvaneh would appear soon. She didn’t know how the pariks would react to her, or if they would believe her when she claimed to be their ally.
“You,” came a voice to her right. Startled, Soraya turned and met the gaze of one of the pariks. She was still curled up from her sleep, but she lifted her head and peered at Soraya through the bars with wide orange eyes. She appeared mostly human, except for the feathered patterns on her skin. “I know you,” she said.
Soraya shook her head and began to explain, but then she heard a rustling of leaves, and Parvaneh appeared among the trees, glowing and healthy once more. Soraya gestured for her to look up, and Parvaneh let out a long breath as she looked around to see her family returning to life.
The pariks were awakening, a few of them calling out Parvaneh’s name in confusion, and Parvaneh unfurled her wings and rose up into the air to help them bend the bars of their cages enough to slip through.
Soraya watched but tried to keep to the shadows, away from this reunion she had no place in. They all had wings, though of different kinds, some feathered and others translucent like Parvaneh’s. One had the leathery wings of a bat. And though they were more human in appearance than other divs, their eyes all glowed with an inhuman sheen.
But human or demon, one thing was clear: the pariks were a family. As soon as one was free, she would go to help her sisters, until they were all joined together on the ground, laughing and talking and embracing, or adjusting each other’s hair or wings. Soraya felt a familiar ache in her chest, the same one she’d felt when she saw Sorush and Laleh and her mother together on Nog Roz. That sense of belonging and rightness was the same—and again, Soraya stood apart from it.
Soraya looked away, and to her surprise, found Parvaneh standing near her. She thought Parvaneh would be at the center of this joyful reunion, but she was lingering at the edge of the clearing, watching the other pariks intently with her wings flat against her back and her hands fidgeting in front of her. Even when she was held captive in the dungeon, she had never seemed so cowed, so unsure.
“Parvaneh,” a voice said, and Soraya turned her head in its direction. The pariks all stepped aside as one of them strode forward—the one with the orange eyes that had spoken to Soraya when she was waking. At the time, Soraya hadn’t noticed her wings, but now they were more visible: tawny brown, with serrated edges like the wings of an owl.
Soraya wanted to address her at once, but the parik’s gaze was locked on Parvaneh, and from the way the other pariks had parted for her, the way they all waited silently now, Soraya knew better than to interrupt.
“Parisa,” Parvaneh said, the word little more than a breath.
“You’ve returned,” Parisa said. Her voice was soft, but Soraya heard every word. “Does that mean you’ve completed your task?”
Parvaneh’s eyes flickered to the ground, and she gave a quick shake of her head. “Not yet.”
Parisa’s wings fluttered in what Soraya could somehow tell was disapproval. “Then why are you here?”
“I have something that can help,” Parvaneh said, her voice growing louder now. “I have something that can stop the Shahmar.” She turned her head to look straight at Soraya, and Soraya again felt that hollow sensation as she realized what Parvaneh was talking about.
“The simorgh’s feather,” Parvaneh announced with such certainty, such confidence.
An excited chattering erupted among the pariks until Parisa held up a hand to silence them. “Show it to me,” she said.
Parvaneh came to Soraya’s side, and Soraya felt a wave of nausea as all eyes turned expectantly to her. She shook her head lightly and whispered to Parvaneh, “I don’t have it.”
She hadn’t meant for the others to hear, but instantly, there was an uproar of angry voices and fluttering wings. Parvaneh clasped her hand around Soraya’s wrist. “You said you had it,” she bit out between clenched teeth.
“He took it from me before he brought me here,” Soraya said. “I didn’t know that…” She couldn’t finish the thought aloud. I didn’t know that they wouldn’t welcome you without it. I didn’t know you were an outcast.
But now she remembered Parvaneh’s furious outburst when she had told Soraya to abandon her family. Are they truly your family if they’ve failed to accept you as their own? If they cast you out and treat you with disdain? Why do they still matter to you? Perhaps Parvaneh had wanted Soraya’s answer so she could know it herself.
Parisa called for silence again. “We thank you for freeing us, Parvaneh, but it’s not enough to meet the conditions for your return.”
Parvaneh’s head was turned away from Parisa and the others, but Soraya saw the clench of her jaw, the dimming of her eyes. She felt Parvaneh’s shame and humiliation as if it were her own, because it had been—it still was.
“She doesn’t have the feather yet, but she will,” Soraya called to Parisa.
The pariks all fell silent in surprise. Parisa looked at Soraya now as if she had only just noticed her. Parvaneh placed a hand on her arm. “Soraya—”
But Soraya ignored her. “The Shahmar took it from me,” she said, stepping forward, “but I can find it again.” In her mind, she imagined green veins curling over her skin like vines, and the image made her feel bold.
“How?” called out the bat-winged parik from behind Parisa.
Parisa inclined her head, approving of the question. “How can you get close enough to the Shahmar to do such a thing?”
“The Shahmar is fond of me,” Soraya answered. “He brought me here rather than killing me. If I pretend that I want to join him, he’ll keep me close enough to learn his secrets. I’ll find the feather, and when I do, I’ll give it to Parva
neh—only to Parvaneh.”
Soraya didn’t know when she had become so comfortable making bargains with divs, but she managed to hold Parisa’s steady gaze as she spoke, her voice never wavering. The words came to her as if she had planned them, because as soon as Parvaneh had told her why they needed the feather, some part of her had known that she was the only one who could retrieve it again.
“How do we know we can trust her?” said another parik, her gossamer wings twitching.
Parisa came to stand directly in front of Soraya, studying her face closely. “I know you,” she said again. Now that the smoke had completely faded, the feathered pattern on her skin was clearer, her eyes even brighter. “You saved me once before, in the forest to the south. You freed me from one of the Shahmar’s traps.”
“That was my mother,” Soraya said. “My mother freed you when she was a girl.”
Parisa’s eyes widened in recognition. “You’re the child,” she said. She raised a hand to brush aside Soraya’s hair, but then she shook her head. “But you can’t be her. I gave that child a gift that you don’t have.”
“I did have it,” Soraya said. Grief and bitterness mingled on her tongue, her words both an accusation and an apology. She knew that Parisa would never understand that her gift had been a curse to Soraya—and Soraya wasn’t even sure of it herself anymore. “I had poison in my veins,” she continued, “but I rejected it, and in doing so, I put my whole family—my people—at risk. My mother told me to find you and ask for your help to defeat the Shahmar.”
Parisa tilted her head, the movement so much like Parvaneh’s that Soraya almost smiled. “Are you like your mother?” she asked.
Soraya flinched inwardly. Was she like her mother, a woman who was determined and ruthless enough to go to a dakhmeh at night, who had freed a parik and tried to thwart a div, who had let her shame fester inside her until the consequences spiraled out of her control? “Yes,” Soraya said, her voice thick with a mixture of pride and regret. “I’m very much like her.”
Girl, Serpent, Thorn Page 18
