The girl extends a hand to me, and after a couple of stunned seconds, I grab her wrist. My eyes shoot open. Another sin-wolf is about to charge right into her from behind. “Look out!”
Without turning around, the girl swings her sword. The inisisa barrels right into it and falls to the ground in wisps of black. She hadn’t even let go of my wrist.
Pools of sin dot the desert floor. They stir and bubble, but none of them move. None of them turn into fountains to swim down our throats. It’s almost as though they’re waiting.
I can’t speak, can barely breathe. The girl hauls me to my feet. It is unfair to call her that. She seems like something bigger, something from the sky. She’s not like the rest of us. The light engulfing her fades, and that’s when I notice that it was all coming from her sin-spots. Beasts ring her arms, dragons and bears and snakes. Lions chase each other on her legs. The wings of a griffin encircle her neck. She wears a simple sleeveless robe made of light fabric. Her dark red headscarf has fallen away. Her hair shines silver in the early morning glow.
She’s tastahlik.
Without a word, she sheathes her sword in a belt loop at her waist and looks around. The sin-puddles stir. She raises her arms and looks to the sky like she’s preparing herself for something. She’s going to Eat all of them . . .
Suddenly, it all stops. Frozen.
Against the rising sun, I see forms stir.
Night is starting to vanish, and I see them. Aliya has Arzu’s arm slung over her shoulder. Arzu limps along. Sweat pastes her hair to her forehead. I can hear her breathing from where I stand. But when she sees the girl, her spine straightens, as if she’s discovered newfound strength.
The girl looks squarely at Arzu. Her sin-spots have stopped shining, and all of a sudden she looks so human.
The puddles of blackness arc upward over the girl, and she cranes her neck, opens her mouth, and swallows the sins as they form one large jet straight down her throat. She doesn’t move, and we all watch in awed silence. The girl’s eyes are closed, her back arched so far I worry she’s going to fall over.
When it’s finished, the girl straightens herself, then takes a step toward us.
Arzu trembles. I can tell now it’s not from being sin-sick. She recognizes this girl. “Juba,” she whispers. She shuffles forward, one step, then the next, until the two are racing toward each other. Arzu trips, and Juba opens her arms just in time to catch her. Together, they fall to the ground. Arzu buries her head in Juba’s shoulder as Juba strokes her hair.
Juba whispers to Arzu something I don’t understand, and after a few minutes, they both get to their feet. Arzu’s face is wet. She doesn’t even bother to hide the tear streaks that glisten in the sunlight.
The girl steps forward and puts a hand to her chest. “My name is Juba,” she says. “Apologies for that . . . spectacle. Usually my tribe is able to be more polite in our welcome.”
Aliya steps forward. “I’m Aliya,” she says, sticking her hand out. Juba clasps it with a steady grip. There’s a pause as Juba looks at me. Aliya nudges me with her elbow.
“Oh, right, I’m Taj,” I say.
“Pleasure to meet you both,” Juba replies warmly. She looks at our makeshift campsite. “You all have traveled a great distance. The village isn’t far from here. I’ll guide you, and we will be there by late morning.” She puts her arm around Arzu. “I see you’ve gotten better at making friends. But worse at staying out of trouble.”
Arzu lets out a chuckle that turns into a blood-rich cough. She falls to one knee, and Aliya rushes over to her.
“I’m fine,” Arzu murmurs. “I’m fine.” Juba helps her up, and the two of them begin walking ahead of us while Aliya and I trail after. I have so many questions, but I’m still struggling to process what’s happened. In the center of the whirlwind in my brain is the knowledge that Arzu’s still alive. I can worry about who saved her and how later. For now, I should just be happy that she seems to be healthier.
Aliya punches me in the arm so hard it almost throws me to the ground.
“What did I tell you?” she hisses at me.
“Ow! What was that for?” I say, rubbing my arm. “Whose ruby did I crush to deserve that?”
“What did I tell you about butting in when you’re told not to?”
I shrug, but I can only use one shoulder. “It all worked out, didn’t it?”
Aliya shoots me a look almost as fierce as those sin-wolves. Then she stomps off after Arzu and Juba.
I feel good, useful. Then I remember the sharp pain in my right arm. If we have to fight any more inisisa on the way, she’s going to regret that sucker punch.
CHAPTER 12
THE SUN HANGS high in the sky. As we crest a hill onto open desert plain, the first thing we see is a ring of silver-haired men and women. Their hair comes down to their shoulders in thick, knotted braids, and they all wear sand-colored robes with red threaded through. They’re completely still, like statues. They wear necklaces, bracelets, and anklets with smooth stones in them that stir in the breeze. The ridge they stand on reminds me of the ridges that circle the dahia back in Kos, the ones that make those neighborhoods and their slums look like chunks of goat meat at the bottom of a bowl of stew.
Juba appears beside me. “I’m not sure how much Arzu has told you of our land, but what you in Kos call the arashi are as common as lightning and thunder here. They cannot be done away with, so we are always outrunning them.” She points to the men and women we approach. “Sentinels. Sometimes, when we get old, we can sense oncoming storms in our bones. One village elder, his left knee aches when rain is near.” She chuckles. “For some of us, it is the same with the arashi. We can smell when they are near. And we can run.” Juba’s own bracelets make music as she walks.
During the Fall of Kos, the arashi had descended from the sky with such suddenness that at first, everyone had frozen. None of us could move. Something we had thought existed only in old tales or to scare children into behaving fell out of that huge hole in the sky and floated over the Palace, nearly blocking out the moon and stars. Each monster hung over a single dahia, hovering, then spat their fire and lightning in bursts of destruction, setting the city ablaze. These Sentinels might have saved the people of Kos. I shake myself out of my reverie. “That’s pretty solid,” I tell Juba. She raises an eyebrow at me, and I realize my mistake. “In Kos, ‘solid’ is like . . . tough. Like a tough stone. It’s a good thing.”
“Yes,” Juba says, smiling in a way I can tell means she still doesn’t get it. “It is good.”
The Sentinels don’t move, even as we pass the village’s perimeter. No expressions flicker across their faces. They just stare, blank-eyed, into the distance, each in a different direction. I want to make a feint, but I don’t know if they can do what Juba did when she fought off the sin-wolves. Better not to invite a beating or a knife to my throat.
As we descend the bowl’s rim, I stumble and have to bend down to keep my balance. Arzu and Aliya are slow to come down as well, but for Juba, it’s like the ground itself is rising to make steps for her. It’s clear she’s made this journey many, many times.
“Hey,” I say to her as we get to more even ground. “How’d you do that?”
“Do what?” she asks as the entirety of the small village comes into view.
“Fight off the sin-wolves like that. It was like you were completely made out of light.”
“Oh.” She smiles and looks at her hands. Sin-spots cover the backs and trace lines across her palms. “These old things?” She chuckles. “It is just how we learn to fight.” She says it so casually, like she hasn’t just defeated half a dozen murderous sin-wolves. As though Arzu, whom she apparently knows really well, weren’t about to kick death’s door down like a Palace guard looking for aki in the Forum. “We are a simple people, but rich in here.” She taps her chest and continues down the slope.
“Does everyone in your tribe fight like that?” I ask. I can’t get her moves out of my head.
“Everyone fights,” Juba tells me. “Some because they have to. Some because they want to.” As we walk, she turns to me and squints, almost like she’s trying to figure out what makes me move. “It is dangerous to fight merely because one wants to.” She doesn’t elaborate, so I’m left to spend the rest of the walk wondering whether or not she’s already decided I’m trouble.
Eventually, we make it to the bottom, where we’re surrounded by the quiet bustle of the desert village. It suddenly looks so much bigger. I see buildings I didn’t see before, maybe because their color blended into the surrounding rock walls and sand dunes. I don’t know what I was expecting. But this place looks less like a temporary campsite for wanderers and more like a town that’s been here for many moons. Throughout the camp, small jungle cats amble around while hyenas play-fight. A child in the street tosses a ball into the air, and a small fox leaps to catch it. They remind me of the wild animals that would wander the alleyways of Kos. The animals that adults tell you never to touch but that we aki used to feed anyway. They were as wild and abandoned as we were. These animals are different. Under their skin, lightning pulses.
In the shade of one building’s overhang, an older tribesman sits on a wooden box with a bunch of little kids in a semicircle around him. Numbers and letters have been scribbled into the ground, and the children pore over them. Proofs! Like the ones Aliya carved into the dirt. “Those are proofs!” I shout before I can contain myself.
Juba smiles as we continue walking. “Ah, I see you are familiar with one of our languages. It is like—what do you call it in Kos—religious studies?”
“Religion?”
“The word of Olurun. These . . .” She searches for the word, then snaps her fingers. Her bangles chime. “Algorithms! And equations are his teachings.” I look over to Aliya, and a slow smile forms on her face as she watches the circle of children all with their heads bent toward their teacher.
Women outside of an adobe dwelling sit in a perfect circle, each with a child in front of her. Chatter hums in the air around them as they joke and laugh. Their fingers work deftly, braiding the hair of the children, who wriggle and squirm, trying and failing to sit still. Occasionally one breaks loose and swings at another, giggling. Animals wander around them. One of the children scruffs the neck of a tiny jungle cat.
Juba smiles at them. We walk by a stretch of tents with laundry hung on clotheslines among them. The wooden beams propping up the structures are adorned with intricate carvings of faces and animals. Then there are rows of small adobe dwellings. Each has a different brightly colored mask hanging from the front door. The masks are engraved with beasts carved into the wood. A long-tailed bird on one cheek. A wolf running along a jaw. We walk by a carpenter with a row of staffs laid out on a table in front of him, perfectly straight, and carved into them are what I realize are animals too—dark and whispy, like inisisa. So small, so detailed. Torches line the streets, unlit now in the bright afternoon, but even the poles holding them up have entire stories etched into them. Aliya reaches out and traces one of the carvings with her finger.
“Where are we going?” I ask Juba.
She smiles at her village, like she’s happy to be showing it off to me. “Before you are settled, I must take you to meet the Elders.”
A troop of women approach. Brightly colored robes that bare their shoulders hug their chests and waists, coming down to their ankles. Small sticks hold their braids up in complex, perfectly symmetrical patterns.
“Ayaba,” says the first woman. She puts her hand to her heart. Juba steps forward, and the two gently press their foreheads together, wide, warm smiles on their faces. Their sin-spots glow when they touch. Juba does this with each of the women, then steps back and gestures toward us.
“Please, these travelers are weary.” She looks to Aliya and Arzu. “Bring them to the sick tent, where they can be cared for. “This one—”
I slide my hand out in greeting. “Taj,” I say.
But before I can say any more, the first woman places her hand on the back of my neck and pulls my forehead to hers. “Welcome.” The others come forward and perform the same gesture. I look down at my arms and my hands. I’m glowing too. All of my sin-spots pulse with lightning, except for the black band on my forearm—the mark of the armored sin-beast.
The women reach out and take Aliya and Arzu by the hands, guiding them toward the healer’s tent.
By the time they’re gone, my sin-spots have returned to normal.
* * *
• • •
Eventually, we arrive at a large circular dwelling made out of adobe with a straw ceiling. The front door is guarded by men with braids running down their backs. As we step inside, my eyes have to adjust to the darkness. I see older men and women, all with sin-spots on their skin. Arms and legs, fingers, and even their toes are covered with markings. Some have sin-spots etched into the sides of their faces, circling their eyes. They look fresh. Or permanent. Like mine. But how can they live for this long with so much sin in them?
Juba gestures for me to take a seat on a cushion in the part of the circle closest to the door. Then she walks to a throne that sits on top of a raised platform at the far end of the room. She nods at one of the tastahlik, who rises and hands me a bowl with some nuts in it.
All around us hang masks. Like wooden people staring down at us. Just like the ones I saw earlier.
“Taj,” Juba says, and I wonder how she’s able to speak so softly yet so loudly at the same time. Her voice fills the entire chamber. “Will you break kola nut with us?”
What do I say? Is there a special phrase or sentence?
She smiles again, noting the confusion in my eyes. “A simple yes or no will do.”
“Oh, yes, then.” I take one. Everyone else already has one. At the same time, everyone bites into their kola nuts.
I almost spit mine out, it’s so bitter. But I manage to hold it in. Uhlah! This is just going to have to be one of those things people do that I’ll have no hope of ever understanding.
“We must begin by thanking you. For bringing us back our Arzu.”
“Wait, I didn’t bring her back.” I think of Osimiri and how intent Arzu was on getting back here anyway. “She had already booked passage on a ship to head here from Kos. I didn’t do anything, really. I can’t take credit.”
“That is not what we mean.” They all look my way, and Juba’s smile vanishes. She’s as serious I’ve ever seen her, and I can’t tell if it’s because I’ve done something wrong, broken some long-standing tradition or something. “We mean her Healing. You participated in her Healing, and for that, we express our eternal gratitude. May you remain blessed and Balanced for the remainder of your life.”
“Th-thank you,” I manage to get out. “I . . . I just did what I could to save her life.” I look around nervously. I don’t know any of the decorum or anything, so I figure, what’s the harm in just charging forward with my question? “May I ask, how do you know Arzu?” I wait. “I worked—well, served, really—in the Palace in Kos. I was aki for the royal family. Arzu, at the time, was a servant too. She was my sicario. She told me then that she had been born in the Palace but that her mother had emigrated to Kos from here. Has she ever been back here?”
Juba shakes her head. “This is her first time home. But my family and I have visited Kos many times. We have long maintained good relations with the Kaya family. As a child, I lived for a time in the Palace, even. I knew Kolade’s father and mother. Karima and Arzu were inseparable, but for Arzu and her mother, I believe it was a blessing to have contact with their homeland.” She smiles at memories I can’t even fathom. The Kolade and Karima she speaks of, they’re like people from a whole other life—so different from how they are now. “I am familiar with your odd traditions. It sa
ddens me to hear what has befallen your city. Not long ago, word reached us that a new queen rules your city. For some time now, we have seen refugees like yourselves pass by in the caravans. A few live among us now, but most don’t stay for long.” She looks at her arms, at the animals running up and down them and over her hands. “I believe we frighten them.”
I realize then that Juba thinks we’re just regular refugees. She has no idea who I am—that I’m the reason there are refugees in the first place. I open my mouth to say something—to tell them the truth—but then I think better of it. If they know who I am, it won’t be long before they know Karima is after me. They’ll run me out of town. And then where would I hide? What would happen to Aliya and Arzu?
“We pray that your city finds Balance once again.”
“Me too,” I whisper.
A moment of quiet descends on the room. Then Juba’s voice breaks through the silence. “While I imagine some of our traditions and customs are strange to you, Taj of Kos, I think you will find that we share with Kosians quite a few things.”
A plate arrives in front of me, and already my mouth is watering.
I’ve never been so grateful for a plate of moin-moin in my entire life.
“And now we eat.”
* * *
• • •
It’s night by the time I leave the Elders’ hut. It has been so long since I’ve eaten that much that I’m practically dizzy with it. During the meal, Juba told stories of holiday feasts when her uncles and the other older men of the village, after massive meals, would lumber through the settlement like bears, loosen their belts, and find wooden stools on which to pass out. She and her friends would run around and play all kinds of pranks on them to see what they would sleep through—flicking their ears or making dyes and painting their faces or tickling their noses with birds’ feathers. The answer was “nearly everything.”
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