The Blind Wish

by Amber Lough

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2015 by Amber Lough

  Cover art copyright © 2015 by Marcela Bolivar

  Interior title page and chapter opening ornaments copyright © Azat1976/Shutterstock

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Random House Children’s Books, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  Random House and the colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us on the Web! randomhouseteens.com

  Educators and librarians, for a variety of teaching tools, visit us at

  RHTeachersLibrarians.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lough, Amber.

  The blind wish / Amber Lough.—First edition.

  p. cm.

  Summary: “Zayele and Najwa’s adventure continues as the war between jinnis and humans escalates.”—Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978-0-385-36980-0 (trade)—ISBN 978-0-385-36981-7 (lib. bdg.)—ISBN 978-0-385-36982-4 (ebook)

  [1. Genies—Fiction. 2. Princesses—Fiction. 3. Wishes—Fiction. 4. Courts and courtiers—Fiction. 5. Baghdad (Iraq)—Fiction. 6. Iraq—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.L9237Bli 2014 [Fic]—dc23 2014005756

  eBook ISBN 9780385369824

  Random House Children’s Books supports

  the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1: Zayele

  Chapter 2: Najwa

  Chapter 3: Zayele

  Chapter 4: Najwa

  Chapter 5: Zayele

  Chapter 6: Najwa

  Chapter 7: Zayele

  Chapter 8: Najwa

  Chapter 9: Zayele

  Chapter 10: Najwa

  Chapter 11: Zayele

  Chapter 12: Najwa

  Chapter 13: Zayele

  Chapter 14: Najwa

  Chapter 15: Zayele

  Chapter 16: Najwa

  Chapter 17: Zayele

  Chapter 18: Najwa

  Chapter 19: Zayele

  Chapter 20: Najwa

  Chapter 21: Zayele

  Chapter 22: Najwa

  Chapter 23: Zayele

  Chapter 24: Najwa

  Chapter 25: Zayele

  Chapter 26: Najwa

  Chapter 27: Zayele

  Chapter 28: Najwa

  Chapter 29: Zayele

  Chapter 30: Najwa

  Chapter 31: Zayele

  Chapter 32: Najwa

  Chapter 33: Zayele

  Chapter 34: Najwa

  Chapter 35: Zayele

  Chapter 36: Najwa

  Chapter 37: Zayele

  Chapter 38: Najwa

  Chapter 39: Zayele

  Chapter 40: Najwa

  Chapter 41: Zayele

  Chapter 42: Najwa

  Chapter 43: Zayele

  Chapter 44: Najwa

  Chapter 45: Zayele

  Chapter 46: Najwa

  Chapter 47: Zayele

  Chapter 48: Najwa

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  For

  James, who helps me see the truth

  Where is the eye that can see You?

  The Beloved is there, but the eyes are blind.

  We are lost in our own veil,

  While everywhere Your vision prevails.

  So long as Atta is lost in Your sorrow

  The people of the heart will always yearn for him!

  —FARID AL-DIN ATTAR (AD 1145–1221, AH 539–617)

  THE CAVERN DOMED around us and bit into the air with jagged crystal teeth. It smelled of too many people all in one place, but it was cool and misty beside the tall waterfall that gushed in through a crack. Atish, one of my few jinni friends, handed me a glass orb the size of a plum. It was hollow and clear, like the hundreds of other orbs nestled in everyone else’s palms. It weighed next to nothing, and I was afraid it would float away if I breathed out too fast.

  We stood along the canal that divided the Cavern into two similar hemispheres. The canal began at the waterfall, snaked through the glittering jinni city, and poured into the Lake of Fire. A web of tall gas lamps kept the city pulsing in bright, golden light. The jinn called them wishlights.

  Spreading outward from the canal were the homes and buildings made by the jinn, some stacked and sloping up the curved walls. There were more jinn, more buildings, and more scents and colors here than in my human village in the mountains, and I wasn’t sure I would ever become accustomed to the crowd. Today was worse than usual. I had to twist my shoulders sideways to avoid brushing up against anyone, and when that didn’t work and I found myself face-in-armpit with a tall stranger, I would hold my breath and slink away as fast as I could. A few times, Shirin smiled apologetically at me, as though she understood what was troubling me but could do nothing to change it.

  It was the day of the Breaking, something that happened once a year. All jinn except my twin, Najwa, who was still in the Baghdad palace, had come to the canal. As it was my first time witnessing the Breaking, Atish and Shirin guided me, like a lost child, to a row of carts where an army of old women stood handing out the glass orbs.

  Atish was the newest member of the Shaitan, the elite branch of the jinni army, and Shirin was still waiting for her chance to be marked into the Corps of Physicians. Both of them had been friends with Najwa before I arrived, and had saved me when I’d made a mess of things before. Alhamdulillah for Najwa’s friends, because without them I’d be sniffing jinni armpits all day.

  “See?” Atish asked. He pointed at the dozens of children lining the canal. Some leaned out over the water, holding up their little orbs of glass. But theirs were lit from within, each a different color. One boy, taller than the rest, pulled back his arm and threw his orb into the waterfall.

  The ball of light plopped into the canal and bobbed to the surface before floating downstream. Seconds later, a spray of colored orbs attacked the waterfall as the rest of the children sent theirs flying.

  By twos and threes, they floated past where I stood, pressed between Atish and Shirin. Each one was still whole, still glowing, like soap bubbles in sunlight.

  “How do they not break?” I asked.

  “Magic,” Atish said wickedly.

  I snorted in response and rubbed my thumb over the slick surface of my own orb. “Show me what I’m supposed to do, oh great wise man.”

  He held his orb up to his nose and shut his eyes. A moment later, a faint pop came from his hands, followed by a golden flame that grew from within the orb. “Easy.” He winked at me.

  Beside me, Shirin groaned. “That does nothing for her, you know.” She leaned in close. “You’re supposed to think of something you regret, something that is keeping you from moving on. It could be something as small as lying about what you ate for breakfast, or, you know…”

  She didn’t have to finish. I knew she was referring to the wish I’d made on Najwa. When I first met Najwa, I’d been on my way to Baghdad to marry Prince Kamal. I was desperate to avoid marrying the prince, because I wanted to be with my little brother Yashar. When a jinni showed up at my window, I thought she was an answer to my prayers. I grabbed her, wished on her, and made her take my place. What I didn’t know then was that I was making a Fire Wish—a wish demanded by one jinni from another. Basically, I enslaved Najwa and stole her life from her
. It’s hard to recover from doing something like that to anyone, especially your sister.

  “But the point is,” Shirin continued, “you put your bad memory in here, where it can’t get out, and then you send it to the lake.”

  “Why to the lake? What’s supposed to happen to it there?”

  “It shrivels and dies,” Atish said.

  “No.” Shirin shook her head. “It disintegrates. It’ll float out there until it comes across one of the flames. Then the flames will break the glass and absorb the weight of the memory.”

  “And then I won’t remember it anymore?” I asked. I wasn’t sure forgetting any of my mistakes was a good thing. How would I know who I was if I forgot what I had done?

  “You’ll remember it,” she said. “But it won’t drag you down anymore.”

  “Which raises the question,” Atish said with a teeth-flashing grin, “what could I have done that I regret this year?”

  I gulped, not sure how to respond, which annoyed me. He was teasing me, and I liked it—which annoyed me even more.

  Shirin took my hand in hers, palm outstretched. “Just hold up the orb, like Atish did, and send the memory into the orb. It’s like recording a memory in a crystal shard. Only this is more symbolic.”

  The jinn can store memories in crystals, which they revisit whenever they want to. It was useful, but my first experience as witness to such a memory had been morbid and shocking. I wasn’t in a hurry to go through that again.

  “I haven’t recorded any memories. Ever.”

  “You just think about it, then wish it into the glass. It’s not that hard. I mean, all those children did it,” she said.

  I nodded, and stared into the clear ball. The orbs from the children’s memories floated past, lighting my orb from behind. If they could do it, so could I.

  But lighting it wasn’t the hard part. I had to choose one bad memory. Why only one? I could fill up an entire box of these little balls each year.

  The Fire Wish had not been a good idea. I should never have forced Najwa to take my place as Prince Kamal’s bride. I’d been selfish, because I hadn’t even considered what Najwa might want. But I hadn’t known I was half-jinni, and besides, I’d fixed it. The lies I’d told pretending to be Najwa were all out in the open now, and no one hated me for them. When I’d first come to the Cavern, I’d hated and distrusted all the jinn, and now I was close friends with two. The Fire Wish had done some damage, but it wasn’t holding me back.

  There was one thing that still stuck in me, like a burr—my cousin Yashar’s blindness. Yashar, who up until a few weeks ago I’d thought was my little brother, had been the brightest star in our village. His father had fawned over him, the women had tousled his hair, and the children had begged to hear his stories and poems. His loyalty to me ruined him. He came with me to the sand dunes, a day trip I was not supposed to take, and we were caught in a sandstorm. The sand scraped his eyes, and after weeks of pain, he was left blind. It was my fault. Since I’d last seen him, I’d discovered I had a twin sister, was half-jinni, and was able to grant wishes. But I still hadn’t done anything to help him.

  Yashar’s eyes, I thought, and pushed the memory of my little cousin—wailing behind me on the camel—into the orb. A second later, there was the pop, just like with Atish’s memory. Then a gold-brown flame flickered into life. It was the length of a baby’s finger, and the color of Yashar’s eyes before the sandstorm had scarred them white.

  Shirin filled her orb and we all looked at each other. Atish’s characteristic seriousness returned in the tight corners of his mouth, and he nodded. Then he and Shirin tossed their painful memories into the water and leaned over the railing until the orbs disappeared beneath the first bridge.

  At that moment, the children ran past, pushing through the jinn who still clutched their unlit orbs. They moved like a herd of bejeweled deer, racing their lights along the canal.

  Atish placed a hand on my shoulder and squeezed. “You can throw it in now.”

  “I’m not ready.”

  “Then let’s walk down to watch the Breaking. No need to run.”

  I nodded and followed them down the path, sometimes waiting for a jinni in front of us to move to the side. My mind was stuck, even though my body moved. I had tried to put Yashar’s screams, his agony, into the ball, but I could still hear them.

  He had cried for days. I had spent most of my waking time up on the cliff, at the ledge I’d often shared with him. I didn’t deserve to be there with those who were trying to heal him. I knew this not just because it was what I felt, but because of the narrowed, flashing looks I got from his father. I’d taken his oldest son into the desert and brought him back damaged and useless. That could not be forgotten. Now that I knew he’d been aware of my real mother’s identity, all the sharp glances and criticisms stung more.

  Without waiting another breath, I reached out over the edge of the path and threw my orb down. It landed hard on the water, splashing and pushing aside some of the other orbs. For a second, I was worried it’d break right there, before it got to the lake, but then it drifted as easily as a leaf in a stream. I followed it with my eyes until I couldn’t tell it apart from the other balls of light.

  I squinted at the orbs.

  Shirin squeezed my hand. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It takes a while. And they have to be absorbed by the flames, remember?”

  My stomach twisted. It didn’t matter what happened with the orb, because it wouldn’t change what had happened to Yashar.

  IT WAS THE day of the Breaking, but I was in Baghdad and there were no grandmothers handing out glass spheres. I crouched beside the harem garden’s stream, did my best to ignore the peacock scratching the gravel an arm’s reach away, and cupped a jasmine blossom in my hand.

  I had tested another jasmine blossom, watching it float across the garden stream and sink beneath the grate, disappearing behind the harem’s wall. It would have to do. I brought the flower up to my nose, inhaled the syrupy scent, and closed my eyes.

  Much had happened in the past year, and I had several regrets. I had sought out the bride from Zab, Zayele, and left the Cavern against Faisal’s orders. I had lied about who I was. But worst of all, Faisal was dead because of me. He had come to save me, even though I didn’t deserve his help, and Hashim had killed him. Now, the Eyes of Iblis Corps had no master. The school had no one to teach Transportation. And I no longer had someone to go to when faced with unanswerable questions.

  The heaviest pain I carried was his death, but I could not let it go. In fact, I deserved to be away from home, alone on Breaking day.

  Another hurtful thought was that my real mother, Mariam, was a mystery to me. She had left her Cavern home to marry a poor human and live in the mountains. This led to her and my father’s death, an unjust blaming of the jinn, and the start of the war.

  I blew a shadowy image of her into the blossom and thought, I never knew my real mother.

  The pain and loss sparked and grew into a tiny violet flame. It danced around the jasmine’s stamen, and the blossom glowed, even in the brightness of midday. Discovering a memory’s color was my favorite part.

  I set it carefully onto the stream and gave it a push. It spun on the surface, weightless and delicate, past rounded clumps of rosebushes, the shade beneath a date palm, and a gazebo of turquoise and white marble. The blossom bent to the right, dropped down a series of shallow steps, and dove beneath the wall and out through the grate.

  There was no pop, no lakefire shredding the painful memory to bits, no giggling and shrieking of small children. Just the silence that follows after a flower has been swallowed by the darkness.

  The wish was real, but the Breaking didn’t work.

  I was still kneeling there beside the stream when Kamal returned. I hadn’t heard him slip into the garden, or noticed the crunching of gravel beneath his sandals. My eyes were sewn onto the point of darkness, the little gap of air between the top of the tunnel and the surface of the s
tream.

  “Najwa,” he whispered, sinking onto his knees beside me. “What’s wrong?” His hand brushed my cheek and wiped away a tear I had not felt form or fall.

  I swallowed away a lump in my throat before I answered. “Today is a special day in the Cavern. I was thinking about that.” I forced a smile and turned to face the prince. “Nothing’s wrong.”

  “What kind of day?” His hand dropped from my face and joined the other to settle onto the ends of my fingers, where they brushed, softly, against my skin. My arm tingled, and I resisted the urge to pull it away.

  “A day of remembering and letting go of pain,” I said.

  “That’s wise. Atonement brings peace to the soul.” His voice sounded more strained than usual. “Do you want to go home?”

  I shook my head. “I promised to stay here, at least until the war is over.”

  He slipped his fingers off mine and picked up the pendant I wore around my neck, scraping his nail over the bit of bent silver, where the cut of moonstone had been. He had promised to replace the stone, but had been too busy to do so. “Is that the only reason you want to stay?”

  I bit my lip and looked away. I wanted to tell him I was there because of him, but I was afraid.

  After a second, he sighed and added, “My father is going to announce the new vizier in a few minutes.”

  “Then we should go.” I started to push myself up off the ground, but he stopped me. There was a shadow in his eyes that should not have been there. “What is it? Am I not allowed in the Court of Honor now?”