The Fire Wish

by The Fire Wish (ARC) (epub)

  Even so, the thrill of slinking down the corridor buzzed in my veins. I still hadn’t found a way out of Zayele’s wish yet, but I was able to do something. I didn’t have to stay locked up with the other women. I could do what I was trained to do.

  I remembered a little of the map Delia had shown me, so I knew which direction to go, even if I didn’t know which hall to take. As long as I was back before the shahtabi wish wore off, I would be fine.

  I ran down the corridor, around the darkened jinni Lamp, and down the opposite hall. I passed the laboratory Kamal had been in the night before, then kept going. Twice, I slowed down, careful not to disturb the air around people who were walking along.

  A giant door of interlocking stars and triangles stood at the end of the corridor. It was closed, but after I waited a moment, the door swung inward. A gray-bearded man walked out with his arms overloaded with books, so I took the chance and darted in. I was getting good at sneaking through doors.

  I had been hearing about the House of Wisdom my entire life. Faisal had been a student there prior to the war, and he had clearly fallen in love with it. He said that in the House of Wisdom, there were more books than I could count. More educated men than anywhere else in the world. More minds willing to see both sides to an argument. And there had never been anywhere else where humans and jinn worked side by side.

  Before the war, the sciences had blossomed, and a large part of it was due to the open discussions between our races. According to Faisal, if it weren’t for his brother and Jafar al-Jabr, one of the caliphate’s best mathematicians, we’d be lost in a world of confusing numbers. And since the day the jinn left, there hadn’t been any new discoveries.

  The door closed behind me and a puff of air blew my skirt, but I barely noticed. I was in the House of Wisdom, and all I could think about was that no jinni had been there in ages, and a female jinni had never been allowed to enter. I was the first.

  Thousands of books, with spines of red leather or black or brown linen, sat on shelves two stories high and a hundred feet long. The scents of ink and glue laced the air, and I breathed them in deep. At least thirty men, all in long robes, were in the library. Some sat at low tables, bent over opened volumes. Others stood in a small group, listening to two men discuss something. A few roamed along the walls, pulling books off the shelves and tucking them beneath their arms. The room was heavy with stories, and I ached to read them.

  Faisal had once been one of these men, with access to all these books. All these minds. No wonder we built the Lamps—the bridge between the worlds. No wonder we gave the humans cartloads of jewels to set foot in it. No wonder Faisal fell in love with this place.

  I spun around, taking in the sight of so many books. Where would I begin? Where could I begin? Scanning the spines of the books would take too long, and I couldn’t go up to one of the men and ask him for their books on jinn.

  But there was a map of the library. It sat propped up on a tall, skinny table and outlined different areas of interest, showing where the books were located. I ran my finger over the ink, but none of the descriptions pertained to jinn. Then I saw that there was a tiny section on the second floor labeled “People of the Lamp.” I almost pressed my nail through the paper when I found it. That had to be about us.

  Quickly, I found a set of narrow stairs and climbed to the second story of bookshelves, then braced myself before looking over the railing. The men below me were oblivious that a jinni was practically floating in the air above them. Thankful for my invisibility, I stepped along the balcony and found the corner I’d come to see.

  One shelf, on the bottom of a bookcase. That was all they had set aside for my people, and it had only four books. A brass lamp held them up against the side of the shelf, and I couldn’t help but grin at that. It was something Faisal would have done. I knelt and read the spines of the books, but none of them looked like they could help me. Most were just records of what the jinn had studied while they were in the House of Wisdom. I pulled one out and flipped through the yellowed pages, then tucked it into the pocket in my gown.

  That was when I saw them. A row of Memory Crystals, individually tied with a strange twine. These crystals were how we recorded our histories and honored our dead. But how had they gotten here? They were supposed to be kept in a special place in the Cavern, never removed. I picked up a dark green one with an equally dark smoke that swirled, suspended, within.

  My nose started to itch, and before I could try to prevent it, I sneezed. Then I gasped, because the sneeze echoed across the open space. I leaned into the bookcase and away from the railing, hoping no one would look up, because for a moment, I forgot they couldn’t see me anyway. Maybe they would assume the noise I’d made had come from someone downstairs.

  But then I heard a man ask, “Is someone up there?” He must have been pointing, because another man answered him.

  “I didn’t see anyone. What books are up there anyway?”

  I could feel the blood draining from my face. If they came up here, there’d be nowhere for me to go. I couldn’t slip around them, because the balcony was too narrow, and by then it wouldn’t matter if I was invisible or not. I couldn’t turn myself into a book.

  The men’s voices were getting louder.

  “The map says it’s where they keep the old records,” said the first man.

  “Let’s go. Maybe there’s a kitchen boy hiding up there,” said the second. I could hear the scowl on his lips, and I started to panic. I stood up, looked over the railing again, and held my breath. I couldn’t climb down, and it was too far to jump. But there was a window at the end of the balcony, by the stairs. Maybe I could stand on the windowsill while they passed.

  I sprinted to the end and climbed into the window just as they crested the top of the stairs. The sill was barely six inches wide, but it was enough. I clung to the top and held my breath as two men with long, dark beards walked past. They didn’t stop to look out the window.

  I was like a lizard, crouching between sky and house. Outside lay a dirt field pocked with scrubs of grass and one long trough for horses. At the other side of the field was a fence, and it was swinging open. At that moment, a horde of horsemen trotted in. Their weary faces were striped with sand and blood, and their armor showed signs of fire damage. One man fell off his horse and landed on his side. Another man dropped his spear, then ran to help the fallen man get to his feet.

  These weren’t just ordinary horsemen. They were soldiers, coming back from a battle with my people. The scorch marks on their round shields proved that.

  I knew I should not feel any sort of pity, but I did. The man who had fallen was now being carried off by two men, and many others were climbing off their horses and limping across the field. A man in a clean, unbloodied blue tunic helped some men guide the horses to the water. He called out to another man dressed in black, and when that man turned, I almost let go. It was the vizier, Hashim. Even from afar, he frightened me.

  My skin was starting to tingle, which meant I had only a few minutes before my wish faded. What would he think if he saw me sitting up in a window, in the House of Wisdom?

  I bolted down the stairs and ran, not caring now if anyone felt the gust of wind. I made it to the curtains behind the harem door before my shahtabi wish was gone, and by then being invisible would not have made a difference, because my pulse was loud enough that one of the peacocks tilted his head at me.

  I took a breath and stepped into the harem’s garden, and that was when I realized I still had the Memory Crystal in my hand.

  30

  Zayele

  He came back. I was crying and crawling on my hands and knees when a glow came from down the tunnel. Then I saw his face. He still looked angry, but he crouched down and swooped me into his arms as if I were a child.

  My throat burned, and I tried to stop crying, hiccupping with my temple against his chest. His arms wer
e warm, and finally I relaxed into him.

  He had come back.

  “Everything I know tells me I should just walk away,” he said. “But I can’t. I don’t want to.”

  I nodded, unable to speak. He had come back. He knew what I was now. He knew I’d been lying and what I’d done to Najwa. But he didn’t know why. He didn’t know about Yashar, or the barge I’d been locked in with Rahela, or how empty I’d been in the tunnel’s darkness. He didn’t know that I had nowhere to go.

  He carried me out of the tunnel, moving swiftly. We emerged behind the waterfall, and he stopped. Mist billowed around, making the hairs on my arms slick. I dug my fingers into his vest, afraid I’d slip off and tumble down into the water. He tightened his grip on me.

  “Honestly, I don’t know where to go. I can’t take you to Faisal or Laira. And I can’t take you home.”

  He was betraying himself for me. I couldn’t understand it. I sobbed again.

  “I know,” he said. “Shirin.”

  “She’ll be so mad.”

  He nodded once. “No madder than I am. She wasn’t …” He didn’t finish the sentence. Instead, he carried me out from behind the waterfall and took a path to a house near a tree-lined avenue. Behind the house, Shirin was painting on an easel as if it was the most natural thing in the world. She flicked the paint into the air from her brush and, with a nod, sent it flying. It smacked onto the paper as hard as hail. The picture was a series of overlying dots and drips—the very opposite form from the weaving I’d grown up learning. And strangely enough, it made me think of Rahela. She was afraid of jinn, and I’d left her with one.

  When Shirin lifted her brush the second time, Atish cleared his throat. She looked up, her jaw slackened, and she ran to us.

  “What happened?” she shrieked. Atish shushed her. I looked away. I couldn’t watch her face. “What happened?” she repeated.

  Atish nodded at the house. “Is your mother home?” She shook her head. “Then let’s go in.”

  She led the way, opening the door. Her face was scrunched up in concern. “Najwa, what happened?”

  Atish laid me on one of the beds and sat on another one. “Her ankle’s broken.”

  “Let me see.” Shirin reached for my ankle and I rasped in pain, pulling it away from her.

  “It really hurts,” I croaked.

  “You’ve been crying.” She looked at Atish. “Where did you find her?”

  “In the tunnel.” He could not have made his voice any darker.

  “Why did you go there?” She shook her head at me. “Never mind. Let me fix you. Then we’ll talk.” Her hands hovered over my ankle and she whispered something. The air between her hands and my ankle glowed green. In seconds, the pain was gone. I tested my ankle by squeezing it.

  “How did you do that?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  Atish grumbled, “She’s not Najwa. She’s not even jinni.”

  Shirin’s eyes narrowed and she studied me. “Of course she’s Najwa.” She waited for me to say something, but I didn’t, and when the silence had gone on too long, she frowned. “Aren’t you?”

  I could not answer her. Not with words.

  “She’s human,” Atish said. “She was on her way to Baghdad when she ran into Najwa—”

  Shirin twisted around to face him. “What was Najwa doing—”

  “I don’t know. But she caught Najwa and wished on her,” he explained.

  Shirin’s hands started to shake and she backed away from me. “You have to explain yourself. What have you done to our friend? When did you take her?”

  “The vizier came to our village,” I said, then explained how I had been chosen to go to Baghdad. “The day we were supposed to arrive in the city, a jinni appeared at my window. I didn’t even think. I just reached out and caught her.”

  Shirin gasped. “You forced a wish from her?”

  “Yes. I needed to get back home. And she looked just like me. I thought it was a sign, a way for me to get out of there. I mean, I was desperate, and there she was! With my own face! So I wished that she take my place and send me home.”

  Shirin’s voice rose. “And you came here?”

  “Obviously,” Atish said. Shirin ignored him.

  “It doesn’t make any sense!” she exclaimed. “It’s one thing—a horrible thing—to force a jinni to make a wish for you, but it’s quite another to force her to take your life. And look at you! You’re a mirror image of Najwa.”

  “I know,” Atish said. “If it weren’t for the missing tattoo, I would have just thought Najwa had lost her mind.”

  “At the time, I thought it was a disguise,” I explained, “or some effect of a jinni being so close to me.” They weren’t yelling at me anymore. Shirin sat beside Atish on the bed, staring at me. Atish was fiddling with the latch on his dagger’s sheath.

  “It’s eerie,” Shirin said. She reached over to the table between the beds, pulled open the drawer, and removed a hand mirror. She held it out to me. “You’ve always looked like this?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it’s not part of the wish.” She took the mirror back and dropped it in the drawer, then slammed the drawer shut. “Atish, you’re not going to turn her in, are you?”

  “It’s too late, and we need her to get Najwa back.” He pulled the dagger out of the sheath and rolled it between his hands. Then he looked at me, which he hadn’t done since we’d gotten to Shirin’s house. “You’re going to help us.”

  “How?” I said.

  Shirin rubbed her hands together. “We will solve this, somehow. First, where are you from?”

  “Zab, near the mountains.”

  She turned to Atish. “Wasn’t that where the murders happened?” When he nodded, she continued, “This is making my head spin. You look like Najwa, and you always have. Then, at a time when you’re most troubled, you come upon her. You switch places—against her will—and end up here, of all places, after you wished to go home.” She paused, and a smile spread across her face. “I don’t think you’re really from Zab,” she said. When I started to protest, she held up her hand to silence me. “Just a minute. Atish, you didn’t turn her over to the Shaitan. Why not?”

  “It didn’t feel like the right thing to do,” he said. “Although I wanted to.”

  “You wanted to tell them about me?”

  “Shh,” Shirin said. “You aren’t Najwa. I understand that, and it makes what happened earlier with Irina make sense. Najwa is always too polite with her because she doesn’t want to upset her mother. But I have this feeling. Maybe it’s the same one Atish has—”

  “It’s not,” he cut in.

  She rolled her eyes at him, then told me, “Well, I don’t think Najwa can come back unless you go to her. You’re the only one who can undo the wish, and if you die, she might be stuck in your place forever.”

  I drew my knees up to my chin and covered my face with my hands. Hot tears pooled in the spaces between my fingers.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, but not to them. The words barely made it past the lump in my throat. “Just tell me how to fix it. What do I wish to get her back here?”

  “You have to go there,” Atish said. He stopped fiddling with his dagger and put it away. “But we can’t get in there, because of the wards. I have no idea how Najwa got in there in the first place.”

  “She what?” Shirin asked.

  “That’s what Zayele said,” Atish said, gesturing at me. “Najwa had gotten into the palace, and Faisal was asking her, Zayele, to go back.”

  “I knew something big had happened,” Shirin said. “And something made Najwa seek you out, Zayele.”

  I looked up from my knees and wiped the tears off my face. “What?”

  “I don’t know, but there’s someone who does. Atish, we have to tell Faisal.”


  “Absolutely not.”

  “He will kill me!” I said.

  “No, he won’t. He’s too wise to make such rash decisions, and he will want Najwa back as much as we do.” She got up and paced between the beds, turning around every two steps. “Let me go talk to him. I’ll tell him I know where Najwa is, and when I’ve got his attention, I’ll explain everything to him as gently as I can.”

  “I should do that,” Atish said.

  “No. You’re too involved emotionally.”

  “I am not!”

  “Atish,” she warned. “Stay here with Zayele. I will be right back. Don’t let anyone in.”

  She leaned forward and hugged me. “It will be all right.” Then she whirled around and slipped out the door, shutting it with a nod.

  After she was gone, it was just Atish and me, alone in the house. He reached down to his dagger’s sheath.

  “Please,” I said, “don’t play with that anymore. I keep thinking you’re going to throw it at me.”

  He looked genuinely surprised. “I would never. Besides, like Shirin said, we need you to get Najwa back.”

  A moment passed, and neither of us said anything. I didn’t like the silence and the waiting. Shirin was on her way to tell one of the most important jinn in the Cavern what I had done to Najwa, and I didn’t have as much faith in him as she did.

  I watched Atish, who kept avoiding my gaze. His lips were pressed tightly together, like he was trying to keep something inside.

  “Why didn’t you leave me there, in the tunnel?”

  “I already told you, I don’t know. I just couldn’t, all right?”

  “But I hurt the girl you love.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t love her. I tried to, but there wasn’t … I don’t want to talk about this right now.”

  Whatever had prompted him to kiss me had never happened with Najwa. Only with me. Suddenly, a prickle spread down from my neck. I looked up at him and saw that his eyes were on me, questioning. He shifted so that we sat across from each other, knees to knees, and although the space between us appeared empty, it was full of something living, something very much like what had just spread down my shoulders.