Before . #3
‘Sister!’ Haj pulled me to his chest. My heart flapped wildly at the honorific. He lifted me on to his shoulders. ‘Our folkteller,’ he shouted. My milk-siblings swarmed us, echoing the chant, asking how I’d challenged the beast. My jaw ached from the urge to grin.
That day, with blood and story, I began to win the hearts of my tribe, and they mine. If only this peace had lasted.
The following year, every holy Friday after eventide prayers, I narrated stories with Babshah Khatun. As the years wore on, I grew taller than my uma. While training with Babshah, my tribesmen came to look forward to my tales, nameless though I was.
Every Flood Festival after we’d come of age to begin warrior duties, my milk-siblings engaged in the tradition of milk threading.
I awoke on my thirteenth festival at dusk, peeking out from behind the folds of my tent to see my cousins lined up beside their fathers, holding thread dyed amber from mare milk, while chugging down honey-sweetened yak kumis.
Afterwards, Hawah came to our yurt, beaming with arms dyed in swirling gold, and a silver ornamental headdress woven with feathers over her braids. It struck me how her cheeks no longer wobbled; her square jaw was prominent; her tawny features sharpened out.
‘Aysenor’s daughter, are you coming to play mountain polo with us? The local garrison guards are joining us,’ she said.
My gaze lingered on the headdress. ‘Is that a gift?’
‘My dada traded for it,’ she answered.
On her newly dyed arms, I saw symbols of feathers, the shape of Nuh’s ark, and even seventy-seven swirls. Envy burned through my blood. Not for the first time, but with real fury, I wondered, why didn’t I have a father to bestow gifts? To dye me? To name me?
‘Are you coming?’ Hawah asked, again.
‘No,’ I answered quietly.
When Hawah left, I stormed into my yurt. ‘Uma,’ I demanded not for the first time, ‘Where is my dada? It’s a holy day. He didn’t thread me.’
Uma sighed and gathered a spool and needle. ‘Give me your arm.’
I yanked it back. ‘You dye my arms every Flood Festival, but now I wish for my dada to do it.’
Uma’s brows furrowed, and even that appeared soft on her delicate features.
Thin and long-necked, she was graceful like a crane.
Her skin was between olive and fair, and her hair hung down to her hips in thick ebony braids woven through with buzzard feathers.
She tutted her tongue. ‘In all your thirteen years, have I or Babshah let you feel his absence?’
‘Uma, if I answer honestly, will you be sad? You say the followers of Prophet Father Adam must always tell the truth.’
She paused. ‘Nothing you say will ever sadden me.’ She curved the gold thread, mixed in dye and mare milk, through my forearms, smiling to soften my hisses of pain, and that kept me from crying. The burn of it stung like salt rubbed in a cut: slow, persistent.
‘If he cannot dye my arms or name me, so be it. But why have you not named me?’
Leaning over my arms, Uma shared the knowledge that was our greatest weapon: ‘My daughter, you know your dada is the emperor of Azadniabad; he forbade me from naming you when I carried you in my womb. For that, one day, the emperor will give you a name.’
Azadniabad: a vast empire to the west that ruled our vassal lands. I knew why the elder chiefs worried about my existence, for I was the daughter of an emperor who’d rejected his child . . . it was as if I was kinless.
‘The emperor must name me,’ I declared.
But she shook her head, dozens of black braids bouncing wayward. ‘He lives afar in his courts.’
‘Then why did the emperor wed you? And when?’
‘Powerful men sacrifice much for a greater purpose. The emperor sent his warriors through this mountain pass to ally with our tribe as a protectorate. In turn, our pastures would receive protection from his soldiers while we guard and escort caravan goods across these trade routes. He chose me to wed from amongst the khan’s sisters and I agreed to it.
I am not sure how old I was. We die so young out here, age becomes frivolous. I might’ve been fifteen years.’
‘But if the emperor likes you, he could bring us to him.’
Uma’s jade eyes darkened. ‘One day we will go, God willing. But the Azadnian courts are unfit for tribes like ours.’
Uma’s hand quivered against my arm, the needle bobbing deep into my skin. A dot of blood welled up and tears sprung to my eyes. Teeth clenched, I blinked them away.
‘When you are powerful,’ Uma murmured half to herself, ‘he will accept you. Strength to an emperor is as a holy book to the worshipper. Power the only way to gain his favour.’
I stared down at my hands. What power did I have that would appease my dada, a grand emperor?
But Uma did not worry. I know now, she recalled the dream she had of my birth, the one of Heavenly light. She knew someday I’d wield the power of nūr.
‘Aysenor,’ the khan interjected. We both turned as he entered the yurt. He’d been listening. Usur Khan was a stern yet young man, strong-boned and graceful like a snow leopard, with thick flushed skin that wobbled as he spoke and braided hair pulled into a rough knot.
I bowed my head. ‘Peace unto you, Khan.’
‘And you, niece.’ He patted my cap, his beard scratching the wool. ‘Indeed, the Azadnian emperor chose your uma as one of his wives. But she left out in her explanation that she charmed him with her beauty and storytelling, enrapturing him with a folktale. Cunning apprentice as she was!’
Uma ducked her head. ‘Perhaps. Although he spoke admiringly of my folktelling before our wedding, it was only because his empire has lost such customs. He would not know a good telling if it told him so. After that, I vowed to never tell a tale again.’
The khan roared with laughter before facing me.
Carefully, he relieved Uma of the needle and mare milk. She stepped back, watching him curiously. He took my arm. ‘Your dada is not here, but if he was, would he know how to thread you in the ways of our tribe?’ he chided.
‘O, Khan, we should teach him.’
‘O, daughter of my sister, an emperor is on a throne to enslave the people to his desires, not for the slaves to inflict their desires on to him. An emperor cannot be taught. Certainly not by his vassals.’
My head reeled with all I did not know, could not imagine. ‘But you are a khan. You are like an emperor too. At fifteen years old, you united the four clans between these mountains under your banner.’
‘A khan of one tribe can hardly win against an empire. We are ants to them. When your uma married the emperor, she was shunned from his courts in a matter of weeks. His other wives and the Azadnian nobles could not bear a humble woman of the steppe-people in their lavish courts. They think us barbaric because we listen to the wind, and move with the herds, settling along the troughs of the valley and eating from the basins of the land, cultivating the little we have.’
I sank beneath his knowing gaze. ‘With no dada, I do not belong here nor there. I’ve heard the chiefs’ concerns about me.’
His finger tilted my chin. ‘You are not lacking, but between two worlds. Perhaps one day your difference will be of great worth to us all.’ He moved the thread, shaping intricate feathers on my reddened arms.
‘Did you know,’ he traced the glyphs, ‘on your skin are the shapes of the Heavenly Crane. Centuries after the Great Flood, it was this ancient crane who freed Nuh’s descendants, including our ancestors, from the jinn invaders.
The Heavenly Crane belonged to the first Azadnian tribe.
And now it’s the symbol of your father’s empire.
When you yearn for him, look at the threading.
A piece of his empire and history is upon your arms now. ’
‘What of you, Khan?’
He thumped his forehead against mine. ‘You speak our language, tell our stories. You hold our history, and now,’ he snipped the thread, ‘I have threaded your arms. You carry a piece of my heart, daughter of my favoured sister.’ He winked.
The wind rattled the wooden lattice of the tent, plastered by felt mats to brave against the cold stoles of daybreak. I shuddered with it. ‘Then I will speak your stories with my entire soul, my Khan.’
He smiled and said, ‘I traded this for you.’ He handed me a pair of oxidised earrings, beaded with welded old coins and hawk feathers, engraved in swirls.
As he clipped them on, a deafening cry rang through the tents, shattering our peace, and my smile disappeared. The khan jumped to his feet. Outside, his apprentice, a young hunter of fifteen years, rode in on horseback, drenched in blood.
‘A raid,’ the boy gasped out. ‘At the Tezmi’a gorge. They attacked the escorted caravan party and broke through the dam, flooding the northern pass.’
The khan was whisked away on to his red horse.
We followed the tribesmen into the centre of the pastures.
Raids had always been common throughout the Camel Road – soldiers ravaging oasis city-states, empires vying for a slice of the trade routes.
We had always been able to defend ourselves; I assumed the khan could thwart any invaders.
But two more of our best archers poured into the settlement, carrying corpses.
A lifeless boy was passed to one of my uncles, neck dangling back from the torso.
‘Haj?’ Uma cried as his father cradled his corpse.
‘No.’ I staggered forward but Uma yanked me back. My hunting partner. My milk-brother.
‘And they’ve captured Hawah,’ the archer spoke quietly. A disquiet rippled across the tents and grasslands, dispiriting even the mules.
It was not our first raid, but it was the only one whose consequences felled my closest kin. I was unable to look away. Then I was greeted with a sight even more terrifying than my cousin’s body.
My stomach lurched and bile rose. ‘U-Uma, what is that shadow?’ I stuttered. For a darkness had sprouted from Haj’s neck, writhing like spilled ink. It rose like a black serpent, and one milky white eye fixed upon me.
‘Uma!’ I cried out. The shadow frothed over his body like a swarm of locusts, turning in my direction.
Uma clenched my hand. ‘Run inside our tent. Grab my blade. Do not come out.’
‘What is that shadow?’ I sobbed.
She covered my eyes. ‘It’s a body. You need not look.’
‘But the demon, the jinn.’
‘What demon? What jinn?’ Uma shook her head. ‘You are frightened. Run inside. And heed my words. Do not come out.’
Why didn’t Uma see it? Why didn’t Uma see the shadow atop the boy’s corpse?