Belonging . #2
‘Soon other clans learned of this. Greed swept across the people. For every battle fought in the Jinn Wars, warriors plucked a feather from one of the two Heavenly Birds, granting them the same seventy-seven bonds to Heaven, the same Heavenly Energy. But each stolen feather in turn stole the strength of the birds. Such warriors, gifted with power from the birds of Heaven, were each named Eajīz after the monk, but they shared none of his righteousness.’
I drew back my hand and the buzzard descended to the grassy plain.
‘After these Eajīz warriors had plucked and stolen seventy-seven feathers from each bird, alas, the two Heavenly creatures could no longer fly. They were left alive but drained by human greed. For centuries, the warriors’ descendants spread across the continent, forming their own tribes and loyalties and kingdoms. That was long ago.
Now the Divine chooses an Eajīz from each generation of the warriors’ descendants to bear one of the seventy-seven affinities.
The lines of succession are lost in the mists of time; the revelation of each new Eajīz is a gift that is unpredictable but Heavenly sent,’ Babshah said.
For my next trick, I lifted my finger, directing the buzzard to fly upwards, but the bird didn’t follow the action. Disgruntled, I tried again. Suddenly, it flapped away. It was not alone.
The fir trees gasped out a flurry of hawks. No one else seemed to notice the creatures fleeing, attention fixed upon Babshah.
Babshah quelled her kin with an eye. ‘It has been over two centuries since our tribe has had an Eajīz in our midst. As kingdoms around us swell with Eajīz warriors, we in the grasslands are alone, attacked and starved. On this eve, glance about you. There are no prophets nor revelations in our era. Heaven has stopped speaking to us mortals caught between war. The birds and righteous Eajīz have passed away into legend. Only we, the descendants, remain, bearing their legacy. A reminder of our shared ancestry and a test of our will when given power.’
She flung out an arm. ‘We must be like the third Heavenly Bird, the mighty Simorgh, who chose to fly above Nuh’s ark, from one era to the next, refusing to align nor side with any war.
We belong to this firebird, swaying from one settlement to the next in the cuts of the mountains.
We may not be Eajīz; nor are we jinn. We are humans. We are better—’
Her voice hitched. The fire’s shadows playing against the ground grew odd.
Now it was my turn to save Babshah. ‘We are like the firebird. And the best of Nuh’s descendants,’ I concluded. The tribesmen stood and hooted in awe.
But Babshah did not move. It hit me – Babshah had never made a mistake in telling a story.
‘Babshah Khatun?’ I gently enquired, sniffing the wet from my nose.
Her mouth parted. A strange breeze rustled the valley, a whining sound. The people’s laughter snuffed like frost against flame.
‘Babshah!’
If not for the redness spreading across Babshah’s stomach, I would marvel at her perfect stillness, as if winter’s affair had simply frozen her in place.
Then her body tipped forward, face smashing on the hard-packed dirt. Crimson pooled around her twitching body. Behind her, the night stretched open like a dark, gaping mouth. I thought I saw flying stars across the sky.
No. Whistling fire arrows.
I had no time to run. The next two arrows clunked into my left shin and thigh. Pain ripped through me. The world blurred. I smelled smoke. I heard yells.
Arrows rained from the heavens. Someone threw me back. I saw the blurry outline of my cousin Sheeth. He crouched over me as arrows buried into his back. My mouth opened to scream. His body collapsed upon me.
Sheeth. I couldn’t move. Run! My ears rang.
‘Run!’ Uma screamed, her face swimming above me.
She pulled me up and carried me toward the red horses, the youngest and elderly already there. Our tribe’s warriors, donning their wooden crane-feathered masks, rode toward the raiders.
Uma’s hands slipped along my waist, slick in my blood. She lifted me on to the horse before swinging on. One hand held me while the other gripped her bow and arrow.
We galloped across the grasslands toward the west of the valley, through the narrow pass.
‘We must go down the mountain then west,’ Uma explained breathlessly in my ear over the pounding of hooves. ‘There is an Azadnian border garrison. The warlordess and her warriors will send aid; they are loyal to our emperor.’
From my left, enemies streamed out of the dark dressed in finer furs than our own, hemmed in red and black raven feathers, and on their faces were tawny animal masks with crimson beads.
The raiders captured the youngest and elderly tribesmen who were riding in a group ahead of us before retreating.
I couldn’t let my mind dwell on what would be done to them as prisoners.
I thought about the knife shoved down my breeches.
Uma’s voice quavered behind me. ‘We’ll circle around.’ But we didn’t make it that far.
A row of horses streamed out from the woodlands, hindering our path. Their riders’ wolf masks, decorated in raven feathers, absorbed the firelight.
‘Uma,’ I breathed heavily. ‘G-grab the reins. Give me your bow.’ Sweat collided with the salt of my tears.
I took her bow and arrow. My thighs didn’t possess the strength to grip the horse for the both of us.
But my hands still worked. For our tribesmen, wielding the bow was as natural as breathing.
Uma guided the horse in a fast loop until the raiding horsemen were behind us.
‘Now!’ I heard their commander cry. Fiery arrows arced over the valley, plummeting toward us. The horse threatened to buck, head swaying.
Biting my tongue, I forced my feet through the stirrups to stand, putting the weight on my right leg instead of my left. My body was narrow; my balance still steady. It’s like hunting, I reminded myself.
Notching an arrow, I twisted my body back. The string snapped and the arrow went flying behind. A scream seized the air.
‘Again!’ Uma cried and the other children ahead of us fired as well. Our warriors engaged the bulk of the raiders, but hundreds flooded the plains, overwhelming escape paths. Arrow after arrow I sank into the enemy, but it was no use.
A raider leapt from her horse and lunged across our path, sword slicing through the horse’s legs. I went flying, landing hard on the grassland. Another blade shallowly carved down my lower back and, instead of air, I gurgled blood and flipped on to my side, curling up.
A hand seized my ankle, dragging me across pebbled dirt that scraped against my cheeks. Soil filled my mouth. I hacked dirt, and shrieked to throw off the enemy, my fist connecting with a rock-hard jaw.
‘Animals,’ I heard someone above me spit before a clog stomped hard on my wrist. I gasped out, eyes flitting upwards.
The enemy climbed on top of me, pinning me in place with a sword to my neck.
On the wolfish mask, the raven feathers swung with his momentum; his grey eyes reflected the fires blazing around us – and the terror on my expression.
Uma’s warnings had come true. Nausea roiled through me. I dug my heels into the dirt for momentum but my wounds made it impossible. My soul warbled. My vision darkened. I felt myself float away, watching from afar.
‘A cornered deer,’ the raider murmured, dragging his sword feather-light down my torso, tearing into cloth and skin. ‘Look at you thrash and panic.’
‘No!’ Uma screamed. She crawled through the grass to shield me, but another raider dragged her away.
Her scream disturbed my terror. Her blade.
My soul slammed back into my body. With my only good hand, I fumbled for the blade against my waistband just as the raider grabbed my hips.
Without thinking, my blade jammed into his belly.
The force reverberated up my arms. The blade rebounded off a rib but I slammed it again. And again.
Eventually he slumped against me. His blood ran down my body as I shoved his corpse away and crawled on to all fours, then pulled the arrows out of my left leg.
The other raider, further now, hadn’t noticed her dead comrade.
Instead, she dragged Uma by the hair toward a tree stump.
She cocked her head, her tawny mask of raven feathers gleaming under the starlight.
But her dark stare, as she gazed down at Uma, showed not pity, not empathy.
What had we done to make her despise us so?
‘So even beasts are capable of love?’ she simply asked, poising the sword above Uma.
The world slowed. Below the raider, a shadow formed. Something from the empty blackness stared at me. I think I stopped breathing. I wondered if death was supposed to look this frightening, even to a child: a ghoulish shadow. My nails clawed into the dirt. I couldn’t suck in a breath.
The shadow slithered along the grass, twitching before settling on my chest. Take me, I mentally screamed to it. That would be better than to die beneath the enemy’s sword. The shadow dove into my chest, chewing at my heart.
I gasped. My eyes flooded with tears. But my neck craned, grasping for one last look at Uma. She shuddered on the ground beneath her attacker, an arrow protruding from her shoulder. I needed to live to protect her.
I begged, O, Divine, I am not ready to die, but if I do, do not let it be in vain. Save Uma. Save this tribe.
The shadow disappeared into me. My chest unclenched, the pressure releasing until I inhaled air, the pain across my body growing.
Then . . . thin gold lines rose up like malleable threads from my arms, legs, chest, tongue.
They shot upwards as if to the Heavens. Pulsing, shaking – they were an entity of Divine making.
More pain lanced through my body and I howled. The warrior glanced in my direction before refocusing on Uma. She cannot see the gold lines around my body, I realised.
The threads shuddered, as if something from the Heavens flowed through it, into my body. A white wave of light erupted. Everything turned bright like the night retiring to dawn.
To my shock, the cold brightness emanated from me. It pulsed densely before shooting forward and cleaving the warrior like a white blade to churned butter. There was nothing left of her body but a spread of limbs, scattered.
Heavenly light, like in Babshah’s stories: the power of nūr.
The other raiders turned at the display. The nūr rose in me like a torrential wave as I limped to my feet.
What struck me most in that moment was not the death I dealt out, but rather the sheer awe brimming in Uma’s gaze – fear and satisfaction warring against each other.
I turned to the other raiders with a strange calm, reaching into my own pain.
The Heavenly light answered, cutting down soldiers until reinforcements arrived from the Azadnian village.
My fingers curled around the holy affinity, basking in its immensity. Through the carnage I felt like a stranger looking down upon myself, mind clear. I can save them, I thought. Like Babshah’s tales, my tribe will hail me as a Heavenly warrior, a way to reclaim the glory of our steppes.
Once, the people thought I was a curse. Now I can be a blessing.
How wrong I was. When the affinity faded and my body collapsed, I looked up.
I’d been too late. Our tribesmen were already dead.
The dusty wasteland spread before me, the cracked ground resembling the textured underbelly of a rattlesnake.
Destruction was all that was left across the grasslands, and a Heavenly power that saved no one.
It breathed its cursed air, wreaking havoc until no tent, human nor beast went untouched.
As reinforcements trickled through the settlement, Uma and I stumbled back to the central pastures, sighting our burned yurts in the middle of the Tezmi’a valley.
The khan’s decapitated head was staked upon a broken spear. Eyes open and suspended in death, the khan stared solemnly at the image of our own destruction as if spinning a story now in the realm of souls, taking the tribe’s legends with him.
More lifeless bodies populated our settlement than any survivors. And many more must have been captured. I couldn’t discern Babshah from the other bodies, all a mangle of blood. From our tribe of over two thousand, barely three hundred survived.
Eventually that day was called the Night of Tezmi’a by my people. A night of ruin.
It was the beginning of my curse: I had potential for strength, but without death I could never reach its peak.