Chapter 38 #2
‘We promised,’ I cry, ‘to spoil ourselves with food. If we cannot in this life, then by the Divine, in Paradise, you and I will reunite. I promised to tell you my folktales. I couldn’t do it then, but I could do it before the Heavens.
Like how I hold you now: speaking with the tongue of a folkteller, hoping the blessings of an uma find you. ’
I bend and kiss her temple and blow my prayer upon her. I repeat that she is safe. By the Divine, she is.
It’s said that in my religion – whose mercy I’m unworthy of – that the ones who don’t accept the consequences of faith will try to exploit its benefits for worldly gain, and that is the measure of a corrupt person, while Believers readily accept consequences in this life, so in the hereafter, they reap the light stretching toward them.
The Believers feel true, eternal peace. They feel nūr.
Nūr is the path to revelation; it’s accepting suffering in return for light. But today, it’s a light I could never reach.
It reminds me I have always been alone. And I have never tried to change that.
No-Name crouches beside us. ‘What will you do?’
Heavenly power is fickle, with as many variables as a complex mathematical equation. Eajīz must have faith in the Divine and, henceforth, the Heavens; we should strive toward morally righteous intentions, then action. But time has run out.
‘I will use the Gates technique to summon a Heavenly Bird, even at the cost of my Heavenly Contract,’ I whisper.
I can only glare at Heaven. The stars stare down, each chasm between their lights appearing small but, in reality, infinite in scope.
Love, I see, is all the withering darkness between the stars, small in appearance but limitless in experience.
And if it’s so far away, if it’s so hard to grasp on to, then love was not for me to begin with.
‘With Arezu gone, you need me,’ No-Name says. ‘I will not leave you.’
It isn’t until I hear Rasha’s melancholy caw, then soft footsteps, that I am roused from my mourning. The Sepāhbad gazes down at Arezu’s corpse. To my surprise, there is a darkening from grief, if only for a moment. He arrived with reinforcements following a campaign at the other Khor townships.
Arezu’s words return. A warrior saved me . . . I do not see the warrior often but sometimes, when they return, they greet me with kahvah and rose faloodeh.
‘It was you.’ Another twist of fate, that this child has somehow brought two warriors on opposing sides together in brief respite.
‘Arezu?’ he simply asks. I manage a nod. He gestures to the path. ‘A walk?’
The skies rumble as rain drizzles lightly on to the grasslands.
With Arezu still in my arms, I stand and he places a light finger on my shoulder. I swallow my uneasiness. It’s his affinity, to ensure no rain touches us as he steers me in the direction of the gravediggers – slowly -to give us time.
During this, I explain Arezu’s death.
When I finish, he nods slowly. ‘Our curse as an Eajīz is to bear a world of sorrow. The more pain we suffer, the more Heavenly bonds we gain. Some murder their own loved ones to access more Heavenly Energy – but they fail to realise that true pain is sacrifice. That is why the warriors, on the brink of martyrdom, are able to access large amounts of Heavenly Energy. And Arezu’s martyrdom .
. . was accepted.’ Then he asks a question.
‘Did she tell you about her pazktab recruitment?’
My heart deflates. ‘She’d begged a warrior to take her to Za’skar.’
He turns, blocking my view of the gravediggers.
‘Nine years ago, a raid was instigated in Khor. In one of the homes I entered, Arezu was surrounded by corpses. Her family had perished but she survived. Her affinity was triggered after her brother and uma were tortured before her.’ His lips turn up, bitterly. ‘She was eight years old.’
I pause, stunned. ‘She said only that her brother died.’ Desperation weaves into my words. ‘How can her family be dead? She – she told me they are plant-dyers.’
‘Were,’ he corrects. ‘They were those things.’
The clearest answer arrives. This girl, raised by death and scarred by memories, at sixteen years, understood a concept I have spent my life running in circles to grasp: family is not the blood running through your clan or the gnarled roots twisting from beneath a tree in archaic tradition, a cage to be rebuilt generation after generation.
It’s the people worth every breath, every labour and every act of love to create a home.
My chest tightens. Her home was never limited to a dead clan. Her home was the land left behind.
The Sepāhbad rakes a hand through his hair before gazing at the mounds of dead bodies.
‘In the days after, through her grief, she thought I was her brother. She followed me . . . everywhere. A survival instinct. Orphaned children were taken to the monastery. I forced her there, but in the years I visited Khor’s outposts, she recognised me.
She had learned about the art of Eajīzi from the monks.
She demanded I patron her into Za’skar’s pazktab. ’
‘What did you answer?’
‘I said Za’skar is not for children.’
I cradle Arezu tighter. ‘And what was her answer?’
His eyes meet mine. ‘She said she was no longer a child.’
My eyes water. ‘She did?’
He nods and reaches out, his thumb catching my tear.
‘Thank you,’ I whisper.
We’ve arrived at the grave site. I pull back the cloth to reveal Arezu’s marred features. I touch my bone necklace. There is no peace in this farewell, only deep regrets. I despise them all: myself, emperors, warriors, generals like him for making children think they are heroes.
‘They must bury her, to avoid a jinn’s curse.’ What he does not say: there can be nothing more to remember my pupil by.
‘Of course,’ I say bitterly. He doesn’t respond.
It seems cruel to abandon this child again, to sink her in the cold, barren dirt for eternity, one amongst thousands in graves.
She had been alone her entire life, but it seems impossible to let her go now, when she is finally in my arms. The brutality numbs me.
I want to protect her. To love her. To pretend she’s alive.
But I cannot. Wordlessly, the Sepāhbad holds his hands out.
I pass Arezu to his outstretched arms. For a heartbeat, she is pressed between us, a bridge across a chasm. He looks at her for a long moment. My skin itches and I scratch as he deposits her body on top of the other veiled corpses: a tower of cruelty, as soldiers amass to pray for the dead.
When the Sepāhbad turns back to me, my words tumble out in confession. ‘The power I taught Arezu made her haughty. It encouraged her desertion.’
The Sepāhbad nods. ‘It’s the dilemma any master must face. At some point, no master can control their pupil. You give them the weapons and let them walk on their own.’
At this, I unclasp the bone necklace Arezu gifted me. I press it into his hands. For a second, as he stares at it, something strange flits in his gaze – sorrow, then slow confusion.
He studies me. ‘The first loss of any underling is the hardest. But eventually, all of it blurs together.’
I do not want to lose another. If I do, will I become like him, almost immune to it all? ‘I never imagined Azadniabad would be capable of this,’ I say quietly.
Using the bone necklace, the Sepāhbad gestures to the smear of bodies across the township.
‘These enemies are not evil, but drunk on the illusion of free will. They think Akashun is freeing their lives, which ironically chains them more to him. Still, I don’t blame them.
Sometimes pain is easier to swallow when you fool yourself into thinking the other side deserves it more. ’
He looks surprisingly human when he meets my eyes.
‘Then the world doesn’t deserve that freedom,’ I answer. ‘If they had something to fear, they wouldn’t act out of line at all.’
He picks a fleck of dried blood off my cheek and steps away. He holds it against the backdrop of the graves in the rain. ‘Well, they fight for it anyway. So, here is that revolution you spoke of. Is it not beautiful?’