Chapter 24 Sirsha
Sirsha
Sirsha knew she was in the Cloud Forest from the smell. Bark and earth and the fresh mist that lay over the trees of Kotama, the Jaduna capital. The sweet bloom of Tibra flowers, found only here in the shade of the Cloud Forest’s towering Gandafur trees.
Sirsha had traveled everywhere and never experienced anything like it, the scent almost tangible, as if drinking the air would quench every thirst.
And the magic. She wanted to sink into it. She’d forgotten the way it thrummed through everything in Kotama, for the Jaduna used magic in all aspects of their lives—building, farming, herding, even crafting.
Voices rose around her, so she kept her eyes closed.
She was tied upright to a chair, her head lolling back on its top rail, arms wrenched behind her and bound.
Through a blurred haze, Sirsha understood that this was not the first time she’d been awake in the past few days.
She remembered feeling ill, and hearing her mother snapping at the Khind Jaduna, What did you do to her?
Days melded into nights, her time one long fever dream.
Among the voices around her, Sirsha picked out her mother’s, less measured than usual as she argued with someone else.
“—daughter of Kin Inashi, whether she was cast out or not. You will not harm a hair on her head,” Raani Sh’ban said, and Sirsha found herself startled at the fierceness in her mother’s voice.
She’d seemed perfectly willing to treat Sirsha like diseased vermin when she tossed her in prison as a twelve-year-old.
“Do you know what she’s brought with her?” It took Sirsha a moment to place the gravelly voice. Raani N’shal, head of Kin Deshma, the battle Jaduna. “Can you not sense it, hanging on her like a funeral shroud?”
“The entire city sensed it.” Another person spoke. “We must bind it, and quickly. We have bigger problems to deal with.”
Bigger than a heart-eating, magic-loving fiend who wants to suck you all dry? Sirsha wondered what could possibly be worse.
“It cannot be bound easily.” R’zwana spoke from nearby. “Sirsha has stupidly attached herself to it, so we must kill her—”
“R’zwana!” Ma snapped. “Do not speak so casually of murdering your sister!”
The conversation continued, but Sirsha struggled to follow it because another voice whispered in her ear.
“Wakey-wakey, little witch,” Div hissed. “You’ve been unconscious for days. Open your eyes, for I am hungry and there are so many tasty morsels about.”
At the sound of Div’s voice, a pressure exploded in Sirsha’s forehead. Exhaustion swept over her, a bone-deep tiredness that had Div’s fingerprints all over it.
“What have you done to me?” Sirsha said, and too late, she realized she’d spoken out loud. The voices quieted.
She opened her eyes to find herself staring up at the woven vines and branches of the Inashi Darakt—the home tree of her Kin. She knew well the image woven by those branches: a group of Inashi Jaduna on a mountainous trail, hair flowing in the wind, bodies turned to a distant sunrise on a calm sea.
It was Kin Khind who used their connection to life—in this case, trees and flowers—to create the image.
They’d done so in the Darakts of the five other Kin: Deshma, the battle Jaduna; Songma, who studied souls; Sitr, whose skill lay in crafting and building; Bij, who harnessed energy; and of course, the Inashi, who tracked.
The image above was a remarkable feat of magic and artistry: Zakat vines, a rich golden brown, structured each figure; Safurah flowers in gold and purple and green bloomed as clothing; the sap of the Darakt colored the sunrise a deep scarlet.
Though—Sirsha squinted—parts of the living image appeared dead. Some of the flowers were wilted, the vines cracked, the leaves shriveled and dry.
“About bleeding time you woke up,” R’zwana said from behind Ma. She regarded Sirsha like one would a rabid wolf, her repulsion dulled into fear.
“Daughter,” Ma said, drawing Sirsha’s attention to her. The Raani stood before Sirsha, with R’zwana and N’shal at her back. A half dozen other Jaduna were arrayed around them, faces Sirsha should have grown up with but didn’t. “I need you to answer a few questions,” Ma said.
“L-Loli,” Sirsha croaked, throat dry with disuse. “Is she—Did you—”
“Your friend,” Ma said, “was dead and using unnatural magic to elongate her life. Why, we do not know. She has been put to rest.”
Relief swept through Sirsha—she knew Loli Temba would not have wanted that strange half existence. And then grief followed, for it seemed that Loli had wished to help Sirsha, however bewildering her words might have been.
“Sirsha, how long have you carried this…passenger?”
Sirsha hardly heard her mother, her attention on Div, prowling behind Ma in her child’s skin, her face as flat and unfeeling as ever.
“Tell them I’m hungry,” Div said to Sirsha. “Tell them I’m here to feed.”
“Tell them yourself,” Sirsha muttered, for she knew Div could make herself visible when she wished.
“Hungry, hungry, hungry—”
“Speak up, child, please,” Ma said—not understanding that Sirsha wasn’t speaking to her. “Do you understand what this thing is, or how—”
“Hungry, HUNGRY—”
“Shut it!” Sirsha said to Div, who giggled to herself. Ma recoiled, assuming that Sirsha had been addressing her.
“I’m not talking to you,” Sirsha said to her mother. “It’s her. The creature. Div.”
“I will be silent.” Div began to circle Raani N’shal. “If you give me this one. She’s a fighter and rich with magic—Oh—” Div made an unnatural slurping sound, like a butcher bat sucking down blood. “Just a small taste, little witch—”
Sirsha’s head ached something fierce. Div was pushing at her, she knew.
Gnawing at her willpower, at the strength Sirsha was using to keep her in check.
Sirsha pulled at her bonds. The Jaduna weren’t safe with her here.
She needed to leave. Every time she was around people, she had to tell the creature no.
It drew down her already depleted willpower. Eventually, she would have none left.
“Ma, why did you bring me here?” Sirsha fixed her gaze on her mother, trying desperately to ignore Div, to keep all the Jaduna focused on what she was saying and work her hands free.
“Of course I know what I carry. I’ve been trying to get rid of her for months.
I must go to the jinn. They—they can help. ”
“No.” Ma glanced at Raani N’shal, who grimaced, her jaw tight. “No, Sirsha. You do not need the jinn. We will handle this.”
“You’re doing what she wants, Ma,” Sirsha said. “She wants to murder, to hurt. To eat your hearts with impunity.”
“To what end?” Ma said. “She must have some reason—”
“Bah, why do you bother?” Div spoke over the Raani. “They’re too stupid to listen to you. They don’t trust you. You should let me eat them. They threw you in prison when you were a child and then discarded you like offal. Let me avenge you.”
The memory angered Sirsha, and the pressure in her head increased. She forced herself to take a breath and keep her voice level, even as Div began shouting hungry, hungry again. “Please take me away from here, Ma,” she implored again. “You’re not safe.”
“She wasn’t to return!” Raani N’shal said to Ma. “You agreed that if she did, Sh’ban, she would be drowned, her body left as carrion that she might never return to the earth that nourished her. Sirsha’s crime was witnessed, sentenced—”
“My crime?” Rage pounded through Sirsha’s veins so fast she shook with it. “You mean the crime of being a child who made a mistake?”
“A mistake you could have avoided, had you but listened to your elders,” R’zwana said, unable to help herself. “I imagine this thing attached to you for the same reason. You thought you could handle it—”
“Silence!” Ma, usually soft-spoken, raised her voice enough that everyone fell quiet. She fixed her dark eyes on her daughter.
“Where is it?” she said. “The creature that has murdered so many. Why has it not shown itself?”
“It only shows itself to me,” Sirsha said. “Rather inconvenient, as it makes it look like I’m a madwoman talking to myself.”
Div laughed, and it was like broken glass. Her attention shifted to Ma, who stiffened, spinning around. “I feel it,” Ma whispered. “It is…vast.”
She turned to the other Jaduna. “Get in position,” she told them.
“Ma, let me assist you in the binding,” R’zwana said, and Ma glared at her.
“You know your role, Raan-Ruku,” Sh’ban said. “If you cannot help, leave.”
R’zwana gritted her teeth and turned to face Sirsha, holding her arm down. An unfamiliar Jaduna did the same on Sirsha’s other side. Sirsha pulled frantically at her ropes, trying to kick free, but N’shal held her legs still with magic, dark gaze flinty.
“Fear not, daughter.” Ma’s soft voice was filled with resolve. “Like the Adah oath, the bond between mother and child is forged by blood. And like the Adah, it is so powerful that it lasts beyond death. I shall use this bond to rid you—and the world—of this monstrosity.”
For one delusional moment, hope flared in Sirsha’s heart. Her mother was the strongest Inashi in the world. If anyone could bind Div, it was her.
And yet Sirsha couldn’t shake Loli’s words. You cannot bind her. No human can.
“Begin the chant at my signal,” Raani Sh’ban said.
“The bond between mother and child,” Div muttered to herself, and the way her eyes glowed made Sirsha tremble. “I wonder…” Div pushed against Sirsha’s mind, an inexorable grating that shredded Sirsha’s control over her will.
“Div wants to devour you,” Sirsha told her mother. “I’m—I’m holding her back, Ma, but I don’t know how much longer I can last.”
“You’re weak,” R’zwana spat. “You have always had the willpower of an infant, sister.”
“Silence,” Raani N’shal said. “Let the Raani work.”
Div sat on a carved chair a few yards away, swinging her legs, smiling. “Yes, little witch, let them work,” she said. “Perhaps I will have a new body soon. At the very least”—her voice turned brittle—“I wish to understand what it is for a mother to betray her child so utterly.”