An Ill-Fated Decision Due to Greed
On the morning after my wedding to Raksh, I had no sooner opened my eyes to see my new groom had sprouted tusks then I sprang
from the bed, promptly tripped on the sheets, and fell to the floor. However, I was still young then and spry, recovering
to fling myself at the door, nakedness be damned. I grabbed the knob.
It turned to cinders in my hand, the rest of door melting away. I gasped, but watching my sole means of escape magically vanish
made me only more desperate, and so I quickly resorted to pounding on the wall with my fists.
“ Help! ” I cried. “Dalila! Asif! Maj—”
Raksh grabbed me around the waist, pressing a scalding hand over my mouth.
“Please stop screaming,” he implored. “My head is killing me.”
I writhed in his arms, trying to wake myself from this nightmare, but it was like fighting a man of stone. From beyond the
blue fingers pressed over my face, I suddenly spotted our marriage contract. Amongst the wreckage of the room, clothes, palm
wine casks, and bedding all tossed about, it was the one thing that had been carefully placed on a wooden table.
At the bottom was my signature.
Raksh let me go, and I crumpled to the floor. For the first time in years, I wept. I had done a great many awful things while nakhudha of the Marawati . I had killed and I had stolen. I had gambled, gotten drunk, and stretched the limits of adultery—often doing all three in
a single evening—then failed to wake in time for fajr to pray for forgiveness. In short, I had a thousand things for which
I already knew I would need to atone.
But this, this ...
“Oh, God...” I dropped my head into my hands. I couldn’t look at Raksh, the acrid air smelling of future hellfire. “I am
doomed. I committed fornication with a demon. I have lost my soul and will burn for a thousand—”
“Was the contract for your soul?” Raksh sounded confused and hungover—if blue beast men could be hungover. I let out another
sob and he sighed in irritation. “Will you cease all the crying? It is very loud.”
He stepped back, shaking like a dog attempting to dry itself. His devilish appearance vanished, leaving both the man I’d met
last night and not. The bluish hue that clung to him might have been a trick of the light; the raven tresses and speckles
dotting his skin, both shadows and reality. The silver-dappled red outlining his now-vanished tusks could have passed for
a poor henna job.
Raksh shuddered. “I rarely lose my form overnight. Whatever these people put in their palm wine... wow. It’s been centuries
since I’ve sampled a beverage so fierce.”
Centuries? I glanced up through my tears. “What are you? Are you some sort of djinn?”
“Not a djinn, no. Though it’s a bit hard to explain; your languages no longer have a good word for what I am. Not really.”
Raksh leaned close as though to confide a secret. “I used to be worshipped as a god.”
I made a garbled response.
Twisting at the waist, a grating sound like a blade on a whetstone coming from somewhere in his body, Raksh continued.
“Last night was, well... my compliments, truly. Rarely can a human keep up with me like that. I might not remember the details of our contract, but I do hope it permits further sexual activities.”
My entire face went hot. I snatched the sheet and wrapped it around myself like a cocoon as Raksh crossed the small room to
pluck up our marriage agreement.
“Hmm...” He began to read it. “What an interesting provision—I’ve never been wedded in your faith’s tradition before. Honestly
it’s been centuries since I tried something like this. The last time I worked a marriage contract, it was with this village
that insisted on shutting up spouses in caves when their partner died, and let me tell you, I am not interested in doing that again.”
My head was spinning, but not enough that I missed the opening in his bizarre words.
“It is invalid!” I burst out. “Our nikah. It is not permissible for me to marry a non-Muslim.”
Raksh frowned. “Is that why the man had me say all those words about God and prophets?” He returned to studying the contract.
“Trust me, dear wife, I can be a vast number of things.”
“But—but you are not a believer.”
“Of course I am. Best to know the competition, yes?” Raksh clucked his tongue and rolled the contract back up. “I see nothing
in here suggesting you owe me your soul. Truthfully, though I was not exactly clearheaded last night, I doubt I would have
agreed to such a deal. Only fools offer their souls, and the pact is so fiendishly complicated I typically prefer other agreements.”
He shrugged as if any of the words he had just said made sense. “I think you’re fine.”
I gaped. “I am not fine ! If I was not headed toward hellfire before, I am now well and truly condemned for marrying a demon while drunk on palm wine!”
“A demon you still intend to save from this horribly dull island, right?” Raksh plucked away the hair falling over my face to peer into my eyes, suddenly looking worried. “Amani, please. I cannot stay here another decade.”
“ Amina! ” I snapped. “And no. The only place I am going with you is back to that crooked excuse for a cleric so he can fix this. Then
I am getting the hell off this island, and you can return to seducing other fools on the beach.”
“But-but that is not fair,” he sputtered. “We had an agreement!”
“An agreement you made in bad faith! You did not think to tell me about all this ”—I gestured at his now-vanished tusks and the coral pendant hiding its foul enchantment—“before I let you in my bed, let
alone my boat?”
“To be honest, I was hoping you would never see this side of—no, wait!” Raksh cried as I made to shake free of him. “Amina,
you don’t understand! I am still the man you met last night. All the things we talked about, that was real. And you...”
He inhaled as though tasting the air wafting from a fragrant cookpot. “I have been aching to contract with someone like you. It has been so long since I found someone interesting, someone worthy , with ambitions to savor.”
It was impossible to break away from his gaze. In the back of my mind, I knew this was not natural. The way he had mesmerized
me last night: I would be willing to bet that hadn’t been due only to wine and my poor impulse control around pretty men.
But recognizing such did not break the bonds of his spell completely. “My-my ambitions?”
“ Yes .” Raksh looped his fingers through my hair like he was placing tapestry threads, marveling at me in a way that felt more assessing than romantic.
“I have spent the last three hundred years with boring, selfish men who care for nothing but sleeping with the wives of their neighbors or nonsensical trade rivalries. But you”—he held me out in a twirl—“you are glorious. The tales you told me of your adventures...” Raksh shivered with what looked like genuine lust, color rising in his cheeks.
“Please, I have no desire other than to stay at your side. To meet your crew and partake of your travels. You will not regret it, I promise.”
“I already regret it.” I rose to my feet. I needed to put space between us. To get out of this room and breathe fresh air.
But there was no door, and then Raksh was there, standing before me again. He was still naked, and despite my age and experience,
I could not help but flush at the sight of him and the memory of how we’d spent the previous evening. I’d never had a lover
like that.
“Just one trip,” he beseeched. “Take me off this island, and I will show you what I can do. If you remain unconvinced by journey’s
end, I will leave and pay you for the privilege.”
“Pay me for the privilege?” I repeated. And no, I am not proud that was my first response.
His spread his hands, and a shower of gold coins erupted between them. They clattered to the floor, but with another snap
of his fingers, the fortune was gone.
I gasped. “Why do you need to contract with anyone if you can do that? You could charter a hundred trips off this island!”
“Because that is not the sort of currency my kind deal in. Nor the kind of currency you want, not truly.”
I laughed, a savage edge to the sound. “Believe me, demon, if I could summon gold, I would not be risking my life on a rickety
boat.”
“No...” Raksh moved closer, his voice alluring. “If you could summon gold, you would build your mother a castle. Bribe
your grandparents to forgive her and set your little brother up with the best education possible.” His eyes locked on mine,
the impossible depth of them intoxicating. “Then, guilt assuaged, you would buy a better ship and sail for the East. You would go see all the places in your stories and have escapades that would make you a legend.
Not because you are a woman or a pirate or any of these things people say about you.
But because you would be the best , period.
Because they would be talking about the adventures of Amina al-Sirafi for centuries.
And by the end of it... your family might even forgive you. Might welcome you home with open arms.”
Well, the spell had finally broken.
“I-I told you nothing of the sort,” I said shakily. “And that... that is not what I want. I am a pirate. A smuggler. I
care for money alone.”
Raksh chuckled, his laugh cracking the air like a whip. “You may be a pirate now, nakhudha, but it is neither crime nor gold
that makes your heart beat. You are an explorer . I bet in another age, another life, you would be one of those traveling men of letters, seeing the world on the wealth and
connections you do not possess in this one.” He raised a palm at my protest. “And no, you did not confess any of this last
night. Perhaps you have yet to even confess it to yourself. It matters not. While our contract binds us, I can read your ambitions
like an open book. And I can assist them. In ways you could never imagine.”
I felt stripped bare, Raksh dragging from the bottom of my soul desires I had not dared let take root; the sand falling away
to reveal wants that seemed na?ve and raw in the bright light of the sun, squirming creatures that belonged hidden beneath
the seabed.
“Why?” I asked hoarsely. “Why would you help me?”
He twined a finger around one of my disheveled braids again. “So that I can summon gold. There is power in human ambition. Sustenance in desire. At least... for beings such as myself.”
Sustenance . “It sounds like we are your prey.”
Raksh grinned. “Well sated prey, I assure you.”
“Ah, am I to be well sated when I am finally devoured?”
“Who says I intend to devour you?” There was a note of surprise in his voice. “Why would I?”
I stared at him in disbelief. “Maybe because you are a lying demon who referred to my Creator as competition?”
“Not a demon,” Raksh corrected. “That is your word. I have no desire to harm you, Amina al-Sirafi. For one, I am rather enjoying you, but more important, I would only be hurting myself. You need not fear our bond. I am a... how do you say it? Like a streak of good luck. While I am contracted with you— married ,” he added with a lascivious wiggle of his hips, “you will always have that favorable wind you need. Your nets will stay
full, and your enemy’s arrows fall short. If you get ten tips on a mark, I will sense that which is correct. I know sailors:
your lives run on luck.
“I am the blessing that makes all the difference.”
I wish I could say I was not tempted, but he’d spoken truthfully. Our lives did run on luck. Mariners’ careers are short and hard, and on the off chance you survive the sea—every crossing its own risk—you
often end up blind and crippled by the labor of doing so. My family had already struggled so much. Everyone in my crew had.
We weren’t wealthy. We weren’t poor , not like I had been as a child, but we had to keep chasing jobs. To be hounded and hunted, and prey on others in the same
bloody way we were preyed upon.
What if it could be different?
“Just one trip,” Raksh whispered, his words curling around me. “Let me show you what I can do.”
This was madness... but God, I wanted it. I wanted everything he said. With my ship blessed, I could go anywhere. See the
world past India. Build my mother and my little brother a palace.
I breathed in and out, my heart pounding. “What about my crew?”
“What about them?”
“Do you mean them any harm?”
Raksh appeared genuinely baffled by the question. “Why should I? My contract is not with them, and your desires are feast
enough. I suspect theirs are terribly dull in comparison.”
I should have said no. I will regret to the end of my days that I did not—well, no, I suppose that is not true, for if I had
turned Raksh away I would not have Marjana. Maybe that makes me a monster, but are not all mothers capable of being monsters
when it comes to their children?
However, that wasn’t the choice put to me that morning.
And whether it was my wicked heart or Raksh’s magic, I couldn’t get the images he’d painted out of my mind.
Sailing into Khanfu and seeing China like I had promised Majed.
Exploring forgotten islands and wandering cities on the other side of the world with my companions.
Setting down my adventures, my stories, and getting acclaim not as a thief but as a traveler .
An explorer like the great chroniclers of our age. Someone honorable and venerated.
I imagined returning to my mother in such a way. As a daughter of whom she could be proud. A daughter who could pay her back
in a comfortable life. Had she not endured so much on my account?
I was already damned. Surely for that, I could go home.
“Show me what you can do,” I whispered.