Chapter 4
The truest lover is a friend.
The truest gift is trust.
The truest misfortune is false belief.
The truest leader is a seeker.
—the poet Rimkin
Jarjeer rockets down the path, hooves clacking, gravel popping. The ride starts smooth, but soon the ground rumbles. Quakes cant the cart side to side in steepening arcs. Shay's stomach sloshes. More rumbling. A louder sound, like fabric ripping.
She peers fearfully over the side rail, feeling the prickle of cool night air against her cheeks. Vines as thick as snakes shoot from the ground and curl like hooks around the spokes of the wheels, thwarting their spin. Shay looks back to the farmhouse.
The touched one has moved from the door to the lawn. She reaches after them with outstretched arms, fingers a distant firefly glow. The earth hums with malice.
The mother shouldn't be able to access her Shawafa. The baby should have siphoned it. There's no other way to explain his survival. Glory to heaven, how much Snow did the woman take?
The midwife digs into her bag and hands Shay the one tool the apprentice has never seen put to use. The knife—carried in case a mother passes and the baby requires emergency delivery—summons a visceral chill, but it's the sharpest instrument they have.
Shay carefully trades the baby off to Ghita. She hangs precariously over the cart as it bumps up and down, lurching forward in bursts. Despite her valiant hacking, three new vines sprout up for every one she chops down. Sweat puddles at the small of her back, gluing her tunic to her skin.
The donkey stumbles as a vine climbs up his leg. The animal bucks free, dipping their bodies low enough to sniff the leafy grass and nearly overturning them. Shay clings to the railing until the cart rights itself.
She stretches forward and caresses Jarjeer's back. “Please, Jarjeer, you must run harder.”
At her words, the animal takes off again, building to an impossible speed that blows Shay's hair to tangles.
Jarjeer flies them away from the farmhouse, away from the touched one.
Away from the reach of the magic she impossibly continues to wield.
Only once they safely clear the gates of their medina does the animal slow to a soothing clomp.
Shay and Ghita are shell-shocked, unable to utter a single word between them.
Back at their apartment, Shay waters Jarjeer before walking him back to the stables.
She wonders how anything, even the influence of a powerful drug, could warp a mother's natural instinct to the point that she'd attempt to murder her child.
Would her own mother have turned on her the same way if she had lived?
This thought, held to the light of the worrisome rumors, hints to something Shay's loyalty to Ghita won't allow her to probe.
Although they weren't paid for tonight's birth, Shay dishes out extra coin to the stable master in compensation for the limp the bewitched vines inflicted on poor Jarjeer.
She then borrows a pail of milk from the lactating goat of a neighbor who regularly borrows tomatoes from their rooftop garden.
Shay hopes her foresight will please Ghita, never imagining she'll find the midwife seated by the hearth, sleeping robe draped open, with the baby happily latched upon her swollen breast.
Shay gasps. “Are you with milk, khalti?”
“Oh yes.” Ghita blinks at her sleepily. “It's another echo passed to midwives for the unlucky cases when a baby is rendered an orphan. Surely you remember this information from your studies of maternal mortality.”
She doesn't phrase it as a question, causing Shay to doubt her own surprise. Such an important fact would not be easily forgotten, but this is their first time caring for an endangered infant.
Shay removes her leather slippers, opting to leave off her bamboo house shoes in preference of the bare feel of clay flooring under her feet.
She makes her way around the uneven and loose tiles she knows by heart, unhooks a latch in the floor, and stores the goat milk inside a small cellar space to keep it cool.
But … Ghita called the child an orphan, which isn't exactly correct.
His mother seemed very much alive when they departed.
Shay almost asks if the midwife also nursed her, but thinks better of it.
It doesn't really matter whether she did or didn't. Shay isn't her daughter either way.
She's only an apprentice. And thankful, of course, to be provided such an opportunity.
“Can I get you anything, khalti?”
“Yes, Lalla Shay, thank you,” Ghita murmurs, gently rocking the baby, his eyes drifting contentedly closed. “Some tea would be wonderful. Add a bit of morning thistle. It will aid the flow of milk.”
Shay sets a pot to boil and grabs first the jar of morning thistle and then the moon pepper she forgot to take earlier. She sniffs the nearly empty jar, the bitter scent almost comforting in its familiarity, and for the briefest moment, she wonders what would happen if she stopped taking it.
Not how it would feel to access magic, but how it would feel if the poison holding her body in its grip were to loosen its hateful fingers. If she no longer existed on the brink of exhaustion.
If she were well.
Dismissing such foolish thoughts, she shakes the last of the leaves into her glass, enough to make up for the dose she missed. She drafts a mental reminder to forage more tomorrow.
“How did the baby survive?” Shay asks Ghita. For reasons she can't explain, it suddenly seems important she understand the answer.
“It's rare, but not unheard of,” Ghita answers distractedly. “You're proof of that.”
While that is true, it's not the same. Her throat tightens. “But my mother …”
“Touched ones don't usually give birth to boys. Did you know that?” Ghita says more decisively, then continues without waiting for a response. “I bet that has something to do with it.”
It seems a very loose correlation. It would make more sense to Shay that the mother may yet be in danger once the drugs clear her system and she inevitably crashes. “Are you sure she'll be well? The mother?”
“Not as long as she keeps using.” With a tired sigh, Ghita carries the sleeping baby to a basket lined with sheepskin, a makeshift bassinet. “But her bleeding was under control when we left her.”
They sit by the hearth, cotton-weave blankets snugged over their laps, knees tipped close together, not quite touching.
Most times, the apprentice cherishes such moments, the calm quiet between them an approximation to tenderness.
But tonight her mind is neither calm nor quiet.
Shay doesn't understand how Ghita can be so cavalier about all this.
Shay sips her tea, the sugar and mint unable to mask the sour tang of the moon pepper on her tongue. “What kind of Shawafa did she have?”
Every woman has one, a unique magical gift buried deep inside, almost beyond reach.
There was a time, known as the Time of Women, when Shawafa was considered as natural as any other aspect of life.
But now is the Time of Miracles. Or, as Shay secretly thinks of it, the Time of Men, for there are noticeably no female rulers.
Of course, nothing in any history book Shay has read suggests there ever were, but sometimes she thinks, with all that power, there must have been.
Nowadays, only Snow activates women's Shawafa, and it does so temporarily.
The classification of magic types isn't readily available information, but Shay has gathered some details from secondhand accounts, whispers of the ancient magic it awakened, the cycles it stole away.
If the moon pepper that suppresses magic is a poison, then the Snow that awakens it is a plague.
“Hadiqmin.” Ghita peers at the steam rising from her glass as if she might scry the future in its unfurling tendrils.
“The ability to control plants?”
Ghita nods. “Quite amazing when you think about it.”
The overgrown farmhouse surfaces in Shay's mind, the remembered smell of overripe vegetation. She hears the frantic buzz of ghost bees, the bubbling flesh of a stranger's corpse—impressions sure to darken her dreams tonight and for many nights to come.
“Should we …?” Shay shifts nervously in her seat.
She swallows hard. Unlike harmless echoes, Shawafa is the illegal form of magic.
If they report the incident, the mother could be arrested.
Whereas, if they don't tell, perhaps the baby could be returned when it's safer.
Maybe they could help the mother purge from Snow. “Should we do something?”
“Us?” Ghita shakes her head and chuckles dryly. “Every passing day sees more touched ones on the street. It's become an epidemic. Meanwhile, our esteemed leaders are preoccupied with taxes and rebels. Unfortunately, if they keep ignoring the problem, I see it only getting worse.”
Which problem? The spread of addiction? Or the children being born to addicts? Before tonight, Shay didn't think the latter was possible, not without the resulting death of either the mother or the child. “Then what will we do with the baby?”
“I suppose I'll care for him.”
The same way she cared for Shay? But … the child's mother is still alive. That makes it more complicated. The things the messenger told her the touched one had said about her baby being stolen suddenly seem less far-fetched.
“Someone told me my mother could be alive.” Shay realizes she's spoken out loud only when Ghita's eyes widen. Does Shay imagine the sharp intake of her breath?
“You stuck to our story, I hope,” the midwife admonishes. “That your mother was a nomad who was left behind by her tribe because she was too sick to travel.”
“And she died during my delivery,” Shay recites to appease her. If the first part of the story is a lie, could the second part also be? Doubting Ghita, even in the confines of her thoughts, feels like a betrayal, but the parallels between this child and herself are too striking to ignore.
“Congratulations are in order.” The midwife abruptly changes the subject, her face and posture shifting to a businesslike formality with her tone.
“A midwife in Kiddah has unexpectedly passed away without an apprentice to appoint as her successor.
I recommended you as a replacement and received word you've been accepted.”
Shay's head spins. How long ago did Ghita recommend her? “You … want me to move to Kiddah?”
“The next caravan leaves in three days.” Ghita swallows the last of her tea and rises. She opens a nearby drawer, and the next thing Shay knows, the midwife is handing her a crisp caravan ticket that smells of fresh ink and unceremonious dismissal.
“I …” Shay stares at the parchment for a moment, the sharply penned details of her departure blurring as her vision quakes. She looks up at Ghita, unmoored. “My training …”
“Is complete.” The midwife doesn't meet Shay's eyes, seeming to address some invisible entity perched upon her shoulder. “You are competent and caring. I'm confident you will be successful in your new post.”
They are words Shay has longed to hear, has striven for with all her being, but they feel hollow.
Only earlier today, the midwife informed her she had two moon quarters to prove herself.
Things seemed more imminent once the birthing call came, but …
the child was delivered without Shay's assistance. Why, she wasn't even there.
“You saved him,” Ghita says, as though Shay's thoughts were wholly transparent. “Very brave, if you ask me.”
A sound rises from Shay's throat, one that could signify agreement or dispute, and she's completely unsure which expression she intends. Even if she were convinced she deserved this, she finds herself aching for more. For something she can't quite translate into words.
“I must get some sleep before Sami wakes again. He'll likely be extra fussy until he acclimates to no longer receiving Snow from his mother's bloodstream.” Ghita turns, effectively buttoning up the conversation.
Shay cups her cheek like someone on the receiving end of a strike. The baby already has a name. Her heart pangs for the child, sure to grow up as she did, without a mother. When he's older, will Ghita tell him the truth about how his mother tried to kill him? Or will she lie to save his feelings?
“Wait,” Shay calls out. This is all too sudden. It feels so final. And it is impossible for her to imagine her future when so much of her past remains shrouded in mystery. She will always be looking over her shoulder for it, like a shadow without a shape. “What was her name?”
Shay doesn't specify whom. She's asked the question a million times and never gotten a straight response.
Ghita stops, keeping her back to the apprentice. This time, she answers, “Hind.”
With that, the midwife shuffles off to bed.