Chapter 6
Our Lallat are waiting to be restored.
The keepers of magic, the fairest four.
Rabia tends the earth, and Rasha draws the tide.
With the sun, Noor dances, and on the wind, Iman rides.
Earth, flame, water, air.
We remember their names, our Lallat fair.
—a Hazmaggi chant
Shay hates coming to the slum. It breaks her heart to see small children playing in dirty puddles and napping next to fly-covered piles of debris.
Yet, she can't help noticing how the women talk and smile brightly among themselves as they hang clothes and carry water.
They seem happy despite their lack of what others deem necessities.
It doesn't take long for a young boy to come running up to Shay. With unmatched slippers on his feet and his tiny frame swallowed beneath an adult-sized tunic, he's hardly the fearsome rebel the barkeep led Shay to believe she'd be greeted by.
He stretches his open hand up and out. “Labas, Lalla. Something for me? Please?”
Shay fishes the last luneers from her satchel. God knows it isn't much, but when she presses the coin into his palm, the child's face brightens into a heart-melting grin.
“God protect you,” she offers hoarsely.
The child tucks the luneers into his pocket. He grabs her hand and sprinkles the top of it with kisses. “May He bless you and your parents.”
Tears prickle Shay's eyes at the innocent blessing.
Ghita is the closest thing to a parent she has known, and the midwife surely deserves God's rewards.
But what of the mother she hopes to find, the one the barkeep accused of luring young women into a life of addiction?
Is such a woman eligible for redemption?
Shay takes a step forward, when the boy springs in front of her.
He glances first to one side then the other, fidgeting in place. “Are you going the right way, Lalla?”
Shay peers into the distance, trying to determine what the boy is looking at. Finding nothing amiss along the uneven belt of makeshift shelters, she squats at eye level with the child and lowers her voice. “Is someone watching us?”
The boy scratches his dirty arm and nods nervously.
Telling herself the worst that can happen is she'll be turned away, Shay holds her palm up in a khamsa sign, her three middle fingers touching, pinky and thumb separated out to the sides.
She lifts her hand high enough to be seen by whoever is hiding.
To complete the signal, she rolls her fingers into a fist that represents the all-seeing eye of protection and taps it to her forehead.
The boy's shoulders relax, but he tips his chin higher. “That's the secret signal. But do you know the secret secret signal?”
Shay frowns, her throat tightening. The barkeep didn't mention a secret secret signal. She gazes up at the bright white of the noonday sun. It floats in a pool of soft yellow like a reverse egg. But there are no clues written among the clouds. Sweat gathers in her palms.
“Just kidding!” The boy chuckles and winks at her. “There is no secret secret signal.”
“M'zein.” Shay stands, her panic dissolving into laughter. “You fooled me that time. But I have a serious question. Do you think one of your friends out there would be willing to help me find someone?”
“It's your lucky day, Lalla.” The child puffs his small chest. “Badar knows everyone in the Bib.”
“I see.” Shay swallows uneasily. She assesses the boy's tender frame. Is it even safe for him to be running about unsupervised here? “What about the traps?”
The boy looks at her askance. He pats his arms and legs, grinning widely. “I still have all my limbs, don't I?”
Badar scampers over stone blocks and wood beams. Shay's heart hammers with exertion and the fear that a misstep will trigger a trap and she'll be sliced by a swinging knife or crushed under an avalanche of rocks.
The child races, his stride never breaking, down the narrow rows that run between crowded shelters.
Many residents have hung torn sheets for privacy where their walls are lacking, half the stones having crumbled away.
Some dwellings, Shay notices with more than a little unease, openly display the checkered flag of the Naturalists. The offense would be unthinkable elsewhere in Nezjar. One building even has their slogan painted on its side: A COMMON GOAL FOR A COMMON PEOPLE!
The deeper into the Bib they plunge, the clearer it becomes that not everyone here is happy.
Touched ones linger in dark corners. The emaciated women alternately pick at their scabbed skin and yank what little is left of their thinning hair.
Each twitch is like a move in a compulsive dance they've been cursed to perform.
Their backs are hunched, their hands curled into claws.
Warts bubble on their faces. One dried husk of a woman sits right out in the open on a palm leaf mat, appearing at risk of being bowled over by the faintest of breezes.
She pulls a dropper of amber liquid from a glass vial and squeezes a glistening drop onto her tongue.
Shock ripples through Shay's body. The touched one throws her head back, her papery eyelids fluttering. A white film spreads over her irises and blots her pupils. Her black lips melt into a sloppy grin, exposing teeth in the early stages of decline. Red wisps of light pulse at her fingertips.
Shay's skin turns cold. After all these cycles of believing her mother is dead, will she now find her to be alive but trapped in same thrall of addiction as these women?
“Come,” the boy urges, tugging Shay's sleeve. “My memma always tells me to keep my eyes on pretty things. She says that which you look upon, you become.”
“Your memma is a wise one.” Shaking off the chill, Shay quickly pursues the child. They swerve around a small herd of goats in their path and finally stop before one of the few shelters with a door, albeit one resting crookedly in its frame.
Could her mother have been here all along?
Surely, Shay would have felt some invisible thread pulling her by the heart, the same way the sea must feel the inexorable tug of the moon.
But isn't it true that she's always carried an unnamed longing inside her?
She attributed it to her constant contact with expectant mothers, but what if it was more?
If she had any inkling her mother could be eking out an existence in the medina's slum, she would have found a way to help her.
But maybe she still can.
Panting, and more winded than a girl her age should be, Shay turns to Badar as he stretches on his toes and beckons her to bend her ear.
“Wanna know a secret?” he asks, whispering mischievously. “There are no traps.”
Giggling, the boy darts away, leaving Shay to question everything she's heard about the resistance.
Al-Mukhtar would have citizens believing the rebels were heartless brutes who wouldn't think twice about putting their own children in harm's way.
But what if they're just the brave few willing to stand up in the face of tyranny? What if they actually protect the realms’ most vulnerable?
The door is shaped like a giant keyhole and painted the indigo of night. Once upon a time, it might have been called fancy. Now it's rusted and peeling and doesn't look at all out of place amid the surrounding clutter where nothing matches.
Hesitantly, she knocks. A warm breeze carries distant chatter, the squawk and bray of livestock, fumes of garbage rotting nearby. What if the woman isn't home? Shay knocks a few more times.
Her thoughts skip back to the touched ones who huddled in the shadows. One of the women was slumped against a wall, seemingly unconscious. This Hind may be inside her dwelling right now, suffering an overdose that has left her unable to answer.
“Hind?” Shay knocks again, louder.
The misaligned door gives beneath her efforts.
It cracks open to reveal a slice of mud-brick wall.
Shay looks back over her shoulder, half hoping no one is watching and half seeking someone who might give her permission to enter.
No one is close by or paying attention. Telling herself it's not intruding if someone needs help, Shay steps inside, the door falling shut behind her.
The room, for there is only one, looks almost homey.
A single small window draws Shay to the back.
She pushes the curtains apart, releasing a cloud of dust and letting in enough light to distinguish that the lumps on the sleeping pallet are merely blankets and pillows.
In a corner sits a folded prayer mat, a book of scriptures held aloft by a wooden stand, and a clay bowl cradling a string of glass remembrance beads.
With a heavy sigh, Shay turns back toward the door.
It seems the woman is out, after all. The skid of her sole over something wet stops her just before she steps on a fancy-looking bottle.
It's tipped upon its side, its contents dribbling out onto the layer of unfinished boards that serve as a floor.
She squats and picks it up, sniffing the neck as she reinserts the stopper.
Peach blossom. A sweet warmth spreads across the pathways of her mind, coaxing a smile to her lips. The scent, somehow achingly familiar, echoes of infantile memories. At least, that's what Shay chooses to believe. She closes her eyes and basks in the feeling.
Only when she opens them does the shape that lies twisted across the room come into focus. Gasping, Shay tosses the bottle aside. She lunges toward the woman whose form the shadows previously concealed.
Her pale skin looks bleached, shading the dark circles beneath her eyes all the blacker.
Sparse fluffs dust her head like a light layer of snow, patches of pink scalp peeking through.
Her arms stick from her sleeves, her neck from her collar, thin as twigs, the knobs of her elbows, knuckles, and chin seeming enormous in comparison.
“Hind?” Shay gives the woman's shoulders a gentle shake, making her head loll limply from side to side. “Are you well?”