Chapter 9 #2
“You brought me food?” the touched one says in soft surprise, allowing herself to be pulled along. “That was thoughtful. Got anything sweet in there?”
Shay shakes her head, rubbing her ears as the cries continue, the likes of which no living creature should ever make. Not a warning. No, these are sounds of pain. Torment, even.
“What about bread?” Hind stumbles slightly, eyeing Shay's bulging hood as though imagining what untold treasures it holds. “A sandwich sounds divine.”
Shay grits her teeth. “Do you hear that?”
The touched one smiles loosely as though pretending to understand a joke. “Hear what?”
“My question exactly.” Shay veers off the gravel path, away from the rows of dilapidated shelters. The touched one follows at rapid sprint as she skirts around discarded furniture, a small chicken pen, and the sapling fruit trees of a burgeoning community garden.
“What are we looking for?” Hind pants, gazing around in confusion.
“This way.”
The animal's protestations bleed into a baleful moan. Shay parts a patch of tangled shrubs to reveal a shivering cat. The poor thing is missing half its fur, the entirety of its face an open wound.
The touched one gasps, appearing at her shoulder. “How did you know it was there?”
Shay blinks at her. “It was making enough racket to alert the whole Bib.”
“No,” Hind says quietly. Her eyes dart from Shay to the wounded animal and back. “Just look at it. Why, it barely has the strength to muster a whimper.”
Ignoring her, Shay kneels in the dry grass. She stares into the one good eye the cat has left. Pain, deep and crushing, reflects in its opalescent depths. A burning sensation sears across her skin, and Shay gasps. Too hot. Too hot. Help me.
“Good thing the Snow hasn't worn off,” Hind grumbles, squatting beside Shay. A blush of green flows to her fingertips. With both trepidation and awe, Shay understands the touched one's intention.
“It's alright. We're going to help,” she says gently to the animal. The feline lays its head down and quiets. Hind positions her hands over the animal's exposed skin. The green glow spreads from her fingertips until her whole hand illuminates. Thin tendrils drift over the cat's body.
“She was burned by hot oil that a drunk poured from their window,” Hind declares. Shay measures her breath as, follicle by follicle, new fur appears beneath the green ripples. The light flows over the cat's head. Mangled flesh reforms, its ruined eye restored.
When the touched one withdraws her hands, the cat pushes to its feet.
It bounds to Shay and rubs against her thighs, purring loudly.
Shay runs her hand across its silky coat of fur, then buries her fingers in the thick ruff of its neck, amazed at the transformation.
She smiles at Hind. No matter what she's been conditioned to think about magic, she can't help feeling the touched one has done a good thing. Nothing short of a miracle, really.
“You sure care about animals, don't you?” The touched one hobbles to her feet, the light in her hands now subdued.
“Of course.” Shay doesn't see how anyone couldn't. Animals feel things just like people, and most of the time, they're easier to be around. “God created humans and appointed them stewards of the earth, including the plants and animals that grow and live here.”
“It's like you have a special connection to them, though,” Hind says, more musing to herself than inviting further commentary. “Like they understand you.”
As Shay unloads the meager provisions onto Hind's shelves, the touched one prepares tea and pours two glasses.
She seems to have recovered from her confrontation with the man, perhaps soothed by the cat's rescue, but then, she's not the one with reason to continue being upset.
No, that's too small a word. Shay is angry.
But even she couldn't help being glad when Khala Bushra confirmed that the feline was the missing Muezza.
The neighbor was so happy to have her pet returned, she offered Hind coin as a reward.
Coin that Hind adamantly refused, a noble if ironic gesture.
Shay is starting to see that, despite outside appearances, there is an underlying current of community in the shantytown. Although she wonders how Bushra would feel if she knew her feline companion was healed by the very magic the Naturalists object to.
“I really mustn't stay,” Shay says, though, in truth, she's not eager to return and explain to Ghita why she no longer has the caravan ticket in her possession.
Light rain patters against the window. It's not falling hard enough to prevent her from walking home, but she worries whether Hind's shelter will leak if it picks up later.
“About the man you saw …” Hind holds out Shay's glass, inviting her to hear more. The white screen over her eyes is fading, smoky brown seeping back into her irises.
Shay accepts the tea, telling herself it's only because she's thirsty. “Did you buy Snow from him?”
“What?” Hind waves Shay into the sitting area, taking a moment to mull over the question, like there's more than one possible answer. “Not exactly.”
The warm tea glass in Shay's hands is grounding. She does her best to project the composure Ghita taught her to have in the many unexpected situations a midwife can face, although this particular situation is somewhat out of her purview. “Explain.”
“I'm in debt, habibti.” Hind speaks softly, as though it will cushion the reality of her admission. “For Snow I was given on credit.”
Shay sighs. A not-small part of her still wants to help her mother, but her idea of taking foraging to the extreme seems silly in light of this new information. “How much coin?”
“Not coin.” Hind shifts uncomfortably. “I owe the man from the alley magical favors.”
“Magic?” Shay set her glass down on a wobbly side table. She needs her hands free to brace the sides of her head in case her brain erupts, a phenomenon Shay imagines is extremely rare but that nonetheless feels imminent. “You can't use magic without taking more Snow.”
“Exactly.” Hind shrugs helplessly. “I want to quit. You know I meant everything I said today. It's this place, these debts that are holding me back. I'd be different if I could start over. If I went somewhere new.”
“How will you ever get purged if you keep using?” Shay's mind churns, and through the layers of confusion, a startling answer comes to her: When Hind said she couldn't hear the cat, Shay dismissed it as the touched one's lack of lucidity, but that doesn't explain what Shay felt.
It was as though the animal's pain had been inside her. Or she had somehow been in its mind.
Like magic …
She should put the moon pepper leaves in her tea right now. She's gone too long without them already. And if what happened was magic, if her powers are emerging, that means Hind definitely lied about using Snow during her pregnancy.
Shay stands and shakes her djellaba's hood until the sachet of herbs tumbles out onto the floor. She scoops it up and fumbles with the drawstring, her fingers trembling.
Hind watches her with an uneasy expression.
Shay pauses. “What?”
“Did you know my Shawafa has two functions?”
Shay blinks as though the touched one has spoken in another language. Without answering, she goes back to the drawstring, which appears to have gotten worked into a knot.
“Primarily to heal, but also to diagnose,” Hind continues, unperturbed.
“It's how I knew what happened to the cat.
I see wellness like waves of harmony and disease like disruptions in those waves.
These disruptions, they don't all look the same.
Different ailments have their own signature.
With experience, I've learned to read them.
And that is how I know you've been taking something that's making you sick.”
“Moon pepper,” Shay admits, her fingers stilling. Her heart stills with them. “But I missed my last dose.”
The stench of the leaves seeps through the cloth, and her stomach sours in response.
What if she could use her magic for good, the way Hind did with the cat? What if she could pay Hind's debts for her? No Snow involved?
Shay stares at her hands and tries to feel something, to connect with whatever came over her back in the ally. A tingle, a shiver. A spreading warmth. Some spark of magic under her skin, a thrum within her veins.
To her disappointment, nothing happens.
“It doesn't work like that,” Hind explains, seeming to understand what Shay is attempting. “The powers of a hizoura don't manifest all at once. You have to learn how to use them, like learning to swim.”
Shay shakes her hands in frustration. “We don't have time for that.”
“There is a faster way,” Hind says, drawing the words out like they taste delicious. “But before I show you, I want you to give me whatever toxin you have that the midwife has been pumping into your body for God knows how long.”
Shay is surprised by how easy it is to hand over the sachet, how liberating it feels. She never realized—or more accurately, never admitted to herself—that she has always hated taking the herbs.
Smiling, Hind digs into the front of her robe. She pulls out a pouch hung on a cord and empties its contents onto her palm. Her fingers quickly close, and she makes a show of unfurling them one by one …
“A ring,” Shay says, confused. Admittedly, it is the most stunning piece of jewelry she's ever seen. The band of polished dark wood melds into a large chunk of silver crystal, a gem Shay can't identify.
“La.” Hind clicks her tongue, delight sparkling in her eyes. She twists the ring back and forth in her fingers, pinging thin prisms around the room. “This is a hjabat. A rare talisman that imbues any woman who wears it with access to her Shawafa.”
Shay's not sure which is more unbelievable: that such an object exists or that Hind would continue using Snow while possessing such a ready solution. Unless there's something the touched one isn't saying. Her shoulders tense. “Does it have side effects?”
“None. It doesn't make the wearer blitzed. It isn't addictive. And it won't accelerate the aging process.” Hind holds up a finger. “The only problem is it doesn't work for me.”
Shay frowns. “Why not?”
“Touched ones have conditioned their Shawafa to respond to Snow.” Hind slides the ring onto her bony finger.
“See? Nothing. But you … your powers are unsoiled. Pure. And the hjabat will make the process of mastering them …” She snaps her fingers, her smile growing so wide, it almost looks too big for her face. “Instantaneous.”
Something feels wrong. Shay knows magic is unpredictable. Take, for instance, Sami's mother and her Shawafa. Hadiqmin, Ghita called it. The midwife described it as amazing, but it nearly killed Sami. And it did kill the khala at the farmhouse.
In the times before natural magic disappeared, Sami's mother might have been a gardener and used her Shawafa to nudge her plants and vegetables to flourish.
She might have grown herbs so powerful that meals enhanced with them would leave a person full for days.
Foods with such high nutrients, they could save the realm's poorest from starving.
And flowers with scents so lush and lasting, their perfumes could raise the lowest spirits.
But with Snow, that same Shawafa manifested as killer thorns, snaking vines, and ghost bees.
Which would be the case with the hjabat?
“You're overthinking this.” Hind scrutinizes Shay's face like someone combing the ground for a dropped coin.
She holds out the ring. “This is the only way for me to avoid using more Snow.
We can easily earn enough to pay my debts and to cover the price of two caravan tickets to Kiddah.
Or you can leave me here, but I'd certainly hate to up and die after finally being reunited with my daughter.”
A million protests wither in Shay's throat.
Despite a rocky start, she wants to believe she and Hind can be a family of two.
Sure, the touched one has lied to her, effectively stolen from her, but there's still hope for her to change.
She just needs to be alive to do so. And maybe this way, Ghita will never even know about the missing ticket.
No sooner does she slip the hjabat on, feel its snug squeeze around her finger, the drag of its heft on her delicate hand, than the crystal emits a silver glow.
Shay stares, mesmerized by the sparkling light, unable to look away.
Even as she breaks into shivers. Even as she cracks into sweat.
A dark speck appears at the crystal's center.
It pulses, a shadow sun chasing light to the edges until the gem smooths into a flat well of black.
Shay tries to ask Hind what it means, her query lost amid the sickness rolling through her stomach. Everything tilts sideways, the way the world must look to a newborn. Then she's falling, the darkness pulling her down.
And down.
And down.
She croaks out one word before the gloaming takes her: “Mmi?”