Chapter 10
Every new road is a choice, and every choice, a new road.
—Hazmaggi proverb
Shay isn't in her body. Or at least she can't feel it.
She can't feel anything. Her mind sifts through a fog of silver light. She catches the scents of blood and sweat and something deep and earthy—smells she associates with the act of birth. Soft voices murmur, coming from an unknown location, from every direction, and none.
Shay can't move. She'd say she's floating, but even that requires being attached to a body. Distantly, she thinks she should panic, knows something has gone wrong with the hjabat, can conceptualize what an appropriate level of concern should look like even if she's unable to rally it.
The silver cloud that holds her feels neither threatening nor peaceful. Neither warm nor cold. She is lost and found. Alive and dead. Everything and nothing. How strange. And how perfectly natural.
The murmurs grow louder. Women. Shay picks out four distinct voices, each honeyed and smooth in its own right, before their words start making sense.
“This one is yours, Iman. She belongs to the silver pantheon.”
“I can see that, but I don't think she's ready.”
“Find a way to make her ready. I can't bear these conditions much longer.”
“You've endured this for a hundred solar cycles already,” a fourth voice chimes in. “A little longer won't hurt. Think of it as an extended vacation.”
“I'd never willingly choose to vacation in a dank and dusty cave,” the third one argues back. “These conditions are wreaking havoc on my complexion.”
“Seriously, Noor?” the first voice asks. “You do realize you're made of glowing minerals?”
“This isn't about our comfort,” says the second voice, the one belonging to Iman. “We all know things have taken a dark turn in our absence.”
“Is she the one we have been waiting for? Where are her companions?” questions the third voice, the one called Noor.
“Alas, she is alone.” This, Shay is mostly sure, comes from the first voice. “And it doesn't look like she will awaken anytime soon.”
“Metaphorically speaking?” Noor asks.
“No, physically,” the first voice answers. “Glory to heavens, the rocks aren't the only dense things in this cave.”
“Stop that,” Iman scolds, clucking. “It's because of the hjabat. She can't move as long as it's on her finger. It seems she hasn't crossed the veil using her own powers, probably doesn't understand that she could. She's only here because the talisman has been spelled.”
“How tragic,” the fourth voice declares. “If only we were there to help her.”
“Why are you all looking at me?” Noor asks, sounding exasperated.
“It is your moon season,” Iman says dryly.
“Oh, fine. Wake up.”
The last words are spoken into Shay's ear followed by two quick snaps. As though riding a shock wave, she becomes aware of the hjabat's heavy pull on her finger. Then a sensation of greater heaviness, like wet sand filling her bones. She blinks, and her vision clicks into focus.
Ashen branches make fractal patterns above her like the network of arteries in Ghita's anatomy books. Beyond, a red moon casts the night sky in a sheen the color of fresh-spilled blood.
That can't mean anything good.
Pine needles poke into her arms and legs. Cold seeps through the fabric of her djellaba, moist soil clinging to her back. The air smells less metallic now, more like rot. The voices grow softer and move farther away, blending into a slippery blur.
A crisp rustle alerts her to the movement of something nearby. The smell grows so strong, Shay would gag if everything other than her eyelids weren't paralyzed. In fact, she's not entirely sure she's breathing, although she must be. She isn't dead—at least, she doesn't think so.
More rustling, indicating more than one something.
Shay tries to remember how she came to be here.
Here in … Warped wilderness swirls into focus.
She's in Al-Ghaba Mayita. Deeper than she's ever been.
But how did she get here? The last thing she remembers is sliding Hind's ring onto her finger.
It was supposed to lend her magic, not knock her out.
What did her mother do?
Even now, Shay's panic stays a subtle buzz below her skin, as if her emotions are wrapped in the fluff of poof flowers.
The rustling moves closer. Pads of small feet press against her skin, followed by the heft of a plump animal, the skitter of tiny nails up her arm.
A flash of fur comes into view. A squirrel.
Except, like the forest itself, the creature is all wrong.
For one thing, it outweighs most cats she's encountered. Its beady eyes glow red, patches of dried pus mat its red-brown fur, and it smells awful, which solves one mystery. The creature sits on her chest and stares at her, its mouth so overrun with pointy teeth that its jaws can't neatly close.
Louder movement, from bigger things that ramble and smash around the forest. Before Shay can ponder their nature, the squirrel unleashes a high-pitched squeal.
Shay closes her eyes as if that will mute the horrid sound.
When it doesn't, she wills her body to roll, her arm to lift, any part of her to engage in some motion with the capacity to shake the squirrel off.
Something about the animal's sickly appearance reminds her of her connection with the wounded cat, how Hind said it understood her.
Unable to talk, she makes desperate eye contact with the squealing creature.
Please stop.
The animal quiets, and Shay breathes a sigh of relief, pleased to discover she can breathe.
But her mind quickly races again, fueled by thoughts of being attacked, if not by the squirrel, then the other animals she heard.
Their lingering presence prickles her periphery.
Lacking options, she doesn't take time to dwell on how little she knows about the way her hizoura powers work.
She maintains eye contact with the squirrel and envisions the animal using its dexterous paws and little thumbs to remove the ring. The squirrel flicks its mangy tail, then scrabbles off her chest. She feels the ring wiggle back and forth on her finger a few times before the creature slips it off.
Pain hits her like a landslide. Her limbs are sore, her ribs feel bruised, and her back is stiff, as if she's been run down by a herd of donkeys. The squirrel squeaks and chirps, and the timbre of these sounds is blessedly softer and less offensive than its previous vocalizations.
Shay slowly raises her body upright. Her headache makes her dizzy, which makes her nauseous, but she takes it as more evidence that she's alive.
She draws a few deep breaths. The squirrel holds the ring out in its strangely handlike paws, waiting.
She accepts it and hopes the creature will leave her be.
The crystal's surface has returned to smooth-faced silver, leaving no trace of the primordial darkness she glimpsed. With her attention on the hjabat, it takes a few moments for Shay to realize the other animals—if you can call them that—have formed a circle around her.
There are deer with eyes clouded white. Chunks of their flesh have fallen away, exposing warped bone and broken ribs.
Bony spikes line the backs of wolves with empty eye sockets.
Foxes, rabbits, and one large bear are covered in seeping lesions, half-healed scabs, and bulbous tumors.
What may be an owl peers down from the branch of a nearby tree, half its feathers stripped away and a fat worm dangling from its cheek.
Shay wobbles to her feet and fans her arm in a wide shooing motion. “What are you all staring at? I don't want any trouble. Go on now! Leave me be.”
The monstrosities slowly back away, slinking into the leafy folds of the forest undergrowth.
“Hello? Hind?
“Are you there? Is anyone there?”
When no one answers, Shay gazes at the ring. She wonders if the strange voices she heard are somehow trapped inside it, but that makes no sense. In any case, she's not willing to risk deathlike paralysis by putting it back on her finger to find out.
Shay secures the hjabat in her waist satchel and hugs herself. She can't be alone. Not when she's finally found her mother. Their situation may not be ideal, but they can work on things …
Or so she thought.
The panic that's hung back rushes in like an angry mob.
No. No. No.
Tears sting the bottom of her throat. She turns a circle, tall cedars spinning with her, a majestic sprawl of shaggy fronds.
Ghastly faces seem to peer from their fat scales of bark, with gnarls for eyes, mouths twisted in hollow screams. There are plants she's never seen: mushrooms that look like spindly fingers clawing up from the ground and vines of white flowers in the shape of tiny skulls.
How did she even get here?
On her second spin, the shallow ruts of wheel marks jump out at her.
They stretch out to form a long path through the grass. One that looks fresh.
Her heart wrenches.
There's no break in the line, no sign that whoever dropped her here turned around and went back the way they came. What business would Hind have this far inside the forest? Or in the land of Ard Al-Ghul that lies beyond?
She peers as far as her eyes can see in one direction and then the other, tracking the grooves to where they disappear in the thick of the woods.
The stars might provide a point of reference to orient her, but the dense forest canopy blots any bright enough to cut through the moon's red veil.
Shay squats to study the dirt trail. She dips her finger into a crescent-shaped imprint, the kind a horse pulling a carriage would leave behind.
Did her mother—no, she doesn't deserve that title—did Hind haul Shay's unconscious body out here and dump her?
Her aching bones support that theory while also suggesting the deed was done ungently.
But she couldn't have done it alone. It has the man in the alley's suspicious scent all over it, except Shay can't imagine what part of leaving her stranded could possibly decrease the touched one's debts.
Shay could try to find her and ask her to explain it all, but Hind lies as easily as birds break into song.
Here's what she knows: The direction opposite of where the hoofmarks are pointing will take her back to Ghita's condemnation and certain disgrace, while following them will lead her straight into her mother's web of lies and betrayal.
There may still be some way for Shay to salvage her apprenticeship. Failing that, Ghita at least deserves an explanation. After all she's invested in Shay.
But the midwife did suggest it's time for Shay to find her own solutions.
After waffling longer than she cares to admit, Shay makes the only choice she was ever going to.
Shay jumps at each shuffle in the brush, every distant wail.
Crickets warble and insects trill, their pitch so high, her teeth lock.
Having been unconscious for the journey, she has no idea how deeply into the forest she was carted, and the more she walks, the surer she becomes that Hind played her for a fool.
By the red glow of a not-right moon, she painstakingly follows the wheel tracks. The darkness is unhelpful enough without a trail that behaves wonkily to slow her down. It often disappears into the base of a large trunk or a tight stand of trees, only to mysteriously emerge on the other side.
She steps over a root poking up from the ground and avoids a sneaky pothole, but stumbles smack into a sticky web moments later.
A spider the size of a dinner plate scuttles over her foot.
Her nerves get so frazzled, she spends twenty beakers in one place, unable to determine whether it's a boulder up ahead or a hungry bear ready to pounce.
Shay knows waiting for sunrise would be wiser.
The problem is, if she stops moving, she could fall asleep here.
That isn't an option. Since she was young, Ghita and the other khalat have warned her and every other child in Mekchaouen about the dangers of the forest. Their young minds were filled with tales of children who played too close to the edge and disappeared, never to be seen again.
They say there's a tree that produces only rotten apples.
That whoever eats one will see their own death.
Spirits, appearing as dead loved ones, lure people into lakes to be drowned or onto rocky outcroppings from which they plunge to their demise.
It's even possible the voices she heard, or thought she heard, belonged to such forest spirits—another reason not to attempt further contact.
Teetering on the edge of exhaustion, Shay stops to rest on a fallen log. That's when she first smells it.
A delicious sweetness infiltrates her senses.
A scent so sugary and rich, so fruity and mouthwatering, she can't help but follow it to the edge of the forest. She's so enchanted as she stumbles through the clearing that the scene before her doesn't register right away.
In fact, for the briefest moment, she imagines she took the other route after all and has arrived safely in Nezjar.
But no. No.
This is not her medina with its neat blue buildings and alleys awash with life.
This is someplace else entirely.
A place where abandoned-looking buildings crouch as though afraid, their crumbling facades caked with grime. Where thuja trees line the streets, bared of all but their prized wood. Their shorn branches rise like arms begging mercy from God, sharp-beaked vultures nesting in their crooks.
A sleek carriage coasts along a cracked red clay road, drawn by ghastly skeleton horses. Unlike the forest creatures, which seemed only half dead, these horses are entirely composed of gleaming, fleshless bone. Bright, floating orbs occupy the sockets where their eyes should rest.
Shay gasps, but the sound comes out more like a death wheeze.
She closes her eyes. Opens them. The vision before her remains unaltered.
This can only be Ard Al-Ghul, a place where the monsters are hungry and humans are the bill of fare. Whatever reason Hind has for coming here, Shay sees no sign of her now, and the trail she left behind goes no farther.
But that smell still hangs in the air. Even stronger than before.
Glory to heaven, what is that?
Shay knows better than to step one toe into Ard Al-Ghul. At least, her brain does. Her stomach, however, protests quite loudly. More of the syrupy scent carries to her on a breeze. She licks her lips, thinking it won't hurt just to see where it's coming from.