Chapter 19 #2
“Why are you so obsessed with my friend?” Khawla pokes her finger into the bloodsucker's chest, but all Shay hears is the word friend.
It rings like a silver chime. She grins as Khawla continues.
“Do you think I don't see you out here night after night, your beady little eyes always watching our cottage? No one trims their shrubs that much.”
“If you don't remove that finger, I'll gladly do it for you,” Tarik says with chilling calm.
Khawla's eyes widen. She looks at her finger with dismay, as if just noticing where she poked it. She snatches it back.
“Good choice.” The bloodsucker smiles slowly. “Because while I would gladly eat you out of principle, I'm sure you don't taste anywhere near as sweet as my little dove does.”
Shay balls her fists to resist touching her neck, despising the visibility of her scars. The way they wave like a white flag on her skin. But, she corrects herself, she should think of them as war stripes. A badge to honor the women who don't have the privilege of surviving to wear them.
“Just like I said.” Khawla shepherds Shay toward the bone-eaters’ cottage at a speedy walk, calling back, “Obsessed. It would be disturbing if it weren't so pathetic.”
The bloodsucker doesn't pursue them, but he laughs. “If you're not careful, you may find that sharp tongue of yours pickled in a jar. Lawn care isn't my only hobby, you know.”
The second Khawla lays hand to the cottage doorknob, the door swings inward. Deebi fills its frame. His face, at first terribly grim, brightens upon seeing them.
“Khwati, you've returned,” he says, his voice swelling with relief. “We thought something terrible had happened to you. I only barely stopped Kabeer from throttling Tarik; he was convinced the bloodsucker had snatched you for a midnight snack.”
“I'm fine, khoya,” Shay says, even if it's only true in the physical sense. Witnessing the horror of the blood-wagon on the heels of learning about Ghita's death has left her harrowed. “I didn't mean to cause you alarm.”
“Come, let my brothers see that you are well.” Deebi smiles, his mouth tight at the corners in what could either be a sign of anxiousness or his normal ghoulish face. He steps aside for them to enter.
With the eyes of all the bone-eaters on her, Shay lowers her head and stares at the muddy toes of her torn slippers. She hears Deebi close the door, the soft pulse of Khawla's breath beside her.
“What in the seven graves are you wearing?” Aidi asks, punctuating the question with emphatic taps of his skull cane against the floor. His voice is so very calm. “Lalla?”
She lifts her eyes. Not every bone-eater looks as happy to see her as Deebi did. “It's a costume for Jou Boulka.” She fidgets with the goat hooves.
“Jou Boulka takes place in the human medina.” Aidi sighs, a sound that for all its softness carries a heavy dose of condemnation. “We have told you, repeatedly if I'm not mistaken, not to leave the cottage.”
“I—” Shay starts, but Khawla jumps in.
“Sidi, she was safe with me. We disguised ourselves in costumes, and it was a one-time occasion. Just to cheer her up. Which, if I recall correctly, is my primary purpose in being here.”
“And did it?” The bone-eater studies Shay carefully. “Did it cheer her up?”
“Well … I'm afraid she ended up receiving some rather shocking news regarding the death of her prior benefactor,” Khawla explains. “It has turned out to be a jarring night.”
“Khawla, you were hired so that Shay would be happier here.” Aidi leans forward, rubbing the skull ornament methodically. “Not to drag her out there where she risks exposure to all manner of danger and heartache.”
“It's the companion's influence,” Beni whines. “Shay would never have done such a thing on her own.”
“As I see it,” Bono contends, sucking his teeth, “if she thinks it's safe to go traipsing around the human medina, maybe she no longer needs our refuge.”
Bristling, Shay remembers the posters and cocks an eyebrow. “Or maybe I never needed it in the first place.”
“Beni is right.” Khawla jumps in quickly. “I convinced the Lalla. I can be very persuasive, and although she was reluctant, my insistence wore her down. I think perhaps we should all get some rest and talk about this when we are clear-minded. As I said, the lalla has been dealt quite a blow.”
Aidi's eyes widen. Given their tendency to bulge from their sockets at rest, the effect is disconcerting. “Do you take responsibility for this?”
Shay tries to object, but Khawla cuts her off with a curt head shake. “As I said, it was my suggestion, but respectfully, I think there is some discussion to be had about such things as independence and healthy boundaries.”
“I'll take that as a yes.” The bone-eater tugs his scraggly beard, only for it to fluff out like an angry cat the moment he releases it. “In light of your actions, I hereby order you to leave our home and to stay away from our charge. Effective immediately.”
“I …” Khawla's jaw drops. “Again, I mean no disrespect, Sidi, but what makes you think you understand the needs of a human girl better than I do? Better than she understands herself? Do you think she would have preferred to continue being left in the dark about the loss of someone for whom she cared deeply?”
“Can you get your things, or do you require Deebi's assistance?” Aidi asks with forced politeness.
“No, Sidi.” Khawla gives Shay a regretful glance. “I can manage on my own, thank you,” she says, and turns toward the stairs.
Shay may feel tired to her bones. She may appreciate that the bone-eaters defended her when she was under threat and gave her some small purpose when she had no other reason to go on.
And, though she's still not sure whether they had ulterior motives, she does have them to thank for her meeting Khawla.
But what matters at this moment is that Khawla called Shay her friend. And friends don't let friends take the fall alone.
Shay clears her throat. Something on her face makes Deebi frown in worry and Bono lean forward in interest. She looks straight at Aidi and juts her chin. “If Khawla leaves, I'm leaving, too.”
Aidi blinks. Shay sees something in his eyes she might mistake for loneliness were he not one of seven siblings. He blinks again, and whatever it was is gone. He waves the cane dismissively, breaking eye contact. “Then I suppose this is goodbye.”
The other bone-eaters stare in stunned silence as Shay and Khawla join hands and, together, make their way upstairs.
Once Shay sees her bed, all she wants is to crawl beneath her covers and forget everything that happened tonight.
But she knows from experience that no amount of sleep will reverse the hands of time, and reality will not tire of waiting for her to arise.
Khawla hauls an empty rucksack from the closet and has just unbuckled it when a timid knock sounds at the door.
Shay pulls it open and takes in Deebi's pleading eyes, the pout that carves hollow gouges and long puddles onto his ruinous face. A face meant to scare little children. But the thought that she herself was once afraid of him seems silly now.
She squares her shoulders. “You can't change my mind.”
“We need you.” Deebi lets out a long breath, releasing a stench like rotten onions.
Shay won't be deterred. “I'm sure you and your brothers survived well enough before I arrived.”
“Well, yes,” Deebi admits. “But it wasn't the same. You bring a warmth to our dwelling, a brightness we didn't know before and have since become accustomed to.”
“What I hear you saying is, if I leave, you'll have to cook your own meals and wash your own clothes.”
Deebi coughs into his mangled hand. “Is that what you think matters to me?”
“Maybe not to you, specifically. But what about the rest of them?” She gestures toward the banister at the head of the stairs.
“We all care for you, even if not all of us know how to show it.” He holds up his leathery palms, imploring. “Even Aidi.”
“Just because someone's intentions are good, doesn't make their actions right,” Shay says, her shoulders dipping.
Even if she has her doubts about Aidi's intentions, she can't pretend any of this is Deebi's fault.
She came here hoping to rest and process all this, but even if that had worked out, she could not have stayed for long.
Not while the circumstances of Ghita's death remain a mystery.
“Besides, something horrible happened to the midwife, and I can't find out what if I am here.”
“What if we could help with that?” Deebi looks down as he asks the question, suddenly captivated by his blackened nails.
Shay glances at Khawla, who has paused shoving her clothes along with more notebooks than Shay was aware she owned into the sack—notebooks filled with sketches, Shay realizes. Putting aside her curiosity, she turns back to Deebi. “How?”
Deebi mumbles incoherently a few times, as though unsure how to word whatever he's trying to say. Twisting the tip of one horn, he sighs. “Are you aware of what my brothers and I do on our nightly haunts?”
Shay makes a stern face. “You frighten children and eat corpses. Neither of which are acceptable activities, I'll have you know.”
Deebi straightens his spine. “I'm sure our lifestyle seems unconventional to you, but you must try to understand that humans need someone to fear, as surely as they need love. Better for them to vilify us, than turn on one another.”
Shay thinks of how people needlessly fear hizouras, the songs children would sing in the schoolyard that gave her nightmares of being snatched off the streets for years.
The way Hind's family refused to accept her Hazmaggi husband, and even Ghita, perhaps unknowingly, perpetuated misconceptions about the tribe.
The way certain women take issue sharing spaces like the bathhouse with mutahawils. “We do that anyway.”
“Trust me, it would be worse without us,” Deebi says. “And, in order to be good at haunting, we need to understand as much as we can about how the human mind works. That's where our graveyard activities come in.”
Shay is quite sure the bone-eaters have a very limited understanding of the human thought process, but then, she cannot claim to understand it any better. “What do you mean?”
“When we eat a corpse, we absorb that person's memories.
We learn more about what people fear and use that knowledge to improve our scare tactics.
But, believe me, lallati, humans are bigger monsters than bone-eaters could ever be.
The things I see in those memories, things humans have done to one another, those are what keep me awake.
The murders aren't even the worst of it.”
Shay blinks. Then she blinks again, and a few times more as her mind skips from one thought to another across a river of logic. “Are you saying that when you eat a corpse, you gain knowledge of how that person died? And if someone killed them, you would know who it was?”
“Yes, that's right.” Deebi wipes his forehead with his sleeve.
Shay glances again at Khawla. Her face, as usual, betrays no clue as to her opinion. Shay contemplates this most terrible of ideas, and in the end, her need to know the truth prevails. She smiles as sweetly as the thing she's about to ask is bitter and says, “And you would do that, for me?”
Deebi nods, then pauses. “Just to make sure there is no misunderstanding, do you wish for us to consume the midwife's corpse?”
Shay screws her eyes, shutting out the graphic description, although that is precisely what she means. “I'm asking you. It would mean a lot to me, to know the truth.”
“I know you're asking me, but I'll have to convince my brothers. Grave foraging is not a solitary act, you understand.”
“Oh.” Shay swallows, the recent memory of Aidi's face when she said she was leaving turning the saliva in her mouth to dust. “Do you think they will agree?”
“I think they'll listen to me.” Deebi peers back over his shoulder, his mottled tongue darting over his gray lips.
It is awfully quiet down below, and Shay suddenly imagines the brothers huddled at the bottom of the stairs, eavesdropping.
“But if I'm able to convince them, will you stay with us? Forever?”
“Deebi,” Shay says, taken aback, but also strangely touched. One thing's sure: Khawla was right about setting better boundaries. “It's sweet that my presence means so much to you. But I can't stay here forever. Surely you understand that?”
“Why not?” Deebi sulks. “As a bone-eater, I'm intimately aware of what horrors occur in the human world. If there's one certainty of human life, it's suffering. And you, lallati, you are too tender and soft to make it in that world. You do not deserve to suffer so.”
Tender and soft. Isn't that what Shay has always tried to be? The opposite of a thorn. And yet, hearing herself described that way is just plain annoying.
“But we won't let anything bad happen to you if you're with us,” Deebi continues. “You would be safe here.”
“A bird in a cage is also safe,” Shay gently insists. “But it can never put its wings to use and fly. Surely, some of the human memories you've seen have been good. Even beautiful?”
Deebi grumbles a begrudging concession.
“I cannot promise to stay forever.” Shay reaches over and takes Deebi's gnarled hand in hers. “I won't lie to you. But I can tell you that when I leave, I'll always come back.”
Deebi seems to ponder this, as though perhaps he didn't realize there could be a third option besides her staying forever or leaving forever. And Shay understands the tendency to think that way. Perhaps the minds of monsters and humans are not so different, after all.
Khawla comes up beside Shay, the sack strapped to her back. She clears her throat.
Deebi blinks, then focuses on Khawla. “I—um—I'll give you two a moment, then.”
Shay turns to Khawla, gripped by the same sense of finality she just tried to assuage in Deebi. The fear that leaving means forever. Tears flash to her eyes, but if she expects the bone-eaters to be able to say goodbye, she supposes she must do the same. “Where will you go?”
“Don't worry. My parents will be more than glad to see me.” Khawla squeezes Shay against her in a sideward hug to accommodate her heavy baggage. She lowers her voice to a whisper. “I'll come back, when the brothers are out.”
“But Aidi—”
“Doesn't need to know.” Her friend smiles gently. “Whatever truth you will learn from them, you will not be left to bear it alone for long.”
“Thank you,” Shay says, and in all her life, she has never felt so supported.