Chapter 25
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Hind is not well. Her tolerance to Snow has become so high, she's rebounding faster. They make their way through the damp and putrid tunnels below the medina. Every step feels like a betrayal of Khawla.
“Walid will help her,” Shadi says, as they slosh through ankle-deep murk.
Shay can't tell how much of the conviction in his voice is real and how much is him trying to convince himself. Him wanting to believe Walid himself is not in any immediate danger. That they haven't made things worse for him. “Is he your brother?”
“Yes.” Shadi sighs, and the sound is layered with grief. “They've made him a Moulay. I mean, thank God he's alive, and we can certainly use information from someone inside, but I would have rather he had chosen to come home.”
Shay palms the center of his back. “May God protect him.”
“He'll be well,” Shadi says, less certainly this time. “As long as Al-Mukhtar doesn't realize exactly who his mother is. Then they might …”
Use him to get at her, she thinks, and she understands too well the confusing mix of joy and pain that comes with finding out your loved one is alive but trapped, whether that be in a physical location or a prison of their own making.
“So, who's Yassine?” Shay asks, as much out of curiosity as to nudge the conversation in another direction.
Shadi nods, as if expecting this question. “Shadi is an alias. Anyone in the Sisterhood who lives in Nezjar has to have a false identity and backstory.”
Shay thinks about the words Walid spoke in Waheeli, the tattoos on the Morchidat's face. “You're not from Umm Chanala, are you?”
“I'm from everywhere.” He grins with a sense of pride. “I'm Hazmaggi.”
“Well, it's nice to meet you, Yassine.” Shay understands the necessity of being undercover.
His name may not be what she thought it was, but in all the ways the matter, he's still the same.
There's just one thing she doesn't understand.
“I'm curious, if your tribe governs themselves, why is your mother a resistance leader?”
“Al-Mukhtar may officially recognize us as separate, but in reality, they steal our children all the same.” His eyes flick to Hind, walking forlornly beside them and making a meal of her thumbnail.
“When one group is oppressed, we all suffer. Evil is only defeated when all good people band together as one.”
“Good luck with that,” Hind mumbles morosely.
“The Sisterhood, the Naturalists, Al-Mukhtar, they all think their way is the only way and refuse to see past their own narrow views.
Then you've got the clans of Ard Al-Ghul, who change their allegiances as it suits them.
The solidarity you speak of is a childish illusion that doesn't exist.”
Shay is taken aback by her mother's skepticism.
She would have guessed someone with the ability to heal might be more amenable to restoring magic.
For a moment, the ensuing quiet highlights the squeak and scuffle of unseen rodents.
Shay declines to contemplate their numbers, pushing the word horde from her mind.
“Do you have an opinion?” Shay asks Hind. “Or would you rather we resign ourselves to defeat?”
“An opinion?” Hind harumphs. “Exploit magic or eradicate magic or use it, but only ever for good: The problem with all these paths is that no one is trying to understand magic, and you can't harness what you don't understand.”
The answer surprises Shay. She realizes this is actually another tool Al-Mukhtar uses to reinforce oppression: keeping people ignorant.
“What did you do to the Snow Queen exactly?” Shay replays the scene in her mind. Whatever Hind did seemed to be the opposite of healing.
“Shawafa can be used in reverse,” Hind explains. “It's a neat trick not everyone is skilled enough to pull off. Instead of healing, I was able to inflict a bit of respiratory distress.”
“Walid told us he thought Muktar Jawad had done something to her,” Shay recalls aloud. Despite the power Snow lends them, most touched ones appear fragile, but that's not a word she would use to describe the Snow Queen. “Do you know anything about that?”
“Zubeda? Or ‘the Snow Queen,’ as you call her?
She's just another victim of Jawad's bizarre experiments. It can be challenging, keeping up with the miracles Al-Mukhtar needs performed to paint themselves as the saviors of the realm. Jawad figured why not make a few touched ones even more powerful. Instead of diluting the crystal they mine to make Snow into a liquid, he forced her to smoke it in little chips out of a pipe.”
Shay wants to ask more questions, the most important one being where the other hjabats are, but Hind is suddenly out of breath.
She grimaces, doubling over in pain. It takes both Shay and Shadi to help her walk, and they're practically carrying her when they reach the port that brings them to the ground near the forest.
It's only as they stand at the tree line that Shadi turns to her, with moonlight on his face and uncertainty in his eyes, and asks, “Do you remember the shortcuts Khawla takes?”
“I don't even think they're always the same. The forest … it changes. Khawla is only able to make sense of it because of her affinity.”
Whatever discomfort Hind is feeling, it doesn't stop her from glaring incredulously first at Shadi, then at Shay. “Are you saying neither one of you knows the way through the forest?”
“I know a way,” Shadi clarifies, unhelpfully. “But in your condition, khalti, it would be preferable to know the shortest way.”
Hind sighs with an air of long-suffering. Then her eyes brighten. She pins Shay under her eerie white gaze. A gaze that is altogether too knowing. “What was your hizoura gift again? Something to do with animals, right? You can use that.”
Shay pinches the bridge of her nose, heaving a sigh of her own.
She's barely practiced communicating with the smallest of creatures and reserved her requests to the simplest of tasks.
Half the time, she's not even sure if it's real or if she only imagines she can sense such things as the sadness of a bird who has lost a life partner or the determined will of an ant digging under a mound destroyed by rain, searching for a buried nest mate.
If she's really able to do anything at all, she's still not sure how it works. “It's not that easy.”
A twig snaps. Two glowing lights pierce through the brush.
A small smile tweaks the corner of Hind's mouth in a way that says, I told you so.
The lights float closer, and the figure of a deer takes shape.
Most of its body looks normal, except the way its eyes shine like white lanterns and its neck seems to be broken.
It walks right up to them. Right up to Shay. Where do you wish to go, Lalla?
The words are a whisper inside Shay's head. Even still, she glances at Shadi and Hind to see if they heard. They both stare at her as if waiting for her to do something.
“Uh, A-Ard Al-Ghul,” Shay stutters, feeling self-conscious to have other people hear her talking to a deer, a slightly dead deer at that.
“We need to travel the shortest route possible. Because my …” Shay grapples for the right word: My female parent?
My heart's wish? My ill-fated disaster? “My mother is pregnant, and she's crashing hard from Snow. We need to get her to a safe place where she can rest—and quickly.”
Follow me. I will guide you.
The deer turns and takes a few steps away before stopping and looking back at Shay.
“It would appear the deer knows the shortcut,” Shay explains to Shadi and Hind, who both nod like this is a normal development.
The creature's glowing eyes blaze a path ahead. Despite its physical abnormalities, it bounds through the forest in graceful steps, adjusting its gait to match what Hind can manage. They fall into a rhythm of sorts. For a while, anyway.
By the time they reach the first cave passage, Hind's pace has slowed to a crawl. It's clear she needs to recoup. They stop, and Shay takes measure of Hind's bulging belly, calculating how many moons have passed since she last saw her.
Not long enough for her to be as far along as she looks. “Are you in your third trimester yet?”
“No,” Hind says, a little too quickly. “It's early.”
Shay doesn't believe that. She fears even the shortcut may be too much for Hind to withstand.
It appears whatever Hind did to reverse the way she used her Shawafa had a draining effect.
She barely had enough power left to heal Shadi.
Shay can tell, despite his efforts to conceal it, he too is still in pain.
Shall I bring someone to assist you, Lalla?
Shay is so entrenched in thought, she startles at the deer's query. “I … Do you know of the seven bone-eater brothers?”
The deer tells her it does. Shay cuts a scrap of cloth from her djellaba for the deer to bring them, that they might surmise she needs their help.
Then they wait. Hind and Shadi quickly fall asleep, one leaning against either of Shay's shoulders as they sit together on the floor of the cave. Shay can't say she blames them.
But she's too busy thinking about Khawla to find such rest. She sees the two of them on Jou Boulka, the memory as clear as an open window, running on the streets of Ard Al-Ghul like they owned them.
How Khawla's face looked tilted back, long hair spread behind her like dark wings.
Shay hears the sounds they made, wild howls offered to the moon.