Chapter 34 #2
“This is amazing.” Yara titters, also looking quickly from the earrings to Shay and Marjan and back down again, her grin growing wider and wider. “Isn't this amazing?”
Marjan, who seemed as amazed as her sister a moment before, now shrugs dispassionately. “It's a neat trick for sure, but we kind of need to get the bracelet before the Naturalists show up, so …”
“About that …” Shay ducks into her shoulders. “The bracelet was tucked away in one of those tunnels at the bottom of the cavern,” she explains, to which Marjan frowns.
“Do we have enough energy to help them out, Sisters?” Rabia asks, her voice melodious and serene. “Since they've gotten this far?”
“I believe so,” Iman confirms. “Put the hjabats on, and we'll see what we can do.”
Glancing at one another, the girls each slip the piece of jewelry in their grasp onto their respective finger, neck, and ears.
Instantly, both the jewels and the pillars blaze so bright, Shay clamps her eyes shut and throws her arm across her face, ducking to better shield herself.
The blinding glare recedes, and when the glow dims enough for Shay to rub the fractured stars from her eyes, she peeks around.
She and her companions are no longer standing on the ledge. They've been transported to the cave floor, and the brilliant stalagmites now tower over them. All three seem to have the same thought at once, peering down at their hjabat for further guidance, but the faces of the Lallat have vanished.
“Figures,” Marjan grumbles.
“Shhh …” Yara tilts her head, her face intently focused. “Listen.”
Voices. Though the conversation is muffled, Shay thinks she hears one male and one female.
“I thought you said the Naturalists weren't here?” Marjan whispers-shouts.
“I didn't see them,” Shay says. Then she thinks of the strange tracks that ran through the deeper tunnels of her dream vision. “Unless there's another entrance …”
Without further discussion, the girls move together to the outer wall of the cavern. They mold their backs against it and inch their way toward the mysterious murmurs. At a tunnel opening, a distinct blue light glows, coming from further down the narrow passage. The voices seem to have faded.
Yara's gaze travels from the blue glow inside the tunnel to the similar green, red, and silver glow from the other pieces of jewelry. She whispers, “Rasha's hjabat. It has to be.”
Tingles course over Shay's skin in scintillating bursts. She and Marjan both nod. The tightness of the passage allows them to enter the tunnel only in single file. Shay goes first, nauseous excitement frothing in her belly. She's followed by Marjan, then Yara.
The clotted shadows of the tunnel are skewered by blue beams of light. Closer, Shay traces the telltale glow to where the bracelet dangles from a fist-sized protrusion of rock along the side of the wall, just high enough to be out of reach.
She looks back to check on her companions, reassured to see the red glow of Marjan's necklace and the twin green lights of Yara's earrings. Closer still, she makes out the shape of a shallow alcove that shoulders the spot where the last hjabat rests.
But it isn't resting at all, is it? That would imply the bracelet came to be in this most alluring position all on its own rather than being planted here, like cheese wedged on a mousetrap. Shay's excited tingles turn to spikes of alarm, needling across the back of her neck and down her arms.
The cave tunnel is silent but for the soft thread of Shay's breath interweaving with Yara's and Marjan's.
Where did the voices go? She runs her palms along the back of the alcove, the light of her ring illuminating the stones in silver splashes.
There's a small shelf at the back. Just high enough that if she steps upon it, she'll be able to reach the hjabat.
If it is a mousetrap, she can't find the hidden springs. She glances back at Marjan.
“Go ahead.” Marjan nods. “I'll keep watch ahead, and Yara can look out from behind.”
Shay takes a deep breath and steps upon the jutting rock lip.
She stretches her arms upward, lifting on her toes.
Rocks rumble and groan. The solid wall behind her shifts, a hidden passage yawning open.
Her fingertips have barely grazed the hjabat when she's seized by phantom arms from behind.
The cold blade of a knife angles against the bow of her neck.
“No one moves, or she dies.”
The words are a sure threat, but the voice who spoke them calls tears of joy to Shay's eyes. She chokes out, “Khawla?”
Marjan and Yara turn around at the same time. They step forward, one's face lit in red, the other green.
The arms tighten, the steel kiss deepening to a bite. “I'm not joking.”
“Khawla, lower the knife,” cries a young boy's voice from deeper down the newly open tunnel. “Those aren't Naturalists, and if I'm not mistaken, two of them are my sisters!”
For a moment the world holds its breath, and then the arms around Shay loosen, and the knife withdraws. Shay can't turn around fast enough. She hugs Khawla fiercely, but her friend's body remains stiff in her arms.
Shay pulls back. She gently cups Khawla's face and peers into the brown eyes she knows so well. But as blue-silver light plays over them, she realizes how haunted they look now. How distant and almost cold. Her friend is thinner. And her thick hair has lost much of its luster.
Khawla squints, and then her eyes widen. A flicker of recognition. Her guarded mask splits. “Shay? Is it really you?”
Khawla embraces her, the knife dropping from her hand, her body going soft.
When she leans back and tries to smile at Shay, it is an echo of the carefree smile she once wore. It's as if her lips can't quite uphold it, a foal on new feet. “It's good to see you, sahbti.”
“Good?” Shay's voice cracks. “It is not good to see you, Khawla El Fessi—it is all the joy in the world rolled together.” She hugs her friend once more, burying the tears she wasn't sure she could cry anymore in Khawla's nest of curls.
“I couldn't bear to lose you. Thank God. Thank God. And thank God again for bringing you back to me.”
“How did you escape?” Yara asks, stepping close to Khawla. “Why did you come here instead of going home?”
“Where did you come from?” Marjan asks at the same time, peering down the passage. “And how did you get the last hjabat?”
“We came through the tunnel system,” Khawla explains, as she and Shay release each other. “Would you believe Al-Mukhtar uses these passages to mine crystal from the pillars? Turns out, that's the main ingredient in Snow.”
Walid emerges through the alcove then, only to be tackled by Yara and Marjan. They tightly embrace their brother, still dressed in a Moulay's uniform. Khawla is dressed in the plain shift of a prisoner, but on her feet are boots that Walid must have given her. Boots that match his own.
“Where is Mmi?” Walid asks, when his sisters let him come up for air.
“Don't worry, Walood,” Yara says tenderly. “She will be so happy to see you when we get back. Thanks to our merciful God, what a blessed surprise it will be.”
Confusion passes over the boy's face. He glances at Khawla.
“She already knows we were coming.” Khawla eyes them uncertainly. “The team told us to meet her here to give her the hjabat.”
“What team?” Shay asks, her voice merging with Yara's and Marjan's in an eerie unison.
“The team that rescued me from the kasbah. They escorted us to Kiddah, where Walid and I retrieved the hjabat. We were warned to watch out for Naturalists, so when we heard your voices in the cave, we didn't know what to expect.”
Shay remembers learning the hjabats’ locations from the Lallat at the swamp outpost when the Morchidat asked her to wear the ring. So why wouldn't she have told them she was sending Khawla to retrieve one? Or that she'd been rescued, for that matter?
While everyone else tries to process all this, Khawla climbs up and grabs the bracelet. Her gaze flits from Shay's ring to the hjabats the other two girls are wearing, understanding sinking in. “Do we really have them all?”