Chapter 3 #3
“Yes and no,” he replied, not making me feel much better.
“She is in the Unseen Realm, both there and not. Travel from the land of the two rivers towards the sea’s heart—that seems to be the path her victims take—and you should perceive the magic emanating from her domain.
” He paused. “She makes it easy for mortals to fall into her nets. It is the leaving that is difficult.”
“Yes, you have mentioned that. Several times,” I said grimly, studying his map as the dim outlines of a plan formed in my mind.
If I had to travel from the “land of the two rivers,” a certain destination might offer an ideal origin .
. . “But I have people who make a business out of getting in and out of difficult situations, some of whom know the occult sciences as well. And I am not without my own skills.”
Khayzur hesitated. “What will you do about the chaos spirit?”
What was I going to do about the chaos spirit? I’d been unable to kill Raksh when last we departed, deciding he was a problem for a future day, like a bad debt, and I was nothing if not talented at avoiding payment.
Perhaps I could avoid it further. “Nothing,” I replied, and when Khayzur gave me a questioning look, I continued. “This matter is urgent, no? If I must race Raksh to Lab’s lair, I will make sure to win.”
Khayzur looked skeptical. “And if he is already there?”
Then maybe his luck will ease my escape. I was not one to hold a grudge when needing every advantage to flee a deadly situation. But there was a stilted reluctance in Khayzur’s expression that made me suspect he and I were contemplating very different ends for Raksh.
“Surely you are not expecting me to get rid of him?” I asked. “I retrieve Transgressions for your people. Nothing more.”
“And we would never ask for anything like . . . that,” Khayzur said quickly. “But nevertheless—”
“Mama?” A sleepy voice called from the stairs.
Marjana. Alarm surged through me, and I jumped to my feet. “Go, go!” I hissed, shooing Khayzur away like the peri was a troublesome pigeon.
“But we have not yet—”
“Abominable spindle, Persian Gulf, lethal sorceress: I understand. Go!”
Khayzur opened and closed his beak-like mouth, clear consternation on his face.
But then he plucked a feather from his back, shoved it in my hand, and launched from the roof, a blur of silver and green vanishing into the black night.
My heart racing, I slipped the feather in my robe and rushed to the staircase to intercept Marjana.
She stumbled into my body and murmured tiredly, “I thought I heard you.”
I pulled her into a hug, wrapping her tight in my arms. She was warm and cozy, the scent of her hair and the familiarity of her snuggle tearing through my heart.
I took a deep breath, trying to steady myself.
Trying to pretend I had not just faced down a creature who could have blown my house off the cliff and been handed yet another arduous, dangerous quest that was going to rip me away from my family.
I clasped Marjana closer, pressing my face against the crown of her head. I wanted to weep.
Instead, I lied. “I could not sleep and decided to take some air.” I swallowed hard, trying to keep my voice from cracking. “What are you doing awake?”
She disentangled herself from my embrace. “I . . . I don’t know,” she said, rubbing her eyes and sounding confused. “I was dreaming . . . There were dolphins in all the colors of the rainbow and then one of them became Payasam. I woke up to her yelling. She’s very upset downstairs.”
“Cats can be dramatic.” I adjusted her shawl to better ward off the night’s chill. “Maybe she had her own strange dream.”
But Marjana frowned. “She was hissing in the direction of the roof. I came up to look and it felt . . . it felt like someone was calling me before I heard your voice.” She glanced up, her big dark eyes more awake now and perplexed. “Was it you?”
Khayzur’s words about sensing the presence of a chaos spirit hissed in my mind. “No,” I managed, forcing a smile. “But dreams can do strange things.”
“I suppose.” She stepped past me to cross the roof, looking in the direction Khayzur had flown. She ran her fingers over the spot where the peri had perched. “This feels cold.”
“It’s a chilly night.” I moved toward her. “Come, my heart, let’s get you back to bed.”
But Marjana didn’t seem to hear me, her gaze troubled as she glanced around the roof and at the midnight sky. Finally, she let out a shaky breath. “Mama, can I ask you something?”
“Of course.”
“When you were my age, did you ever feel . . . strange?”
I stared at my daughter. She’d shot up in the past year, not quite the height I boasted at eleven, but enough to indicate she’d be a tall adult.
Long gone were the chubby cheeks and pudgy hands of childhood; indeed, she’d started braiding her hair like Hala, my stylish sister-in-law.
Increasingly I could see an echo of the young woman Marjana was becoming, and her inquiry was perhaps the most normal of questions, a topic treaded upon by daughters and mothers for countless generations.
But I strongly suspected Marjana was not asking about monthly bleeding or the other accompanying irritations and blessings of becoming a woman.
Of all times to have this conversation . . . However, I forced myself to set aside the confrontation with Khayzur. Marjana needed her mother, not a distracted pirate-adventurer.
“All the time, beloved.” I moved to stand beside her at the roof’s edge.
Below the midnight ocean churned, a shifting sinuous mass vibrant with reflected starlight and the untold life swimming in its fathomless depths.
“People used to ask your grandmother if she stretched my limbs at night to make me grow. And as you can imagine, wanting to run away to sea was not exactly a respectable thing for a young girl to desire. But I grew into my strangeness, I even learned to love it.” I tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.
“Jana, the truth is that even adults are still learning who they really are, still uncertain, still dreaming. It’s part of life. ”
“But did you ever feel really strange?” she persisted. “Not because you wanted a different life or because you were so tall . . . but because there was something different at your very core?” She bit her lip, hesitating. “Something that made you different even from the people in your family?”
I opened and closed my mouth. It would have been cruel to say yes: to tell her of my childish fantasies that I belonged to a kingdom of sea djinn or a race of mythical warrior women. For in my case, those had been just that—fantasies.
But Marjana’s sense of being different was no fantasy.
She is suffocating. My mother’s warning came back to me, her fear that Marjana was suffocating here, locked away as she left childhood, the only part of her life I could shelter.
Maybe it was time to move beyond that.
Taking a seat on the low stone wall that ran along the roof’s edge, I pulled her close, cupping one of her small cheeks in my broad palm.
“Jana, you are my daughter, dearer to me than my own life, my own heart. No matter what difference arises between us, that will never change, understand? I will always love you, always support you. But for now . . .” I took a deep breath, not entirely certain what would come next, only that I would need to temper my reaction and put my child’s feelings first. “Tell me what’s going on. ”
It was as though a dam burst. “I know I heard a voice,” she insisted.
“Felt a voice . . . like—like something was reaching out to spy on me. And when I came up here . . . that feeling lingered. Like when the wind is gone, but leaves are still following in its wake. And sometimes when I’m walking outside .
. . there are these whispers and shadows only I notice.
” She met my gaze, her eyes wide with fear. “Do you ever feel like that, Mama?”
Ever since I was spirited off the peri island, changed forever. I chose my next question with care. “Do you ever feel like that inside the house?”
Marjana shook her head. “Not really. Not until tonight.”
My spirits sank. If Marjana was sensing aspects of the Unseen Realm—chiefly its creatures—it made sense that she didn’t feel them inside our home because upon my return from Socotra, I had chased out several tiny, scaled beasts and a winged shadow with my meteor blade, roaring prayers and threats down upon them.
I, too, heard and saw hints of the magical world in the groves and waters that surrounded our house, but never inside.
Such creatures apparently feared the giant human with the ill temper and magical blade.
“And have you . . . have you always felt this way?” I asked, masking the worry in my voice. “Or has it been more recently?”
Her gaze dropped to her lap. “It’s been since forever,” she confessed in a trembling voice that broke my heart.
“I think I’ve always known I was different from the rest of you, but hearing and seeing things .
. . not so much. And it’s happening more and more.
Like—like something’s living inside me and getting bigger.
And I don’t want it there! What if it’s a demon or evil spirit—” Her voice fractured in fright.
“There’s an old lady in Salalah who rants about being possessed by a djinn—”
“Jana, my love, breathe,” I urged, trying to calm her down. “There isn’t a djinn inside you. There’s nothing bad inside you. I promise.”
She pulled back to look me in the face, her expression so clearly wanting to believe. “But how do you know?”
Faltering for a response, I said the only thing I could. “Because your father’s people . . . they were also—different.”
Marjana immediately straightened up, wonder and curiosity blooming across her face. “Baba was like me? Then this feeling . . . it’s not evil? His people are good?”
Every vile thing Raksh had ever done, every selfish betrayal, every lie—the way he was utterly inhumane—flashed across my memory.
Raksh had once implied there were spirits of discord that had less blood on their hands, beings that fed off the disruptive joy of new love and new babies, discoveries and wonders . . . but he was a liar.
And so was I. “Yes,” I whispered, having no other recourse and hating myself for it. “They’re good. All people have some good.”
“Who are they?” Marjana pressed again, more fervently. “Where do they live? Does Baba have any relatives? Can I meet them?”
“No, they don’t—I mean—” I flustered for a response. “Your father was not close to his kin. He had not been home in many years and rarely spoke of his people and their land. Except to confess that they were different. They had . . . an affinity for magic.”
Marjana’s eyes were wide with hope. “An affinity for magic? What does that mean?”
“I could not say,” I replied, evading the few truths I knew.
And God help me, they were few. I knew nothing of these “spirits of discord” whom Raksh claimed reluctant kinship with, save that they were unfathomably old; my estranged spouse saying the very word humans had used for his race was long extinct.
“I’m sorry, Marjana. Our marriage was not a long one and we met as travelers at sea.
That sort of life does not attract people who like to talk about their past.”
“But he was your husband,” Marjana pointed out. “My father. Surely you must at least know where he hailed from. Auntie Hala and Uncle Mustafa are always whispering together; Auntie Hala teases him, saying she knows all his secrets.”
A flush of embarrassment swept over me. Granted, I would rather Marjana grow up having my brother’s happy marriage to a woman he adored and doted upon—a match properly arranged by our mother—as her reference for how spouses should treat each other.
But I was not quite prepared to tell my eleven-year-old that I’d cycled through husbands based on how attractive and competent they were in bed and at sailing.
And I was definitely not ready to admit that I had married her father while drunk so we could sleep together.
“Our relationship was not like that,” I finally replied. “I know very little else about his people, but I’m sure that if they have an affinity for magic, that explains how you feel. So it is nothing to fear.”
Marjana was looking at me like I had lost my mind. “But, Mama . . . that explains nothing. What does such an affinity mean? Will it grow stronger? What if it frightens people?”
I had no response. To tell her not to worry would be worse than a lie.
People always feared those that were different, and all I had to offer Marjana was ignorance.
An ignorance that had already proven dangerous; I had barely learned that the spell that bound the Moon of Saba could enslave her before I needed to prevent it from falling into the hands of a sorcerer.
And it was an ignorance that had forced me to spare Raksh, bitterly aware that as much as I distrusted him, he was the only link I had to my daughter’s origins.
And look how that turned out. The asshole was traipsing his way through the ports and taverns of the Persian Gulf while I needed to abandon Marjana yet again to clean up his mess.
But staring at my daughter now—who had revealed her heart’s worries only to emerge more lost—made me feel utterly useless.
“We’ll figure it out,” I promised. “Together. I’m not going to let anything bad happen to you, my love.” I squeezed her hand. “I swear.”
She leaned into my warmth, letting out a shaky exhale I mistook for relief. But only briefly, until she asked the question that haunted our home.
“But what about when you leave?”