The Jinn Daughter, page 17
“Yes, of course,” I say through gritted teeth. “I know this.”
He stares at me, then flicks his gaze over to the girls. “I’m sorry about Layala, but my sacrifice is for Sayil, and Sayil alone.”
I bow my head. “Of course. I’m only keeping her body from rotting quicker.”
He gives me a sharp nod of the head, and I turn back to the girls. I set more logs in the fire and make sure the bowls of blood are beside me.
“I’m ready,” Rami says behind me.
I turn around. He’s standing there, by the table, one hand near the girls’ soul seeds, the other holding a knife out to me.
“Please,” he says, and his silvery eyes are wide. “Please make it quick. Make it deep.” He turns so he’s facing away.
I stand behind him, my mouth so dry I pause to drink some water.
“All well?” Rami says, looking at me over his shoulder.
“Yes, yes, of course,” I say, and he faces ahead of him again.
This is for Layala. This is for your child. His sacrifice will be worth it.
This is for Layala, I keep repeating to myself.
I settle my hand on Rami’s shoulder and force him down to his knees. He’s shivering now, his breaths are ragged.
This is for Layala.
I plunge the knife into his neck and watch him bleed.
This is for Layala. This is for Layala. This is for Layala.
He’s clutching at his neck, and I resist the urge to place a warm cloth and pack herbs into his wound to stop the bleeding.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him, coo to him even, as if he were a child I was putting to sleep. “This will be over shortly.”
This is for Layala.
He sputters, and more blood drains out of him. I hold a bowl to capture it, letting the blood fill up, even as Rami slumps to the ground. He’s not breathing anymore, and he’s still, his eyes closed.
This is for Layala.
I pour both my blood and Rami’s together into a bowl and swirl it. I pry Layl’s mouth open and slide the blood down her throat.
Then I drink the rest of it.
It’s salty and metallic and thick with clot. I gag and choke, and I want to vomit. But I force it down with water, trying not to think too much about it. I hold my fist to my mouth for a few breaths, until my stomach is settled and I know I won’t vomit it all out. I set the kettle on to boil, and I eat Rami’s soul seed.
I gasp when the soul releases its stories. They’re violent and grotesque. Mosaics of body parts and rotting flesh, ash and dust and fire, and death from ages past. I see the rot of decaying bodies choking the earth. I feel the souls not as they were when they died, but before that. They were … happy? There is warmth on my skin—sunshine. And I smell fresh grass and rain. I hear music and dancing, the heavy thrum of drumming in the night air.
The images shift, the sounds more distant, and I see dead children. Bodies piled on bodies, then set on fire. The earth spits out fire and flame, and black ash settles on everything. The oceans swallow the ash. I can’t make out a single story thread, there are too many scenes flashing before me.
But then my magic settles on one story, and I pluck it out.
A claymaster was married for twenty years to her husband, a painter. She was still young in her own mind, no more than forty years, but she’d never had a child.
She and her husband both wanted children, twins even, so they would always have a playmate in each other.
One day, the claymaster told her husband, “I’m going to make us a child.”
Her husband laughed and said, “You can’t do that without my help.”
“You’re right,” the claymaster said, and plucked two hairs from the man’s head and two from hers. She took two types of clay, one she always used that was easy to mold, and another type that was grainier and took more of her skill to shape.
She mixed both her and her husband’s hairs in each of the clay and set about molding both into children. Two girls, for she’d always wanted a sister, though she only had brothers.
The claymaster shaped them into the most beautiful babies she could—with dimpled cheeks and hands, chubby bellies, bright eyes, and button noses. She molded the clay for days, shaping and drying and heating. Her husband painted the clay, taking weeks to make sure he did his most beautiful work.
Then they waited. They set the clay babes under the light of a full moon, smoothed the bodies with oils and herbs, and splashed a life spell over the clay, given to them by a witch who lived deep in the woods.
The claymaster and her husband went to sleep and prayed their efforts would reward them.
When they awoke to bright sunshine, the claymaster rushed out of her house to check on the clay. In place of what she and her husband left out the night before were two bone and blood babies, smiling up at her as if they’d known her their entire short lives.
“Husband!” she yelled. “Husband, come quick!”
Her husband dashed out of the house, and when he saw the babes, he picked each one up and cried.
“Two girls,” the claymaster said, “just as we wanted.”
They took the girls inside and raised them in love.
The years flew by and soon the girls were ten and as different as could be. The one fashioned of easy clay was easygoing, with bright blue eyes and pale hair, and her name was Shamsa, the sun. The other was wilder, more stubborn, as if born of the wilderness, with her dark hair and brown eyes, and her name was Amur, the moon. But the two were inseparable.
The claymaster remarked to her husband, “Our girls are so different, perhaps we should separate them, so Amur doesn’t spoil Shamsa’s goodness.”
The two parents thought on it, then decided they would separate the girls, sending Amur to the witch in the woods to keep away from Shamsa, who would stay home with them.
The sisters refused at first, but then when they were asleep one night, the claymaster’s husband took Amur, still sleeping, to the witch in the woods and left her at her doorstep. When the witch awoke the next morning, she found the girl still sleeping on a mat of leaves before her house.
“Wake, girl,” she said. “You have been deceived, but not by my hand.”
Amur was angry, and though she tried, she could not find her way back to her home, and the witch refused to help, saying she did not meddle in the affairs of selfish humans without a good reason. So, Amur stayed with the witch, and she learned the witch’s ways.
Years passed, and Shamsa grew more beautiful as Amur grew more wild. But none was less than the other, for they were different sides of the same hand.
One day, Amur spotted Shamsa gathering berries deep in the woods. She was happy to see her sister, but also angry that Shamsa was the one who their parents loved.
So, she decided to kill her and take her place. She followed Shamsa back to their parents’ home and learned the route. At night, she waited until all were asleep and snuck into the house, poisoned thorn vine in hand.
But just as she was about to stab her sister in the neck with the thorn, Shamsa’s eyes flew open. She recognized her sister instantly, though many years had passed.
“Amur?” she said in a low voice so she wouldn’t wake their parents.
Amur’s hand dropped and she felt shame for what she had been about to do.
Shamsa eyed the poisoned thorn but drew her sister closer to her. “I wouldn’t have blamed you, if you had done it,” she said. “Our parents wronged you. I begged them for years to bring you back, but they never listened. Here’s what we’ll do: you sleep here with me and when they awake, we will surprise them!”
Amur thought on it, then slipped into her sister’s bed. They curled up into each other like they did as children and slept as if no years had ever passed between them. When the sun broke through the windows, the sisters awoke and set out a breakfast for their parents, then sat at the table and waited for them to awake.
When the claymaster and her husband awoke, they found both sisters at the table. The claymaster’s knees failed her and she fell to the ground. Her husband tore at his hair and asked his deceived daughter for forgiveness.
“You have wronged me,” she said. “But I forgive you, for I only want to be with my sister again.”
What Amur didn’t know, though, was that Shamsa had the poisoned thorn in her hand. With her parents distracted, she rose up and stabbed them both with the thorns, killing them.
“Shamsa!” Amur said. “How could you?”
“They have made my life miserable, from sending you away to keeping me inside the house so no one would spoil me. They are miserable, sorry creatures and didn’t deserve the lives they were given.”
Though Amur was happy she had her sister back, she knew it was wrong to kill their own parents. Using the witch’s magic she learned over the years, she brought the claymaster and her husband back to life. But it wasn’t a true life, no, for no witch’s magic is stronger than death’s. The best she could do was to bring the claymaster and her husband back into the shape of clay dolls. Each full moon, when the clay dolls were set out under the moonlight, they came back to life, just for that night.
And so, the sisters lived this way the rest of their long lives, meeting their parents at every full moon, but living in happiness together the rest of the time.
I’m surprised at the story. It’s sweet, even as it came with pain. I hold the story in my mind and quickly write it in blood over Layala’s body. I sketch the gardens, the plants, and the witch and Amur and Shamsa, from memory. I write the words of the tale until every inch of her body is covered in it.
“I’m sorry, Rami. And I thank you for your sacrifice,” I say aloud. “It will not be in vain.”
And if you knew what Layala was planning at the river, if you chose not to stop her, then I care even less for your life. And if you had no hand in this, then know your life goes toward a greater good.
I look down at Sayil, and with as much affection as I can feel for Death’s daughter, who looks nothing like my own with her pale hair and pale coloring, yet so similar in her youth and beauty, I say, “I’m sorry, Sayil. But my Layala comes first.”
Then I take Layala’s soul seed from its jar and eat it.
34
It doesn’t feel right. Layala’s story isn’t what I expect. I know her feel, the way her soul felt when she was an infant.
But I shake my head to clear the thought. An infant is not the same as a child is not the same as an adult. An infant barely has stories to their soul, and Layala was far too young when I raised her before. Of course she would feel different.
Still, her story is different, ripe with a grief I know I’ve had a hand in. It makes my heart bleed, because it’s a story I understand.
A fisherman lived alone in a hut on a small island of one hundred souls. Every morning, he threw his nets, hoping for a catch that would let him both have a warm meal for the night and something to sell in the market in the morning.
One day, he was out on his boat, his nets cast into the sea. He felt a tug and so went to look to see what was caught in his nets.
He was met with two large eyes and a pleading mouth.
“You are a woman,” he said, and lifted the nets out of the water and dragged the woman from its tangles. “Where did you come from?” he asked her.
“From the sea, from deep in the sea,” she told him.
“But you are a human woman,” he said. “How can that be?”
“I have been cursed by a wicked witch and banished from the sea. She forced me into this skin that breathes the air and not the water I was born in. I was caught in your nets as I was trying to swim to shore.”
“Come home with me,” the fisherman said. “I will make you my wife and I will offer you safety.”
The woman agreed and she went home with the fisherman. The next day, they were wed, and all the people living on the island were invited. There was a meal made of the fish caught by the other fishermen and the spices and herbs their wives grew.
The first year, the fisherman and his new bride lived happily. He took his boat to sea every morning, and she took a long swim and sang to the waters.
But after the first year, the woman grew sad, longing for her family deep under the waves.
“I have to go,” she told the fisherman one day. “I don’t know when I will return.”
“I can’t protect you if you leave,” he told her.
But she only said, “I will protect myself, and before I leave, I will make sure you are blessed with a catch each morning so you will never grow hungry.”
The woman left the fisherman, and for days and weeks, until a year had passed, he mourned her.
On the aniversary of her leaving, the fisherman was out in his boat when he felt a tug in his nets. He glanced over his boat and found his wife caught in them. But her eyes weren’t looking at him this time. They were closed and she wasn’t breathing.
The fisherman pulled his nets in and cut his wife free. He tried to blow breath into her lungs, tried to warm her with his jacket, but she stayed as still as a rock against pounding waves.
“She is dead!” he cried to the sky. “My beautiful wife is dead. She has drowned in the very sea she so loved.”
And so, the fisherman carried his wife back to shore and buried her in a cave where the land and sea kissed. Every night, after he came back from his catch, he visited her, leaving her a bit of his fish as an offering, hoping that one day, through some magic, he would find her again in his nets, her wide eyes staring up at him and a smile on her beautiful lips.
I’m crying at the story, as I feel the pain and longing in it. I swallow the sob of guilt welling up in me, choke back my screams. I touch my child’s body and rub my blood all over her again and again. I wash her body with the sacrifice’s blood. And I write her own soul’s tale over her, sketching the sea, the nets, the fish and the cave the woman was buried in.
I sit back on my heels and survey my child’s body, covered in blood and earth and ash. The blood and the stories are intertwined now, the two souls merged. Now all that’s left is to let steam enter her nostrils and breathe life back into her body.
35
This raising takes longer than I expect. When she was an infant, she was raised within half a day. This time, it takes two days and two nights before a finger stirs, as if death is reluctant to give her back.
I don’t move from Layala’s side, except to get drinks of water and eat a few mouthfuls of food. But I keep vigil at her side, making sure the kettle’s steam never runs dry. I hold her hand and wait for her pale white nails to turn seashell pink again. One of her fingers twitches, once, twice, and at first, I think it’s just my imagination.
But then it lifts up, and I know the necromancy worked.
“Layl,” I say, waving more steam over her face.
I bend over her nose and talk to her, telling her nonsense strings of words, just to get my own breath into her, like she does when she tells stories to her plants in the spring.
“Layl?”
I lay a hand on her chest, waiting to feel that first sharp intake of breath.
“Layl.”
I keep repeating her name and rubbing warmth into her arms as I do. Blood is flowing now, color returning to her pale skin. Her touch is warm, too. Her nails are still pale, but less so, almost pink now.
Her eyelids twitch, her eyes darting back and forth beneath them.
“Layl.”
She moans, and her arm moves. Once, twice, then she flails one arm over the other and rolls onto her side.
“Layl,” I sob. “Oh, Layl. Layl.” I crouch over her, wanting to squeeze more life back into her. Instead, I add water to the kettle to create more steam.
I let that steam drift over her, like clouds passing over a mountain.
“Layl.”
She moans again, then shifts onto her other side.
Her cheeks are flushing pink now. I check her nails—seashell pink as the day she was born.
“Layl. Open your eyes.”
Twitch. Another twitch of the eyelids. Her eyelashes flutter.
And then I see two large dark orbs staring up at me. Layala is alive.
Then, to my surprise, there’s a knock on our door.
36
The knock is insistent and reminds me of the guards Abu Illyas sent before.
Layala stirs, moans, and I dart a glance between my daughter’s face, the door, and back again.
“Come, Layl, drink some water,” I say, holding a lukewarm cup of water to her lips. I don’t want cold water shocking her system.
The knocking on the door turns to pounding.
“Coming,” I say, trying to force cheerfulness into my voice. But the knocking is too rough, and Layala is still so weak.
I watch her slump back down and curl in toward the fire. Her back seems so small now, shrunken from death, even though I oiled it and kept it from rot with herbs.
I glance through the eyepiece, spotting some men. They knock again, and the door shakes under the force. I swing open the door just wide enough that I could glance around it. “Yes?” I ask.
A dry, veiny hand slaps the door open, but the hinged lock keeps the man from barging in. Still, the hand shoves the door back further until I’m sure the lock will snap.
“Keep out,” I say. “My daughter has a contagious fever. And the pox,” I add.
The man hesitates, and I see his bright blue eyes trying to look in through the door’s crack.
“Open this door, jinn, in the name of town law.”
“It’s contagious,” I repeat.
The man hesitates again, but two others behind him shove him aside and kick at the door. They pound on my door again, and I hear the wood splinter.
“You’re going to break my door!” I shout. “And then you will have to deal with Sheikh Hamadi. He bought the door!”
“That’s what we’re here for, jinn!” the second man says, shoving his face in through the door’s gap. “He’s dead.”
I feign shock, widening my eyes and shaking my head. “What?”
