Illyas stands, cutting me off. “Do it,” he says. “I’m not really alive in this place.” He gestures around him. “And if it can bring Layala back, I will do it again and again.”

  “But you’re here,” I argue. “And you visit us. I can visit you.” I hear the pleading, the yearning, in my voice, and I know Illyas does, too. He leans his face toward mine, and for a moment, just a moment, I almost feel him, so soft and strong. “And what if it is all for nothing? What if your seed does not work?”

  He crouches again and hovers his hands against my cheeks. “I will always be with you, in here,” he says and points to his chest, to the heart that would have been behind it if he were alive. “You know this. Layala knows this.”

  “I’d lose you,” I splutter. “I can’t—”

  “I’ll always be with you, in my own way.”

  “I don’t want to lose you.”

  “You won’t.” He leans in to kiss my head, a faint touch of warmth that’s not enough for me in this moment. “I knew this day would come, when I’d have to pass on anyway. It was only a matter of time. And for Layl, I’d do anything,” he says in a soft voice, more a murmur.

  “I’ll miss you.” And I’ll grieve for you until my dying breath and beyond.

  “I’ll miss you, too. And Layl. You’ll tell her for me, won’t you? That I love her and miss her.”

  “You should tell her,” I say. “Where is she, anyway? I expected her to be with you.”

  “She said to leave her alone,” he says, his voice low. “So I did.”

  I nod, then say, “She won’t agree, you know. To let you sacrifice yourself for her.”

  Illyas gives a dry laugh. “She won’t have a choice. I am her father, and I am deciding this for her.”

  “I … maybe there’s another way, or maybe I could …” But my voice falters. I can’t think of another way.

  “It’s my time to go, Nado,” Illyas says. He watches me with the softest look I remember seeing on his face.

  “Jahannam,” I say in between sniffles. “Eternal suffering.”

  “Maybe I won’t end up there, hiyati. Maybe, maybe the good I did in life will protect me.”

  I nod, not trusting myself to speak. Those who have been slain by their own hands end up in Jahannam. You know this, I know this.

  “I will find a way to get you into Mote, so you do not suffer eternity.”

  Illyas bows his head, but says nothing.

  He reaches out a hand to me, holding it near mine. “I love you, hiyati.”

  I hover my hand over his, pretending I feel him. “I love you, too, hiyati.”

  But it’s too much. Too fast.

  “I can’t do this,” I sob. “I can’t live my life alone.” I sniff. “I’m being selfish, I know, raising Layl, sacrificing you. But I can’t, not alone.” I glance at him. “Maybe I shouldn’t give you up. Perhaps, perhaps Kamuna was right, and it’s Layl’s time.” But the words sear through my heart and I’m shaking my head, shivering in my grief. “I can’t do this alone, Illyas.”

  He presses himself as close to me as he can without going through me. “A shared cost is no burden,” he says. “And I’ll share whatever that burden is, as long as we’re together.”

  “I know,” I say. And I believe it. “But perhaps, this is my cost to bear and to bear it alone.”

  “Hakawati,” Illyas says. “Your job in life is to pass the dead through Mote. And that is what you will do.”

  “To pass the dead through Mote,” I repeat. “Not to raise the dead.”

  “This is our Layl, Hakawati, our child who is dead. You are her mother, and that is your job, to keep her safe and keep her life hers. You will do what you must, Hakawati, no matter the cost.”

  I nod, and I stare at him until my eyes blur. “Oh, Illyas,” I say. “What will I do without you?”

  He smiles gently, and his eyes crinkle the way they always did in life. “What you have been doing all these years. Living a life.”

  We sit side by side, Illyas and I, until I know it’s time to leave. My soul is drained, being in death so long, and I know the longer I stay, the harder it will be to return to life.

  “You should go,” he says softly. “Go home.”

  You are my home, I want to say. You and Layala.

  I don’t want to, but I force myself to rise. “You are my one and true love, Illyas, and you will always be.”

  “I know, Hakawati. You are hiyati. My life and my heart and the greatest piece of my soul. You and Layl.”

  I swallow the grief threatening to overwhelm me. “Then this is goodbye.”

  Illyas’s smile is sad, but he gets to his feet and stands before me. He bows his head over mine, for just a breath. Then he pulls back.

  “Goodbye, Nadine.”

  38

  I’m sobbing on my knees in the cemetery when I return to life. I want to curl up on top of the grave and die, just to be back in death with Illyas.

  You could be with them both. You won’t have to pass Illyas. And Layala, maybe, maybe she could become Death, and be able to leave the realm. Have a semblance of a life.”

  No!

  No! That is no kind of life. That is a shadow of a life, and not one lived.

  I push aside my grief, swallow the pain building in my heart. And I walk back to my home, walk back to my child, dead under my roof.

  Kamuna is still there, watching Sayil in Layala’s body as she eats and drinks and shivers, even though she is sitting beside the roaring fire.

  “Hakawati,” Death says when I shut the door behind me. “Did you do what it was you had to?”

  I nod and move to the shelf with Illyas’s jar.

  “Hakawati?” Kamuna says, uncertain, eyeing me.

  I meet her gaze. “I will sacrifice Illyas and raise Layala with his soul.”

  She doesn’t say anything, but I notice she pulls Sayil in closer to her side. Sayil, who looks like my Layl but has none of her soul.

  You are doing the right thing as her mother. You are giving her a life, the one she should live. That is your duty as her mother and your right as Hakawati.

  “Nadine,” Kamuna says, pulling me from my thoughts. “I know what he means to you.”

  “Do you?” I snap, my voice sounding far too bitter, even to me.

  “Yes. And I wish it could be different.”

  “And there is no other way, Death? No sacrifice you can conjure?”

  “No. And truly, I am sorry for your loss. I know how painful it must be.”

  I swallow the bile rising in my throat. “There is none who owe you a favor, who could be a sacrifice?”

  Kamuna shakes her head. “If there were, I would have called in that debt many moons ago to raise my Sayil. I am sorry, Hakawati. I cannot help you.”

  I bow my head and hold Illyas’s jar. His soul is so red, so purely red, it looks more like the color of blood than anything else. The color of life.

  A soft hand settles on my shoulder. “I will be here, Hakawati, if you need me.” She glances at Rami’s body, still lying there on the ground.

  I glance up at Death, her face so mournful, her eyes shining bright with tears.

  “Bury him,” I say.

  I leave the cottage and gather more clay, more water, and everything else I need for Layl’s raising. I prepare her body as I did before, and I kneel beside her. Kamuna and Sayil’s eyes burn against my back, but I ignore them. Illyas’s jar and Layala’s seed are beside me.

  “I am sorry, hiyati,” I murmur.

  Then I open the jar, and I eat Illyas’s soul seed.

  39

  I feel peace.

  My body feels weightless, and my heart is almost light. As if the burden I carry in my bones has been lifted by an unseen hand. I feel almost … happy? Nostalgic, but happy.

  Illyas’s story smells of him, like the earth and water, the sun and skin.

  I am crying as his story runs through me, the tug in my mind of his soul’s tale. I’m aching, aching, to hold him one last time.

  My magic captures it, and though I want to wrench my heart from my chest, as light as it may feel now, I swallow my pain, and I tell his story.

  A lonely woodcutter sat in the stump of a tree he’d just cut down. The tree was crying, or so it seemed, thin lines of sticky sap flowing out of it. But the woodcutter didn’t seem to take notice, for in his hand was a long piece of bark-covered wood, hewn from a branch of the fallen tree.

  The woodcutter went home that night to an empty cabin he’d built with his hands so many years before. He set that log on top of the fireplace while he made a stew for his supper. Just as the flames were dying, he took the log, about to throw it into the flames. But something in his gut told him not to.

  Instead, he picked up his little carving knife and started creating notches in the wood, a notch each for the eyes, two pricks for the nose, and a little slash for the mouth.

  The woodcutter began to yawn and so he set the wood down and slipped into his little cot for the night.

  When he woke the next day, he slipped outside into the chill of an early morning and went to work cutting up the tree he had felled the day before.

  Again, something in his gut told him to set aside a thin branch and take it home with him. That night after his supper, he cut the branch into four pieces. He then added new notches to the wood he’d already made a face for, this time creating little indents where the shoulders and legs would be. He measured everything exactly except for the right leg, which was just a bit more gnarled and a bit shorter than the left.

  The next morning, the woodcutter set about his work, but just as he was heading home for the evening, he kneeled by a river to take a drink. His knees settled into the soft clay of the riverbank and some instinct told him to take a bit of that clay home. So he did.

  After his supper, he molded the clay around the arms and legs he’d cut. Then he went to bed.

  In the morning, the man slid the wood with legs and arms into his pocket and went about his work. As he settled in for his midday meal, he brought out the little figure and set it aside.

  As the woodcutter was eating, a bird fell down beside him, its wing broken. The man cupped the little bird in his hands and, the wooden figure forgotten, took the creature home to care for it.

  Weeks passed and the bird healed with the woodcutter’s care.

  One morning, the woodcutter said to the little bird, “I must let you go now, little friend. You have been good to me, but I must let you go back to your life.”

  So, the woodcutter opened his door and set the bird free.

  The bird came to love the woodcutter’s gentle nature and went to the riverbank where he knew he had forgotten the wooden figure.

  The bird, in the language of the woods, said to the river, “Please, river, bring this figure to life for the woodcutter to have a friend of his own.”

  The river said, “What did that woodcutter do to deserve this, for what you ask of me is no small thing.”

  The bird replied, “He healed me and fed me and cared for me, asking for nothing in return.”

  “I see,” said the river, who spoke to the tree that was felled by the woodcutter and asked if it would give its spirit to the figure. The tree, no longer a tree but cut into so many pieces, agreed, then brought the wooden figure to life.

  The figure’s legs grew longer and wider, and so did his arms. His face grew brighter and more cheerful, and the bark softened into skin. Leaves became hair and hands, and feet grew.

  “Go be alive,” said the river.

  And the figure, now a man, sat up and, on feet and legs as a newborn colt does, found his way to the woodcutter’s cabin.

  The woodcutter was settling into his supper when he heard a knock. He opened the door to find a man standing outside.

  “Come in and share my supper with me,” the woodcutter said, and the man stepped in, his right leg a bit shorter than his left.

  “Where do you come from?” asked the woodcutter.

  “From the river, I think.”

  “What is your name?” asked the woodcutter.

  “I don’t have one, I think.”

  “Who is your family?” asked the woodcutter.

  “The birds and the river, the trees and the woods.”

  And the woodcutter knew the man was the wooden figure he’d carved and put together with branches and clay.

  “You may stay with me,” said the woodcutter, “if you wish. I will teach you my trade and perhaps we can be friends.”

  The man smiled and nodded. “Yes, I’d like that.”

  “You will need a name,” said the woodcutter.

  “Shajar,” said the man, “for the tree that gave me its spirit.”

  “Shajar,” repeated the woodcutter, nodding. “And I am Ard, for the earth that gave the tree its life.”

  Shajar and Ard lived together for many years, and Shajar taught Ard the best way to respect old trees who were coming to the end of their lives. Ard learned how to gently pass on tree spirits, while Shajar learned how to hold a tree until it cried no more and gave up its spirit to the young trees just taking root.

  When Shajar died, Arrd buried him near the stump of the tree that had given up his spirit for him. And when Shajar was shrouded with the earth that he had been born from, Arrd laid down beside his old friend and died.

  40

  I stare down at Sayil’s lifeless body while I cup Layala’s seed in my palm.

  I kneel over her body, trying to find any resemblance she might have to Layala, but though I thought they shared something, I no longer do. The girls are like night and day. Where Layala’s features are strong and dark, her brows bold, her hair a wild mass of dark curls, Sayil is light. Her skin is alabaster, her hair more the color of copper than coal. I resist the urge to lift an eyelid and see what color her eyes are.

  “You are not my Layl,” I whisper. “But you will be her soul’s vessel. And with that, I will have to live.”

  Then I eat my child’s soul seed.

  A flower grew in a field of grass, and it stood taller and thicker than anything around her, save for the trees. The grasses, plain and green and slim, made fun of the flower for her tall stem and colorful petals.

  “You have a strange head,” they told her, laughing, “So many petals and so many colors. Why, we have just one head and one color and that is enough for us.”

  The flower would bend in the wind and rain and would try to shrivel up against the grasses, just so she wouldn’t tower over them. But with each passing day of sun and rain, she grew and grew, until her stem was as thick as twenty grass blades and her flowered face was as wide as a person’s fist.

  The flower was miserable, for even though every person who passed by her stopped to remark on her beauty, she didn’t fit in with the grass.

  One day, a girl and her friend were running through the field, and they came upon the flower.

  “Oh, how beautiful!” they exclaimed, dancing around the flower that stood as tall as they did. “We should take it home! We would win the town prize for prettiest plant!”

  And that is what they did. They cut the flower at her feet, and she bled and cried at the pain of it all. They wrapped her in cloth and suffocated her, carrying her all the way home.

  There, the girls planted the flower in a pot of soil, and they fed her with water from their well. The flower stood as tall and proud as she could, but she felt lonely without her grasses and even missed their teasing.

  Even so, everyone who saw her admired her and claimed she was the prettiest flower they ever saw.

  The day of the town fair came, and the girls won the prize for prettiest plant. With their blue ribbon attached to her, the flower gazed upon the sea of faces who walked by, staring for but a second or two before going on their way.

  As the weeks passed by, the flower grew weaker. Her leaves shriveled, her petals fell, and the girls no longer bothered to water her. The flower was the most miserable she’d ever been.

  A bird noticed her plight and came over to her.

  “I can help you,” the bird said. “Just give me some of your seeds, and I will plant you somewhere else.”

  “But then I won’t be me,” the flower said. “My seeds are part of me, but they’re not me.”

  “If you don’t give me your seeds, then you and your kind will die. You are already dying, so let me help you.”

  The flower thought for a moment, then bent her head to the bird. The bird pecked and pecked at her until it stole some of her seeds and flew off. True to its word, the bird scattered the seeds among the grasses so that many flowers grew tall and beautiful. The bird and its friends took more seeds, scattering them far and wide, until the entire field was covered in these flowers.

  People would come by and take walks through the field, admiring the flowers and trampling the grass as they did so. And though our mother flower died, her kind lived on because of her.

  “Oh Layl,” I say, and then I’m crying. “My beautiful Layala.” Have I done this to her? Have I made her feel like that flower?

  My head feels too heavy, and I let it hang against my chest. “I’m so sorry you felt this way, Layl. I’m so sorry I didn’t realize.”

  I want nothing more than to hold my child again, and to tell her, to tell her she is beautiful and doesn’t have to sacrifice herself to be worthy. That she is worth more than gold already, simply being her.

  But mostly, I want to tell her I’m sorry for forcing her into a pot, just like that flower.

  There is nothing more to do but to wait. But I don’t move.

  I run my fingers along the wood of the floor, feeling how solid it is. I close my eyes and breathe in deeply, inhaling the scent of spiced bread, warm tea, and … us. Layala and me. I imagine Illyas’s scent is lingering in the air, mixing with ours.

  My eyes trace the curve of my pot-bellied stove, the one I’ve boiled so many pots of tea and coffee over. The clay oven in the corner, where I’ve baked bread for my child and fed her all these years. The floor, covered in carpets made of fibers twisted by my maman’s, and her maman’s hands, each one colored and layered over the other.

 

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