“Come,” the boy urges, tugging Shay's sleeve. “My memma always tells me to keep my eyes on pretty things. She says that which you look upon, you become.”
“Your memma is a wise one.” Shaking off the chill, Shay quickly pursues the child. They swerve around a small herd of goats in their path and finally stop before one of the few shelters with a door, albeit one resting crookedly in its frame.
Could her mother have been here all along? Surely, Shay would have felt some invisible thread pulling her by the heart, the same way the sea must feel the inexorable tug of the moon. But isn't it true that she's always carried an unnamed longing inside her? She attributed it to her constant contact with expectant mothers, but what if it was more? If she had any inkling her mother could be eking out an existence in the medina's slum, she would have found a way to help her.
But maybe she still can.
Panting, and more winded than a girl her age should be, Shay turns to Badar as he stretches on his toes and beckons her to bend her ear.
“Wanna know a secret?” he asks, whispering mischievously. “There are no traps.”
Giggling, the boy darts away, leaving Shay to question everything she's heard about the resistance. Al-Mukhtar would have citizens believing the rebels were heartless brutes who wouldn't think twice about putting their own children in harm's way. But what if they're just the brave few willing to stand up in the face of tyranny? What if they actually protect the realms’ most vulnerable?
The door is shaped like a giant keyhole and painted the indigo of night. Once upon a time, it might have been called fancy. Now it's rusted and peeling and doesn't look at all out of place amid the surrounding clutter where nothing matches.
Hesitantly, she knocks. A warm breeze carries distant chatter, the squawk and bray of livestock, fumes of garbage rotting nearby. What if the woman isn't home? Shay knocks a few more times.
Her thoughts skip back to the touched ones who huddled in the shadows. One of the women was slumped against a wall, seemingly unconscious. This Hind may be inside her dwelling right now, suffering an overdose that has left her unable to answer.
“Hind?” Shay knocks again, louder.
The misaligned door gives beneath her efforts. It cracks open to reveal a slice of mud-brick wall. Shay looks back over her shoulder, half hoping no one is watching and half seeking someone who might give her permission to enter. No one is close by or paying attention. Telling herself it's not intruding if someone needs help, Shay steps inside, the door falling shut behind her.
The room, for there is only one, looks almost homey. A single small window draws Shay to the back. She pushes the curtains apart, releasing a cloud of dust and letting in enough light to distinguish that the lumps on the sleeping pallet are merely blankets and pillows. In a corner sits a folded prayer mat, a book of scriptures held aloft by a wooden stand, and a clay bowl cradling a string of glass remembrance beads.
With a heavy sigh, Shay turns back toward the door. It seems the woman is out, after all. The skid of her sole over something wet stops her just before she steps on a fancy-looking bottle. It's tipped upon its side, its contents dribbling out onto the layer of unfinished boards that serve as a floor. She squats and picks it up, sniffing the neck as she reinserts the stopper.
Peach blossom.A sweet warmth spreads across the pathways of her mind, coaxing a smile to her lips. The scent, somehow achingly familiar, echoes of infantile memories. At least, that's what Shay chooses to believe. She closes her eyes and basks in the feeling.
Only when she opens them does the shape that lies twisted across the room come into focus. Gasping, Shay tosses the bottle aside. She lunges toward the woman whose form the shadows previously concealed.
Her pale skin looks bleached, shading the dark circles beneath her eyes all the blacker. Sparse fluffs dust her head like a light layer of snow, patches of pink scalp peeking through. Her arms stick from her sleeves, her neck from her collar, thin as twigs, the knobs of her elbows, knuckles, and chin seeming enormous in comparison.
“Hind?” Shay gives the woman's shoulders a gentle shake, making her head loll limply from side to side. “Are you well?”
Something dark trickles from the side of her mouth. Shay's mind flashes to the khala's corpse back at the farmhouse. With flaring panic, she dives into action, but as she gently uncurls the woman's stiff body, the crisp crackle of bones suggests she's too late. Nevertheless, Shay delivers compressions to her frail chest. She breathes air against her chilling lips.
“What in the seven hells are you doing?” The woman pushes Shay off her with sudden strength. Wheezing, she wipes her mouth with the back of her hand and glares at Shay.
Their eyes are the same shade of smoky brown. Faded Hazmaggi tattoos scrawl across her cheeks and forehead. Odd, given that Ghita said the detail about Shay's nomadic heritage was fabricated.
“That's funny. You don't exactly look like the sort to break into women's homes and assault them in their sleep.”
She's obviously alive, but no less a thing of horror, and Shay's first impulse is to deny that such a creature could be her mother. Yet, even in the meager light from the shelter's grime-streaked window, the resemblance is notable. As her adrenaline dies down, Shay's fingers trace her own slightly crooked nose, her tapered chin. With a strange sense of detachment, she wonders if everything she thought true is a lie and all the lies are true.
“Devil got yer tongue?” the woman derides. She leaves Shay lumped on the floor and shuffles to the middle of the room. There, she dumps a bucket of hot coals into a pit dug into the ground where it has been left uncovered. Shay watches her hang a dented teapot of water over the fire.
Recovering her voice, she sputters, “Wh-what are you doing?”
“Never seen someone make tea?” the woman grumbles. Despite her mockery, a hint of kindness touches her face, turning pit marks into dimples. She pats a large, round starmia made of tattered leather beside her. “Come sit.”
Shay's tongue adheres to the bottom of her mouth as she crosses the room obediently. All the cycles she carried this wish inside her, this unspoken yearning for maternal love, she never once stopped to think of what she would say to her mother if given the chance. Her heart pumps hard under the cotton of her djellaba, gushing all the words she cannot find.
For her part, the woman says nothing more. She goes about preparing tea, her method similar to Ghita's but different in a way that takes Shay a few moments to pin. It isn't so much her process as the way she holds herself as she moves. So unlike Ghita's confident posture. The touched one, old as she looks, has the body language of an unsteady but eager toddler.
She finally hands Shay a glass, accompanied by a tight smile. Shay holds the warm tea in her hands as though she can't recall what to do with it. When she opens her mouth, she has no idea what she means to say until the words tumble out. “Khalti, do you know who I am?”
The touched one taps her dirty nail on her glass and looks at Shay as if she insulted her. Something like pain glistens briefly in her eyes before she blinks it away. “Do you imagine I can't recognize my own flesh and blood?”
