“It's amazing,” Shay whispers, as if anything louder might break the spell. “I can't believe more people don't know this is here. How did you find it?”
Something painful spikes behind Shadi's eyes. Cuts into his brow. “Do you believe in the Creator, Shay?”
“Of course,” Shay answers reflexively. “How else would we be here?”
Shadi looks unsatisfied. “I mean, really believe, really understand that every time we stand and pray in the Old Tongue, He's right there, answering us back word for word. That it's more than worship. It's a conversation.”
Shay gives a slow nod. She's never thought of her prayers exactly that way before, but she does feel connected when she performs them. Not just to the Creator, but to all creation. At the same time, she also feels as if the rest of the world falls away, all the worry about what her place is in it. Her past regrets and future concerns. Somehow, realizing how small you are in a vast universe can be the greatest form of freedom.
“Since when did you become a Marabout, Shadi?” Khawla quips.
Shadi rolls his eyes before going back to Shay's original question. “I used to have doubts myself, especially after my family endured a period of loss. I couldn't understand how God let terrible things happen. I thought about ending it all. One night, I prayed that God would give me a sign if I should keep living. Nothing happened. And so, I wandered out into the night, prepared to lose myself in Al-Ghaba Mayita.”
Shay sucks back a gasp. She's heard the stories. Of people, overwhelmed with life's sorrows, venturing into the forest with no intention of coming out, whether that means being consumed by beasts or following a forest spirit off a cliff. It's said Al-Ghaba Mayita will not refuse a willing sacrifice.
“But somehow, I ended up here instead.” Shadi waves his arm at the brilliance surrounding them. “I guess that was my sign, wouldn't you say?”
Shay stays quiet for a long moment. She's sure that story couldn't have been easy for Shadi to share, to live through, and she's glad he made it to the other side. Before she knows what she's doing, she lays her hand on top of his.
“What happened to your family?” In Shay's periphery, Khawla frantically shakes her head. Shay withdraws her hand. “I'm sorry … I understand if that's too personal.”
Shadi takes a deep breath and musters a wan smile. “I don't speak about it often, but I don't mind that you asked. There was a night raid on our home. Myyounger brother was taken from us. My sisters are afflicted with nightmares to this day.”
Shay's mind skips to Fatimazara and her grandson. The gallows rise in her mind once more, and with them, a tide of bile in her stomach. Even more than a distraction, the hangings are a fear tactic, a means by which Al-Mukhtar control the masses. “They arrested him?”
Shadi gives a dry laugh and jams his thumbs into the corner of his eyes. “Do you call itarrestwhen the ‘rebel’ is nine cycles old?”
This time, Shay can't restrain her gasp. The bitterness in her stomach boils over her ribs, submerging her heart in acid until every chamber burns. She doesn't know what to say, knows nothing she could say would make a difference. Then she remembers the day of Khawla's arrival at the bone-eaters, when Shay told the maid about Tarik's attack.
“I'm sorry that happened.” Shay looks deep into Shadi's soulful brown eyes. Eyes that look bottomless in the most beautiful way. “There's nothing that could ever justify that.” And she hugs him, the same way Khawla hugged her.
But it doesn't feel the same.
Shadi feels solid in all the places Khawla is soft. He relaxes in her embrace, his breath fanning her neck, his fingers fitting the notches of her spine like they're the keys of a flute. His warmth seeps into her, spreads through her body and sinks to her deepest core, a place that answers with a searing blaze.
In the corner of her eye, Shay sees Khawla again, this time with a small smile bowing her lips. Shay stiffens. She shouldn't be feeling this way after Shadi shared something so horrible. The only heat she should feel is anger on his behalf.
Anger for Fatimazara. For every citizen taken by soldiers in the night to be brutally hanged the following day with no explanation of their crimes. She pulls back abruptly, slamming her back into the jagged slab of cave wall behind her.
Shadi looks stunned, then concerned. “Are you well, qalbi?”
Qalbi. My heart.No one has ever called Shay that before. She winces. His look holds the same aching tenderness as the one he once gave her on the roof of her old apartment, as if he wanted to know her. But that was long ago. She was a different person. Who would want to know her now? “My mother is an addict.”
She blurts the admission, the words too soft and small in the vast space around them to ring as loud and heavy as they do inside her head. Inside her chest. Khawla grabs Shay's hand at her side and squeezes, and Shadi's hand glides to rest upon her other shoulder.
“I suspected as much,” he says gently, without judgement. “Between the gossip and the moon pepper. You look better now, by the way.”
“It's a hard thing, loving someone who is destroying themselves,” Khawla chimes in, giving Shay's hand another squeeze.
Between them, Shay feels almost safe, and though she knows the folly of hoping that such a feeling will be more than fleeting, she wants to try. She wants to give Shadi and Khawla the chance to prove to her that she can trust them.
Shay tugs the hjabat from her bodice and slips the cord over her head. As soon as she holds it up for Shadi to see, one of the four pillars, the silver one, flares even brighter, bursting with radiance. Shay shields her eyes as streaks like lightning reflect off its craters and contours. Everything is bathed in the gleam of stardust.
“Um …” Khawla gawps at the dazzling display. “Has that ever happened before, Shadi?”
Shadi shakes his head, speechless. He looks at Shay, questions brimming in his eyes. She tells him what she already told Khawla about her vision in the forest. He listens intently, his gaze drifting more than once to the ring cradled in Shay's hand with an expression of wonderment.
When she's finished, he hesitates, swallowing. “Shay, I think Khawla is right about the hjabat's importance. How would you feel about coming with me to meet my mother?”
