Regardless, it's not an offer one receives every day.
Shay nods, and the bird instructs her to close her eyes. First, she hears the flutter and sweep of the iris spreading its wings, and then she feels the whoosh of air as it takes off from the windowsill in flight.
A vision blooms in Shay's mind, like wearing optical lenses that magnify color and scope. She sees the horizon cast wide, a sky drenched in violet hues. Her heart thumps like a sandrabbit sewn up inside her chest. Tunneled air whooshes past her ears. In her new range of view, the world below looks reborn, the treetops of Al-Ghaba Mayita shifting and swaying like a great viridescent ocean.
By the time the bird flies a circle over Ard Al-Ghul and bids Shay to reopen her eyes back in the bone-eaters’ kitchen, the seeds of a plan have rooted in her mind.
Shay smiles. Rfissa is customarily served to Mekchaouen's women when labor is imminent, a part of their birth traditions that always took place before the midwife's arrival. Shay never imagined sharing her first experience of this special time, the calm before the storm, with her own mother.
She's adding the final touches to the tray when the echo comes—a reverberation that lights every nerve inside her. Her teeth hum with the strength of it, her field of vision swirling like the stroke of a paintbrush.
The baby is coming now.
Deebi freezes mid-pacing as Shay bursts through the door. “Thank goodness you're here.”
She scans the small room, Hind nowhere in sight. Her heart plummets. “What is going onnow?”
“She was fine when she asked to go to the washroom.” Deebi glances in that direction and back to Shay several times, swallowing harder with each subsequent shift of his eyes. “But she's been in there for over thirty beakers, and last time I knocked, she didn't answer.”
Shay grunts in exasperation. “And you didn't think to come downstairs and tell me?”
Deebi winces, pinching the tip of one horn in two fingers. “I didn't want to upset you.”
Swallowing further remonstration, Shay rushes to the door with Deebi on her heels and frantically twists the rigid knob. “Hind? Are you well? … Mmi?” She pounds until she hears the faintest moan from within. “Deebi, I need you to break this door down.Now!“
Deebi nods and backs up several paces. He barrels forward and batters his shoulder against the door. Once, twice, three times. Concerned voices buzz below. Inquiring feet clomp up the stairs. On the fourth try, the door yields with acrack, like lightning splitting an ancient cedar.
Shay ducks under Deebi's beefy arm and into the washroom. Hind lies on the floor, her limbs akimbo like a carelessly tossed doll. Bloody fluid spreads beneath her, flowing down the cracks between the tiles. A reddish handprint smears the wall.
“Mmi!” Shay shrieks. She slides to her knees in the slick pool and cups her mother's face in her hands.
Hind's delicately veined eyes flutter open.
Her eyes are scrubbed white as pearls.
“There you are, zine diali. Kbida,” Hind slurs, smiling softly. The entirety of Shay's stomach does a flip. Her mother is high as the moon. Disbelief springs in her throat like a trap, nearly snatching her voice altogether.
“How did you hide it?” she croaks. “Where did you get it from?”
“It doesn't matter where.” Hind sticks out her lower lip and shakes her head in small rapid movements. “It matters why.”
“Then tell me why!” Shay screams, her hands dropping to her lap. “Do you want to kill this baby? The way you said you wished you'd killed me? You couldhave stayed purged for one more day, just long enough to deliver her. So yes, tell me why!”
“I need my Shawafa to heal her in case she's born weak,” the touched one mutters, her eyes drifting closed again. “I took the Snow to give her the best chance. Because I know how much she means to you. And I know I've been selfish and you have no reason to believe me when I say this, but Shuika, I do love you. I always have. Every day we were apart, no matter how low I was, or how high, I got down on my knees without fail and begged God to protect you. I never meant to harm you.”
“You foolish woman.” Shay sobs, a sound that scrapes her throat. Even if it's likely the drugs doing the talking, the hungry void inside her gobbles up her mother's words. She spent most of her life thinking she had no mother, when all along she had two, each only able to love in her own limited way despite good intentions.
“That's a terrible excuse. Your body is already working hard to deliver the baby, and you've added another stressor. It's a dangerous combination, for both of you.” She hooks her hands under Hind's arms. “Help me, Deebi.”
The bone-eater lifts her mother's limp legs. Together, they carry her out of the washroom and ease her onto the sleeping pallet.
“Don't just stand there!” Shay addresses the other brothers hovering worriedly at the edges of the room. “Fetch me three buckets of warm water and all the clean cloths we have.”
The brothers nod and scurry from the room. Shay carefully peels Hind's clothes back, exposing her round belly. As she turns to grab her makeshift midwife's horn from the nearby shelf, Hind moans. The sound draws out, filling the room with its urgency. Her mother's eyes wince shut, her thin hands fisting into the sheets beneath her.
It's the kind of cry Shay thought she was used to. But hearing it now knocks fear into her bones.
29
