Page 108 of The Lustrous Dark
The arms tighten, the steel kiss deepening to a bite. “I'm not joking.”
“Khawla, lower the knife,” cries a young boy's voice from deeper down the newly open tunnel. “Those aren't Naturalists, and if I'm not mistaken, two of them are my sisters!”
For a moment the world holds its breath, and then the arms around Shay loosen, and the knife withdraws. Shay can't turn around fast enough. She hugs Khawla fiercely, but her friend's body remains stiff in her arms.
Shay pulls back. She gently cups Khawla's face and peers into the brown eyes she knows so well. But as blue-silver light plays over them, she realizes how haunted they look now. How distant and almost cold. Her friend is thinner. And her thick hair has lost much of its luster.
Khawla squints, and then her eyes widen. A flicker of recognition. Her guarded mask splits. “Shay? Is it really you?”
Khawla embraces her, the knife dropping from her hand, her body going soft.
When she leans back and tries to smile at Shay, it is an echo of the carefree smile she once wore. It's as if her lips can't quite uphold it, a foal on new feet. “It's good to see you, sahbti.”
“Good?” Shay's voice cracks. “It is not good to see you, Khawla El Fessi—it is all the joy in the world rolled together.” She hugs her friend once more, burying the tears she wasn't sure she could cry anymore in Khawla's nest ofcurls. “I couldn't bear to lose you. Thank God. Thank God. And thank God again for bringing you back to me.”
“How did you escape?” Yara asks, stepping close to Khawla. “Why did you come here instead of going home?”
“Where did you comefrom?” Marjan asks at the same time, peering down the passage. “And how did you get the last hjabat?”
“We came through the tunnel system,” Khawla explains, as she and Shay release each other. “Would you believe Al-Mukhtar uses these passages to mine crystal from the pillars? Turns out, that's the main ingredient in Snow.”
Walid emerges through the alcove then, only to be tackled by Yara and Marjan. They tightly embrace their brother, still dressed in a Moulay's uniform. Khawla is dressed in the plain shift of a prisoner, but on her feet are boots that Walid must have given her. Boots that match his own.
“Where is Mmi?” Walid asks, when his sisters let him come up for air.
“Don't worry, Walood,” Yara says tenderly. “She will be so happy to see you when we get back. Thanks to our merciful God, what a blessed surprise it will be.”
Confusion passes over the boy's face. He glances at Khawla.
“She already knows we were coming.” Khawla eyes them uncertainly. “The team told us to meet her here to give her the hjabat.”
“What team?” Shay asks, her voice merging with Yara's and Marjan's in an eerie unison.
“The team that rescued me from the kasbah. They escorted us to Kiddah, where Walid and I retrieved the hjabat. We were warned to watch out for Naturalists, so when we heard your voices in the cave, we didn't know what to expect.”
Shay remembers learning the hjabats’ locations from the Lallat at the swamp outpost when the Morchidat asked her to wear the ring. So why wouldn't she have told them she was sending Khawla to retrieve one? Or that she'd been rescued, for that matter?
While everyone else tries to process all this, Khawla climbs up and grabs the bracelet. Her gaze flits from Shay's ring to the hjabats the other two girls are wearing, understanding sinking in. “Do we really have them all?”
35
Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the Great Rescue in the rural area of Rifchat. For years, the surrounding villages suffered at the hands of a cult that stole their children and kept them captive for nefarious purposes. On this date, an unidentified vigilante slew the cult leaders and left the missing children safe in a local prayer house. Two and ten out of the three and ten children who had been reported missing were returned to their families. The children were targeted for their physical differences, but none of those rescued showed signs of being true hizouras, authorities say. One girl was never found. According to a statement from her parents, she would be ten and six today. This event mirrors a similar event called the Little Rescue that occurred in Tiglah one year later, where again, all the missing children but one were safely returned.
—theChanala Chatpaper
Khawla loops the heavy bracelet onto her slim wrist. The four girls stand before the glowing pillars expectantly.
“Were we supposed to wait for the meteor shower?” Yara asks when nothing happens.
Shay realizes Tarik never said anything about the meteor shower, even though he knew about the cave. “I'm not sure it works that way.”
“Me neither,” Marjan agrees. “It's more about the window closing after the shower, so as long as it hasn't happened yet, the stars should still be in alignmentfor this to work.” She shrugs one shoulder. “If you give credence to that sort of thing, like Mmi does.”
That makes sense, in a way. Perhaps the true urgency had less to do with the meteor shower, and more to do with Al-Mukhtar mining the crystal pillars and weakening the Lallat. But if that's the case, what are they supposed to do that they haven't yet?
Shay pinches the bridge of her nose. Maybe they should say something. Some kind of chant or blessing. She finds herself repeating the words she remembers the Marabout saying at the holy institute.
“Our Lallat are waiting to be restored,” she says, hoping she's remembering correctly. “The keepers of treasures, the fairest four.”
