Page 47 of The Lustrous Dark
“Beauty?” Shay thinks of Hind, so desperate for a blitz that she'd forsake her own child, of Sami's infanticidal mother. The touched ones rotting away in the darkened alleys of the Bib. “Have you not seen the damage magic can wreak?”
“Not magic,” Khawla says with gentle firmness. “Snow. And yes, I have. But it won't be like that when we return natural magic to the women of Mekchaouen.”
She speaks with a passion that's unsettling. Or maybe Shay has become more cynical. If these Lallat are real, they certainly picked the wrong girl to reveal themselves to. “How does that work?”
Khawla squints. “How does what work?”
“How will the Sisterhood return women's natural magic? What's the plan?”
“I don't know,” Khawla admits. “The details exceed my ranking. But I do have a friend who could be persuaded to take the hjabat to our leader and ask what should be done with it. I was planning on meeting him tonight. Would you consider coming with me?”
Shay blanches, a new panic squeezing her throat. “You were planning on going out? Tonight?”
“Don't you know?” Khawla vibrates with barely contained excitement. “Tonight is Jou Boulka!”
Every sowing season, Mekchaouen's citizens dress up in animal skins and cook meat over large fires in the street. Ghita never allowed Shay to attend the festival, calling it a celebration of debauchery. Shay always thought it was more about the symbolic struggle between good and evil, but she never wanted to go badly enough to argue the point.
We can't just leave without telling the bone-eaters. I could be arrested if I'm recognized. Al-Ghaba Mayita is too dangerous at night. The whole world is too dangerous.
All these reservations play through Shay's mind, but she can see on Khawla's face how important this is to her. She either truly believes the realm can be saved, or she thinks the ring will earn her recognition from her faction's leadership. Shay can understand both desires, even if she isn't completely on board with the cause herself.
“I suppose it wouldn't hurt just to see if the ring really is important.”
“Yes!” Khawla jumps up, yanking Shay with her by the hand. So great is her excitement, Shay wonders if Khawla intended to ask her to the festival all along. And despite her misgivings, she hopes that is the case. “This is going to be so much fun. And don't look so worried. I have a plan!”
Of course she does.As Khawla drags her from the bone-eaters’ quarters, Shay remembers her reason for entering them in the first place. “Khawla, wait. I wanted to ask: Have you happened to see my prayer beads anywhere?”
“No …” Khawla halts. Her body freezes up, and her eyes flutter closed. After a brief moment, she opens them and marches straight to Aicha the scarab beetle's glass living enclosure. She removes the lid, dips her hand inside, and withdraws it with Shay's beads dangling from her fingers. “I wonder how those got in there …”
“I have no idea, but thank you.” Shay takes the beads. She must have dropped them in the enclosure while she was in the bone-eater's room yesterday.
After noticing Deebi's increasingly frustrated attempts to train his pet, Shay decided to use her abilities to secretly help him. But she doesn't tell Khawla that. She may not be involved with the Naturalists, but she's still a rebel. And instead of spurning magic, this new faction seems to revere it. All Shay wants is to lie low and keep her neck noose-free, and advertising her ability probably isn't the best way to accomplish that.
She does find it most peculiar that Khawla knew exactly where to look.
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Jou Boulka, the night of skins: A festival with roots in Hazmaggi tradition that has been adopted over the years by the mainstream culture of Mekchaouen. Some say its rituals represent the cycle of birth and rebirth; others say it is a celebration of fertility. It is believed to be bad luck to light a fire in your home on this night, therefore meat is cooked outdoors on public fires instead. Citizens dress up in furs to honor the spirits of the animals that have been sacrificed to provide nourishment. Children are known to knock on doors and ask for money or wool or goat skins. It is believed that a child who manages to touch the skin of one of the costumed festivalgoers, who often thwart the children's attempts by hitting them playfully with a severed animal limb, will have good fortune in the coming solar cycle.
—Encyclopedia of Holidays and Celebrations
The first step of Khawla's plan is to dress them up in disguises. She clips small horns into their hair and loops bracelets adorned with the hooves of mini-goats around their wrists. She then lines up tubs of paint in the colors of red, white, black, and green, and proceeds to employ them with an artistry that makes Shay think her earlier comment about the gift of painting was something more than a random comparison.
Khawla stains Shay's skin in the deathly pallor of a wraith who hasn't glimpsed a drop of sunlight in ages. Black circles hang around her eyes. Tiny marks around her mouth create the illusion of threads stitched into herflesh. On her own face, Khawla draws black veins that wind around her eyes, appearing to twist under her skin and seeming to carry a substance much darker than blood. The maid paints another mouth over her own in sweeps of red and uses white to set rows of jagged teeth within it.
The results render them indistinguishable from the nonhuman inhabitants of Ard Al-Ghul. The girls creep down red clay streets up to the edge of Al-Ghaba Mayita. Here, Khawla walks to a poplar tree with a symbol carved upon its bark—the yaz—made of a straight line with an intersecting upward curve on the top half and an intersecting downward curve on the bottom half. It's a motif that symbolizes freedom, often seen in Hazmaggi tattoos. Khawla presses her hand to the symbol, her eyes fluttering closed again, her face bearing that look of concentration.
When she opens them, she reaches into the thick cloth sash tied around the waist of her skirt and pulls out a tapered candle. She holds it with two fists and cracks it, but instead of breaking in half, the stick illuminates with a fluorescent glow. A grin tugs the corners of Shay's mouth.
Not a candle—a jinn stick.
The same lava used to straighten hair can also be encased in beeswax to form a child's toy. Shay used to collect them from the ground on the mornings after festivals when Ghita wasn't watching. Once broken, the stick will stay aglow for about a day.
Her palms dampen right along with her sense of adventure when she recalls the gruesome animals from her last forest foray, the way red moonlight reflected in the eyes of those that had any. The shadows of night that seemed to conspire to hide the girls in their escape now sway like thick ropes ready to coil about her neck.
It may not be too late to convince the maid to turn around. In fact, if what Deebi told her is true, getting to the festival tonight shouldn't even be possible. “Khawla, I'm confused. Doesn't it take at least one whole day for humans to cross Al-Ghaba Mayita by foot?”
“Not if you know the right shortcuts.” The maid's eyes sparkle with mischief and starlight. As though sensing Shay's growing apprehension, she grabs herhand and squeezes it lightly. “Listen to me. I want you take a deep breath. And then look up.”
