Page 11 of The Lustrous Dark
In the yard, Shay finds Ghita crouched over the body of the khala who was so frantic when they arrived. The midwife is softly reciting passages from the old scripture, while the khala, no longer frantic, lies still amid the grass, seemingly napping. Ghita looks up, her eyes damp and sorrowful, only smiling when she notices the baby. “Oh, thank our merciful God. The child is well.”
Ghita stands, while the other woman remains unmoving on the ground. Even with the khala's eyes glazed in a vacant stare, it takes a stunned moment for Shay to register the absence of her breathing. “What happened?”
“She was stung by ghost bees.” Ghita wraps her arms around herself and scans the quiet countryside as though fearing more of the dangerous insects will appear.
Shay looks closer at the dead woman, inspecting the multiple red welts that pattern her face and neck. She shudders, but quickly reins in her horror. It's not the worst death she's borne witness to. “Surely from God we come, and to Him we shall return.”
The words bring her comfort, but … Shay can't help feeling guilty that the bee refrained from stingingher. The question is, why?
“Ameen.” Ghita bends and strokes her fingers down the woman's eyelids to close them. “I hate to leave the body, but we must get away while we can.”
“What will we do with the baby?” Shay wonders aloud, jiggling the fussing infant in her arms. Staring down at him, she scans the pink newness of his skin for some visible mark of the magic that must have saved him. By all odds, he should not have lived.
A loud crunch brings their focus back to the dead woman. Shay's stomach goes rubbery as the corpse withers before her eyes.
Her skin shrivels, hair and fingernails falling away, her insides melting with a sound like bubbling stew. Soon, nothing more than a desiccated mummy remains. Thin lines of honey dribble from her dried-up mouth and empty eye sockets.
Glory to heaven. The sheer number of stings must have intensified her body's reaction to the venom. It's still not the most gruesome death Shay has had the misfortune of seeing, although it ranks closer now.
“We'll worry about that later,” Ghita says, answering the question Shay forgot she had asked. The midwife steers the apprentice by her elbow toward the waiting donkey. “Hurry now, Lalla Shay.”
They've barely taken a seat when the silhouette of the touched one pops into the farmhouse's doorframe. Swaying unsteadily, she leans her forearm on the wooden jamb. “What are you doing? You fools! Don't you see that the baby has to die? Give it back to me this instant!”
“Calm down, Sayeda!” Ghita shouts from the cart. “The baby is already dead. We only wish to give the child a proper burial.”
Shay tugs the baby closer. She gives him the pad of her finger to suckle, lest his cries disprove Ghita's words.
The touched one's age is difficult to place. There's something youthful in her voice, in how she carries herself. While her sagging skin and wiry hair, the bend of her body under its weight, suggest a woman advancing in age, and not gracefully. Yet she not only survived the rigor of childbirth, but she has strength enough left to stand there, issuing her bloody demands. Shay cannot understand it.
“Dead? Are you sure?” The woman wobbles her head and pauses. She looks back at Ghita, her white eyes gleaming with deadly intention. “The moon says you're a liar, khalti.”
The touched one's fingertips kindle green.
Shay clucks her tongue twice. “Go, Jarjeer. Faster than you've ever gone.”
The cart jolts forward. Shay shoots a backward glance at the touched one. She looks as thin as the moonlight surrounding her, her glowing hands thrown toward the sky.
4
The truest lover is a friend.
The truest gift is trust.
The truest misfortune is false belief.
The truest leader is a seeker.
—the poet Rimkin
Jarjeer rockets down the path, hooves clacking, gravel popping. The ride starts smooth, but soon the ground rumbles. Quakes cant the cart side to side in steepening arcs. Shay's stomach sloshes. More rumbling. A louder sound, like fabric ripping.
She peers fearfully over the side rail, feeling the prickle of cool night air against her cheeks. Vines as thick as snakes shoot from the ground and curl like hooks around the spokes of the wheels, thwarting their spin. Shay looks back to the farmhouse.
The touched one has moved from the door to the lawn. She reaches after them with outstretched arms, fingers a distant firefly glow. The earth hums with malice.
The mother shouldn't be able to access her Shawafa. The baby should havesiphoned it. There's no other way to explain his survival. Glory to heaven, how much Snow did the woman take?
The midwife digs into her bag and hands Shay the one tool the apprentice has never seen put to use. The knife—carried in case a mother passes and the baby requires emergency delivery—summons a visceral chill, but it's the sharpest instrument they have.
