Page 4 of The Lustrous Dark
“Are you well?” He releases her hand, and cool air fills the now-empty space in her palm. Whatever force his stare held outside is gone, replaced with timidness. He looks at Shay like a person watching a glass tipping toward the edge of a table, about to shatter.
But Shay doesn't need someone to catch her. She needs to know whatthatwas all about. How did Shadi know that whatever tale the girl had heard originated from the brewery? Shay peers deeper into his face, and perhaps her own scrutiny holds more power than she realizes because his eyes flutter open and closed. His throat flexes.
“Do you know what she was going to tell them?” Shay asks, not sure until he averts his gaze.
“I-it's nonsense,” he stammers.
Unease squeezes the pit of her stomach like a fist. “Tell me, please.”
“I'm not certain it's the same rumor, but I did hear something while picking up a delivery from the brewery recently. It was about the midwife.” He looks down before adding, “About your mother.”
Shay swallows, fear scraping her throat like broken eggshells. As far as anyone knows, her mother was a nomad. That's the story Ghita invented. The one Shay has carefully adhered to. A lie her safety—her existence—depends upon.
“No one knows anything about my mother,” she whispers, reciting a quick blessing for the dead inside her mind. Shay herself has been able to pry only the barest facts out of Ghita over all these solar cycles. Her chest squeezes with new longing and the desperate notion that she might grasp some flash of memory, a whiff of scent, or the notes of a song her mother sang while carryingher in the womb, but her mind comes up empty, a well from which she draws only shadows.
“That's the thing. A woman who frequents the brewery has apparently claimed tobeyour mother.”
The shock that grips her is so jarring, she takes a physical step back. Her shoulders clatter against the jars of preserves on the shelf behind her.Thatis not what she expected him to say. “What?”
“As I hear it, a touched one—who I think it is important to note was blitzed off her kettle at the time—told the barkeep a story, and the barkeep repeated that story to her uncle and cousins, who repeated it to more people after that. So, you can imagine, in addition to the suspect nature of the original story, there have probably been some embellishments added along the way.” He speaks with such a deeply apologetic tone, it's almost as if he's confessing some grave sin he himself has committed.
“Anyway, this touched one claimed that nearly eight and ten cycles back, she gave birth, but that the midwife stole her daughter and left a puppy in her place.”
“A puppy?“ Shay asks, not sure on what basis her brain has determined that this is the part of the story that needs interrogating. She tries to think over the strange noise inside her head, like her ears are covered by trumpet shells or her brain is stuffed with poof flowers.
Of course, it's ridiculous to suggest that Ghita could be capable of such a thing. More ridiculous, as Shadi has rightly pointed out, to entertain the ramblings of someone addicted to Snow—a drug that puts women in touch with ancient magic at devastating cost to their bodies and minds. Most ridiculous of all, the touched one he's talking about can't be Shay's mother.
Snow often renders women infertile. In the rare cases where a touched one manages to conceive, it is rarer still that they carry to term. When they do, the babies are unlikely to be viable. In Shay's case, it was her mother who died so she could be born, a fact she is constantly reminded of in her line of work.
Especially today.
On the anniversary of her mother's death.
Shay's birthday.
“My mother is dead,” Shay says, the words clawing out of her like a revenant from the grave. She tries to elaborate, but the details Ghita drilled into her until she sometimes forgot they were fabricated now fizzle upon her lips.
“I'm not saying I think the story was aboutyou, or that it's true at all.” His voice gentles, lowering until it reminds Shay of softly rustling waves. “But if there were any chance, would youwant itto be?”
Shadi is giving her a funny look again. Despite the skepticism he voiced, she's not entirely sure he disbelieves the touched one's story. She wants to say something to convince him it's false—all of it—but she doesn't trust herself to speak. Afraid she might slip up and somehow admit that, strangely enough, her motherwasa touched one.
The shelved walls of the pantry seem to slant closer, tightening in. The air grows thin. Shay rushes out, leaving the question he had no right asking her unanswered.
“Lalla!” Shadi strides after her. “Please, allow me to escort you.”
“I can find my own way back,” Shay says without turning to look at him, startled by the bitterness in her voice. “I'm sure you have more messages to deliver,hopefully ones that are true.”
She hurries across the kitchen, not stopping when her hip knocks into a table stacked high with rounds of fresh-baked khobz. Somehow, she takes all the right turns and makes her way to the birthing room as the mukhtar is leaving it. A reedy boy accompanies him, struggling to carry the heavy book wherein records of the medina's lineage are stored.
Shay respectfully inclines her head without slowing, but the mukhtar stops her with a sharp clearing of his throat. He is not the one she remembers Ghita telling her would come, Shay realizes. Not …Asim.
No, he has the same long robes, white beard, and red cap as every mukhtar she's ever seen, but his weathered face is unfamiliar. That in itself is less than surprising. Al-Mukhtar consists of twelve leaders who periodically trade positions between the four regions of Mekchaouen—excluding the fifth region of the Mourian Desert, ruled by Hazmaggi nomads.
What's peculiar is the look he's giving Shay. Does he recognize her? She stands straighter, holding her breath. This time, the rehearsed answers to questions of her heritage form faithfully in her throat. “Labas, Sidi?”
The man blinks. He shakes his head, smiling gently. “I'm sorry, Lalla. You look very much like someone I know. Are you close to the mother?”
It takes Shay a moment to understand he's referring to the mistress of the house. “No, Sidi, I'm the midwife's apprentice.”
