Page 54 of The Lustrous Dark
“No.” Shay looks down, ridiculously, at the flat span of her stomach. “It's me … The apprentice.”
“Bnti, is it really you?” Zaytuna disappears for a moment and returns with a pair of wire-framed spectacles perched on her nose. “Hold on, I'll be right down.”
Shortly, the woman clatters down the stairwell on the side of the building. At the bottom, she draws a threadbare robe over her sleeping gown as she marches up to Shay. Zaytuna grabs both her hands and peers into her face like someone confronted by a ghost. “Where did you go, bnti? The midwife was quite distraught by your disappearance.”
“I …” Guilt slithers between Shay's ribs. “I was lost, khalti.” It's the only explanation Shay thinks of, and she reasons it to be accurate in more ways than one.
Zaytuna huffs, jamming a hand on the crest of one hip. “I told her not to let you keep foraging so close to that awful forest.”
Shay's eyes drift back to the black smears across the door, shocked afresh by the sight. “Do you know where she is?”
“I'm so sorry.” Zaytuna runs a nervous hand over the brightly colored scarf that covers her hair. “The midwife … she fell sick.”
Shay sets her teeth. It can't be true. Ghita never got sick. And if she ever did feel the slightest symptom of approaching illness, she always knew what herbal tincture to take to nip it in the bud. Of all the times for her to succumb to illness, how could it happen when Shay wasn't there to help? She's reaching toward the door handle when Zaytuna stays her hand with her own.
“What are you doing?” Shay wails. A pang of panic fills her throat. “She needs me.”
Zaytuna lowers her voice to a somber wisp. “She's not here, bnti.”
Shay steps back from the door, and her hands are shaking. Her whole arms are shaking. She sniffles. Was the illness so dire, Ghita had to be admitted to a clinic for treatment? “Did she go to the maristan?”
Zaytuna shakes her head sadly as Shadi and Khawla take hold of Shay from either side as if she might fall. “I'm so sorry,” the neighbor repeats, her mouth twisting like the words are bent into peculiar shapes that cause friction on her tongue. “It is a great loss to the community.”
“What?” Shay manages to stutter. “Where is Sami?”
Zaytuna looks confused. “Who?”
“The baby …” Shay wipes her wet eyes, new tears rising more quickly than she can dry them.
“Why don't you come upstairs,” Zaytuna offers, pushing the question aside before Shay can decide how much is prudent to say. “I can make some tea.”
The shaking moves to Shay's legs, her body under the grip of denial, every bone joining her mind in its fight to reject the neighbor's words. Zaytuna has no reason to lie, yet it can't be true. Ghita can't be … gone. The midwife was a force of nature. Shay would sooner believe the moon itself had fallen, leaving behind a gaping hole in the fabric of the sky.
Wiggling free of her companions, Shay lunges for the door.
“I wouldn't go in there if I were you.” Zaytuna's voice turns sharp with warning.
“Is it contaminated?” Khawla asks worriedly.
The woman's face clouds over. Her chin trembles. “It isn't safe.”
Something is off about all this. Shay pivots back to the woman and speaks gently. “What really happened here?”
The neighbor straightens her face like a new bedsheet, but she can't smooth the edges of fear from her eyes. “Just come upstairs. You don't need to see what's in there.”
Desperation mounts in Shay's chest. Whatever has happened, it's surely her fault for leaving. Why couldn't she have been content with what she had? Why was she so needy, so greedy, so hungry for a kind of love that was never meant to be hers?
Turning from Zaytuna, Shay pounds on the door, a scream ripping from her throat. “GHITA!”
Khawla's caring hands are on her upper arms, but Shay can't stop pounding.
A flurry of scratches from the other side of the door. The brass knob twists from inside. Whoever she expects to see when the door shudders open, it certainly isn't the bouncing ball of gray fur that quickly twines itself around her leg. “Qamar! How on earth did you get inside the house?”
“You should have listened to me,” Zaytuna rasps, backing away. “Go turning over rocks, you're asking to uncover snakes.” She scurries back upstairs, leaving Shay to stare inside the apartment, the familiar walls and furniture buried beneath a darkness that swims with shadows.
“Maybe we should go.” Khawla releases Shay and wraps her arms around her own body.
Shay bends to shower Qamar with overdue affection in the form of pets and scritches. She glances up at Khawla. “I understand if you'd rather wait for me outside.”
