Page 61 of The Lustrous Dark
“I think you should go now.” Shay attempts to close the windowpane, but Tarik reaches out and effortlessly blocks it with the heel of his hand.
“Are you rejecting my gift?” He frowns, looking much closer to delighted than sad. “And here I thought there was still a chance for us to reconcile our differences.”
“Differences?” Shay balks. “Such as your desire to kill me, you mean?”
“You take one little nibble of someone, and they hold it against you for eternity.” Tarik clutches his free hand to his chest, feigning heartbreak. “If that were all I wanted, I could have already jumped through this window and eaten you.”
Shay wraps her arms around herself, calculating how fast she could run to the kitchen and where to locate the biggest knife. Maybe if she shoves the dresser up against the window, it will buy her time. “And why haven't you?”
“Fair question.” Tarik pins Shay with his dark gaze. “Would you believe me if I told you stress affects the quality of blood? It's so much tastier when given freely. And blood like yours deserves to be savored.”
“That is never going to happen.” Shay shudders, the pain of Tarik's bite all too readily remembered. “I am asking you, again, to please remove yourself from my window. How are you even there? Are you floating?” She raises on her toes to peer down, confirming that Tarik is indeed levitating.
He moves back, still hanging in midair, but now a foot away from the window. “Remember this moment, little dove—the moment you were offered peace and turned it down. But make no mistake, I am equally fond of enmity.”
With that ominous proclamation, his slender torso sinks like a flagging kite below the window and disappears into the night. Shay quickly shuts the pane and latches it. She stands there for what feels like infinity, breathing heavily and not quite believing he's gone. Sure enough, untold beakers later, something slaps against the window with a force that shakes the glass in its frame.
Once her soul returns to her body, Shay braves a look down to the ground, knowing the gloves will be there before she sees them. She scans the yard for Tarik, not finding him until she looks across to his house. His silhouette looms in the upstairs window that faces hers, backlit by the halo of a candle.
It has the makings of a trap, but while Shay didn't want to accept the gloves from Tarik, it feels wrong to leave them discarded like refuse. Besides that, the blood on them is evidence of Tarik's crime.
She could wait for the brothers.Shouldwait for the brothers. But what if it rains or an animal finds them? What if, what if, what if?
Stop overthinking, she tells herself—and quails. Ghita's voice, she's used to hearing, but when did Hind take up a lectern in her head? Nevertheless, Shay darts downstairs and hurls herself into the night. She doesn't pause to check whether Tarik is still at the window. Doing so would only slow her down.
She retrieves the gloves as fast as she can, her heart a maelstrom in her ears. Only once she's safely back inside does Shay catch the tang of vinegar and see that the blood has been scrubbed away. Dropping the gloves in her lap, she collapses on the seddari and cries.
She cries for the beautiful woman who accepted the gloves, hoping they might resolve the pain in her hands, a mistake she paid for with her life. For all the women, reduced to what men can take from them, who have paid a similar price for daring to want more.
She's still there when the brothers return.
21
Whoever said women's magic has died has never attended a birth. For what is a womb but a magic portal? What is breastmilk but a life-giving elixir? And what is a midwife but an earth-bound angel? A shepherdess of souls?
—fromThe Womb is a Garden: Essays on Midwifery
Ghita's body has never looked so small. She's been laid on the huge dining room table, and her white funeral sheets wriggle with the movement of crawling beetles. At Shay's request, the brothers provided burning oud, assorted flowers, and beeswax candles, the pleasant scents of which almost mask the oddly cheese-like smell of decomposition.
Shay offers a special prayer for the dead. She supplicates for the soul of the woman who was, for all intents and purposes, her foster mother, asking she be forgiven for any wrongdoing, pleading she be spared any punishment in the life that follows, and that she's granted nothing but eternal happiness and peace.
Once finished, Shay stands beside the body. From a logical standpoint, she understands the midwife's spirit no longer resides in this world. But it isn't logic that compels her to speak.
“Ghita Bensultana.” Shay's barely begun when the tears overwhelm her. “I should have listened to you. I should have been there. I should have thanked you while I had the chance. I should have told you … should have said … I love you. Even if I know you'd never have said it back. I'm sorry, khalti, for what I've done, and for what I'm about to do.
“I know it's wrong, allowing your remains to be desecrated, but I need to know what happened. Who did this. And if Sami is well. Nothing makes sense anymore. A world without you in it, God forgive me, is like a world with no gravity. Whoever killed you, they have killed me. But when I find them, I will become a living haunting.”
Her hand trembles as she lifts the edge of the sheet to glimpse Ghita's face one last time, her keen eyes permanently closed, nimble body forever stilled. She presses a kiss against the cool purpling skin of her forehead. Not drying her cheeks, Shay staggers to the salon, her world painted black. Deebi helps her to sit on the seddari as the other brothers stand around her.
“Are you sure about this, Lalla?” Aidi asks.
“Yes, Sidi.” Shay stares ahead into the shadows of the empty hearth. The weather has warmed to the point where it seldom needs lighting. A single lantern stands alone on the center table, shedding a thin globe of light to hold back the darkness.
She hears the shuffle of feet as the brothers migrate from the salon to the dining room. She listens to every crunch of bone that follows. Each slurp and swallow of flesh. The squelch and splatter of limbs ripped asunder.
She pretends the noises belong to something else.
Just her stray cats devouring their daily scraps. Only the market butcher at his stall, trimming fat and hacking meat into thick cubes for stew.
