Girl, Serpent, Thorn

by Melissa Bashardoust

  “Go!” Ramin called to her, not taking his eyes off the div, which was moving toward him.

  Soraya silently thanked him and began to climb. She ran breathlessly, but halfway up the stairs, she had to stop, because she felt sudden sharp stabs of pain all along her body. She put a hand on the wall to brace herself, waiting for the inexplicable pain to pass, then continued.

  She had to pause again when she reached the final flight of stairs, which brought her onto a balconied platform on the outside wall of the palace. At first, she had only stopped because she had been startled by the unexpected flash of green, but then she realized what she was seeing, and her jaw dropped in awe.

  The golestan was still growing. Twining through the bars of the balcony were thick green vines lined with thorns. When Soraya looked up at the wall, she saw more of the vines growing over the palace walls, covering nearly the entire facade. Again, she felt a stab of pain that took her breath away, but as soon as it passed, she continued up the last flight of stairs, careful to avoid the vines and their poisonous thorns.

  At last she stepped up onto the roof. She rushed toward the edge near the front of the palace, where Azad was backing away, still holding his dagger to Tahmineh’s throat. Parvaneh stood several paces away from them both, alert but very still.

  Soraya ran to Parvaneh’s side and called out, “Let her go, Azad. She has nothing to do with this.”

  Azad’s head jerked in her direction, and Soraya felt a wave of dread. She had expected to find him frantic and afraid, still halfway between monster and man. She had thought she could appeal to him again, as she had tried to do on the steps below. But Azad’s eyes were cold and calm, his scales—and any other sign of the Shahmar—completely gone. He wasn’t using Tahmineh to protect himself—he knew he had lost his throne, as well as any command he had over the divs. All he had left to do was punish Soraya for his loss.

  “Nothing to do with this?” he echoed coolly. “She’s the reason we’re all standing here now. It’s time for her to atone.”

  “He’s right,” Tahmineh called back, eyes fixed on Soraya. “You shouldn’t be the one who has to stop him, Soraya. It should have always been me.” To Azad, she commanded, “Do it, then. Do what you should have done to me thirty years ago.”

  Soraya balked at her mother’s words. But then Parvaneh put her hand on Soraya’s shoulder and whispered so only she could hear, “She’s doing you a favor,” and Soraya understood. Tahmineh’s life was the only thing standing in between them and Azad. And so she was offering that life as a sacrifice, so that her daughter could put an end to their family’s great enemy once and for all.

  Tahmineh gave Soraya a small, subtle nod, and Parvaneh’s hand tightened on her shoulder. Let him do it, they were both saying to her. Another sacrifice, another exchange. She had put out the fire and endangered her brother so that she could lift her curse. She had given Parvaneh to Azad to save her family. She had nearly killed Sorush for the same reason. But now, just once, Soraya didn’t want to trade one life for another. She wanted her family safe, her mother alive, her people protected, Parvaneh free—she wanted it all, and she wouldn’t let Azad take a single one from her. Not again. Not anymore.

  The stabbing pain was returning, only now she couldn’t feel each individual stab, but a constant sense of pressure all over her skin—all under her skin, like something fighting to break through. Ignoring it, she stepped forward, letting Parvaneh’s hand fall away from her shoulder. “Azad, listen to me, please. You’re fully human now, aren’t you? You can find a new life for yourself somewhere else, somewhere far from all of your worst memories. You could forget the past and begin again.”

  The dagger in his hand wavered slightly, but his face remained impassive as he said, “Would you come with me if I did?”

  Soraya hesitated for half a breath, then forced herself to say, “Yes.”

  He laughed wryly. “I was hoping you would say that. I wanted to hear you lie to me one last time. But even though you never keep your promises, Soraya, I always do.”

  His arm moved in one quick motion, the blade slicing across Tahmineh’s throat, and Soraya screamed.

  But Azad’s reflexes were human now, and as his arm began to move, Soraya saw a flash of movement beside her—a flash of wings—and Parvaneh knocked his arm aside. The dagger flew out of his hand and skittered across the roof.

  Soraya ran to her mother, the woman who had both cursed and saved her, and knelt at her side. Parvaneh was already removing the sash from her tunic and wrapping it tightly around the wound to stop the blood from seeping out. “It’s not deep,” she said. “If we bind the wound—” Her hand went to her waist, where her sash had been, and then her head shot up. “I must have dropped the feather when I flew up here, but if I can find it—”

  “Go!” Soraya cried. She was holding her mother’s hand, but it was cold—too cold. “Go quickly.”

  Parvaneh glanced up at Azad, who had been knocked to the ground during her attack. She hesitated, but then she rose and dove off the edge of the roof, her wings carrying her down.

  The pressure under Soraya’s skin was building, but she paid it little attention, too concerned with her mother’s pain to worry about her own. Tahmineh’s eyes were still open, and she raised a hand to Soraya’s cheek, her lips parting to speak. “Don’t let him win,” she said with her remaining strength before her eyes fluttered closed.

  She was still breathing, but Soraya thought of all her mother had endured—of the shadow she had lived under since childhood, the sacrifices she had made—and her vision went black for a moment. And then it burned red.

  Her heart was pounding so strongly she felt the blood in her veins rushing to the surface of her skin. She knew this feeling, and so she knew what she would find when she looked down at her hands, her wrists.

  Dark green veins were spreading over her skin, but even without seeing them, Soraya felt the poison inside her. She welcomed it like a friend, like a savior. At this point she had always stepped back from the cliff’s edge—she would take deep breaths, calm her beating heart, wait until the spread of her veins slowed. But words were turning over and over in her mind.

  Be angry for yourself. Use that rage to fight him.

  Don’t let him win.

  The pressure was unbearable now, and her skin felt tight on her bones, like something was trying to burst out of her. It was the same feeling as in her nightmares, just before she awakened. Surrender or destruction, she thought. That was the way of divs. She could surrender to the div’s blood inside her, or she could let it destroy her.

  For so many years, Soraya had tried to fight down the poison inside her, but this time … this time, she surrendered.

  The sky was a vivid orange now from the setting sun, and she turned her head up to it and let out a cry of rage and pain and release. And as she did, the pressure began to fade, the pain dissipating.

  Something was happening to her—something new.

  All along the lines of her veins, thorns were beginning to pierce through her skin, sharp and long like the ones in the golestan. She held her hands in front of her, watching in silent awe as the greenish-brown thorns appeared along the backs of her hands. They pushed out through the fabric of her dress, and when she touched her face, she felt more of them trailing down in two lines along her cheeks, down to her neck. This was what she had always feared: that her transformation wasn’t complete, but was waiting for the day she could no longer control the poison within her. But instead of feeling horrified by the change that had come over her, Soraya felt whole.

  She could sense the poison inside her now more keenly than she ever had before—but more than that, she could control it, directing its movement through her veins until she chose to release it through her thorns. If she had only given in to this transformation years ago, she could have had this power and protection without having to forgo touch—but there was no point in dwelling on the past now. That was what Azad had done.

 
At the thought of Azad, her head jerked up, and Soraya briefly thought she had been transported somewhere else. Azad was still there, backed into one corner of the roof, and he was looking at her in awe—and unmistakable jealousy. But all around him, climbing over the edge of the roof, were vines from the golestan. They were spreading out along the surface of the roof like a green web, moving closer and closer to Azad, surrounding him until he had nowhere to turn. Soraya could feel the golestan in her blood—in the div’s blood that joined them both. There was something alive about it, and it seemed to know what she would want, what she would do, like an extension of her thoughts.

  After checking her mother’s pulse, Soraya rose, slowly approaching Azad. He looked nervously at the vines that kept inching closer to him, creating a cage of thorns around him.

  “I wouldn’t touch them if I were you,” Soraya said.

  He looked up at the sound of her voice and spoke her name under his breath. He tried to move toward her, but the thorns only grew closer around him.

  “Don’t you like me this way?” she said. The vines parted for her, creating a path to him. “Beautiful yet deadly, remember?”

  “I remember,” he said, his voice strained as he tried to keep the thorns from touching his skin.

  She stood directly in front of him, close enough to touch. Here was the great Shahmar, that monster of her nightmares, the demon who had terrorized her mother and deceived her into betraying her family. He was nothing now but a defenseless young man, fragile and exposed, so easy to destroy. Soraya reached a hand out to him, the thorns on the back of her hand moving closer to his throat …

  “Soraya.”

  Parvaneh’s voice was clear and loud behind her, but Soraya couldn’t make herself turn away. “My mother?” she said.

  “I found the feather. She’ll heal now.”

  Soraya did feel relief, but it was buried under something else, something sharp and hungry. Her eyes never leaving Azad’s throat, she said, “Does that mean you think I should spare him?”

  “No.”

  Her voice was closer now, and Soraya felt Parvaneh’s hand rest on her shoulder, her fingers fitting around the thorns. If Parvaneh wondered at her changed appearance, she must have decided that now was not the time for explanations. “I won’t stop you,” Parvaneh said, “but I don’t want you to do it like this, in anger, so quickly that you barely realize what you’re doing. I struck at him like that once, without thinking of the consequences, and I regretted it long after. If you’re going to kill him, you should want to do it even with a clear mind. So I’m asking you—are you sure you want to do this?”

  Of course I do, she wanted to say, but she forced herself to lower her hand. She pulled away some of the vines encaging Azad, letting them wind around her arm in a kind of caress, as she considered the question more carefully. “What do you think, then?” she said to him. “Should I kill you, or should I do to you what you did to me and Parvaneh? Should I keep you locked away with nothing but your guilt for company? It would be fitting, wouldn’t it?”

  Azad kept his eyes on her, his fear hardening into defiance, like liquid metal becoming a blade. “Lock me away if you will, but don’t think that you’ll break me so easily. I waited for over two hundred years to take back my throne—what makes you think chains and thorns will stop me this time?” He shook his head. “I won’t stop, Soraya. I won’t surrender, and I won’t stop fighting you until I see every single member of your family dead and—”

  It happened so quickly that Soraya didn’t understand at first. Parvaneh had pulled her aside by the sash around her waist, and something blurred past her, and Azad was gasping in pain, the handle of his dagger sticking out from just below his ribs.

  “Enough,” came a voice from behind them, and Soraya turned to find Tahmineh staggering to her feet. The blood-soaked feather was on the ground beside her, and there was nothing left of her wound except for a silvery, feather-shaped scar across her throat. Parvaneh must have noticed her moving for the dagger and pulled Soraya away so that Tahmineh’s aim would land true.

  Tahmineh came to them, her eyes never leaving Azad. He had slumped down to the ground, his back against the parapet. While Soraya had gaped at her mother, Parvaneh had already retrieved the dagger, and Azad’s bloodied hands tried to cover the expanding circle of red above his stomach.

  “You were right about me,” he said, his words labored. “In the mountain, when you told me why I never lived as human—that it would have all been for nothing—”

  Soraya knelt beside him and nodded in understanding. His words to her before Tahmineh’s blow had been true, but they had also been spoken with purpose. He had wanted to goad her into killing him, rather than leaving him to face all his failures in the dark. I forget him sometimes, the man I used to be, she remembered him telling her, and she wondered if he already considered himself dead, if he had died with the Shahmar, and no longer knew how to be just Azad.

  She glanced at her mother, who had finally faced her own nightmare and won, and nodded again. “Enough,” she agreed. Perhaps he didn’t deserve the mercy of her thorns, a quick end to his pain, but she would grant it to him nevertheless. Soraya moved one of Azad’s hands away from the wound and pressed the back of her knuckle against his palm, piercing his skin with her thorns as she released the poison into him. He shuddered as the poison spread through his veins, his eyes remaining on Soraya until at last they went glassy and still.

  Soraya let out a long breath and dropped Azad’s hand, peace settling over her like gentle snowfall. She heard the same soft exhalations from her mother and Parvaneh, as if they were free to breathe for the first time.

  Soraya rose, and she tensed as she faced her mother directly, not knowing how Tahmineh would respond to her daughter’s new appearance. But when Tahmineh came toward her and saw this final manifestation of her gift, her eyes were wide not in fear or revulsion, but in amazement. She raised a hand to touch an unmarked space on her daughter’s cheek and said, “It suits you.”

  “I agree,” Parvaneh said, and Soraya laughed.

  But the battle wasn’t over yet. Soraya went to the edge of the roof and looked down at the fighting below. The divs were even more outnumbered than before now that so many of them had fallen, but Soraya knew their deaths were only a temporary relief. She took in every div corpse on the ground and saw a new div rising from Duzakh to fight and die, around and around without end. Until now.

  “Come,” Soraya said. “We have to put an end to this.”

  Soraya stepped up on the parapet, and the golestan wrapped itself around her arms and waist to carry her down to the platform below. Tahmineh came the same way, as well as Azad’s body, wrapped tightly in the vines, while Parvaneh used her wings.

  Their descent was striking enough to pause the fighting, and Soraya took advantage of this attention to step forward and address the crowd.

  “The Shahmar has fallen,” she announced loudly, gesturing to the prone figure of Azad on the steps. She thought of everything Nasu had told her, and chose her words carefully. “Your leader is gone, and can offer you nothing more.”

  Soraya descended the platform and walked out into the garden, winding her way through the crowd without fear, as she had done the night of the banquet. The divs regarded her warily, but they knew better than to touch her now. “If you continue to fight,” she said, “you will lose again and again, because this land—these people—are now under my protection.” As she went from div to div, the vines from the golestan followed her, circling around each and every div’s feet in silent threat. “But if you lay down your weapons and surrender to me,” she continued, “I will let you return to Arzur without further harm.”

  The vines continued to climb up to the divs’ ankles as she spoke, and now she began to reach out and lay a hand on each div she passed—a scrape of nails against an arm or cheek or shoulder, a gesture to remind them of the banquet night, when they had accepted her as one of their own. Accept me now, she wan
ted to say, and I will protect you, too.

  And as she passed them one by one, laying a hand on each, the divs began to drop their weapons. They did not bow as they had done for the Shahmar, because Soraya would not ask that of them, but simply surrendered.

  She circled her way back to the steps and ascended them again. “I ask you—I ask all of you, div and human alike—to lay down your weapons tonight and consider this battle ended.” But when she looked out at the crowd, she saw something that disturbed her more than any div. Many of the humans in the garden were staring up at Soraya in disgust or horror, likely wondering what made her any different from the monsters they were fighting, and Soraya’s resolve began to waver. She wanted to cover her hands with gloves, run into the palace and seek refuge in the passageways—

  But then a figure emerged from the crowd, grimy with blood and sweat, but still as radiant as he had always been. Sorush bounded up the steps and stood beside her as her equal. He didn’t speak—he didn’t need to speak. His presence at her side was enough to make it clear that she had spoken for him as well, and that to deny one was to deny them both. He raised his sword for all to see and laid it down on the steps.

  And then, finally, the people of Atashar dropped their weapons, and Soraya’s battle was over.

  30

  They had to wait another week before the spring rains came, and longer still before a thunderstorm gave them what they wanted— a bolt of lightning, sent from the Creator.

  Shortly before the end of spring, a large crowd gathered outside the fire temple, but within, only the royal family was present, as well as several priests. Soraya stood apart with her mother, the spahbed, and Ramin—with whom Soraya had forged a hesitant truce—while Sorush and Laleh approached the altar. They bowed their heads as the high priest said the words to sanctify both the Royal Fire and the shah it protected.

  That protection was mostly symbolic now. Sometime after the battle had ended and the divs had all retreated, the simorgh had vanished once more, not leaving behind a feather this time. Sorush had been concerned about this, but Tahmineh had assured him that the simorgh had only granted her protection before because her son had needed it. Now the Shahmar was no longer a threat, and Atashar had another protector, someone the divs would listen to.