“What are all these books?” Ben asked, gesturing to the tall stacks of books around them.
“These are all the books that concern this topic,” Olumi said.
Jabari looked alarmed.
But Olumi went on. “We don’t have to read all of them right now,” he said. ”What do you know of the Karee people?”
“Only what I have learned from Abbas,” Isika said, “and a very little from the three men and their families who have come to join us. They are nomadic, and though they are under the power of the Desert King they have historically opposed him. Abbas is in hiding because he led an army of warriors against the king. His father pretends to have no part in this.”
“Very good,” Olumi said. “There is much more, but that’s a good start. Settle back on your cushions and hear what I have to say.”
Isika wiggled around until she was comfortable, and waited. After a dramatic pause, Olumi went on.
“The Karee are an ancient people. They have wandered for most of their existence, though at one point they did have a city. No one knows where that city was, because it was hundreds of years ago and memory of it has been gone for a long time. But they have always had a storyteller, who travels between camps to tell them the news and remind them of the stories. The storytellers are growing more rare, because the Desert King hates them and kills them when he finds them. He has the Karee under his thumb, and though they try to resist, he always shuts them down. There are rumors that the last storytellers have gone into hiding. One of them, a very old man, told a prophecy about two sisters.”
Isika shivered.
“It has been passed from tribe to tribe over many years, so I don’t know if it has changed, but this is the way I know it. Would you like to hear it?”
Isika hesitated. Now it didn’t seem certain that the prophecy was about her and Aria. It could be her and Ibba, or sisters like Karah and Jerutha, or no one they knew at all. She felt prickling in her hands and feet. It seemed like a moment that could tip over the edge into a new kind of understanding. But in a way, how could she not hear it?
“Yes,” she said. “Of course. It might have to do with Aria’s healing, right? Of course we want to know anything we can. If it will heal Aria, it doesn’t matter what it is.”
Olumi nodded from his perch of cushions. “Settle back then children, settle back.” He began to sing.
“Two sisters, out of the night,
fall into the dirt and the dust.
One lies still, injured and lost.
The other dies to lift her.
Two sisters, a sword, a boat, and a bird,
Hearts broken, lies spoken,
Grip of evil, grip of pain
One must heal the other or death will steal,
One will die for the other’s gain
The world cracked open
Out of the night comes the way.
The land cries out, an answer comes.”
Isika lay back in the cushions with her eyes closed, looking into the dark night sky, full of stars. As she watched, two stars fell to the earth. Isika saw that one of the stars was her, and she stood and began to run, because the other star was Aria. But Aria’s star fell and lay still, and Isika couldn’t get her to wake up.
She blinked, back in the library, looking at the concerned faces above her. Everyone was grave, and Ben had tears in his eyes. Isika reached up to find tears on her own cheeks.
After a pause, Olumi spoke. “This is what I have heard of the prophecy,” he said. “And I have never known how to interpret it. But I know of a great Karee healer named Asafar who holds the prophecies now that the storytellers cannot be found. I believe he is still alive, though you may ask the Karee warrior who has come to join us. If you find Asafar, he will be able to tell you of the prophecy and whether he knows what it means.”
“I don’t understand,” Isika said. “It didn’t seem to say anything about healing Aria.”
Jabari looked at her, his face solemn. “It wasn’t very practical,” he said. “But I think it reveals that somehow Aria’s healing is tied up with you.”
“Yes,” Olumi agreed. “The two of you are linked, and it seems that you cannot be separated. Asafar will know more.”
The sun was setting when they came out of the library.
“We should go to the elders,” Jabari said, as they walked down the long hallway. “I think we need to travel to the Karee people and find this healer. Perhaps he will have wisdom for us.”
The palace corridor was lovely in the late afternoon. Rosy light poured through the windows and played in the white stone alcoves in the walls. Isika ran her hand along the wall lightly. She nodded at Jabari.
“You’re right,” she said. “Let’s do it now.”
The eating hall was cozy in the lights of evening, platters of food spread over the tables. Isika realized she was hungry as her mouth watered at the sight of the food. Gavi looked up from his cushion as they walked into the room. He smiled at them.
“Ah, there you are, Jabari,” Laylit said, putting her plate down and rising to embrace her son. “Hi, Isika. Hi, Ben,” she said.
“We’ve come from Olumi,” Jabari told his mother. “And I invited Isika and Ben to eat with us. We have a question for you.”
Laylit nodded and gestured toward the food table. Isika, Ben, and Jabari heaped food onto their plates, then joined Gavi and Ivy on the cushions, near the elders. Sometimes Isika had glimpses of life in the palace for Gavi, Jabari, and Ivy. The palace was beautiful, but Isika preferred her life with Teru and Dawit in their small, simple house. The palace was large, airy, with great echoing rooms, and quarters for the different families. Teru and Dawit’s house was small and cozy. One day, when she was queen, Isika would have to live in the palace. She wondered what she would do to make it feel like home.
She looked up from her plate at the sound of Jabari’s voice. She had been lost in dreams and Jabari had already finished eating.
“What?” she asked.
Ivy laughed. “Little daydreamer,” she said. “Jabari asked if he could share what you know with our parents.”
“Oh,” Isika said. “Of course.”
While she ate, Jabari told the elders what Olumi had shared with them. “And he thinks that the healer, Asafar, will know more about the prophecy. So we are hoping to go visit him.”
Ivram ran a hand through his grizzled hair. “I know Asafar,” he said. “But from long ago. We have not visited the Karee in many years. Not since Queen Azariyah was taken.”
“I don’t understand,” Laylit said. “Why do you need to know more about this prophecy? It sounds like something that comes from the Great Waste.”
“The Karee do not follow Mugunta, beloved,” Andar said.
“We need to go because there may be something in it that can help to heal Aria,” Isika said. “And also, we may be able to help with the problem the Karee men brought to us.”
“The disappearing people,” Karah said, nodding her head slowly.
“You can’t mean that you want to let them go!” Laylit broke in.
“Can we have a moment?” Andar asked. The elders moved closer to one another and spoke softly.
Isika took a bite of spicy zita greens and a spoonful of the soft white cheese that sometimes went with the greens. The cheese helped to mellow the sharp taste of the greens. The food was amazing, and she sighed. The palace cooks would help to soften the change of moving to the palace, whenever she did that. The food here was always amazing.
In the corner, Andar was shaking his head, “I don’t think it’s wise,” Isika heard him say, but then Karah spoke, loudly enough for the others to hear her.
“Andar, we must begin to trust the World Whisperer, and Jabari too—your son, and Ben! They have shown that they are trustworthy in their judgement. Why not send them to the Karee people? It would be a good gesture of friendship, as well, after far too long.”
“But the Karee are under the rule of Gariah,” Andar repl
ied. “It is too dangerous to allow our future queen to go to those lands.”
Ivram rubbed at his face, his head tilted to one side as he thought. “It does seem like a journey is necessary. Until we understand what is happening with Aria and the Karee people, we cannot understand how we are being attacked and why there are Balota in our land. This prophecy speaks of the land crying out.” He nodded to himself. “I believe we should let the children go. But I feel…Olumi must go with them.”
Isika crossed her arms over her chest and waited. After a few more minutes of hushed speaking, the elders turned to the youth.
Andar nodded. “You may go,” he said.
Chapter 7
Aria opened her eyes and stretched, blinking until the white canvas of the healing tent came into focus. Dark gloom crashed over her. She was here again, still here, always in the healing tent. She had protested, she had told her parents she didn’t want to come back, but they hadn’t listened and now she was back in this place of sickness. Waves of anger washed over her. She bit the inside of her cheek. There were other patients. In the corner bed was an old woman who had been trapped inside poison walls, and in another corner, a boy who was wasting away of some sickness that she didn’t understand. They didn’t have an arrow leaking poison into their bodies. They might recover.
She hated it at the healing tents. She wanted to be home with her parents, or better yet, out on a seeking journey, pulling down walls, sleeping under the stars. But no one would let her go. She was losing hope, trapped here because no one knew how to heal her.
After a while, one of the healers came into the tent and close to Aria’s bedside. She gently laid a hand on Aria’s head, to feel how she was this morning. Aria knew it wasn’t good when the healer bit her lip and smiled, pasting a smile on her face, though tears sprang into her eyes. It wasn’t easy for the healers to be with her, since the most skilled ones could feel what Aria felt, and they almost couldn’t bear it. Another reason for her to be gone.
“Let me bring you breakfast,” the healer, Orie, said, “and then we’ll do a session with Sophie. The two of us will find a way to make you feel more comfortable today, Aria.”
Aria didn’t answer, she just turned and stared up at the ceiling, frustrated. They didn’t understand that she didn’t feel bad. She didn’t feel weak, or sick. She wasn’t in pain—most of the time. She just felt angry, and like she needed to run.
The breakfast was tasteless. Sometimes, when the arrow was really strong, Aria couldn’t taste food. She lay staring into the moving canvas of the tent until the healers came back. The tents moved at least once each year. The healers sent pain and sickness into the earth, and though it had the ability to absorb great quantities of human pain, it needed time to recover, so they moved around. After they moved, gatherers would come and heal the land itself, planting flowers and trees, putting strength back into the soil.
Orie and Sophie brought hot herbal compresses to draw the arrow farther out of her, though they had never been able to remove it completely. Aria liked the comforting compresses. They smelled good and she liked lying there and pretending that the hands of the healers were the hands of her real mother, Amani, gently wiping the warm cloth over her forehead, her shoulders, her arms.
As they worked, Sophie used the compresses, while Orie put her hands on Aria’s head, arms, and legs, drawing the poison out with her gift.
Aria began to feel better. When she opened her eyes, the air looked clearer again, brighter. Before it had been covered with a gray haze. She could think clearly again, and she remembered that Sophie and Orie were helping her, that her parents had sent her here for healing, not to trap her. She didn’t hate the tent as much. Then she remembered who she was—that she was Amani’s daughter and Isika’s sister. She remembered that she was loved and that she loved her siblings and her mother, who had died too young. She also loved Gavi and Jabari, Brigid, and her foster parents.
The healers finished their work and smiled at her. She smiled back and sat up in her bed. Sunshine streamed in through the windows of the tent, lighting up the leaves of the sweet-smelling plants Gavi had brought the day before. She breathed in their smell.
The tent flap opened and there Gavi was. He walked in and sat on the corner of her bed, smiling at her.
“How are you feeling today?” he asked, his voice gentle.
It was an old question, one that Aria was tired of. Sometimes she refused to answer when people asked it, but she felt better after her treatment, so she answered him.
“I’m doing okay,” she said. “The herbs and hot compresses felt good today. And your plants are making this tent smell so good.”
“Are you up for a walk?” he asked. “Sophie said I could take you up into the gardens, if you want.”
Aria thought about it. She saw the shadows of trees dancing in the sunlight, and being outside appealed to her. She nodded and he jumped up and held a hand out to her, but she pushed it away.
“I’m not an old woman.”
He shook his head, smiling. “I know you’re not an old woman, Aria.”
They walked all the way to the kitchen gardens to see the new peppers Gavi was growing. Gavi went on and on about his plants and Aria listened, allowing her mind to flow along with his words, happy not to wrestle over her problems as they looped through her mind. They fell quiet as they walked among the trees and flowers outside the kitchen gardens.
Aria held her hand out to a tree to see if she could feel the same thing that Isika felt, but it wasn’t there and there was nothing except this arrow and the pain. It was strange, when her mind was clear the arrow hurt her more. When it was cloudy, it only made her angry. She stood in front of the tree for a long time, and slowly felt the pain recede, though she didn’t think the tree had done anything. She could see that the poison arrow was slowly poisoning the rest of the Maweel as well, including her sister, who might never be the same.
She needed to leave Azariyah. She needed to go, perhaps all the way to the Desert City to find her father. If she stayed, she would poison this entire land and she might even harm her sister. When it was bad, she wanted to hurt her sister, to sink her teeth deep into Isika and make her hurt as much as she did.
“What are you thinking about?” Gavi asked. They stood in a large stand of Hoona trees with warm yellow bark and leaves that flashed with gold.
“I’m thinking about how I need to make this right,” Aria said without thinking. She trusted Gavi so much that she sometimes said more to him than she should, but she went on this time, feeling open, like a new flower, like something outside of herself was guiding her. “I need to do something, Gavi. I need to do something. I can’t just lie here and let them try to heal me over and over again while it doesn’t work.”
“What will you do?” Gavi asked. His face was worried, his brows drawn together.
“Something . . . Something. I need to go . . .” She looked at him and suddenly knew that if she told him her idea, he would try to stop her.
He shook his head at her, crossing his arms. His nearly white hair stood up the way it always did and he was growing the beginnings of a slight golden beard on his face. It intrigued Aria as she stared at him.
“You can’t go anywhere, Aria,” he said. “You need to let us take care of you and wait a little longer. I have heard a rumor that there might be a healer who can help you. Isika and Jabari will go to search for him. Perhaps he can make you well.”
Aria stared at him. “What?”
“Well, there is talk,” Gavi said. “I don’t know what will come of it, but a small group are going to the Karee people to see if they can find a solution for your arrow.”
Aria was furious. She felt a sharp pain in her chest. “So that’s what you do,” she said, “you sit around in your little palace and you talk about me with the heir to the throne, and you mock me and you tell each other that I need to be healed and I need people to rescue me, when I am fully capable of rescuing myself and, in fact, I am
more powerful than you could ever know.”
Gavi looked hurt. He reached out toward Aria and she drew back, but he reached out farther and as his hand met her arm she felt the waves of healing coming from him, drawing away the poison. She slumped over and all the power went out of her, and she leaned against him.
“Oh, Aria, I’m so sorry. This is horrible. Please, little bird, please wait. Please don’t do anything you can’t take back. Please stay here and let us take care of you.”
But Aria knew she wouldn’t.
It was a dream that night that did it. Flashes of colors came toward her—birds flying, trees that waved. She walked to a tree and put her hand on it. This time she could feel the life song coming from it the way her sister could. A voice spoke to her, and it danced, this voice, and waved, danced and waved, and danced and waved and looked a little like the mud demons. She smiled at the dance, and the voice said, “Aria, I know what can heal you. I have it for you. Come to me. I will help you.”
She woke up breathing hard. The sun hadn’t yet risen, but the first birds were singing. She knew she needed to leave immediately, before anyone else was up. She needed to go to the voice. Her father, in the Desert City.
She got up quietly and packed the bag that always came with her. She stole into the kitchen and packed as much food as she could, including several small nutrient-rich loaves of bread. She took the flowers and plants that were by her bedside and silently placed them around the beds of the other two patients in the tent. She wrote a short note to the healers saying, “I was homesick, so I went home. I will come back in two days.”
She hoped it would work that the healers would think she was at home and that her parents would continue to think she was here.
She stole out into the early dawn, and she ran. She ran first to her home, where she snuck around on silent feet, packing her bedroll, travel gear, and bow and arrows. She changed into her travel clothes, and now she was running out of time, so she left swiftly and started her journey across the fields, toward the road that led to the desert.
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