“We will not go to the capital,” I said. “We will not beg for scraps at the table of the Maker King of Qamih. It’s time for us to go home.”
It felt very strange to say the word.
Tariq stilled. More than any of us, he wanted to see the heathered fields that were his birthplace once again. His was the longing of a memory half real, half constructed. My memories were firmer, and Arwa had none at all, save an idealized version of the Little Rose that I could never bring myself to tarnish. Tariq believed in Kharuf the way he believed in everything else: he had heard the story many times, and when he reasoned his way through its inconsistencies, he found surety, not doubt.
“We will go back through the woods, and cross the mountains,” I said. “We will go back to Kharuf, to our birthright there.”
“What about the curse?” Tariq said.
I let the gold dust fall to the ground, where it mixed with the dirt and disappeared, save for the occasional glint when it caught the sunlight. I brushed my hands on my kafiyyah. It was my turn for white knuckles on the staff I carried, the staff I would use to fight and support my steps on mountain paths. I held on with all I could, the way I held on to the stories my mother had told me about her life before her ruination. The way I held on to the truth.
“If we go to Kharuf, we will fall victim to the curse ourselves, as our parents did,” Tariq said. He didn’t sound afraid, and Arwa didn’t look it. “It will come into our lungs and choke us. The Little Rose does not spin, and so neither can we.”
I had never believed it to be that simple. I don’t think Tariq did, either; he only spoke plainly to bring an end to the conversation. I thought about the golden dust again, and let myself consider the full scope of the world. It was hard for me to do. I liked the straightforwardness of staff fighting, the ease of movements my hands had done a hundred times before. Whether I liked it or not, that also meant spinning, and spinning meant the curse. I knew in my heart that Tariq was right. The magic spun around the Little Rose all those years ago must have grown in potency, the threads of it twisted more tightly by the pull of each season’s turn. We could not just blunder into its webbing.
“We haven’t spun in Kharuf as they did,” I said. “And we haven’t spun here as much as they did. Maybe we won’t be as sick. There must be a way.”
Tariq considered it, but I knew it would take him a while to decide. He would sift through all that he knew.
“It will take us some time to reach the pass.” Saoud knew the look on Tariq’s face, too. He pulled out the map his father had given him, and traced the line that would be our route so that we could all see it. “Let alone to cross the border. We can think on the way.”
“It would make us less vulnerable to bandits, if we keep moving,” I said. I tried to sound neutral, so that Saoud would voice his opinion too.
“I don’t like it,” he said. “But it’s better than trusting the Maker King’s alternative.”
Arwa brushed the last of the gold dust off of her hands and was only a simple spinner-girl again. Tariq doused the fire and buried the smoldering remains. Saoud took his staff too, and looked at me. I squared my shoulders, pretending confidence I did not entirely feel, and started walking back in the direction of the rising ground.
The four of us would go together.
WITH SAOUD’S INCLUSION, we woke early every morning to spar before we took up our journey again. Though I was the better fighter, Saoud had his father’s gift of teaching, and could square off against Arwa and Tariq so that they learned. If I tried it, I would probably break their fingers. It was not that I lacked control, Saoud’s father said, only mindfulness of how my opponent moved. I was a bruiser, Saoud an artist, and we each of us had our place.
Right now, my place was stirring the pot by the campfire while Saoud and Arwa did their best to knock the other off their feet. Tariq had caught three rabbits the night before—game had been good to us in the mountains—and we had put the remains of the last one into the porridge to thicken it. It was plain road fare, and nothing special, but compared to the dried meat and fruit we’d have for lunch while we walked, and whatever Tariq might conjure up for us to roast that night, this meal was a promise that, at least at the outset, the day would not go too far ill.
With a victorious cry, Arwa leveraged her staff behind Saoud’s knees and dumped him into the dust. She was getting better. Soon he was going to have to stop giving her openings.
“I know, I know,” she said, laughing, as Saoud rolled to his feet. “If I shout then I cannot claim a surprise attack.”
“What else?” asked Saoud.
“I dropped my elbow, I looked down at your knees before I swung for them, and I didn’t retreat quickly enough to avoid you kicking me, if you’d wanted to,” she recited. “Do I get to have breakfast now?”
“It’s almost ready,” I told her.
“I am going to the river, then,” she announced, and disappeared into the greenery that flanked our camp.
Saoud looked like he might have protested. The farther we went up the mountainside, the more dangerous the road became. The main road was well kept, of course, so that the wool convoys could come through, but we were avoiding that way lest any word get back to my mother. Our path was steeper, the river’s current faster, and the possibility for danger more present. Arwa was no spoiled flower, like the Little Rose in her pretty castle, but she was in our charge, and Saoud and I were still trying to figure out the line between protecting her and giving her the privacy she required.
“I’m still in earshot!” she shouted, and Saoud rolled his eyes.
“Get the bowls,” I told him. “And get the water bucket ready for heating so we can clean up as soon as we’re done.”
Tariq, whose sparring lesson had been done before Arwa’s, had already struck the tents, and soon enough we were on our way again. With the path more difficult to see, I was even gladder of Saoud’s decision to join us. I could discern the way ahead, and he could guard the back. For all our planning, though, it was Arwa who first saw the signs of danger.
We walked steadily uphill all day, and though the morning had started off fair-weathered enough, the sun was shrouded in light grey clouds by the afternoon, and rain was gathering in the leafy canopy above our heads. Arwa had stopped walking to wring out her veil when she gave a low cry, and waved frantically to Saoud.
“It’s a bear print,” he said. “Nothing else in these mountains is that size, save the dragons, and they have three toes.”
“There’s no water in it.” Arwa’s voice was so muted, she barely said the words aloud.
The forest around us grew, all of a sudden, impossibly large and dense and dangerous. We listened, ears straining against the gentle patter of water on leaves and boughs above us, hoping to hear some sound of the beast that tracked us, but there was nothing but the rain.
Saoud moved slowly. He’d been using his staff as a walking stick, as had we all on the ascent, but now he reached behind him to tie it to his pack. I did the same. Arwa and Tariq had to lay theirs on the ground, and I made a note to fix their packs at the earliest opportunity. Tariq had two knives in his belt, the legacy of his father, but Arwa had only her eating knife. I had a set of matched blades, and Saoud had the long knife that his father had given him when he reached his sixteenth summer. Not very good inventory for going up against a bear.
“Arwa.” Saoud said it in his father’s voice, and I knew that Arwa would listen to him, even if she didn’t like the words he said. “Climb a tree.”
It wouldn’t defend her against a bear forever, but it was the best thing I could think of too, so I only nodded when he said it. Arwa bit her lip, clearly upset at the idea of leaving us behind, but cast about for the best option and then disappeared above our heads without a single word of protest.
“Tariq, stay out of its reach. Bear skulls are hard, but they’ve got eyes and a maw like any creature. Do you think you can hit either?”
Tariq looked at
the knives in his hand. He had some practice at throwing them, but never at anything more mobile than a bale of hay. Still, he met Saoud’s gaze and swallowed hard.
“Try to keep it still, if you can.” He didn’t say it like he had very much hope in the matter.
“Yashaa, keep to Tariq’s side,” Saoud said. “I will circle behind it.”
“Is that the best idea?” I asked.
“It has kidneys, same as a man does.” Again, I couldn’t think of a better idea.
At last, there was a noise from the woods around us. Not a broken stick or a stumble, for bears have too much woodcraft for that, but rather a rustle in the leaves that was not from the rain. We turned toward it just as the bear came out of the underbrush and saw us.
It wasn’t a large one, which was good news for us. Without a bow, we would have been hard-pressed to put down a full-sized male. This one was black, and when it stood to roar at us as it entered the glade, it was no taller than Saoud’s father. But it was very wide; its arms stretched out far enough to grasp all three of us at once—to crush us without ever having to bloody its teeth or claws. It dropped back on its paws to come toward us, and I saw its face for the first time. I had never seen a live bear before, but I knew that something about it was wrong. Its eyes…its eyes were wrong.
“Yashaa!” shouted Saoud, and I refocused on my task.
“Move, then!” I replied, but he already was.
Crouched low, and legs spread wide, he circled the bear as it paced toward us. Beside me, Tariq was shaking so hard I thought he might drop his knives. He had seen the beast’s eyes too, and I knew that he remembered, as I did, stories of a faraway garden littered with statues that were impossible to look at without feeling a twist in your soul; statues carved because a demon had wished it done. It was bad enough to face a bear, but a bear with a demon inside of it was even more terrifying.
The bear roared again, and this time I thought I heard another’s voice on top of the beast’s. Another bear might have passed us by—surely there was better prey in these woods—but the demon in this bear hungered for our blood in particular and would have it, if it could.
Saoud was all the way around now, waiting for us to get the bear’s full attention, but it was holding back. I knew the demon was working against us, using its own intelligence to keep the bear from its full ferocity, even as it planned to bring that same force down on us as soon as it could. We needed something to bring the bear out, to make the demon lose control.
And, from above, Arwa saw it too, and saved us. She had nothing to hand but whatever pinecones she could grasp from the branch on which she stood, and that is what she used. Her aim was true, pelting the bear around the ears and muzzle until, pushed to animal rage, it charged the ground where Tariq and I were standing.
To his credit, Tariq didn’t hesitate at all. The first knife left his hand before the bear had taken two steps, and it hit the creature’s shoulder. It was already roaring, so I couldn’t tell if it felt any pain at all, but Tariq’s second knife took one of those terrible eyes—and that, we could see, the bear felt. It reared, pain and confusion in its voice; the demon pressed it forward, when all it wanted was to retreat. Then Saoud was behind it. He was as strong as anyone I knew, and it still took both hands on the hilt of his knife to pierce the bear’s hide. He went low and left of the spine, hoping to strike something important there, and he must have hit a vital target, because the bear—no, the demon—screamed as the iron pierced it.
Before the creature could turn on him, I stepped between those flailing front legs and drove my knife into the bear’s other eye. My blade was longer than Tariq’s, long enough to reach the beast’s brain, and that was its end. It caught me with a paw as it fell, and I staggered back as blood filled my eyes; but it did not rise, or even move, when it hit the ground.
I sat there, in the bloodied glade, while Arwa used one of her spare veils to bind my head and Tariq retrieved and cleaned our knives. When I could see again, I looked for Saoud, who cradled his knife in his lap. We had taken down a bear with a demon on its back, and it hadn’t been the end of us to do it. The mountains seemed just a little bit smaller against the expanse of the sky.
WE DID NOT CONTINUE on that day, so that we all might have some time to recover. We moved only just far enough from the bear to avoid any opportunistic scavengers that might take interest in so large a corpse. Saoud took some of the better meat, but we had no means to preserve the bulk of it, so he was forced to leave it on the forest floor. This rather galled all four of us: we had each known enough hunger to be reluctant to leave food behind to spoil.
The wound I sustained bled fiercely, forcing Tariq to scavenge for moss when Arwa’s spare veil became too soaked to be useful, but it seemed at first to be mostly superficial. The morning after, though, I had a terrible headache and any light at all only heightened the pain. When I tried to walk to the river to wash the blood out of my hair, I stumbled and could not keep my feet. Saoud took my arm and led me to the fire, where he was roasting bear meat for our morning meal.
“My father has told me of injuries like this,” he said, returning his attention to the spits. “They bleed a lot, and even though the mark they leave is small, they can rattle the inside of your head. We should not have let you sleep last night.”
“I don’t know if you could have stopped me,” I told him. “I slept longer than you did, and I’m still tired.”
“If you sleep, you may fall into a slumber from which you cannot be woken,” Saoud said. “I would rather poke you with a stick every ten minutes all night than risk that. I don’t want to have to carry you over the mountain pass.”
“Your concern is touching,” I said.
“Yashaa, I’m serious,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do to make you better except force you to rest.”
“You just said I couldn’t!” I protested. Rest was out of the question. We had too far to go.
“You can’t sleep,” he said. Arwa came to sit beside him, and Tariq took a bucket to the river because it was clear I was not going to make it on my own. “One of us will make sure you stay awake today, and tonight we will wake you every quarter mark. We’ll be able to travel again the day after that.”
“Saoud,” I began, but his face was his father’s: deadly serious and not to be gainsayed.
“Even that might not be enough,” he said. “That was not simply a bear, and you know it as much as I do. It fought with another’s strength, and it struck you directly on the head. It’s miracle enough that you are only mildly wounded.”
“Three days of travel lost, and that’s mild?” I wanted to sound angrier than I was, but the truth was that I was bone-weary and couldn’t muster the energy.
“For a bear and a demon, I think so,” Saoud said.
At the word “demon,” we all stilled. We had been brought up on stories of the wonderful creatures who had loved Kharuf-that-was, who had given gifts to its blasted princess, but sometimes we forgot what they had been made to do. We had come out of the desert, and so had they. Where we had brought sheep to pen up or herd on the heathered slopes, they had brought beings much darker, and the mountains were the prison they had used for the pen.
Arwa’s knife was in her hand, cutting the cooked meat into portions, and I saw that it was bronze, as most eating knives were. Saoud followed my gaze, and I knew he understood.
“Here,” he said, passing over his small iron dagger to her. “Keep this on your belt, even when you sleep.”
She nodded, and the knife disappeared under her long tunic. Saoud’s father had told her that unless she grew up to be a giant like him, her best defense was to convince others she was not a threat, and so she always concealed the weapons she carried under her clothes. That short a blade was a poor protection, but the iron in it would keep her from the worst.
“At least we’ll be able to use more of the bear,” Tariq said.
That was a comfort. Fresh meat was always a treat for us, reg
ardless of how we came by it. I couldn’t help Saoud and Tariq dress the bear—too much walking, too much bending over, and Saoud said I wasn’t to carry anything heavier than a bowl of porridge—but I could wrap the cooked meat in the leaves that Arwa collected, so at least I wasn’t completely useless in my infirmity.
By evening, the worst of my headache was gone, though I still could not stare at the fire for long, and I was exhausted. Worse, I was bored out of my mind. The others had taken advantage of the day to mend tears in clothing and bags and fix what they could of our gear. When I tried to focus on something, though, my eyes swam and my head pounded anew. I would have even been grateful to spin, but I could barely hold my hands still for Tariq while he wrapped the last of his thread around them.
He sighed when the job was done, taking the skein and putting it carefully in his bag. Both he and Arwa had brought carded wool for spinning on the trip. Each night, at the fire, they had brought out their spindles and worked them, spinning thread for no particular reason other than that they could, and that they found it to be a comfort. Arwa had run out of wool the night before the bear attacked us, and this was the end of Tariq’s supply.
“I know spinning is not your favorite,” he said to me, “but it’s all I have left from my father.”
“I know,” I said. Maybe when my mother—no, I wouldn’t even give that consideration. Instead, I ran a practiced hand over the thread in Tariq’s bag. “It’s well-made,” I told him. “Even and strong. He would be proud of you.”
“It’s not like we can spin in Kharuf anyway,” he said. That had been his decision after much consideration. He closed the bag and stowed it with the rest of his gear.
That was the other story from the mountains. The Little Rose could not spin, and thus no one in Kharuf could spin. Qasim had made a proclamation of it, and that law had driven most of the spinners from his land. Those who stayed—like my mother, who stayed for love of the queen—knew only suffering. I would not let Tariq and Arwa suffer if I could do anything to prevent it.
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