“The desert will help you,” she whispered. “I will help you. You can be what you were again, once you’re gone from this place.”
A frown touched his forehead. “In some ways, yes. But I’ll still be bound.”
“Yes, of course—but your hiding cripples you twice over! There’s no blame in this, I of all jinn understand. But imagine the freedom, the relief, not to wonder with each sunrise, Is this the day that one of them learns what I am?”
He’d been drawing her toward him, his hands sliding around her waist; now he paused. “There were a few who learned my secret, over the years. They helped me stay hidden, in fact.”
“Arbeely,” she said, remembering the name from Sophia’s scrap of paper. “He was the tinsmith?”
“Yes. And . . . there was a woman. A baker. Her name was Chava.”
She frowned, thinking. “The tinsmith had reason to protect you, you were his livelihood—but what about the woman? Why did she keep your secret?”
He smiled, uncomfortably. “Must there be a reason?”
“There is always a reason.” Was he so very naive?
“Perhaps we were merely friends.”
She chuckled at that. “I see. ‘Friends.’ And where are they now, these friends of yours?”
“Arbeely is dead,” he said. “And Chava is . . . gone. We argued, and parted company, years ago. I wasn’t a particularly good friend to her. To either of them.”
“Of course you weren’t,” she told him. “You were attempting the impossible. Humans and jinn . . . we aren’t meant to be ‘friends.’ We aren’t meant to be anything at all.”
He looked up. “But you and I are?”
“Yes! Can’t you see it?” She grasped him by the wrist, her fingers around the cuff.
He was silent a moment, his eyes upon his wrist, where she held him. Then he said, “Jinniyeh, you must know that if I go back with you, then yes, I will change. But you will change, too.”
She frowned at this. “What do you mean? Change, how?”
“I’ll influence you, without even meaning to. I’ll use some ridiculous human figure of speech, perhaps, and it’ll take root in your mind even as you curse me for it—and one day, instead of telling me that you’re angrier than a ghul’s mother, out will come, It makes my blood boil. It can’t help but happen.”
She laughed, uneasy. “But that makes no sense. I would never say such a thing.”
“No, not at first. But as time goes on . . .”
“Then simply don’t,” she said, growing irritated. “Forget these ‘ridiculous human figures of speech,’ and I needn’t change. All will be well.”
He shook his head. “But then I’d only be hiding again.”
She bristled at that. “Hiding? Merely because I ask that you speak like a jinni, as much as you’re able?”
“I understand your anger,” he said. “I, too, used to think that I could live in this body, among these people, and not be changed by it. That I could, as they say, swim in the water and not get wet.” She shuddered at the image; he smiled and said, “You see?”
“And you’re comfortable saying such things?”
“No, but I’ve learned to live with the discomfort.”
“And now,” she said, “instead of returning to how you ought to be, you will demand that I do the same?”
“Jinniyeh, you may think that all my learned humanity can simply melt away—but it can’t. I’ll never be the same as I was. And if I try, the only thing I’ll achieve is misery. So yes, I will come back to the desert with you. But you must accept that I’ll always be just a little bit human—and that you will be too, in time.”
For a long moment she only stared at him. Then: “No.” She took a step back—his hands slipped from her waist—and then loosed her form and floated away from him, beyond the platform’s edge.—You’re wrong. I didn’t come all this way merely to weaken and debase myself, to grow as fearful of my own nature as you seem to be. I’m no cowering changeling! If I’d known when I first saw—
Her voice stopped; she flinched. She’d used the form of see that implied both a woman and an adversary, as one spies an opponent across a battlefield.
He frowned. “First saw who, jinniyeh?”
—The healer-woman in the souk, she said. The one who told me where to find you.
But her hesitation had been too plain; he was watching her intently now. “Yes,” he said, “the healer-woman, the one who spoke of shining boxes as high as Mount Qaf, and an arch of Palmyra among the trees. It was a beautiful story, jinniyeh. Will you tell me more of it?”
—More of what? I don’t know—
“The story of how you came to find me. Your earlier version was lacking in detail. You said you had to enter many sleeping minds, before you learned which city the healer meant. Whose minds were they? What did they dream of?”
—They were humans, old and young, she said, making a dismissive gesture. They dreamt nonsense, and I understood little of it.
“And what of the ships? You said that you flew to Port Said, and then took a ship across the sea and another across the ocean. But how? Did you read the sailing schedules in the newspapers? Visit the ticket offices in the docklands?”
—No, of course not!
“Then how did you find your way?
—There were men near each of the ships. I changed into a bird and perched nearby, and listened to their conversations. She said it defiantly, to make up for her earlier hesitation. Now will you continue to interrogate me, or have I passed your test?
He folded his arms. “Tell me, jinniyeh. What is a directory?”
She quailed, for she had no idea. What had Sophia said? I found an address in an old directory. That was all.—It’s a place where they keep addresses, she said.
He smiled at that, but his eyes were sharp as flint. “What did the directory look
