“Chava,” he said, “we need to leave. Can you move at all?”
Her eyes flicked up at him. With slow and palsied movements she maneuvered to her knees, tried to rise, toppled over with a gasp.
He caught her and carried her from the yard, keeping to the shadows as much as possible until they reached her boardinghouse. Her landlady’s bedroom lamp was lit—no doubt she’d smelled the smoke and heard the sirens, and gone to investigate. The rest of the house was dark and quiet.
He found her keys in her cloak pocket, then quickly carried her up the stairs, unlocked the door, and laid her on the bed. She was a stiffly curled bundle, her cloak drawn across her face like a curtain. He was about to switch on the light when she stirred and spoke, her voice a painful rasp. “No, don’t. I’ll be fine, Ahmad. I’ll see you tomorrow night.”
A pause. “Chava,” he said slowly, “are you telling me to leave?”
“Ahmad. Please.”
The only chair was at her writing-desk: a bentwood rococo confection, more suited to a girlish boudoir than her spare and sober room. He placed it beside her bed and sat, folding his long legs together. The chair squeaked in protest, but held.
“I’m not moving,” he said.
She seemed about to argue, but then gave in with a slump of her cloaked shoulders.
For long minutes he watched her, a dark form on a dark bed. He could smell parched earth, fissured with heat. A scent as familiar to him as her usual one—only he’d never thought to find it in this city, in this room. If he closed his eyes, he might be flying over a summer valley on the other side of the world.
“Are you in pain?” he asked quietly.
A pause. “No. Not really. Just . . . uncomfortable.” Her voice was still a rasp.
Unnerving, to sit staring at her like this. He’d glimpsed her ruined features for only a handful of moments, but now he couldn’t drive them from his mind. Would she heal, as she said? Or was that only a lie, to calm him? He had the impulse to lie down next to her, to take her in his arms; he held himself back, afraid of hurting her—afraid, too, of learning the true extent of the damage.
He shifted in the chair, cleared his throat, looked around for a distraction. His foot nudged something next to the bed: a large rattan hamper. Her sewing basket. He picked it up and set it in his lap, but could see little detail in the nearly pitch-dark room. He found the lamp on her nightstand, snapped his fingers above the wick. Already he missed the earlier acuity of his senses, the way the barest hints of color and shape had stood out through the smoke. Was that how he’d seen the world before the flask, and he’d simply forgotten?
She stirred beneath her cloak. “What are you doing?”
“Looking through your sewing basket.”
“Why?”
“For lack of options.”
She fell silent, then gave an irritated sigh and shifted again, as though searching for a more comfortable position.
The sewing basket was like an enchanted box in a tale, full of smaller boxes that all contained boxes of their own. He lifted them out one by one, inspecting their contents. There were buttons and needles and dozens of spools of thread: black and white and ivory, various shades of gray, dark blues, a few greens and yellows and one startling fuchsia. Another box held scraps of cord and trim and ribbons, feathers and flowers meant for hat-brims. Then, a box of tools: a small metal ruler with a sliding gauge, a pincushion neatly spaced with pins, a pale wedge of tailor’s chalk, and an elegant pair of golden scissors in the shape of a stork. The stork’s feet perched upon the two finger-loops; its long neck was the shaft, the sharp blades its beak. He held them up and admired them in the lamplight, surprised to find such whimsy in anything she owned.
At the bottom of the basket were folded squares of pale muslin. The Jinni chose one of these, then a needle and a spool of dark thread. He measured a length of the thread and snipped it with the scissors.
Another movement from the bed. “Ahmad, what are you doing now?”
“I’m practicing my sewing.” He knotted the end of the thread, and, with little forethought, began a haphazard embroidery of crosses and zigzags. But the thread was too thick, and the muslin began to pucker and ripple around the stitches. Carefully he snipped out the offending thread, chose a slimmer one, and began again.
“Talk to me,” she said suddenly. “Please.”
“What shall I tell you?”
“Anything. I just want to hear your voice.”
You’ll be glad to hear that the girl escaped. He nearly said it—but at the last moment stopped himself. He didn’t trust himself to keep the bitterness from his voice. She’d nearly destroyed herself, and for what? The girl had managed to live regardless. So instead he said, “Then I shall tell you the story of Mount Qaf.”
He paused then, surprised by his own words. Why, of all things, had he thought of that? It was the scent of burnt earth, perhaps: it had taken him out of himself, and dragged him into the past.
She did not say, What is Mount Qaf? She only lay listening. Waiting. He cleared his throat. “In the legends of the jinn,” he said, “Mount Qaf is the emerald mountain that encircles our world and holds up the sky. It is a land of exceeding beauty, where all kinds of trees and flowers grow without need of rain. Only on Mount Qaf does the roc, the king of all birds,
