Once We Were Starlight

“There are no fish in the desert,” Ahmad said. “How did you know about them?”

“Sometimes Haziq brings food from the sea frozen on ice to serve the customers for dinner. Once they didn’t eat it all and Haziq said we could have the shrimp and the lobster that was left.”

He stared at me again in an assessing way. “Ah. I see. Did you like it?”

I frowned. “I didn’t eat any. Zakai said it’s better not to experience something we’ll likely never have again.”

A strange look came over his face. “They keep you very sheltered, don’t they?”

I thought about that, feeling slightly embarrassed, like a child. “I suppose. I think it’s because they don’t want me to be hurt by the knowledge of the tragedies beyond these walls.” I swept my hand toward the stone barrier. “They do it out of love but . . .”

“But you like stories, don’t you, Karys? Even the bad ones. You seek knowledge from those who will give it to you. And you don’t tell that to the others, even Zakai.”

I blushed in shame but nodded quickly. It was as though the little man had looked straight into my mind and plucked out all my secrets. I did seek knowledge. I wanted stories. Yes, even the bad ones, and perhaps especially those. And I didn’t even know exactly why I desired such things.

Ahmad looked back out to the desert. “There are opportunities to gather knowledge, even on Sundara,” he murmured.

“Yes,” I said. While I didn’t desire the freedoms Zakai did, I was deeply curious to hear the descriptions of things I’d never experienced, and it was a relief to say it out loud. I wanted stories and pictures in my head, like the vision of the great blue whale Doren had described, the one he told me was bigger than Sundara, though I knew that couldn’t possibly be true. “Will you tell me more about where you came from? The city and the streets? The houses? Did some of them have green shutters? Will you tell me what it smelled like there?”

Ahmad glanced back over his shoulder, his smile wilting, and a look I couldn’t define coming into his eyes. “What if I told you more than that? What if I taught you to read?”

I stared at him, my heart jumping. “Read? Letters?”

“Yes,” Ahmad said. “And learn numbers too. Math.”

“You know those things?” Almost all of those on Sundara had never been taught to read or write. They came from circumstances where they’d been rejected or ignored, a burden to their struggling families who grew crops for a living and had no need of a non-producing mouth to feed. A few knew a couple of letters, and others, like Yanna, had taught me the meaning of the words they used in conversation, but mostly, they’d been resistant to teaching me, saying Haziq would discipline them by withholding food if they did.

“I do. Though I didn’t tell Haziq that. My mother taught me. She was very wise,” Ahmad said.

I glanced back, expecting to see Haziq standing at the edge of the courtyard, listening, though I’d never once seen him there before. “Haziq, he—”

“Doesn’t ever have to know,” Ahmad said, his eyes narrowing slightly.

Was this some sort of revenge then? Regarding . . . Berel and the leash? Still . . . how exactly would he teach me? “There are no books here. And few writing implements or paper.” My eyes slid away as I thought of the pen I’d taken from Haziq’s desk once when he’d looked away, and the notebook that had fallen from the pocket of one of the men who came to watch our performance. But that notebook only had a few blank pages left inside, and I was deeply protective of it. It was where I kept my secrets.

But Ahmad shook his head as though what I said was of no consequence. “I smuggled in books. At the bottom of Bibi’s basket. And I don’t need ink or paper. I have tablets of sand,” he said, gliding his foot over the layer of sand that had blown over the wall and settled on the courtyard floor.

My eyes grew big like saucers and I swallowed. “You have books,” I repeated. “And written stories?” I loved the stories Bertha told me from her memory, but I’d heard them all and yearned for more.

“Yes.”

“I’ll have to tell Zakai.” I kept some of my thoughts to myself, as Zakai did his. But something this big? How could I keep this from my other half?

“Not yet. I have a feeling Zakai won’t like it.” He looked off to the desert where the fiery orange sun kissed the tawny, silken sand. “And I understand. In some ways it’s a cruelty,” he murmured.

“What?” I asked, confused.

He met my eyes. “Learning. Knowledge.”