We Free the Stars (Sands of Arawiya 2)

She was just Zafira.

“Oi, it’s freezing. Do you want me to stay?” Kifah asked.

Zafira shook her head. “I just need to breathe.”

“Right. But have a care, eh?” she said with a pointed glance at her chest.

Zafira waved her off.

Who was she now? What purpose did she serve in the world?

Change hung in the air, making the sun’s rays a little bit different, and her steps faltered when she saw it.

The nothing in the distance.

No enticing shadows, no breathing black. A simple plain of snow cut into blue seas, a horizon bereft of the Arz. That darkness that had defined her. That had made her who she was.

Now she was an archer without a target. A girl without a home. A soul without a purpose.

Zafira turned and hurried away. The street leading to the sooq was white and empty, and her shawl did nothing to ward her shiver as the ghosts of her village spooled to her side, following her past one house, then a second. The third. Ghosts don’t exist, Deen said in her head.

Ice scraped the bottoms of her boots, cold and relentless. Not even the downiness of snow had survived the massacre.

The buildings surrounding the sooq held a dark and maddening silence. This was the jumu’a where Yasmine’s wedding had taken place, a moment that felt rooted in some long-ago past. How many times had Zafira stridden past the windows of Araby’s sweet shop, annoyed at her people for smiling and laughing as the cold clouded their every exhale?

Now she missed it with a bone-deep sorrow. She could hear phantom laughter, the joyous shouts of children, the hustle and bustle of her people. If she walked three steps to her right, she would be able to make out the lavender door to Bakdash. A few steps to her left, and the thin baker’s windows would stretch wide.

The wind moaned again, lamenting, lamenting.

“It’s all my fault,” she whispered, sinking to her knees on the gray jumu’a, snow drenching her clothes.

Footsteps crunched along the ice-speckled stone, and a weight lifted because she knew that gait, those whispering footfalls. She turned to meet Nasir’s gaze, to find understanding, reason, something.

No one was there.

Shivers racked her body. She was cold, so, so cold.

Her life had fallen apart without even her to witness. These were the people her father had taught her to feed, to care for. They had died because they had breathed.

I’m sorry, Baba.

Resilience flowed through a woman’s veins as fervently as her blood, Umm had always said. It was what held together the frayed edges of Zafira’s sanity, but endurance, like all else, had its limits.

It was suddenly too much.

She curled into herself, clamping her mouth closed to stave her scream.

Pain flared from her wound. A cry tore from her lips, unleashing the dam that she’d kept patching and patching over the years, failing to notice as it overflowed. One tear became ten, and then she couldn’t stop.

A small shadow fell over her.

“Okhti?”

“I did everything. Everything I could possibly do,” Zafira gasped out. “Why? Why wasn’t it enough?”

Lana pulled her to her chest, and somehow, the tears fell faster, harder. She was supposed to be the stronger one. The one to hold them together.

“The world has no right sitting on your shoulders, yet you’ve given it more than you will ever owe,” Lana whispered. “You’ve done for it what a sultan would require a throne, a crown, and a thousand men to accomplish.”