Loretta of the Lamp

Gypsy curse

She woke curled up on the far corner of the bed from Akil, having tried the rug for all of five minutes before the allure of the bed had won her over. When she tiptoed over and carefully lifted the corner of the blanket to climb in, she was sure Akil was only pretending to be asleep. Comfort had not been hard to find in the borrowed bed. She had fallen asleep on the far edge from him, hugging the arm the Jin had kissed close, to ward off the chill.

But now it was day and she was awake, squinting in the sunlight which streamed through from the balcony.

Of course Akil was already awake. He was standing out on the balcony, looking down over the city. He had not yet bothered to put a shirt on, which Loretta found...interesting. Though she could only see him from behind, the muscles across his back were tensed and this arms tight from his fierce grip on the edge of the balcony. She wondered what he was thinking about that he was so aggravated.

Before they went to sleep the night before, he had confirmed that he was the same Akil of the story that Malah shared, that he had once been a prince destined to rule Doua until the strange case of his eye colour had forced his parents to offer him as a sacrifice. He also told her more about the sacrifice of children.

There were nine sacrifices at all times in the mountain of smoke, one for each province of the Lamp. As soon as one sacrifice was spent, the province the sacrifice had come from was called to give tribute, and the culling would begin.

Malah was right that often a whole generation would be lost. Akil too had heard the rumours that one of the smaller outer provinces, Ao, had become a dead region. The blood of their youth had run dry with none left young enough to have children, or young enough to be sacrificed.

Doua meanwhile, had thrived for generations on the sacrifice Akil had made, though Loretta was beginning to suspect he hadn't realised this until he listened to Malah's stories. The city was rarely called to send children to the fire, unless they were born with pink eyes. The Djin king had declared that every Te Ahi child with pink eyes belonged to the mountain and should be given as tribute, and every one had been sacrificed and accepted into the Smoke, yet none of them had survived as long as Akil. Akil remained an enigma, and Loretta believed this had something to do with how she had ended up in the lamp in the first place, not that she would share this thought with him. At the moment it didn't matter anyway.

She rolled over and climbed out of the bed quietly, stretching before she walked out to join him on the balcony. "What do you see?" she asked after standing silently beside him for some time.

"A world that hasn't changed in a thousand years," he replied, relaxing his grip on the ledge in her presence.

"The city still looks completely the same?"

"Everything looks the same," he said with a sigh, "the city, the people and their behaviour. The Lamp. Everything. Even these rumours of the Djin King."

Loretta frowned, "So he was alive when you were sacrificed?"

Akil nodded.

"But how? How does he survive out of this 'Mountain of Smoke' if he is a genie?"

"I don't know."

"And how does he live for so long if it's so abnormal that you survived for so long?" She demanded to know, "And, additionally, does that not mean that you could be the oldest person in this entire world, next to this King? And, if you and he are both outside of this Mountain of Smoke, alive, what does that mean?"

Akil didn't reply. He fell into his usual state of melancholic musing, and Loretta could not be bothered prompting him to continue. There were so many things she suspected he must not understand about his existence. Sometimes, she just asked the questions to push him, she knew she wouldn't get an answer.