The Fire Wish

Chapter One ~ Najwa

                                                                               ~NAJWA~

The earth and all her layers sped past while I traveled to the surface. I was smoke and flame, swirling through granite, through shale and sand. It took only a moment, and then I emerged, myself again. I stepped onto the dirt and shielded my eyes from the blinding star in the sky. I was in a human’s garden, just as I’d wished.

“Shahtabi,” I whispered. It wasn’t a long-lasting wish, but it kept me from being seen by humans. It kept me safe, and it was the first wish I’d learned in school.

The sun beat down on a garden filled with flowers and their spiny, pale green stems. It cast shadows—real, sun-made shadows—on the dirt. The garden was soft, without a trace of crystal. Instead, it had flowers. Delicate, fragrant roses opened on the ends of the stems, yellow and pink in their centers.

A bird landed beside me on a branch and turned its head to look at me. It had shimmering feathers that it fluffed out before turning its head another way and taking off. Just like that, it was flying through the air, straighter than a bat. I had seen a live bird, and I had seen it fly!

But I was here for a flower, so I squeezed my hand around a stem. I was about to break it free when I heard music.

I dropped the stem, leaving the flower to bounce on its bush, and looked in the direction of the music. An arched door stood open. Someone, a human, was in there playing one of their stringed instruments. An oud.

The notes fluttered upward, and then dove into a melody I recognized. I couldn’t name it, or remember when I had heard it, but it felt familiar. It was like breathing in a scent that made you sad, but not remembering why.

I should have gotten the flower and headed straight back, but I didn’t. I tiptoed to the doorway. It was darker inside, and after my eyes adjusted, I saw a young man about my age bending over an oud and plucking at the strings. His sun-darkened fingers danced over them.

I knew this song. It swirled around in my memory, elusive and haunting. Why did it sound familiar?

The young man finished playing and put down the oud; then he pulled off his turban, tossed it onto the floor, and ran his fingers through his hair. It stood up, messy and thick.

I pressed my back into the doorway and took in the room. Shelves lined the walls, filled with bound books. Charts covered in numbers and maps of the stars covered the walls above the shelves, while scales brimming with broken rocks stood scattered on the single table in the room’s center. It was a kind of laboratory, but one in which human boys played music.

The music hung thickly in the air, like the scent of cinnamon, as he stood up and went to the table, taking two long strides before picking up a stone ball off one of the scales. He stared at the ball, which was so large he had to hold it with both hands. Then he turned it over, where it caught the light in milky-white layers. It was selenite. We used it to house the flames of our streetlamps but it was heavy. I had never seen anyone rolling it in his hands, pressing it close to his face.

“How is this going to work?” he asked the almost-empty room.

My face started to tingle. Soon my shahtabi wish would fade, and he’d see me standing in his doorway. I backed out of the young man's laboratory while he was still staring at the selenite ball. Then I turned and ran to one of the rosebushes.

I was in a pool of hot sunlight when the wish died out, with a thorn-riddled stem between two fingers. Quickly, I bent the stem till it snapped, gasping as the thorns pricked my skin, and held the rose tight against me.

“Mashila,” I whispered.

My body fell into a cloud of smoke and flame, and I dragged the rose with me, its bit of pink dusting the air like a blush.