“Do not look at my face,” she snapped.
He lowered his eyes sharply.
“I—”
“Please,” she said. “No apologies. Explain the people. Among the trees.”
He hesitated. Thinking of his books, no doubt. Searching for answers experience could not give him.
“Most likely my dead,” he said. “On your path, you have your own.”
“Will you look for the Maha among them?”
“He will be far deeper in the realm,” he said. “Not here. Not so close.”
As they walked, the path and the forest around them began to change. The trees grew lush, then withered once more. Shadowy figures moved closer, fingers curled around branches, eyes lambent—and then vanished entirely, behind a mist so thick that it burnished the air a blinding white.
They finally stopped when their path—Zahir’s path—was barred. The trees had formed together before them into an arch. Beyond it lay no forest. Instead the ground beyond the arch was covered in a sumptuous carpet, heavily embellished with birds and flowers, but curiously devoid of the rich colors Arwa would have expected of such an artful masterpiece. But there was barely any color here, and the floor was as much a mirage of ash as everything else that surrounded them.
Zahir stared ahead. He did not move.
“Tests,” he said slowly. “Everything must be tested. The Maha is not here, not in this place, but I believe another ancestor’s memory lies beyond the bough.” There was a pause. “Somewhere my heart is beating very quickly. Do you feel the same, Lady Arwa?”
“Of course,” she whispered. “How could I not?”
“Of course,” he echoed. He looked at their joined hands. “Two ropes twined together are harder to break than one,” he said. She had the sense he was repeating the claim for confidence. “Together, we are less likely to lose ourselves to the path. Lady Arwa, no matter what you see, do not let go of me.”
“What will I see?”
He frowned, the expression forming a luminous crescent on the glass of his brow.
“I don’t know.”
“Ah. Well then, my lord. I suppose we learn together.”
Without allowing herself another thought, she stepped over the threshold, drawing Zahir with her.
They were in a room surrounded by lattice and silk, shawl discarded in a heap of silver embroidery upon the floor cushions. A large divan stood at the room’s center, strewn with pillows. Flowers sat in bowls of water, to sweeten the air.
“This is not a man’s room, I think, my lord,” said Arwa.
“No.” Zahir was looking up, a waver in his voice. Arwa followed his eyes.
The ceiling was covered in stars, tessellated silver-gold. Cloth, she realized, had been pinned to the domed roof, giving the large chamber unusual warmth and intimacy. As Arwa watched, the stars wavered. Moved.
“Are they—?”
“An aspect of dreaming,” said Zahir. “Nothing remains exactly as it should. We do not dream perfectly, as Gods do.”
He stepped forward. Once. Twice.
“She is by the window,” he said softly. “Come.”
Across the room stood the silhouette of a woman. Arwa could not think of her as a woman whole. Even from here, the absences were apparent: no fully formed legs, to shape the hollow curl of her skirt; no face upon that turned head. Her skin was nothing but ash. She was a barely real thing, a scrap of memory carved into limbs and the turn of a head, a soft fall of ash-white hair, bound into a thin braid.
Zahir moved closer to her first—held a hand out toward her, his roots strange and bright, his eyes hollows of feeling.
She heard him whisper a prayer, a mantra spoken at funerals, with grief and love for the dead. Then he curled his fingers, touched a hand to the woman’s ash—and shattered her.
