“And don't worry about not being able to fall asleep.” Marjan's voice is calm, but the deep caves give it a distorted ring. The lantern makes her eyes flicker and flash. “They aren't called the dream caves for nothing.”
“Is there anything I have to do?” Shay asks warily.
“They won't force their way into your mind,” Yara says. “You have to accept them in.”
Marjan visibly shivers. “No matter how terrifying they appear.”
The opening here is much larger than Shadi's cave. Nothing about this place is hidden or secret or hard to find. The broadness itself feels like a trap. But as they make their way inside, multiple paths branch off, winding and narrowing. The sisters tell Shay there is no wrong choice. In the dream caves, all paths lead to the central cavern, the dreamer's sanctum.
“What is your affinity?” Shay asks Marjan, to make conversation.
The drink Yara prepared for Shay worked as she promised, allowing her to leave Shadi enough milk for a couple of days. Enough time for them to secure the last hjabat and take it along with the others to Shadi's cave before the meteor shower. Marjan's feeding device came out perfectly, too, though that was more ingenuity, less magic.
“I have really good aim.” Marjan mimes pulling an arrow from the quiver at her shoulder, drawing the string of an air bow, and releasing it.
“I think you meant to sayunerring marksmanship.Don't be so modest, Marj,” Yara says. “Tell her about the time you shot an arrow through that apple on Mmi's head at fifty paces when you were three cycles old!”
Shay marvels at the fact she's met not one but three other hizouras now. She used to think she was alone. That magic was something to be subdued at any cost, even her health. She marvels, too, that Najla won't have to feel thatway in the likely case she's also a hizoura. She'll have Shay and two khalat to guide her. Three if Khawla comes back.
WhenKhawla comes back.
As they walk, a calm falls over her. A not-unpleasant sense of tiredness. She hears a sound. Not water, not wind, but something in between. A low, soothing hum that gets louder as they go along. The tunnel ends, opening to an expansive circular space.
The cave walls in the dreamer's sanctum have eroded, forming shelves of identically-sized alcoves, like cells in a honeycomb. Many of these are etched with crude drawings, symbols marked in overlapping layers, newer scribblings covering older ones until it's hard to make sense of either.
Some cells are littered with scattered bones.
Shay chokes on a dry cough. “Anything anyone wants to tell me?”
Marjan frowns. “Did I not mention that sometimes the thing the night hags take is the dreamer's life?”
“You most certainly did not.”
“That won't happen,” Yara quickly interjects. “It only happens to, like, evil people.”
“That's a theory,” Marjan corrects.
“No,” Yara argues. “Mmi has researched the ghoul clans extensively. If you read her journals, you'd know it's a reasonable assumption based on known facts.”
“That's exactly what a theoryis,” Marjan insists.
Shay strongly thinks someone should have mentioned this before they left from the bone-eaters’ cottage, but there's no point debating it now, when they're already here. When that sound has gotten, not louder, exactly … but stronger?
It's almost like a vibration, so, yes, she thinksstrongeris the right word. It's relaxing. Shay can tell Yara and Marjan feel it, too. They've stopped arguing and started swaying their bodies back and forth, back and forth, to the calming rhythm.
Without much by way of further conversation, they set up camp. Each girl chooses a cell to sleep in and rolls out their cushions and blankets for the night.When Shay closes her eyes, her mother's face is not there. Her mind is blessedly blank.
It's a relief she doesn't enjoy for long, because the next thing she's aware of is heaviness, a bearing down in the middle of her chest. She struggles to breathe, to roll over and change position. She can't move.
Her eyes flick open and go wide, beholding the creature perched on her body.
Night hag.
Shay tries to swallow her panic, but it goes only halfway down her throat before coming back up kicking and screaming.
Though the hag is crouched over her, Shay can tell she's tall. Long, straight dark hair falls over her shoulders like a veil. Her skin is alabaster white. Her eyes sockets are gouged, empty black pits from which some dark substance leaks, spilling down her pale cheeks in jagged smears. Her mouth hinges open as though eternally frozen in a muted scream.
From shoulder to elbow, her arms appear normal, but from the elbow down, the skin melds into thick black scales that end at her sharp-taloned fingertips. Her chest is covered by glossy black feathers that tip silver in the strange glow Shay realizes is coming from the cave drawings.
