Clicking sounds, like nails scrabbling over stone. The whispery rustle of feathers. Shay lifts her eyes, searching the far reaches of the cell. More creatures crowd around her. She tries to count them, but the effort makes her dizzy.
The hag slowly extends a taloned finger and presses its pointed hook to Shay's temple. She scratches lightly. Shay would not be able to stay still if she had any choice. Every muscle in her body screams at her to thrash, resist, flee. The hag makes a moaning sound, and though whatever she's saying is unintelligible, Shay understands her request.
Her tongue loosens. Despite the burning desire to scream for help, she instead rasps out, “Yes, you can come in.”
The sides of the hag's mouth twitch into a grotesque mimicry of a smile. The talon digs into Shay's temple, drilling deep into her skull. Pain eats through every thought until there's only the whoosh of flapping wings. Then she's airborne.
She looks down from the night sky upon the realm of Mekchaouen from the perspective of a crow, but it's not like when she joined minds with the irises.
This view is impossible.
It appears as though she's flying at such a height that the entire realm unfolds below her, every region visible at once. From the wind-furrowed sands of the Mourian Desert to the moon-crusted waves of the Cerabbi Sea. With each flap of the giant crow wings stretched out to either side of her, her vision is spliced by unbidden images. Images that feel like memories. Memories belonging to someone else.Dreams!
Dreams of falling, of being chased, of bloodied teeth that clatter against the porcelain sides of washroom basins. Of dying, dying, dying again. Over and over. A hundred different ways.
No, not dreams.
These are nightmares.
The hags wheel across moonlit clouds, sifting through dream after dream, jumping from nightmare to nightmare, in search of a clue to the hjabat's whereabouts. They drag Shay along through a disjointed parade of humanity's most ardent wishes and basest desires.
A surprising number of dreams feature jewelry of some sort, and a fair portion of these involve engagement rings, specifically. Finally, Shay glimpses the bracelet. Where the other crystals are set into a metal or wooden base, the bracelet is a thick band made of blue crystal in its entirety.
The hag dips low in the sky. The streets of Nezjar spring up around them. They glide past the darkened square, the abandoned market, through slumbering neighborhoods. With each successive wing flap, the image of the hjabat grows clearer.
The night hag's clawed feet touch down upon the dry earth of a bramble-filled clearing beyond the medina. Shay recognizes the rocky hillside. The familiar cave opening wrought into its side.
She doesn't walk necessarily, but her consciousness glides toward the lights flickering at the end of that long tunnel. Those streaming ripples of red, blue,silver, and green. She floats past the ledge where she sat with Khawla and Shadi on Jou Boulka. Down past the glowing pillars and deeper into the twisting innards of the cavern. Through tunnels where tracks have been laid and strange equipment has been left behind. Tools of the like used for quarrying and mining.
In a hidden cubicle, not unlike the cell where Shay's sleeping body now lies, she comes upon two sleeping figures. The hjabat glowing from the wrist of one is so brilliant, its aura casts a flare that obscures the face—and other identifying features—of both sleepers. All Shay gets a clear look at is their boots.
Boots caked in a fine sheen of silvery dust.
Caw. Caw. Caw.The crows’ calls fill her ears, each cry growing louder and brasher, overlapping. Amplifying. She winces her eyes closed, and when she opens them, she's back in the dream caves. The night hag pants, her feathered breast fluttering. She still perches on Shay's chest, her talon embedded in Shay's temple.
The hag jerks her clawed hand back. Pain sizzles in a white-hot burst. Shay's vision sears and blurs before slowly shifting back into focus. Something pale and wormlike hangs limply off the night hag's talon.
Shay instinctively recognizes it as a piece of herself that has been plucked from her mind like an apple off a tree. She knows not what piece, won't know until one day when she'll be straightening her thoughts like books on a shelf and come across an untouched hollow in the dust wheresomethingis missing.
Shay's heart lurches beneath her sternum, already missing the ineffable. The hag lowers the clinging morsel toward her wide-stretched mouth.No, Shay wants to whisper. Wants to shout.It's mine. But whatever it is the hag has chosen to take, she swallows it down whole with a wet gurgle.
34
Breaking announcement:
Researchers have discovered a new thousand-cycle-old dragon skeleton! The green-hued fire-breather was found in a riverbed in the Valley of Muttaharoun and is believed to belong to a new species, possibly a gandawar. “Aisha” will be displayed this tending season at the Natural History Museum of Kiddah. Get your tickets early!
Come morning, Shay's throat is thick with sleep. The cave drawings no longer glow. Her right temple throbs. The hag's assault has left no outward mark upon her, but the ghost of something lost hovers just behind her shoulder. A smudge, at the edge of her periphery. And the thought of turning her head to behold its full form strikes her with dread.
The girls pack up camp, stopping to regroup once they've put some distance between themselves and the dream caves. Only then, over an outdoor breakfast, does Shay relax enough to tell her companions about her encounter with the night hags.
“If the rebels who took the bracelet are at the crystal cave, we must depart at once.” Marjan glances up from her plate of khlea and boiled eggs as if she expects an argument.
Shay nods. The motion sends a ripple of pain through her forehead. She chews a bite of jam-smeared khobz, which makes it worse. Though the forest shade blocks all but the faintest trickles of light, the day feels too bright and glaring. She wonders how Najla is getting along.
Yara lays a cool hand on her arm. “Have you figured out what they stole away?”
“Marjan is right.” Shay ignores the question. She doesn't want to tell Yara that it hurts to think about it. Literally. Each time she makes a conscious effort to take stock of her mental landscape, it feels like she's stabbing herself in the eye with a fork. “The meteor shower is when? Tomorrow night?”
