THE IFREET FATHER, Teresa Noelle Roberts 5/7
Quickly she realized that had she been on her own in the desert, jackals would have soon gnawed her bones. But Halim and Halima bore her up when she grew too weary; created shade from the fierce sun with their alterable, heat-loving bodies; drew water from rock and sand; conjured food. When the desert nights grew cold, Halima would shrink to the size of a human girl and share her blankets like a sister.
Always, in the distance, Labbannah could see ifreet and ghouls with hideous faces and deadly claws. They wished to attack, the twins said, but feared her bottle-amulet and the twins’ weapons.
Among these horrid creatures, she sometimes thought she saw her father, apart from the others, his gaze forlorn.
Once, she tried to approach him. He let her draw close, but when she came into his reach, his form shifted to something that never could have been human.
Moving faster than her mortal eyes could perceive, the four other ghouls surrounded her.
She grasped the bottle that hung around her neck and said the words that Fatima had taught her.
Before she had a chance to open the seal, a battle cry split the air. Halim’s sword flashed as he entered the fray, while Halima fired a great bow. Labbannah wisely curled up in a ball on the sand, hand still on the amulet.
Halim struck one of the ifreet a terrible blow, cleaving his chest. Flames flickered from the wound. Within a few beats of Labbannah's racing heart, the ifreet was burned to ashes. Halim had already moved on to another foe, and soon small fires burned on various places on the evil creature’s skin.
Halima’s arrows caught another one in the throat, and it too burned to ash within seconds.
Seeing that, the survivors threw up their hands in surrender, then vanished.
“Never trust an ifreet,” Halima said, helping Labbannah up. “An ifreet will kill you if it can, and if your father has taken their path, he also will try. You must keep your bottle for such a case, for it may be the only way to save you both.”
“Father protected me at sea,” she protested.
“But many weeks have passed since then. The longer he spends in the Kaf, the more likely he is to become corrupt,” Halim said.
“Then we must reach him as quickly as possible. Please, my friends,” Labbannah begged, “I know the djinn can travel at the speed of thought. Help me!”
The twins conferred long and seriously, sometimes agreeing, sometimes arguing. “We can fly as fast as a lover’s sigh flies to his beloved,” Halim explained finally, “but such speed is perilous for humans, for your kind is more bound to time than we are. I am reluctant to do this, for I would hate to see you harmed.”
“But,” said his sister, “I know that it is you and not we who must choose whether to take the risk. We can take you to the Kaf in the twinkling of an eye, but for each league we travel that way, you shall age.”
“How old will I be when we arrive?”
“Perhaps forty of your years.”
Labbannah turned pale, imagining that much of her life melting away. And then she took a deep breath. “Forty is young enough to enjoy good health, but old enough that my brothers can’t easily marry me off. I can be an eccentric scholar who lives alone, as I always wished. In any case, only Allah can say if I might not die tomorrow, whatever age I am.” To try to convince herself that she wasn’t frightened, she joked, “Inshallah, I’ll be one of those lucky women who grows more handsome as she ages.”
With those brave words, she let Halima pick her up and take to the air.
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