THE IFREET FATHER, Teresa Noelle Roberts 6/7
With a dizzying rush, the ground and the world as she knew it melted away. Pain wracked her, as if all the ills that might pass between seventeen and forty were striking her at once.
As suddenly as they had started moving, they stopped, setting down on the ground as gently as a feather. Labbannah opened her eyes.
The light was green. The ground was the color of springtime grass but not the texture. They were outside the walls of a city as large as Cordoba, and the turrets she could see against the green mountains in the distance glowed like jewels.
Stories she had read flooded back to her. Some said the Kaf was made up of gigantic emeralds, and the city of the djinn built of great gemstones.
It was true.
How ever would she get her gem-greedy father to leave such a city, even for the hope of Paradise?
Caught by despair, Labbannah sank to her knees and wept.
Her knees creaked; a gray-streaked braid flopped forward into her vision.
The hands she wrung in anguish were not as pretty as they had been, but stronger, as if they had worked hard, soothed the sick, cradled children. The magic ring now looked like the sort of unfashionable but well-made ornament a woman might cherish because it was a gift from a loved one two decades before.
At that sight, despair was replaced by the determination she’d seen in women of a certain age, that stubborn strength that let them stand up to their husbands or for their children, or get food on the table even if, like one of her aunties, they’d had the misfortune of marrying a wastrel.
She rose, less gracefully than she would have done moments before, but no slower.
“Don’t just stand there! I am going to save my father’s soul, whether he wants to be saved or not!” And, tossing away her veil, she stormed up to the gates of the city.
The guard at the gate towered over her and had seven horns, but he took one look in her eyes and let her past, Halim and Halima at her heels.
They found their way through teeming streets to a market square. It was as bustling as any suq in Cordoba, but the customers were ifreet and djinn, ranging from the nearly-human to the truly hideous. Some of the booths sold ordinary things, while others carried more exotic wares, huge roc eggs, for instance, or books that spoke their stories aloud. Flanked by her taller djinn companions, Labbannah passed unnoticed in the crowd.
They rounded a corner and came across a butcher’s stall, only instead of lambs and goats hanging from the hooks, there were human arms and legs, and instead of chickens and pigeons in cages, there were babies. The ghoul-butcher looked up and fixed his eyes on her across the crowded square. “There’s fresh meat!” he cried. “Catch it, boys!” Two smaller ghouls ran toward her.
Halim and Halima shoved her behind them, saying, “Hey, she’s our supper!”
The young ghouls begged pardon, but their master yelled at them, “Can’t you see that those two are sheep-eaters, not man-eaters? They’re trying to trick you!”
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