Sparkers (13 page)

Melchior reddens. “That was stupid of me. I'm sorry. For that and for everything. Please hear me out.”

I wait. It strikes me how absurd it is for us to be having this conversation in Sarah's room, surrounded by pastel cushions and watched by a row of porcelain dolls nestled on the bed.

Melchior looks me in the eye. His hair clings damply to his forehead, and he swallows. “I'm sorry for letting my friends hurt you. For letting them break your violin.”

“Why didn't you stop them?” I ask.

“I don't know,” he says bleakly. “I guess I didn't want Shimon and Ayal to think . . . It's not easy being Xanite at Firem. If you don't make them like you, they call you an immigrant, a foreigner, sand spawn.”

When he utters that name for Xanites out loud, I can't help a small gasp. As insults go, sand spawn is pretty foul.

Melchior seems not to notice my shock. “Then on top of that, being a Rashid . . .”

“Azariah seems to manage,” I put in.

Melchior snorts. “Azariah's a genius. And unlike me, he wants to go into government so he can fix things.” He shakes his head. “I owe you a new violin—”

“I don't need it,” I say. Then I realize with a pang that I'm thinking of Leah's fiddle.

“Are you sure?” Melchior says.

I nod. “You weren't the one who broke it.”

He grimaces. “In a way, I was. I'm really sorry.”

“I know.” After a pause, I add, “My thanks.”

I feel strangely relieved, though I still can't wait to escape. “Azariah's waiting for me.”

Melchior nods. I edge out of Sarah's bedroom, feeling the slightest twinge at leaving him looking so miserable.

When I enter the study, Sarah is no longer there. Azariah looks up from the Hagramet books. “What on earth did Melchior want?”

“He was apologizing to me,” I say.

“Apologizing?” he says incredulously. “For what?”

I hesitate before telling him what happened.

“He did that?” Azariah sounds horrified.

“It's nothing to do with you,” I say. “We need to get to work. The dark eyes.”

“Oh. Right.” He takes a breath. “I think I've determined the spot in the text with the most discussion of spells. With any luck, there'll be a description of the neutralizing spell.”

The section Azariah has picked is near the end of the book, about twenty pages past the passage about the Agrav Dynasty's collapse. I sit down and tackle the first sentence while he scribbles notes in his blank book. The words are simple, but their arrangement is complex, and after a moment I realize the paragraph consists of instructions.

“You're right, Azariah. I think this is a spell.”

“Really?”

“Here.” I translate aloud. “‘Written down to preserve . . .' Something about forgetting. Then here, ‘a spell,' ‘harmful to harmless' . . . I think you've found it!”

He clenches his fists. “God of the Maitaf. We're saved.”

“But what if it doesn't work anymore?” I say, glancing down the page. “I can't make much sense of these directions.”

“Well, you're not a ka—” He flushes. “Translate the spell, and I'll do it.”

Once I've finished, we read the text together. I'm skeptical. The words are plain, but the hand movements they describe are anything but clear. Worse yet, with nothing but my grammar to guide us, we can only approximate the pronunciation of the incantation.

Azariah's face falls as he peruses my translation, but he still says, “I want to try it.”

With some apprehension, I ask, “Is it safe? What happens if you cast a spell incorrectly?”

“Nothing, usually.” He squints at my handwriting, contorting his hands in front of his chest. “What sound do you think ‘ae' is?”

“How should I know? That's how the chart transliterates this Hagramet letter, but Ashari doesn't even use that digraph.”

He raises one eyebrow. “What's a digraph?”

“Just try, Azariah.”

While he utters syllables in slow succession, I chip away at the next section of the text. I'm hunting for a word root in the dictionary when Azariah sighs. “It's not working.”

“How do you know?”

“I can feel it. The magic's not moving.” He glances at the notebook where I've written,
This describes how to . . .
“If I could just ask the advice of a more skilled magi—”

“Azariah, you can't!” My voice catches on a spike of terror as the intuition surges inside me.

“All right, all right,” he says, half grudging, half offended.

Just then, I find the dictionary entry I was looking for. Next to the Hagramet verb is its Ashari translation:
treat (as illness), cure, heal
. My heart pounds.

“Look!” I say, scrawling
cure
in the notebook. I seize the original text. Familiar words leap out at me: plants, numbers, simple directions.

“It looks like a recipe for some kind of potion,” I say breathlessly.

Azariah looks blank. “I don't—”

“Here,” I say, showing him in the book. “Below the neutralizing spell. Azariah, I think it's a cure for the dark eyes!” I jump up from the chair as tears of joy, or relief, sting my eyes.

Azariah's face lights up. “Then we can save Ashara! I'll figure out the neutralizing spell, we all will, but first we'll heal everyone who's ill.”

Hope rises in my chest, burning so brightly it almost scares me. The task before us is so daunting.

“We're going to save the city, right?” I say.

Azariah nods. “We have to.”

• • •

A
FTER
C
HANNAH
DROPS
me off, I stand in the street for a moment, motionless in the snow. The world is so quiet. Out here, it is the loneliest of winter nights, but I'm not afraid, not even of the poison in the air.

At home, Mother is in our bedroom leaning over Caleb, who lies curled up in bed, the blankets pulled up to his chin. The peace of the snowy street deserts me.

“Mother?” My voice sounds high-pitched. “Caleb?”

Mother looks at me, her face empty. “He's sick, Marah.”

I rush to the bed and place my palm on my brother's forehead. His skin is burning, his body trembling. I stroke his hot face until he opens his eyes.

His irises are black.

T
he cure is on my mind the moment I wake. I crawl out from under the covers and check on Caleb. He's still feverish. As I pile my blankets onto him, a powerful wave of longing for Father sweeps through me. I miss him more intensely than I have in years, and with missing him comes fear as deep and black as the sea. We've already lost Father. We can't lose Caleb too.

I can't wait a whole week to start deciphering the cure. I want to go to Azariah's house today, but I would have to walk, and I don't know the way well enough to be sure I wouldn't get lost in the country. So instead I grab a piece of paper from the nightstand and a pen from my schoolbag. I scribble a letter to Azariah asking if we can meet sooner than next Thirdday. If I mail it today, I can hope to hear from him as early as the beginning of this weekend. Even that feels too far off.

When I walk into the kitchen with the letter, I'm surprised to find Leah's sister Ruth sitting with Mother at the table.

“Good morning, Marah,” Mother says. “I didn't get a chance to tell you last night, but I've found a new job.”

“Really?” I say. This is the last thing I expected to hear. “Where?”

“At the Maitafi Graveyard, in Gishal District.”

“You're going to be a
grave digger
?”

Mother laughs. “No. I'll be record keeper.”

After the secular City Cemetery, the Maitafi Graveyard is the largest burial ground in the city. Nowadays only halani are interred there. And only the religious ones at that. I'm surprised they hired Mother when we aren't Maitafi.

“Today's my first day,” she continues, “and you have your violin lesson this morning, so—”

“Maybe I should stay with Caleb,” I interrupt.

Mother shakes her head. “Ruth will watch him while we're gone.”

“It's the least I can do,” Ruth says.

I grudgingly give in. After a hasty breakfast, Mother and I leave the apartment together. She watches me tuck Azariah's letter into our mailbox without asking who it's for. Before we part ways in the brittle cold, she places her hand on my shoulder and says, “We'll make it through this, Marah.”

I take the direct route through the kasir neighborhood again. Even as I keep a nervous eye out for Firem boys, my thoughts circle incessantly around Caleb and the promise of a cure. I walk along the icy sidewalks with reckless haste, wanting to hurry through every moment I'm away from my brother.

When I reach her house, Aradi Imael greets me with a warm smile. “How are you, Marah? Only seven days now.”

I nod distractedly. Caleb's illness has overshadowed everything, making my upcoming audition feel much less real. I want to be translating Hagramet right now.

While Aradi Imael brews a pot of tea, I tune and try to coax some limberness back into my fingers. Then she asks to hear the Shevem. I begin to play, my tone thin and colorless.

“Fuller sound,” says Aradi Imael, watching me.

I draw my bow more deeply into the strings, but each phrase is more barren than the last.

“Stop, Marah.” My teacher's face is calm, her fingers steepled under her chin.

I let my bow arm drop to my side.

She leans forward in her armchair. “You need to give it more.”

“I'm trying,” I mumble.

“No, you're not,” she says. “Start again. Make that crescendo fill the whole room.”

My fingers are trembling, and suddenly I'm sure I can't play the Qirakh audition. In my effort to keep myself together, I play like a clockwork creature.

“Marah, is something wrong?”

Yes. Everything. I can't trust my voice.

“Marah,” Aradi Imael says gently, “you won't play with your whole self unless you risk vulnerability. You must not be afraid of your fear.”

I concentrate on breathing for a few excruciating seconds. How can she ask this of me? If I don't shove down my terror for Caleb, I'll break down completely. And what does it mean to play with my whole self?

At last, I adjust the fiddle under my chin. Instead of suppressing my fear of losing Caleb, I try to let it wash over me. I lift my bow again, holding it with a looser grip. Then I take the Shevem from the beginning. I'm still holding back, but now my tone is purer, sweeter.

When I stop, Aradi Imael nods. “Better.”

• • •

T
HE
NEXT
DAY
,
Fifthday, Mother leaves for the Maitafi Graveyard just before sunup. I practice in my bedroom all morning, standing over my brother like some sort of guardian. My audition is on Firstday, only days away. Caleb wakes now and then and watches me sight-read medsha excerpts or polish the Shevem. I almost can't bear the eclipse of his eyes.

From our bedroom window, I spot the mailman leaving our building. I race down to the foyer to check our box, hoping for a postal miracle. It's empty, of course.

Mother returns at dusk, a basket hanging from her arm. She sets a fragrant loaf of bread, a jar of pickles, and something wrapped in butcher's paper on the kitchen table.

“We can afford fresh meat?” I say.

“Yes,” she says with a tired smile. “Thanks to my new job.”

“How do you bear it?” I find myself asking. I can't imagine being around the endless funeral processions, the murmured prayers, the gaping graves. “Doesn't it make you think of Father?”

She looks sadly at me. “I have never been able to avoid reminders of your father, Marah.”

Later, I watch her tending to Caleb. Her sure hands help him get up and lie down, gauge the heat of his fever, and coax broth and herbal tea into him. Her movements stir up dim memories of my own childhood illnesses, of Mother's presence, always near, imparting the confidence through the haze of sickness that all would be well. But all won't be well until I can get back to the Hagramet book.

On Sixthday, Caleb's fever breaks. He begins to cough.

On Seventhday, I finally receive a letter from Azariah. I tear it open in the entrance hall.

Dear Marah,

I'm sorry to hear about Caleb. I'm afraid I only have more bad news. Sarah fell ill with the dark eyes on Fourthday. I agree we can't wait until next week to continue our work, so I've asked Channah to bring you to our house on Eighthday evening.

Azariah

Sarah too! I picture her on the yellow cushion in her bedroom, paging eagerly through her fairy-tale book. The letter flutters in my hand. Tomorrow night can't come soon enough.

At dinnertime, I tell Mother I'm going to the Rashids' again.

“Tomorrow?” she says. “Weren't you just there on Thirdday?”

I nod, blowing on my soup.

Mother sets down her spoon. “Marah, more than a few neighbors have asked me why you're associating with kasiri. Gadi Yared told me she couldn't imagine what kind of mother would let her daughter ride around in some government official's auto.”

I feel angry on both our behalfs. “I'm sorry.”

“What the neighbors think doesn't matter if I understand why you're going to the Rashids,” Mother says more gently. “Are you really still visiting these kasiri just to humor a little girl?”

Her perceptiveness makes me squirm a little. “Not exactly.”

She waits, expecting me to elaborate.

“Sarah has a brother who's also in Final, at Firem. His name is Azariah.”

Mother raises her eyebrows. “You've been going to the Rashids to see a boy?”

“It's not like that,” I say hastily. “We're both interested in foreign languages and old books. That's what we've been talking about.”

This makes Mother laugh. “You and your languages, Marah. But why do you need to see this Azariah tomorrow? Isn't it enough to talk about obscure languages once a week?”

I hesitate. If I reveal the whole truth to Mother now, she'll never stop asking me questions. She'll want to see the evidence with her own eyes. Inevitably it will come out that Azariah and I have been translating a banned book, and I'm still convinced we can't tell anyone about that.

“We've found something,” I say at last. “Something I think might help Caleb.”

Mother stills. “You mean something that might heal him?”

“Maybe,” I say, bracing myself for an onslaught of inquiries. But Mother just shakes her head.

“You can go to the Rashids, Marah,” she says, “but try not to chase false hopes.”

• • •

O
N
E
IGHTHDAY
, C
HANNAH
picks me up later than usual, after supper. At the Rashids', Azariah doesn't even look up when I enter his study. Books litter the floor, and he kneels among them, his lips moving silently.

“It's me,” I say.

He stands up and wipes his dusty fingers on his trousers. “I'm sorry about Caleb.”

“I'm sorry about Sarah,” I say hollowly.

I pick my way to the desk where the Hagramet text lies open to the instructions for the cure.

“The first ingredient's an herb, something about bears,” Azariah says.

I glance at the Hagramet. He's right, the first item on the ingredients list is “the herb called foot of bear cub.”

“Cub's foot?” I guess. “Does that sound familiar?”

He shakes his head. “Sorry about the mess. I was looking in my father's herbals.”

I reach for a pen and our translation notebook. The next few items are also rather culinary: more herbs, a couple of spices, some kind of nut oil whose name I recognize from the market. The dictionary furnishes us with the Ashari names for these ingredients, but neither of us is certain what they are.

“Perilla?” I say. “Oxalis? I've never heard of these plants.”

“Good thing we have these herbals, then,” he says.

While he combs the indexes of his father's books, I move on, deeper into the Hagramet. It's calming to wrestle with the text. The focus it demands distracts me from my worries, and at least we're doing something.

At last, I look up from the book and read the list of translated ingredients aloud. Three entries remain undecipherable.

“This doesn't look
too
bad,” Azariah says, sounding a little desperate as he examines the page. “I've found all the herbs and spices, and most of them shouldn't be difficult to buy.”

“Most of them?”

“A few are uncommon,” he admits.

“Still, isn't it odd a magical cure should include such ordinary ingredients?”

“I'm not sure. We don't study apothecary magic till secondary school.”

“I can ask about the unusual ingredients at the Ikhad,” I offer. Never mind how we're going to make the cure if I can't translate the last three items, or if Azariah has to dabble in a kind of magic he's never learned.

“I'll do some more research too.” He grits his teeth in frustration. “I wish we were making this already!”

For the first time, I decide to leave my grammar with him, but only after I tear a sheet out of the notebook and make myself a copy of the ingredients list.

“When can you come back?” Azariah asks. “There are still the instructions to translate.”

“The Ikhad's not open till Tenthday,” I say. That's in two days, but it feels an age away. “I'll come that night.”

“Eat dinner with us. I'll ask Channah to bring you.”

“My thanks.” I should be getting home, but something holds me back. “How's Sarah?”

“Not well,” he says. “The doctor was here a few days ago, but he couldn't do much except give her medicine and use some healing magic to bring down her fever.” He seems embarrassed, as if he wishes he hadn't mentioned healing spells.

“And your brother?” he asks.

“I don't know.”

In this fragile moment, we're both afraid to breathe.

“Can I see her?” I ask impulsively.

Azariah nods, and I follow him to Sarah's bedroom. Across from the cushion and the lacquered cupboard where I read to her, Sarah lies on a low bed under a thick pile of blankets.

“Azariah?” she mumbles, squinting at us from her voluminous pillow. It's a shock to see her like this, drained of her vivacity.

“Marah's here,” Azariah says. He leads me to Sarah's bedside, and I kneel to return her black and wondering gaze.

“Marah?” she says in disbelief.

“It's me.” I try to smile, but my lips crack.

“I don't feel good,” Sarah says, butting her head deeper into her pillow.

“I know,” I say. “But you'll get better soon.”

She bursts into stormy tears. I look at Azariah in alarm, but he just shakes his head.

“Sarah,” I whisper, stroking her damp hair as she cries. “It'll be all right.” Her sobs are already abating. She's too weak for such noisy despair, and soon she falls asleep.

I stand up and catch sight of Azariah's clenched jaw.

“I'm sorry,” I say.

“Don't be silly,” he says, wiping the tearstains from Sarah's cheeks with his thumb. “You made her happy.”

• • •

C
HANNAH
HAS
AN
unsettled air about her as she starts the auto's engine to take me home. Once we're rolling along the snow-dusted road, she asks, “What do you keep coming to the Rashids for?”

“I'm working with Azariah,” I say evasively.

“Don't you think it's unusual for you to be spending so much time with a kasir family?”

Is she warning me off? Does she think I've betrayed our kind by fraternizing with her employers? She knows as well as I do the Rashids are different.

“Is your work something to do with languages?” Channah persists.

“What?”

She guides the auto around a bend between the bluish snowbanks. “The reason Sarah wanted you to meet Azariah in the first place was because of your foreign books.”