Vial of Tears, page 26
“That is true,” Eshmun said. “Yes.”
“It’s not safe here for us,” Sam said. “Another god will come after Rima, or me. Your father, maybe. The brother of Môt.”
“Perhaps.”
“Then I want to die now,” she said. “I need to die.”
22
She would become a ruḥā.
She would slip through the boundary like water through a sieve. She would reach Mom with her message. Eshmun would heal her and bring her back to life, and Rima would never know. She would sleep through the entire thing.
“You want to go to Earth to haunt your mother?” Eshmun asked, incredulous. “To speak to her?”
“Yes,” Sam said. “To tell her to touch the obol she has. I have to try. It’s my only chance.”
“Samira,” Eshmun chided.
“Stop,” she said firmly. “No lectures. This could work and you know it.”
“And that is why I hesitate,” he said. “You will leave me.”
“I’m dying!” Sam shrieked, holding up her hand. “And you can’t heal me.”
Eshmun looked away, his expression wracked with anguish.
“Besides, you have your obol, and sooner or later you’ll use it to leave. Now give me my chance, please.” She grabbed Eshmun’s hands. Her voice broke. “I have to hope. I have to try.”
“All that time Teth was pressing me to decide what you were to me. Cousin or confidante, slave or ally. I know now. You are my truth,” he said. “My quštā. You shine a light into my darkest corners.”
“You’re welcome,” she said.
She was terrified of what she was about to do. It could go horribly wrong. She pushed him away because otherwise she would start to cry, and there was no time for tears. “Now go find Sbartā. And tell Helena. If this works… if she wants to come back with me, this could be her only chance.”
But Eshmun didn’t move. He looked into Sam’s eyes. “What if you venture beyond my reach?—Too deep into death to return?”
“I won’t,” she said, trying to convince herself as well. “I’m coming back. This isn’t goodbye. Not yet, not like this.” Trembling, she swiped a tear from her cheek. “Go. Now!”
Eshmun nodded. “I will prepare the poison,” he said. “It will be painless.” He kissed her forehead, then pulled away and searched her face.
“Samira. My light,” he said before sadly turning away. She watched as he walked out onto the stone bridge that led back to the mainland and the city.
As soon as she lost sight of him, she went back to the small bedroom to check on Rima, who was still sleeping soundly, even as Sam kissed her cheek. “I’ll be right back,” she said quietly into her ear. “I won’t be gone long.”
“Ah, but where are you going?” Zayin suddenly appeared, stepping away from the stone walls where she’d been camouflaged.
Sam’s heart jolted with panic. Her mouth turned dry.
“Šlama ‘lekh,” she choked, backing toward the doorway, curling her hands into fists.
“You owe me something.” Zayin extended a gloved hand. “The vial of tears. The full supply, actually.”
“I had a vial,” Sam said, “but… I had to use it. I can get you another.” She glanced at Rima, who was stirring in her sleep.
Zayin’s eyes narrowed. “You used it? Did you drink it yourself?” she hissed.
Before Sam could answer, Zayin grabbed her by the hair and clamped a hand over her mouth, dragging her out onto the patio. “Let me tell you a story,” she said into Sam’s ear. “Once there was another ḥayuta like me. Her skin was nearly purple. Melqart adored her because her skin was the color of the royal dye. He would arrange grapes and flowers across her stomach and we all watched with jealous eyes as he devoured her.” She pulled Sam’s hair with a vicious jerk. “Do you know what happened to her?”
Sam tried to shake her head. She could hardly breathe.
“She grew older,” Zayin hissed, “and Melqart’s desire for her went cold. He turned his attention toward me. I became the favorite, the queen of his court. So what do you think will happen to me if I grow old?” She shoved Sam to the stone floor, where she hit her head. “I will not allow it. I will not be forgotten.”
Sam’s lips were against the floor as she spoke. “That might be true. That might be Zayin’s story,” she said, turning over, trying to pull herself up against the dizziness. “But you aren’t Zayin, are you? Why bother with this charade? Show your true self. Take off your gloves.”
“True self? There is no such thing,” Zayin snarled. “We are all simply potential.”
“I know who you are,” Sam said.
Zayin cackled, and then shook her shoulders to shed her appearance. She became a withered, weathered old man. Sparse, wiry hair. Loose, mottled skin. Knobbed, bony hands.
“I am the Alchemist!” he cried. “I am chemistry. I am fluid. I am an epoch of knowledge: every ancient text, recipe, and concoction. I render dark magic unseen. While Eshmun was a prisoner of Môt, I took his blood and hair myself.” He squatted to lean close to Sam’s face, his uneven yellow teeth bared. “Because you failed to serve me.”
Sam’s head still swarmed with stars. “I serve no one.”
“If you wish to redeem yourself, tell me where his obol is.”
“No,” Sam said. “I won’t tell you.”
“I wonder. What could I make with the blood of a god-slayer and prophesied queen?” The shapeshifter considered her. “I would like to experiment. I would like to know. What could I do with your heart? What is your potential?”
Sam saw the flash of the knife. And then she felt it.
“No,” she wheezed. The pain was searing, a fire made of glass shards and tannîyn talons. Her hands went to her stomach, where she was bleeding. It was just like Rima’s recurring nightmare, the one where Sam was leaving to fight in a war instead of Dad. She wore a uniform that was too big for her. Her hands were covered in blood. It was warm and sticky.
“You die alone,” the shapeshifter said. “For dishonoring our agreement. I will slice the throat of your sister next, but I will take her to Eshmun to heal, and he will give me the tears you owe me. And then I will take all of his blood and hair, every last drop, and every strand.”
Sam felt herself separate, torn in half like a sheet of paper.
Her body below.
Her ruḥā hovering above.
She was dead.
23
Eshmun. Hurry.
There was a rift in the sky and she slid through it like a shadow. Ahead was a dark waterfall, a thin sheet of water, too black to see through. I’m dead, Sam thought. So fast. Behind her trailed a thin line of smoke still connecting her to the world of the living, to Eshmun and Rima.
Death was loud. There were so many voices, a hive, a constant buzzing.
Mom? Sam cried out. Where are you?
She touched the waterfall and it parted around her finger, which was now a black twig of bone. She gasped at the sight of her reflection in the spectral water, a skeleton draped with tendrils of shadows. A curtain hung upon a midnight window.
She had no breath to hold as she floated through the frigid waterfall and beyond. Behind her, the line of smoke remained. Voices flooded over her. Mom! Is that you?
It was like tuning Dad’s old radio to his country station. Sam trained her attention back and forth, nudging it a fraction of an inch.
And then suddenly she was in a restaurant. A diner with red-checkered tablecloths. There was a glass case full of pies, and no one in the restaurant except for her mother.
Mom sat alone in a booth, twirling a spoon in her mug of coffee. At her feet, a brown dog panted happily. His name was Kibbee, Mom’s dog before she met Dad. Sam knew all this, even though Mom had never told her.
Mom. It’s me. It’s Sam.
Sam. Sam! Her mother leaped up from the booth and hugged her. I have been looking everywhere for you! Where have you been? She pulled back and screamed. You’re dead! Look at you… you’re… She backed away, horrified, and then turned and ran through the doors and out into the street.
Wait! Sam followed. Outside was New York City. Or maybe it was Paris. There were huge buildings with massive carved columns. Buses and taxis lined the curbs. The air smelled like smog. Stop! she cried, catching up with Mom and taking her by the arm.
No, no, no. I need to wake up from this dream. Which way gets me out? Mom’s eyes went to a subway entrance ahead and she ran toward it, but Sam blocked her way.
Please, Mom! I need your help! Sam clasped her dark hands together. If it’s too hard to look at me, just close your eyes and listen.
No. Let me wake up. Mom was intent on getting to the subway entrance. Sam stayed ahead of her.
Listen to me. Do you have a coin somewhere? A magic coin?
Suddenly, all around them, the streets disappeared and the buses changed into elephants. Above, a man walked on a high wire, and Mom had popcorn in her hand. A clown walked past holding a bouquet of giant white balloons, floating like bubbles through the air.
Mom! Listen to me. You have to go touch the coin. The coin from Lebanon. Do you have one? One that’s special? Maybe it’s hidden somewhere with your tarot cards and crystals. In that special box you keep hidden in the closet. The locked box with the gold bracelets and the wishbones inside. Mom!
Mom turned. Held out her hand and unfurled her fingers. In her palm was a square piece of fabric. Black silk. She unfolded it and a coin sat in the middle. This one, she said, not a question.
Yes! That’s the one. I need you to wake up and go get it. Go touch it. When you’re awake. I know you might be afraid of it, but it will bring Rima home. She can come home if you touch it. Do you understand? I’m sending you a sign. This is your sign, Mom.
Mom looked at her, searching her face where her eyes should have been. Sam knew she would only see pits of nothingness. You said it will bring Rima home. What about you?
Sam looked over her shoulder at the black thread that was still connecting her to life. It was so thin. Unraveling, fading.
She sobbed, making a horrible rattling noise, December ice cracking the surface of a lake. It was too late. Eshmun hadn’t found her yet. She couldn’t go back to him, either. There was no way to retrace her steps to the living. No compass would work, no map would guide her. She was nowhere and never. A threshold had been crossed. A boundary. She was in her mother’s dreams.
Behind Mom, an acrobat flipped through the air. A child squealed with delight.
Mom repeated her question, more urgently: You said the coin will bring Rima home. What about you?
She wanted to hug her mother but knew it would only terrify her to be embraced by death. Instead she wrapped her brittle arms around herself: the empty cage she’d become.
I’ll come to you in your dreams again, okay? I’ll see you here again at the circus, the diner, or wherever you want. Soon.
Mom nodded. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and Sam ached to brush them away.
Goodbye, Mom. I love you. Please. Save Rima. I love you. Goodbye.
24
Sam pressed her fingers into the waterfall. She could go back to the underworld as a ruḥā. Or she could stay here on this side and haunt her old life. She could go to prom, if it hadn’t already passed. Instead of wearing that new dress Mom had promised with her casino winnings, she would wear her shredded garment of death. She’d float across Glen Lake, watching the fish dart below the turquoise surface, and she’d lie in Mom’s bed to sleep next to her at night.
Maybe she could even find Dad. She turned toward the chorus of voices again, trying to sort through them for his. Was he here somewhere? If she called his name, would he hear her?
And then a voice asked: Sam? Is that you?
No. Another ruḥā floated toward her. No! What are you doing here? You’re dead! You cannot be dead!
Sam hugged it tight, the two of them clacking against each other like broken wind chimes. It was Rima.
I came to rescue you, you idiot. Eshmun’s going to pull me back to life, and you’re coming with me.
It’s too late for me. I’ve been dead too long.
Shut up. I’m not letting you stay here. Hold on to me. We have to try.
Sam nodded. She gripped her sister’s ghost and pressed her head against her cold, sharp spine. The cord of black that tethered Rima to her body—to life—tightened and pulled.
Do not let go of me.
I never have.
The icy waterfall clattered like a curtain of teeth as they passed through it, and then the wind cut straight through her, whistling, like a sail full of holes.
And as suddenly as Sam had found herself at the circus with Mom, she was back at Eshmun’s castle by the sea.
Below her lay her body in a puddle of blood. It spread around her, soaking Rima’s dress. They were dead, side by side, but she could see that she was still linked to her body by a single, wavering thread, like the last strand of a spider’s web.
From above she watched as Eshmun knelt between their bodies, a hand on each. Her gold-and-emerald ring shone like a watchful eye. She could hear him mumbling and chanting his incantations—
—and then Sam felt life pushing its way into her again.
First it was a slight movement, like flower petals unfolding. And then an entire universe winked inside her and the stardust swirled into a wave, carrying her back to her body. There was the pain of the knife wound, and the warmth of Eshmun’s hand. Prisms of light flashed. Her head ached with a rushing pulse. She opened her eyes and looked up at the indigo sky and then Eshmun’s worried face.
He cupped her head in his hands. “I thought it was too late,” he said gently.
She smiled weakly. “But you didn’t lose hope.” Her voice was hoarse, as if she’d been screaming the entire time she was on the other side.
“As you told me,” Eshmun said, “one must try whatever is possible.”
Thick tears streamed down his cheeks and into his beard. She reached up and gathered the drops on her cursed fingertips and put them into her mouth, tasting the salt and honey. But the ruḥā stains were still as black as tar. Persistent, patient. Death was waiting for her, still so near.
“I don’t want to die again,” she said. She sat up and looked at Eshmun. “I don’t want to go back to that place.”
“You will not,” Eshmun said. He pressed a jar against his face as he continued healing Rima, who moaned and gasped for breath. The glass lip hugged his cheekbone and his tears ran into it, filling it to the top. Sam watched Rima’s chest rise and fall more and more evenly, the blue in her lips and the gray in her cheeks fading. Sam held her hand, whispering Rima’s name until she finally opened her eyes and blinked up at her.
“We made it,” Sam breathed. “You got us back.”
Eshmun stood and set the jar of tears on the stone railing. “Leave it,” he said. “I am creating an elixir for your hand. I need to gather silphium, bedolach, myrrh, herbs, and bird bones, among other things. I will return as quickly as possible.” He hurried through the center of the fortress, and Sam watched him cross the arched stone bridge.
She squeezed Rima’s hand. “You okay?” she asked.
“Would you stop asking me that?” Rima replied. She motioned to her bloody dress. “Of course I’m not okay. We were just dead.” She sat up and rubbed her neck. “Stupid caramel-flavored cream cheese.”
Sam’s mouth was dry. Her head still throbbed. “What happened to you?” she asked. “Did you get stabbed, too?”
“No, not stabbed.” Rima squinted like she was trying to see something in the distance. She swallowed. “I woke up because I heard something, a scuffle, maybe a scream. So I came out onto the patio, and I found you.” Her voice broke. “You were bleeding like crazy. I completely freaked out, and then out of nowhere this gray lady had me in a choke hold.”
“Zayin,” Sam said. “Actually, probably not. The shapeshifter.”
“Regardless, psycho,” Rima said. “Eshmun scared her off. Or him?”
“I’m not sure. He can take on any form, I think. So he killed you?”
“No, I stuck my hand in the snake pit,” Rima said, “so I could go get you. Eshmun had poison for me to drink, but I was afraid it would take too long.” She nodded to a green vial on the railing. It sat next to Eshmun’s jar of newly collected tears.
“The snakes,” Sam said, wide-eyed. “You let them bite you.” She glanced over at the pit, her stomach churning at the thought: their venomous, sharp fangs sinking into Rima’s hand.
“I didn’t think about it. You would have done it for me.” Rima looked into Sam’s eyes. “So what was it like? On the flip side. You were back there a while.”
“I saw Mom,” Sam said. “I tried to get her a message.”
She explained the obol Mom might have, and how she’d told her to touch it. How they had to hope that Mom remembered her dream, and that she would act on it. Sam flexed her hand; it was starting to go numb.
“It looks worse,” Rima said, standing and then helping Sam to her feet.
Sam nodded. The skin on her hand was drying out. It was cracking.
“You need to drink those tears,” Rima said, just as there was a whoosh of air above them. A flash of wings.
Sam’s heart slammed with panic. Another tannîyn had come for them.
No. It was Zayin—or the shapeshifter—on her hawk, swooping over their heads.
The hawk landed, its talons clattering against the stone. Zayin slid off and stalked toward Sam and Rima. She held her knife, still stained with blood. Her hands were gloved. “Give me that fresh vial of tears,” she demanded. The hawk cocked its head, angling its pointed beak.
Sam and Rima stepped backward until they were trapped against the railing. The vial of poison and the jar of tears sat just behind them. Zayin snarled and pointed the knife toward them.
