Chapter Fifteen
Race to Brace
After a long and restless night, Trinka raced down the hall to her room. And found it empty.
“Where do you suppose she would have gone?”
“I don’t know. She’s your mother,” Jamilah shrugged and yawned. “Let’s go down to breakfast. I’m starving.”
“But we can’t just leave her running around loose!” Trinka protested.
But Jamilah had already started back down the hall. “Maybe she went down to the dining hall already. It’s as good a place to look as any.”
Reluctantly, Trinka followed her cousin back to her bedroom to get dressed, and the two of them, trailed by a whining Sabirah, made their way downstairs.
“I don’t see why we have to put up with her again. I thought she was going to be sent away!”
“If anyone gets sent away, I hope it’s you!” Jamilah retorted grumpily.
Trinka hardly paid any attention to their quarreling, as she peered down every corridor and into every open room, hoping that somewhere she’d catch a glimpse of her lost mother. She even thought of staying behind to explore more thoroughly as her cousins went on to breakfast, but in the end, she was glad she followed them into the dining hall because, sure enough, Ashira was there, seated next to Bahir Faruq, looking younger and lovelier than ever. And a good deal more lively!
Gone was the vacant, far-away look. Gone were the demure manner and the hand to the aching forehead. Her eyes sparkled, her smile flashed. Her dark tresses swished as she laughed. She seemed to be enjoying every morsel of her breakfast, and she had apparently made a witty remark to Bahir Faruq, for he was laughing too, while the bahira looked on primly. As she slid into her seat, Trinka felt as if she had already eaten the most satisfying meal and topped it off with warm candy. She and Jamilah exchanged victorious glances, while Sabirah, who looked puzzled at first, decided to ignore the whole situation and dedicate herself to the pile of pastries on her plate.
Trinka had little appetite for anything other than watching her mother, who still hadn’t paid much attention to her. Trinka knew she couldn’t expect her mother to recognize her yet, but still, she kept hoping.
“I hope you will pardon my tardiness, bahir and bahira.”
Trinka nearly choked on her bite of jabuticaba scone as her aunt swept into the room.
“I had an unexpected matter of business to attend to, and I…” she stopped cold as she saw her older, or now, much younger sister sitting happily at the table.
“Good morning, Mother,” Ashira said brightly. “I hope you slept well. How is your backache this morning?”
Vashti looked for a minute as if she might faint, as she first turned pale, but then quickly grew red.
“Why, my dearest sister, aren’t you in a joking mood this morning?” she replied with a false, high laugh. She took her place at the table, and Trinka could feel Vashti’s eyes burning holes into her side.
“I must say, I haven’t seen Ashira quite like this in years―even decades,” Bahir Faruq commented as he neatly speared a thin slice of meat. “In fact, she looks exactly as she did back then.”
Aunt Vashti seemed to go even paler.
“Excuse me, madam,” Beatrice announced as she swept quietly into the dining room, “his highness is here and would like to take Ashira for another chariot ride, but I have been unable to find…” She stopped short as Trinka’s mother waved at her from the other side of the table.
“Good morning, Beatrice.”
Even the stalwart matron appeared at a loss for words.
“Of course, she would be thrilled to take a ride with Amir,” Aunt Vashti answered for her. “Go ahead, dear sister. You needn’t wait for the rest of us to finish eating.”
“Who is Amir, and what right does he have to drag me away from my breakfast?” Ashira returned archly.
“She is in a joking mood this morning,” Bahira Cantara sniffed.
“He’s your intended, of course,” Bahir Faruq told her.
Ashira’s eyes seemed to darken and narrow, a look that Trinka recognized even though she hadn’t seen her mother angry in so long. It was like the fires in the jewel caves, Trinka thought. Though you couldn’t see the flames, you knew they were smoldering beneath the surface, ready to leap out at you at any moment.
“How many times have I told you, Father, that I will not marry that man!” Ashira threw her napkin down on the table, and her metal hook clattered against her plate.
“Now my mother thinks Bahir Faruq is her father?” Trinka whispered.
“It’s because she’s caught up in her memories of the past,” Jamilah whispered back. “She doesn’t know who the people around her are, so she sees them as people she knew at that time.”
“Don’t be ridiculous! You’re a perfect match,” Aunt Vashti tried to soothe her.
“Mother! You and Daddy are the ones who are being ridiculous. How could a girl like me possibly be a perfect match for someone who’s perfectly awful? He’s a pompous, cranky, boring, old…”
“My dear, Amir is hardly old,” Bahira Cantara interrupted.
“Maybe not to an old biddy like you, Aunt Walhujah!” Ashira snapped. She had abandoned her seat at the table and was pacing about for effect.
“Ashira,” Vashti said sternly. “You will receive Amir graciously, and…”
“Don’t you try force with me, Mother,” Ashira warned, her eyes still smoldering. “You make me meet him, and I’ll make him wish he never met me!”
“Ashira,” Vashti tried to make her voice sweet.
“Uncaring, selfish, miserly old man,” Ashira fumed as she paced. “I don’t see how anyone could marry Musonas!”
Sabirah snickered loudly.
“You stay out of this, Vashti!” Ashira snapped, clearly taking her niece to be her own younger sister.
“Shall I tell his highness that his lady is indisposed?” Beatrice inquired.
“Yes,” Aunt Vashti murmured. “And bring the potion.”
Trinka and Jamilah exchanged worried glances, but before anybody could do anything, Ashira stormed from the room, shouting, “Tell him I’m indisposed to see him ever!”
“Well, now, what’s gotten into her?” Bahir Faruq mused.
Jamilah calmly kept eating her breakfast, with an air of complete boredom and passivity, but the bite of bread Trinka had taken caught in her throat. She felt her cheeks grow red as she struggled to swallow, painfully aware of her aunt’s eyes boring into her, as if they knew she was somehow to blame. How long, Trinka wondered, could her mother keep remembering without Aunt Vashti doing something horrible?
“Oh, well, you know how her memory is,” Aunt Vashti faltered.
“It’s almost as if she’s living in the past,” Bahir Faruq said thoughtfully between bites as he calmly continued eating his breakfast. “You know how she reacted when your father tried to force her to marry Musonas.”
“Ran off with some sailor from Brace, didn’t she?” Bahira Cantara remarked distastefully.
“Yes, well,” Aunt Vashti answered. “Obviously she wanted to forget all about him, or she wouldn’t have come back.”
Trinka choked and forced herself to swallow hard. She could eat no more. Her eyes felt like fire. She ached to stand up and rant, the way her mother had. But a warning glance from Jamilah kept her in her seat.
“Amir knows about that, doesn’t he?”
“Hmm?” Aunt Vashti twisted her necklaces uncertainly for a moment then let out a high-pitched twitter. “Oh, yes, Amir knows… many things. I never mention it in front of him, however, since it distresses him to think how she’s suffered.”
Only the sound of clinking utensils, and Sabirah slurping the fruit from her pastries filled the silence.
“I think I’ll go to the kitchen and see if the genies need help with anything,” Trinka ventured.
Jamilah’s bright eyes turned to her mother and said. “I will too.” Her mother stared open-mouthed as her eldes
t daughter curtseyed for the bahir and bahira and followed her cousin into the servant’s area.
“What polite young ladies you have,” Bahir Faruq commented.
Sabirah scowled for a moment and then snatched an extra cake.
Trinka was just about to flee the dining room in relief when Aunt Vashti’s voice caught them.
“That won’t be necessary, ladies. I’m sure the genies can handle it. I want you to join us in the conservatory this afternoon.” Trinka and Jamilah exchanged pained glances and sighed.
For the rest of the day, an uneasy hush fell over the palace. Aunt Vashti’s painted lips were set in a thin, straight line across her pinched white face as the girls sat working on their sewing samplers. It was a task that one of Jamilah and Sabirah’s many governesses had apparently set them to, but one that they hadn’t been forced to do for quite some time. Trinka’s frustration grew with every stitch as her needle went into her fingers more times than it went into the fabric. Her stitches were loopy and uneven but, she noticed with some satisfaction, they were better than Sabirah’s. Her younger cousin jabbed at her sampler listlessly, fidgeting loudly and making as much fuss as she could get away with. Jamilah didn’t look any happier, but she worked quietly, glancing up only occasionally from her pretty work of flowers and bows that was Trinka guessed, by far the closest to what a sewing sampler should look like.
Trinka hated the screaming and the yelling that usually filled the palace, but somehow the silence was even more unnerving.
At last, Aunt Vashti, who sat chatting quietly with Bahir Faruq and Bahira Cantara on the other side of the room, told the girls they could go upstairs and play. Gleefully, Sabirah tossed her sampler aside, lifted her skirts, and tried to run from the room.
“Sabirah!” Aunt Vashti called sharply. “Come right back here and put your things away properly.”
Sabirah opened her mouth to protest, but the look on Vashti’s face stopped her from uttering any sound. Jamilah and Trinka neatly put their samplers into their ornate boxes and stepped quietly from the room. They exchanged silent glances. Just a few more minutes, and they could go see Ashira again and make sure she…
“Not you, Trinka,” Aunt Vashti’s words caught her like fingernails digging into her back. “Come here. I want a word with you.”
Slowly, agonizingly, Trinka made her way to her aunt and the bahir and bahira. Despite a quizzical look from Vashti, Jamilah followed.
“Bahir Faruq and his wife have kindly agreed to take you in,” Aunt Vashti announced smoothly. “It will be a wonderful opportunity for you to experience another part of Apostrophe, away from here.”
She spoke the last words with subtle but unmistakable emphasis. It was Trinka’s turn to turn pale.
Away from here…
“But I’ve got to…” Trinka suddenly stopped, not realizing she had spoken aloud, “…go upstairs and get my things,” she finished red-faced.
“There’s no reason for you to go upstairs,” Aunt Vashti dismissed the idea. “The bahir and bahira will be kind enough to supply you with all you need.”
“I have something for her, Mother. It’s in my room,” Jamilah replied coolly.
“But you mustn’t keep Bahir Faruq waiting,” Aunt Vashti said, clearly straining for patience.
“It’s all right, Vashti. We’re in no great hurry. You can let the child get her things.”
“She has nothing of value,” Vashti protested.
“Well, don’t be too sure,” Bahir Faruq countered sagely. “Sometimes we value things for the memories they hold for us, the people they remind us of. The strength of those associations can be worth far more than the objects themselves.”
Unable to press her point further without contradicting the bahir, Aunt Vashti let them retreat hastily from the room, though she still looked daggers at Trinka.
“We’ve got to get you out of here!” Jamilah hissed as they hurried up the stairs.
You’ve got to get to your father.”
“But what about my mom?”
“I’ll do the best I can with her. We’ve got to get you to Brace. But there’s no way…”
“Yes there is,” Trinka answered breathlessly. “The talisman my sister gave me.”
“Well, where is it?” Jamilah snapped.
“I don’t know. Your mother took them all the day she took the aquarock, remember?”
“It must be in her chambers then. Come on!”
The two of them flew down the hall. Through the pictures that only looked like artwork from below, Trinka could see her aunt heading up the stairs, surely coming toward them.
“Faster!”
They reached the massive doors near the shower room that led to Aunt Vashti’s chambers. Jamilah took the long, jeweled key from her pocket.
“You have a key to her room?” Trinka asked breathlessly.
“I have a key to everything,” Jamilah answered smugly. Sure enough, the key fluttered and butted against the door, changing shape until it fit the lock perfectly. It clicked, and the two of them rushed inside and shut the door firmly behind them. Trinka was sure she could hear ominous footsteps coming down the hall behind them, growing ever closer.
“In here!” Jamilah called. A chest with a curved, ornately carved top sat at the foot of an enormous bed covered in richly embroidered fabrics.
Jamilah checked the tiny mirror around her neck, and must have seen an enraged figure coming toward them.
“Hurry!”
“It won’t open,” Trinka gasped. She strained with all her might against the tiny metal locks that held the lid in place, but the chest refused to spill its secrets. Jamilah’s hands flew forward with her key. It fluttered and wriggled every which way, trying to tunnel its way through the lock. At last, the chest burst open, spilling bottles and baubles, trinkets and talismans all over the floor.
“Quick, which ones are mine?” Trinka scrambled to sort through them.
“No time for that! Take them all!”
“I can’t take them all!”
“Yes, you can—here’s your genie purse.”
Jamilah began shoveling handfuls into the tiny bag. Trinka got to her knees and hurriedly scooped them in too, not daring to look at the strange and wonderful objects for fear she’d spend too long contemplating what powers they might possess.
“But what if she thinks I’ve stolen them?”
Jamilah sighed in exasperation, as she dropped another handful of them into the purse. “Well, you haven’t. If she asks, I’ll say I took them.”
“But you didn’t!”
“Yes, I did, and I gave them to you,” she insisted.
Trinka smiled.
“I’ll miss you,” she confessed to her cousin.
Jamilah laughed. “And you think I won’t miss you with only Sabirah to argue with?”
Trinka smiled, and the two of them threw their arms around each other, drawing apart when they heard a key clicking in the door.
“Quick! Here’s the vial.” Jamilah handed her the tiny glass as Trinka scooped the last of the spilled talismans into her purse. “And take these too.” She handed her the key and the locket around her neck.
The door swung open with a mighty bang.
“Trinka!” her aunt hollered.
“Go!”
Trinka gripped the vial, threw back her head, and swallowed. And in a flash of white light, she was gone.
{ Brace }
“Hope may not get you to your destination, but it is good company on the trip.”
- Anonymous