Muchafraid

Prologue

Anya was choking. A thought had grown in her mind until it spilled over into her throat and made her gag. 

Stopped in a lane, she fought to swallow a deep breath but only sucked in the pungent night air. The acrid smell of Dragon tea was everywhere in the city, where once there would have hung the earthy fragrance of ink.  

In her left hand, she gripped the reed pen tighter. The ink-stained nib of the Qalam hard against her blue-black specked thumb. 

Where the Round City had once been a vibrant mix of colors, their hues had turned harsh until it seemed as if there was only a dank gray left throughout. This fear could not be unfurled like a cloak whipped away with a strong hand. Only the verses spoken out loud, like a fresh rain, could diminish the oppressive atmosphere. 

Let me try once more, she thought, raising her left hand. 

Anya closed her eyes and in her mind watched herself climb the wall of fear around her heart to reach its centre, where her power lay. She blinked. The wall proved too high this time. She could not reach any words to recite.  

I am not myself. Tears dripped down Anya’s face and on to the bodice of her sand-spattered dress. Her ink lined arms were bare, exposing the many marks designating the high level of her craft. The drawn shapes, one of a pen nib, another of a falcon escaping its tether, rippled along with her skin in the chill of the mist. She’d had to leave her vermillion cloak behind at the port when she ran from the demons. 

At least my bag is still slung over my shoulder, she thought to herself but remembered its brilliant red marked her out as an artist which no longer ranked as good fortune. Lately, she had carried little luck with her. 

For once, Anya let her thoughts drift away from the present. To some seven weeks before. When she had been at her desk in the scriptorium of the Great Library of the House of Wisdom. Dar Al Hikma. 

The breeze coming in through the wide, open windows. Freshly made paper, slick and hung up to dry, swayed above her. Bound books and manuscripts were abundant. All the knowledge of the world. That was happiness, she thought. 

What use were any of those books, eh? A cruel voice in her head spat at her.       

Her fingers coiled around the Qalam in her hand, as if poised to write. That was my life, she thought. But that was before. Before she heard the whispering of demons that day in the library. When she followed the grim voices. I should have kept to my books, she thought. Then she shook her head. No, I could not have turned back.

In the lane, her body began to quake up against the wall as she remembered the shock of her discovery. Slipping past a door she had been instructed by Him never to open, Anya found the source of the dreaded sound. Eyes hot with tears, she recalled the writhing mass of demons around Him. Witnessing His deceit and treachery, she had vowed to sound the alarm about who He really was. In response, there was a smile on His lips and a thick finger pointed in her direction. He had issued a warning. 

“Keep silent about what you see here. Obey me, or …  surrender to your fate,” He had growled. That voice. So persuasive. Its cadence still lingered in her mind.  

Despite this threat, she had tried to undo His plan to deceive the Calipha into outlawing all those who practice the arts. She looked down at the Qalam, given to her by the poet when she found him in the forest where the artists had sought refuge. To use against Him? Also a gift to seal the vow the poet had made to meet her at the tavern this evening. Only the poet could rally the city’s guilds. To unite the merchants, artisans, writers, poets, dramatists and musicians to resist the Fasiq. He who hunted her now.   

Yet, Anya did not wait for the meeting with the poet before challenging Him. She went to His ship, with the dozens of barrels of Dragon tea aboard it, to face the Fasiq and his demons. Alone. And to prove what, exactly? That I was the worthy one? The sight of the Qalam in her possession had enraged Him. 

“In Baghdad, the arts will die,” he said.

In reply, Anya looked at Him, squeezing the Qalam between her intertwined fingers, and spoken out loud the words that came to her mind. There had not been enough force behind the verses she had recited and the fear endured. So she ran from the port towards the tavern. 

“You see now that you are not the Reciter, Anya. Now, give me the Qalam or I will take it from you,” the Fasiq had crowed as she fled. Take it from me, she repeated in her mind what he had threatened. It was the same thought that almost overwhelmed her just now. He will now come to take my unborn child from me. 

She rubbed her swollen belly with her right hand. My child, you will come this night, I can feel it, she thought.

The demons had followed. They were searching the streets behind her, seething and hissing, calling out her name. 

Beyond the lane where she hid from them, a swell of boisterous voices and slamming cups bubbled up. The hubbub reminded her that the Dragon tea tavern was near. Oh, how the people already show such thirst for the amber-green liquid, Anya marveled. The tavern had been only a plain tea room just two months before and they had not had the Dragon tea served to them for very long. 

She shuddered again but not from the cold. The thought that none who drank the Dragon tea knew its terrorizing purpose made her furious. She hated that she had any part in its creation.  

When she felt a shooting pain in her belly, she could not stop herself from crying out a little. 

The baby is coming now, she thought. As fast as Anya dared, she left the lane and made for the tavern.

“Allow me just a little of the grace given to the Reciter, to be able to reach refuge,” she begged. Her breath billowed out and enveloped her shivering body as she moved. 

Anya’s fist closed tighter around the pen in her hand. The poet will be waiting for me at the tavern, she told herself, even though she didn’t quite believe it.

She half staggered, half ran through the streets that had once been her playground. A cry like a hunting call pierced the icy air. 

“The demons,” she spat. Then on hearing the cry again, she sighed. “No, … a falcon.” She hoped the great bird was watching over her and the unborn child she carried, animals and nature of all kind, giving symbolic strength to all artists.  

Stifling a shriek of pain and frustration, Anya collapsed against a wooden hut. It creaked in the wind. Anya coughed, once again tasting bitterness in her mouth. This would be as far as she could go.   

An oil store, she noted. The hut’s door was unlocked and she stumbled in. Dropping her bag on the ground next to her, Anya fell on to some tatty sackcloth on the floor. The starlight from outside turned the standing clay jars that filled most of the space inside the hut into sentries. She lay between them, and picked a strand of hair off her face and pushed it back up on to black beehive that sat on her head. The pain was steadily getting worse, and she twisted the reed pen between her fingers as though it was a string of beads. 

I must hide the Qalam from Him. Tearing a piece of the rough cloth lying on the floor, Anya wrapped the pen in it. Then, taking a small rectangular box from her bag, she removed the lid and looked inside. 

There was a single white, round cookie. She gazed at it, smacking her cracked lips. How long had it been since she last ate something, she wondered to herself. Putting the cookie in her mouth, Anya closed her eyes and chewed, thinking to herself. I recall joy now. Dry crumbs spilled down from her mouth.  

She took a moment to savor the taste of the Ghreyba, the pleasure of it, then placed the cloth covered pen in the box, sealing the lid tightly.  She scraped at the ground with her fingernails, then began to dig. After a few minutes, the hole in the soot, sand and dirt was deep enough to fit the box. Solemnly, Anya buried it and with a flailing arm managed to drag a clay jar over to hide her work. Then she fell back and gasped for air, taking a moment to rest. 

A small, hateful laugh told her she was no longer alone. Anya propped herself up with her arms and locked eyes with the demon. “You foolish girl,” the voice said. Its face is hideous, she thought, as she turned her gaze away. Anya felt the hair on her skin rise up and stifling another cry of pain, she drew her legs in to her belly, desperate to make herself as small as possible against the clay jars behind her, as if she might be able to disappear among them. For a moment she remained like that, her breath as quick as the hoofbeats of a galloping stallion. Then she forced herself to look back at it. 

“Get out, demon,” Anya said in a loud whisper. “Slither back to your master, the Fasiq.” 

“He will be here soon,” the cold voice said and its laugh was joined by others. Gleaming red eyes filled the hut. “You will give over to Him the Qalam or the child will be ours.”

The demons were everywhere now and she was surrounded. 

“The poet has the pen and is in the tavern, already rallying the city against the Fasiq,” she said, attempting to be defiant but the fear and guilt in her body was taking over. I have failed. It was in every muscle now, burrowing into her very bones. She focused her mind on the child. On love. 

Darkness blanketed Anya as the demons circled, hissing and cackling, ready to pounce.

Anya shook her head in reply, unable to say anything, as her mind focused. I love you, my child. She summoned all the strength she had left and finally pierced the wall of fear around her heart. Anya found words would now come to her lips.

“A falcon’s cry day or night,

Prey and hunter always know,

Can be warning or delight, 

Yet each can deal the killer blow.”    

Anya screamed her fright into the night. It broke the shadow. The light of the night stars spilled into the dirty, small hut. The red eyes of her tormentors were gone. At Anya’s feet was a small, moist bundle. 

************

Warda, thin and pale looking, muttered to herself as she made her way behind the Dragon tea tavern. 

“Lazy, girl! Letting the lamps burn low! Get the oil, quick! Or I’ll tan your hide!” Warda’s auburn curls bobbed from side to side as she perfectly mimicked her mistress, Mrs Loot. 

She had been scrubbing Dragon tea-stained floors, cups and jugs for weeks. Yet, she still hadn’t received even her first day’s dues from Mr Loot and his wife. Warda needed the work too badly to complain. Her mother was very ill, and her brothers and sisters could only go to school if money could be found. Her father was long gone from the Round City. 

“A filthy artist. Run off to the forest with the rest of them dogs, lost to us until the day the Reciter comes,” Warda spat. Anyway, it was up to her now, her mother had said. 

“Don’t let us down, Warda,” the kindly woman, looking far older than her years, had said from her sick bed the night before. 

“Yes, Mama,” Warda had replied, squeezing her hand but feeling very tired herself. “Get some rest now, Mama.” She had tried to soothe her mother to sleep, pressing a cool, damp, rag against her brow. 

Still thinking of her mother, likely asleep at home, Warda pushed her way into the oil store. 

She almost smiled as she remembered how Jad, her youngest brother, had been so excited at the idea of school. By the time of the Calipha’s next birthday, if he studies hard, he may be chosen to join one of the guilds. She thought of Jad becoming an artisan or a merchant even. Not a soldier, or sailor, then he would be away from the family. Warda shook her head. No, Jad would have his own kiosk in the city one day, as long as he had the money to stay in school. Warda would not give up the dream, no matter how badly she was treated. 

“Damn the Loots, damn the lot of em,” she said and then giggled at her own unintended joke. 

Her laughter became a surprised gasp. A dark haired woman, hardly breathing, lay on the ground in the hut between the jars of oil. In her ink-marked arms, something small and strange sat, staring up at Warda.

“Help! Help!” Warda screamed. What if I am thrown out of the tavern by Mrs Loot what will become of my mother, my brothers and sisters, she worried. She just knew she would be blamed and gave the sleeping artist and her baby a scowl before she turned and ran. “I’ll make you both suffer for this,” she said as she went. 

As Warda burst into the tavern, a falcon’s cry pierced the frosty night once again.

Thank you for reading.