Arti dips her head to Terra. “Give Ty my compliments.”
When we’re again alone in the salon, my mother takes up the pitcher of beer and refills Oshhe’s bowl. “We’ve missed you so very much,” she remarks, her voice quiet and leading. “Haven’t we, Arrah?”
I stare at the empty porcelain bowl in front of me. It’s bone white. The air in the room shifts like the bubble the Litho boys created when I wandered into their camp. It’s a shield so no one will hear or see what happens in the salon. I force myself to look at my mother. My eyes beg her to put an end to this, to confess, to tell us what she’s done with the children. I’m losing hope that we’ll find them alive—hope that there’s a chance to make things right. If only I could reach the charm . . .
“Arti,” Oshhe says, watching her intently. “What have you done?”
“I’m afraid that I have some bad news.” Arti picks up a cloth from the table and dabs at the corners of her mouth. “I’m sorry for what I must do now.”
My body stiffens as my father and I lock gazes again. His eyes are the shifting black of a night sky, a pool that reflects color with brilliant clarity. When he finds what he’s looking for, his face shatters. The pain in his expression cracks me in two. His lips tremble as he opens his mouth to speak, but he doesn’t. His words escape on a dead wind. Sparks of magic dust the room, passing through the ceiling to answer my father’s silent call.
His skin takes on a white glow as he pushes away from the table, dropping the bone charm in his haste. I struggle against Arti’s magic to get it, but the fight is only in my mind. The want, the need, the desperation balls up inside me like a storm. On the outside, I’m shaking but still seated on the pillow. I can’t move, I can’t speak, I can’t act against Arti. The only things my mother doesn’t control are my thoughts and feelings. Every curse word under the sun pops in my mind—and still it’s meaningless.
Arti takes her time to come to her feet, her movements weary. Magic alights on both of my parents. It clings to their bodies. My father beckons for me. When I don’t move, he tugs me behind him as if I’m still his little girl.
Their magic erupts in an explosion of bright lights and colors. It cracks through the room like thunder, swirling into clouds of mist. My father stumbles back a few steps as blood trickles from Arti’s nose.
I throw my mind against the force binding me to my mother. My teeth tear into my cheek and my mouth fills with blood. I wiggle like a worm until my trembling hands brush against the bone charm on the floor. I clasp the horn in my fist, desperate to feel something—any hint that it’s broken her curse. There’s nothing, only a cold reality. The white ox’s bones, the strongest source of protection magic possible, fail to scratch the surface of my mother’s curse, let alone break it.
Oshhe falls to his knees behind me, and I abandon the charm.
“Father, no!” I scream, crawling to him. “Let him be!”
Oshhe’s jaw goes slack, and his arms hang limp at his sides. He tries to speak but the words come out in stops and starts, turned upside down and inside out. Tears cloud my vision, and I swipe them away.
“No, no, no,” I whisper as I shake my father. “Heka, please.”
Arti is half out of breath, her hair wild as she reaches down to pick up Oshhe’s bowl. His whole body shudders, and his eyes roll into the back of his head. No matter how furious my cries for him to fight the curse, he doesn’t answer. He can’t.
“What have you done?” I want to claw out my mother’s evil eyes, claw the vacant look from her face. Instead, I hold my father in my arms as his body falls completely still.
“You tried to reach the bone charm, even after I forbade it with my magic,” Arti says, glaring at me. “How are you able to resist me?”
She’s right. I resisted her magic for a moment, but my surge of defiance was for nothing. The charm didn’t work, and I can’t do anything to help my father.
When I don’t answer, she shrugs, wiping the blood from her nose. “It doesn’t matter.”
Arti blows on the bowl, revealing fire script covering the white porcelain. Tears streak down my face as I cradle my father in my arms. His skin is so hot, too hot. He should’ve sensed the curse on the bowl upon touching it. If he had, he wouldn’t have taken so long to feel the curse on me too. He only saw the sweet girl he once loved, just as I spent too long yearning for my mother’s affection to suspect the truth. We had both been so blind.
“Why?” I hear myself ask over and over, the word tasting like bile on my tongue.
Arti stares at me across the bowl. “I need your help.”
I blink back tears. The way she says “need” sends chills down my spine.
Arti glowers at the bowl again, her mouth set in a hard line, determined and unyielding. Her eyes rage with so many emotions that for a moment she looks confused. She balances the porcelain on the tips of her long fingernails. It wobbles as she rocks it back and forth—her attention never swaying, never faltering. Beer spills over the edges and runs down her hand. Mist creeps up from the rim and curls around her wrist. My mind races. I can’t think straight. I’ve seen this script before at the Temple. In magic, script seals; like circles, it binds. If the bowl has captured something of my father, some part of him, and if it should drop and shatter, it will break him too. The bowl suddenly stills on her fingertips, and I inhale a sharp breath, daring to hope that she’s changed her mind. Could there be something left of her heart after all? She blinks, her whole body rigid, then lets the bowl slip from her grasp. I lunge for it, but I’m too slow and can’t untangle myself fast enough.
The bowl crashes against the table and shatters into a thousand pieces. Each shard lights up as bright as the sun. I shield my eyes as her magic scrapes my forearms. When the light dies, I pull my father closer as if I can somehow protect him against the impending firestorm.
I will find a way to free you, Father, I swear it on Heka.
Sixteen
I sit on the floor, cradling my father in my arms. The muscles in his neck jut out as he clenches his teeth. He fights the curse, but by the end of the night it takes control of him. Arti doesn’t carve a symbol of a serpent into his chest. Lines of the fire script from his bowl crawl across his skin like centipedes and settle into tattoos.
Except for his face, which remains untouched, ink even darker than his skin covers most of his body. He’s like Tribe Zu now, but instead of his tattoos protecting him, they bind him to Arti. Even tighter than the binding she inflicted on me. She asked how I was able to resist her, but have I done much? I couldn’t tell Rudjek or the Vizier the truth. I couldn’t warn my father.
Arti puts the salon back in order with her magic. A blinding light sweeps through the wreckage. It mends the broken table, rights the spilled food, makes shards of glass whole again. The bubble around the room flickers but remains intact. She doesn’t so much as look at Oshhe as she sits back down at the table—as if nothing has happened. Anger flares in my chest. How can she completely dismiss him? The person who found her broken and tried to help her when she needed him the most.
Her hands shake as she pours herself more wine and lifts the glass to her lips. I want to shove it down her throat. The thought catches me off guard and dread pulses through my veins. Even if I could do it, there’s no way to know for sure if her death would break our curses. My mother is powerful and she’s no fool.