My fate is tied to the lamp.
But I’m not dead.
The thought sends a jolt through me, and I take stock of my surroundings. The sky above is dark, but there are no stars, no moon, and no clouds to obscure it. Below I see only sand, sweeping toward every black horizon.
I sink and take my human form, turning a full circle. And then I see it: the only thing to be seen for leagues about.
A door, half sunk in sand.
A door I know at once.
I open it, because I know that is what I’m meant to do. Certainty settles in that I am not in Ambadya, nor the godlands, nor the human world. Where I am, I cannot say, though my best guess is that I am still burning with my lamp, and this is some fevered hallucination. All I can do is follow the path before me.
The steps behind the door are not broken and covered in sand, as they were when Aladdin set foot here—or in the real version of here. Despite being sunken beneath the desert, the room looks the same it did the day I first created it, when you said you wished for a garden that would never fade, Habiba, more beautiful than any in the world.
The jeweled trees refract the light of the glowing diamonds above, scattering red, green, and blue flecks of light like dancing fireflies. Water babbles through the brook lined with rocks of silver and gold. A wind from nowhere softly shakes the emerald grass, filling the air with a musical tinkling.
I walk through the garden, feeling unattached to my own body. Ahead, I can see where I’m meant to go. The lamp sits on the throne, waiting for me. It’s as if my mind is rewriting the day Aladdin and I met.
When I reach the throne, I stare at the lamp for a long moment, my eyes tracing the familiar contours with a blend of hatred and love. I’ve been bound to it for so long, despising it, cursing it, but it has been the only constant in my long, lonely life. It is, in a twisted way, home.
I reach out and have the strange sensation of being inside the lamp at the same time, looking out at myself, feeling myself getting closer.
But before my hands can touch it, the bronze melts, bubbling and oozing, dripping onto the floor. I jump back, my stomach wrenching, as I imagine what it would be like to be inside it when that happened. Did happen. May still be happening.
“What is going on?” I murmur. “What is this place? And why am I not dead?”
“Of course, you already know.”
I spin and suck in a breath.
You stand before me, Habiba, dressed in the same armor and leather you wore the day you died. Your hair is long and loose, with little braids behind your ears. You shine like a goddess, but your flesh bears wounds and bruises from battle.
“A life as sacrifice,” you intone, “will set you free. And isn’t that what the Shaitan fears most? A jinni with the power to grant her own wishes?”
“I can’t grant my own wishes.”
“What do you do best but turn wishes into reality? You wished to die that the boy might live, and you made that wish come true. You opened a door to a magic long lost, far more powerful than any the Shaitan wields. A sacrifice for freedom—that is the Forbidden Wish. You made the sacrifice, now accept the consequence. Freedom bears great responsibility.”
I stare at you, my mind a flurry of questions, but I can articulate none of them. With a smile, you step closer and press your lips to my forehead.
“Live, my old friend,” you say. “And remember: Time is the strongest magic.”
You vanish as the room begins to shake, just as it did the day Aladdin stole me away. I break into a sprint, dodging chunks of stone that fall from the ceiling. Sand pours in waterfalls all around, burying the glinting jewels. I reach the stairs and bound up them, throwing open the door—to find not a desert but a void.
The universe spins around me, stars glaring bright, galaxies pulsing bursts of color. Looking back, I see the garden collapsing into itself, getting smaller and smaller. Flame rushes toward me, and without another thought, I jump.
I fall backward and upward, feel the wind rush around me, and I lose all sense of weight and direction.
The universe unfolds around me in a dazzling dance of light and color, opening circle by circle, each curling into elaborate patterns: sun and rose, starfish and pupil, tiger’s mouth and elephant’s ear. I fall through their center.
Stars are born, grow old, and burst apart into new stars. Galaxies blossom like flowers, shooting out tendrils of light, teeming with life. Spinning planets circle a million bright suns, and I see it all.
I have spun out of time. I stand on the edge of eternity, looking in at all the brilliant worlds. They are strung on invisible threads in a vast tapestry, each pulling the others, everything connected by the finest of lines. As I watch, the threads quiver and hum. The universe sings a deep, eternal song, sound in waves, in deep sighs, in whispers, in swirling chords and rising, falling tones. The music of the worlds, weaving in a pattern that is both chaos and order, both beauty and terror, without beginning, without end. Tears run down my face, and I dare not blink.
I lift my eyes, above it all, and see the one weaving the stars. Imohel, the God of Gods. He smiles and pauses briefly to touch a finger to the center of my forehead, and at his touch, I fall.
Fall through the stars.
Through time.
Through light and wind and fire.
Through smoke and a sky gray like ashes.
• • •
Nardukha stands in the same spot, staring furiously at the fiery doorway. Less than a moment has passed since I threw myself into the fire, determined that I would not repeat the past, would not strike down Aladdin as I struck you down, Habiba. Determined that this, at the end, would be my choice. And somehow, it worked.
Somehow, I am still here.
It takes me a moment to find myself, to determine that I am standing in the doorway, in both worlds and neither. I turn around and see flames behind me. I myself am smokeless fire that burns red and blue, indistinguishable from the blaze that separates the mortal world from the immortal.
Turning back to the human world, I see Nardukha look down at Aladdin, who stares in disbelief at the doorway, unable to see me amid the flames, believing, no doubt, that I am dead. He doesn’t even struggle when Nardukha wraps a hand about his throat and lifts him into the air. But his eyes begin to widen, and he gasps with pain.
At once I step through the doorway, a girl of fire and fury, taking human form in a gown of black smoke that curls and trails behind me. Never have I burned so hot. Never have I felt so powerful, not even when granting the most incredible wishes. A new power rages through me now, something completely wild and untrammeled, and I realize what is missing: the invisible tether that bound me to my lamp. The bond has been broken.
Whether it was really you I saw, Habiba, or a ghost conjured by my mind, I know the words you spoke were true: In sacrificing my own life for Aladdin, I unwittingly triggered the Forbidden Wish. The bond between lamp and jinni is severed.