“What’s a bird’s nest got to do with it?”
Sidra folded her robes around her and sat on the terrace with her legs crossed. She pointed a finger. “Sit and close that mouth of yours.”
Yvette feared a trap but had no choice. Even from five feet away, anger radiated off the desert sorceress, making Yvette feel as small and defenseless as she’d been as a girl on the streets below years earlier. She sat in front of the jinni and folded her legs.
Sidra held the nest in her hand and blew gently across the dried sticks and grass that had been woven together with instinct and care. Fluffs of feathery down stirred inside the shallow depression as the nest caught fire. The flame spread but didn’t consume the small nest or feathers inside. The nest glowed orange as the fire danced in a circle in the jinni’s hand. Sidra’s eyes followed the flickering light like one might read a newspaper.
“How’d you do that? I thought your magic went out.”
“Not out, only dimmed. Now hush. One’s fate must not be trivialized by idle talk. Not even yours.”
One’s fate?
Sidra’s head tilted to the side, and her eyes narrowed as she squinted at some vision. What did it mean? Yvette chewed nervously on her thumbnail, waiting to see if the jinni intended to throw her over the side of the building after all.
“It’s as I suspected,” Sidra said, placing the nest on the ground, unharmed from the flame. “It was your desire that brought us to this city of infidels.”
Yvette shook her head. “I didn’t. I swear!”
“The fire does not lie.” Sidra stood and nudged her chin. “Get up.”
“Why, what are you going to do?” Yvette looked quickly around for a door. Surely there must be an escape.
“Stand, girl. I need to give you something.” The jinni reached in the silken folds of her robe and brought out a small perfume bottle made of green glass with an intricate overlay of gold in a leaf pattern. A crystal bird served as a stopper. Exquisite. The sort of thing found in the bourgeoise shops along the rue de Valeur. Sidra placed the bottle in Yvette’s left hand.
“What’d I do to deserve this?”
Sidra scoffed. “Nothing. And it’s not yours to keep. But you stole a wish, so now you must do this thing for me.”
Always the tit for tat with these jinn. “I told you I didn’t—”
“Do not deny it. Your heart was pointed here when we escaped, and now you’ve dragged me to these dirty streets as well.”
“I don’t know why you keep going on about it. You’re a jinni, for heaven’s sake. Poof off if you don’t like it here.”
Sidra advanced, her hands balled into fists. “You know nothing about the rules of magic.”
“No, but I know what this is worth,” she said, holding up the bottle in a way that suggested she might drop it at any moment if Sidra didn’t back off.
“Do not test me, sharmoota! That bottle is worth ten thousand of your heart’s filthy desires.”
Yvette tossed the bottle in the air so that it flipped once, then deftly caught it in her right palm. “Then why give it to me?”
The jinni reached out a panicked hand. “I’ve no time to explain, but because of your reckless wish I am now confined inside the city boundaries. I cannot leave. And neither can you.”
“I can leave right now, if I want.”
“No, girl, you can’t. The thing you desired with every ounce of your heart is here, and until you find it and satisfy your wish, you cannot leave.” Sidra shivered, a thing Yvette had never seen her do before. “In the meantime, that bottle cannot be found in my possession,” she went on. “Not while my powers are dimmed.”
“So, you want me to stash it for you?” Normally she’d be happy to continue tormenting the moody desert witch, but there was something different in Sidra’s eyes this time. Something desperate. Fearful even. It strummed a sympathetic chord inside Yvette, layers and layers beneath the tough facade she’d built up from years of living on the streets. She knew the feeling of offering something of value to someone, only to have it broken from lack of care.
Yvette closed her fingers over the bottle and slipped it inside her costume. “I guess I owe you for helping me escape. I’ll keep it safe, if that’s what you want.”
Sidra gave a firm nod, her relief obvious. The jinni seemed to consider the matter settled, as if a debt had been paid. Standing aside a horned gargoyle, she scoured the skyline and pointed to a hill on the far side of the city where a domed roof rose above the summit. “You’re not too late. The one you’re looking for is still there.”
Yvette’s mouth watered with fear. She didn’t know what dream the jinni had seen in the flames, but watching her correctly pick out the neighborhood atop the butte where she was born told her the vision had been rooted in truth. Or as near a version of the truth as she’d ever known. She understood partly why she’d been swept back to the city. Perhaps she had wished to return from some deep place inside. Before Sidra turned her into a sparrow, she’d seen proper magic done by a proper witch, and for the first time in her life she’d wanted that for herself. Magic was in her blood, always had been, tingling on her skin at the tips of her fingers, in the roots of her hair, and along her spine. And yet she’d never been anything but a failure at spells. There’d never been anyone to show her how to do them properly or teach her how to channel the restless energy that seemed to flow through her. No one who cared, anyway.
But now that she’d seen a vine witch wield her magic and knew what was possible, Yvette wanted power for herself more keenly than she ever had before. That was the thought she’d folded up and tucked away in her heart just before she’d been caught in the jinni’s sorcery.
Yvette leaned over the railing, scanning the city as the streetlights twinkled against a purple sky. The image gave her the courage to confess. “I want to learn magic for myself, is all. I want to know what kind of witch I was supposed to be before everything went to shit and I ended up in that prison.”
Across from her, a fat gargoyle stuck its tongue out and rested its head in its hands.
“That, girl, is why I decided not to kill you.” The jinni side-eyed Yvette as if waiting for her to flare up and then smiled when it didn’t happen. “There is no greater journey than following one’s fate,” she said, her voice softened, perhaps on reflection of her own circumstance. “Even if it’s to be found in this stinking place.”
“It’s been three years,” Yvette said, finally gazing at the white-domed cathedral on the butte in the distance.
“A blink in time.”
“There’s usually some hell-broth on the boil at a little café at the top of the hill, if you’re hungry. That is, if you want to come with me.”
The jinni shook her head and pointed her chin in the opposite direction toward the south bank of the river. “My path is that way. In the maze of narrow streets where I can disappear.”
“So that’s it? We crash-land in the city together and then go our separate ways? How will I return your bottle to you?”
Sidra adjusted her shawl so it covered the top of her head. “For whatever reason, fate has bound us together. We will find each other again. This I do not doubt. Until then, take care with that bottle or I will curse you and your children, and your children’s children, to an eternal blistering hell of torment, as though a thousand fire ants feast on your brain.”