“Listen to me,” I said. “This is what we know: spinning makes us sick. Not spinning makes us mad. I will suffer the least if you let me spin, and then you and I can make a plan when my head is clear.”
He did not like it. I did not much like it either, but I knew that it was the only way. It would be only the finest thread, the smallest line between sanity and sickness, and I would hold it for as long as I could, but I needed a place to start.
“Very well,” he said. “But I will hold the wool.”
He would stop me before I spun too much, I knew. He would help me find the middle ground.
When Tariq and Arwa returned with the water, we cooked dinner and sparred until it was too dark to see. They crawled into their tents and slept, and Saoud and I pretended to do the same while we waited for them to quiet. Then Saoud went to his pack and pulled out my spindle and a handful of wool he had taken from Tariq.
As soon as he put the shaft in my hands, I felt better than I had in days. The weight of the whorl pulled my hands down, the way my mother had taught me when I was a child, and when Saoud gave me the wool, I knew that this was what I was meant to do. There was a tickle in my throat, even before I dropped the spindle the first time, but I ignored it.
I spun quickly and well, and long before I wanted to stop, the wool ran out. Saoud would give me no more. The thread was not my best work, but it was work, and I was glad of it, even though I coughed when it was done. Saoud gave me water, and I coiled the thread around the spindle shaft, finishing the job as I had been taught.
“Are you better now?” Saoud asked.
“Yes,” I said. My throat betrayed me with a cough, and Saoud’s eyes narrowed. “At least, my mind is better,” I said.
“You look much calmer,” Saoud said. “You have scared me these past days.”
“I’m sorry,” I said. “And I will be sorry later, too. I can already feel it coming undone.”
“Then we’d better talk now,” Saoud said, “while we still can.”
IN THE END, THE BEST IDEA we had was to give Arwa her spindle. As she spun the meager wool that Saoud allowed her, her eyes lost the red-manic glint; her smile became the one I was used to, not the feral look of a strange girl who scared me as much as I am sure I scared her. The hardest part was watching Tariq, whose face grew longer and longer as he watched her spin, hunger writ on every part of his skin, and his fingers still moving absently against his thigh.
“I’m sorry, Tariq,” I told him. I didn’t try to still his hands, though I wanted to. “You know I don’t hold you back to hurt you.”
“I do,” he said. “I do. It’s only…”
I knew what he meant. I had only felt the call to spin since we had arrived in Kharuf and fallen under the curse. Tariq lived with it of his own accord, this calling to our craft, and loved it, all his days. Now he could not have it, and he felt mad for wanting.
Arwa came out of the tent. She had scrubbed her face, and was wrapping a newly washed veil around her head. She was dressed neatly, with none of the dust of the road on her knees, in the best clothes she had remaining. She looked like a poor merchant’s daughter, one who could pay for what she needed, but could not pay very much. The truth—that she was not even that well-stationed—pulled even harder at my heart.
“Are you sure you are all right?” I asked her, probably for the tenth time.
“Yes, Yashaa,” she said to me, and coughed lightly into her veil. “My head is clearer now, and I remember how the market works.”
“We will be close by if you need us,” Saoud told her.
I would be the closest, since my head was still clear enough. I would watch her as she went among the stalls. Saoud would be with Tariq, tucked out of the way but ready to come if we needed them.
The town we were close to had a fair-sized market. There were more than two dozen stalls, and we knew that more artisans and traders would set up in unofficial corners of the market to do their business.
“They talk to Arwa because she is small enough that they think it does not matter what they say to her,” Saoud’s father had told us. Arwa had overheard two merchants discussing how the Maker King’s soldiers might be bribed to rout us out of the crossroads, despite the fact that it was our right to stay there. Arwa had been right next to them when they’d said it, her dress and appearance making it obvious who she was, and they had not cared. When she told Saoud’s father, he had been able to remedy the situation, and the two merchants had found themselves unwelcome at the market thereafter.
“Do they think I am stupid?” Arwa asked.
“No,” said Saoud’s father. He used his gentle voice, so that the words would not hurt her when he said them. “They think you do not matter.”
“Then they will pay for their own folly,” Arwa said. It became a game to her. She would listen and report, and we learned to use the gossip she brought us to our advantage.