“I can keep going,” she said. “I’m getting faster, I think.”
“I want to see the headache you get before we turn you loose on our alterations,” I said. “You told me it was nothing in the mountains, and I knew you were lying, but you concealed more than I thought.”
“The phoenix’s gift lets me recover,” she admitted ruefully. “It does not precisely ease my recovery. I thought it would get easier, but so far it hasn’t. I do feel better eventually, but every time it’s like I am adding on more weight.”
“It’s like that when you practice anything, at first,” I told her. “Eventually, you’ll have all the weight you need, and then you’ll get better at bearing it.”
“I hope so,” she said.
Arwa and I continued to sew, and while we worked we told Zahrah the craft knowledge that our mothers had told us when we were small. We told her about the different kinds of sheep, and the ways to herd and shear them. We told her which plants could be used in place of wool, though they were not commonly found in Kharuf. We told her which trees make the best needles and spindles, and how to find the best pieces of finished wood if you were setting the frame for a loom.
I don’t know if she remembered any of it from when she was small, but it was wonderful to talk to her like that. She asked good questions and didn’t fidget, the way we had when we had been forced to sit still. Perhaps it was because she wasn’t a child. We talked until the hem was nearly done and we were sewing mostly by firelight.
“Saoud and Tariq should be back soon,” I said. “Even if they haven’t caught anything, it will soon be too dark to continue.”
“I’ll start boiling water, in any case.” Zahrah stood up to get the pot, but made it no further than her feet before she collapsed back onto the ground.
“Zahrah!” said Arwa, dropping the tunic and crawling to her side. “Yashaa, help me.”
But there was nothing I could do. It was the headache, the same as she’d had in the mountains, and this time it was worse. Her eyes ran with tears if she so much as looked at the fire, and I imagined she felt the light of it in her skull the way I had felt the needle in my thumb, only multiplied a hundredfold. I sent Arwa to soak a veil in cool water and pulled Zahrah into my arms.
“You were right,” she said, grimacing through the words. “Yashaa, it feels like my head will explode.”
“It won’t,” I told her.
“It’s magic,” she said. “How can you know?”
“The demon needs your head, Zahrah,” I said. “That means it won’t explode.”
It was cold comfort at best, and I knew it, but it was the truth. I held her until Arwa came back, and then we helped her to sit up so we could wrap the cool cloth around her head. She vomited twice, and again when Saoud and Tariq came back with a rabbit and she smelled the blood. She didn’t even try to eat, so I put her to bed.
“Stay,” she said. “Please.”
Arwa could sleep in the tent with Tariq. Zahrah’s reputation was already ruined. It could do no harm.
“All right,” I said, and I held her until she finally fell asleep.
OUR TENTS WERE ALL THE SAME, so I was awake for a few moments before I remembered where I was. I had slept fitfully at first, worried that Zahrah would vomit again, but once she was asleep she didn’t stir at all, and eventually I had drifted off and stayed asleep. Saoud had not come to wake me for a watch, probably thinking he would wake Zahrah if he did so. I hoped that when she did wake up, her headache would be gone.
The ground was hard underneath the tent, and we had reached the season when damp rose through the dropcloth, making the mornings cold. Usually I slept wrapped in my bedroll and was warm enough, but this morning, with the press of Zahrah’s body against mine, it was actually almost comfortable. Or at least it was until I shifted, and realized that the ground was not the only thing that was hard.
It wasn’t an alien feeling, of course, but usually I was alone when it happened, and I could push it out of my mind. With Zahrah so close, all I could think of was getting out of the tent before she woke up and noticed. I moved as carefully as I could and exited the tent with all possible speed, though I did make sure that she was still tucked underneath the blanket.
It was barely dawn. The sky was grey except for the east, where pinks and oranges were beginning to bleed over the mountaintops. The heather blossoms were still closed, though I knew they would soon unfurl, and everything was quiet. Saoud sat near the fire pit, feeding kindling into the small flames, and he looked up when he heard me approach.
“Here,” he said, passing me a piece of the rabbit he’d caught yesterday. I had missed supper, so I tore into it. “How is she?”
He did his best not to sound anxious, but I knew he wanted to be on the move again as soon as we possibly could.