The world went silent. The sounds of the birds, the water, the wind—all of it vanished, replaced by a roaring in Zainab’s ears. She stumbled back, her cane striking a root, nearly sending her sprawling.
“He’s a liar,” Aminah whispered. “Ask him about the ‘Great Fire of the East.’ Ask him why he can’t show his face in the city.”
Zainab fled. She didn’t use her cane; she ran on instinct and agony, her feet finding the path back to the hut through sheer desperation. She sat in the dark for hours, the cold earth seeping into her bones.
When Yusha returned, the air felt different. The woodsmoke scent of him now smelled like burning deception.
“Zainab?” he asked, sensing the shift. He set a small parcel on the table—bread, perhaps, or a bit of cheese. “What’s happened?”
“Were you always a beggar, Yusha?” she asked. Her voice was hollow, a reed snapping in the wind.
The silence that followed was long and heavy, thick with the things left unsaid.
“I told you once,” he said, his voice stripped of its poetic warmth. “Not always.”
“My sister found me today. She told me you are a lie. She told me you are hiding. That you use me—my darkness—to keep yourself in the shadows. Tell me the truth. Who are you? And why are you in this hut with a woman you were paid to take away?”
