Kissed by Chaos
Chapter 23 – Dunya's Gift
Raafi could not stand that look. He had grown accustomed to the bursts of pain that accompanied receiving that look from his father. However, seeing that look in Claire’s emerald eyes was something he would never be able to handle.
When she had looked at him like that, the unmistakable dullness of disappointment lingered in her eyes. Only seconds ago they had been filled with fire. In that fire was a refusal to be used in anyone’s game. There was a hard determination and a passion that made him feel something strangely close to desire. Yet because of him and his cowardice, the fire had been doused far too abruptly.
Added to this tumultuous wave of twisted emotions was confusion. As Raafi lay in his chambers in the darkness with his arms crossed behind his head, Amira’s name danced into his thoughts with disarming grace and clarity. Damn it all! He had been so close to sure that Amira was the woman he was destined to spend his life with. He had truly believed that perhaps, with time, his heart would lay with Amira. And then he had found Claire rocking back and forth with wide eyes, whimpering and shivering uncontrollably. Raafi had felt an almost irrepressible urge to wrap his arms around her, to comfort her and tell her that he would be there regardless of any otherworldly forces. The burning courage and determination in her eyes as they had spoken in that hallway had only added to his desire for her, to simply be with her. Her whispered assurances that he was anything but a coward had tipped him over the edge into something close to insanity.
He rubbed a hand over his face and was surprised when a groan of frustration managed to escape him. Why now? Why did Amira and Claire both have to interrupt his otherwise monotonous and already frustrating life at the same time? Why was it him of all the princes in the world that was chosen by Dunya for her disastrous plan?
He pleaded for sleep to take him away. Why couldn’t it show him the slightest bit of sympathy? Didn’t sleep understand that lying alone in the darkness with only his thoughts to accompany him was far more than he could bear?
Somewhere in between trying to decide the exact green of Claire’s eyes and conjuring the image of the curve of Amira's lips, Raafi looked through the window to see that the black of the night had begun to fade. Eventually, the birds outside began singing their ritualistic morning choir piece and the Imaam’s deep, musical call to prayer resonated through the palace. Sleep still had not kissed Raafi’s eyes.
***
Raafi was relieved to find that by the time he had completed the morning prayer, he had formed a plan for the day. As he chewed through his breakfast of delicate breads and exotic fruits, he realised that perhaps things would not go to plan – maybe he would not get the answers he wanted. By the time his plate was empty and the servants had taken it away, Raafi had decided that he could not be completely useless to Claire.
He ambled through the twisting yet familiar corridor and hallways until he stood before Queen Zainab’s quarters. It was only then that he realised exactly how long it had been since he had seen his mother. He knocked on the door and as he waited for her to answer, he wondered why she had not been there yesterday when Raafi had been formally introduced to Amira's family.
The door creaked open and a maid peeked out. The young woman’s eyes widened when she realised who the visitor was. She looked behind her and announced in a breathy voice, “Your Majesty, Prince Raafi is here to see you.” Before even a second had passed, Queen Zainab’s voice exclaimed, “My son? He’s here to see me? Well quickly, Rahima, let him in!”
The maid held the door open for him and shyly averted her eyes as he stepped through. His eyes instantly fell upon the woman standing near the window. She was grinning at him, her eyes crinkling with her joy. It took him a moment to reassure himself that he had come to the right room, that this was the right woman. Because the worn and weary woman in front of him was far too… old to be his mother. The Queen Zainab he remembered had long black hair that fell to her hips. It had been so straight and smooth – Raafi remembered running his fingers through the long strands as a child, marveling at the perfection of his mother’s hair. Now, it was streaked with gray and far thinner than it had been.
Her hair was not the only thing that had changed. She had undeniably lost a lot more weight than was healthy. Her skin looked almost transparent and when she clutched Raafi to her in a weak embrace, he could feel that her skin was just as fragile as it looked. He realised with dismay that somehow his mother, a beautifully fierce eagle, had been reduced to a tiny sparrow with a broken wing dragging by its side.
“Mother… what happened to you?” The door clicked shut behind him as the maid respectfully stepped out to leave mother and son alone.
Queen Zainab released Raafi from her embrace to hold him at arms length. Her eyes were filled with the wonder of a mother looking up at her son to find that he had suddenly grown too many years at once. “No matter about me,” she replied dismissively. She brushed a thumb gently over the hollow under one of his eyes and said with a cheeky smile, “What have you been worrying about? You look hideous!”
He chuckled but still could not quite get over the change that had so suddenly come over his mother. “Why thank you, that makes me feel much better about myself. But Mother, you only give me more to worry about. Please tell me, are you ill? Do you not feel well? What happened?” When she looked away with a smile, trying to avoid the question, he gently took her by the shoulders so that she was looking directly up at him once again.
“It’s… it’s just age. I’m an old woman now.”
“You look as tired as an old woman, that is true, but you are far too young to be so weary. You know that as well as I do,” Raafi said quietly.
She sighed and moved to sit down on her bed. “Maybe. Who knows. Now tell me, what can this old woman do for you? Surely you did not just come here to visit me?” Queen Zainab was smiling, but underneath that smile was an already dying hope that maybe she was wrong.
Guilt made Raafi clench his hands together. He had never been too close to his mother. She had always been attending to business, trying to please his father. She did not appear to have much time for her children. Even so, her favourite child was Raafi’s little sister, Farah. No matter what, Raafi could not deny that there was no excuse for him to have neglected his mother as he had. Had the distance between them become so great that she no longer expected him to visit her just for the sake of it?
“Mother, I always want to see you, you know that. But you know how things have been – Father had banished me and I still can’t believe that I’m still standing here, within the kingdom’s walls.”
Queen Zainab gave a short, bitter laugh. “Ah, the whims of your father. That is one man that I will never understand. Adnan…” she looked down at her hands as she spoke her dead son’s name. “Adnan did not die because of you. That is something that I refuse to believe.” She glanced up at him searchingly for reassurance. “Am I right?”
He sat down beside her and rested his head on her shoulder. “Yes, you are. I cannot thank you enough for believing in me. I do not know how I would have felt if I had known that even you thought I was the reason for his death.” A silent moment passed as mother and son let themselves remember the man that could have been sitting and joking with them at this very moment if fate had been just a little kinder. Then Raafi remembered why he had come here and he spoke once again. “There is something I need to ask you, Mother, and I need a truthful answer. You’ve never answered this question before – you’ve always avoided it in some way or another. But now… it is important that I know.”
The slight smile that had lingered on her face throughout their little meeting fell from her face and now she looked wary, as if she knew what was coming. She remained silent, waiting.
“I want to know what happened seventeen years ago.”
The silence in the room was so loud that it seemed to screech through his brain, demanding to know why he had spoken the unspeakable. For years he had been denied of an answer so why had he brought it up now?
He knew that somewhere inside him he would never be able to leave behind his past and truly look toward the future if his question did not receive a reply. This answer was the key to un-jumbling his nightmares. Not only that, he had a feeling that if he was able to make sense of that long ago night, he would be able to make sense of what Dunya wanted from him and Claire.
His mother sucked in a breath and Raafi felt her shoulder stiffen under his head. She was staring at the door. He wondered if she was considering making a run for it. Then she spoke.
“My first child was a girl. A lovely girl so beautiful that I could not stop staring at her and wondering if she was truly a child of this world and not something more heavenly. I loved her and I still do love her in a corner of my heart that I let myself open every once in a while. Her name was Maryam. But… Maryam was a girl, after all. She was not strong enough or cunning enough to rule Mirzan one day when your father passed away.”
Raafi glanced down at her hands as they clenched the material of her dress. A part of him wanted to tell her that it was okay, that if this was too painful for her to recount she could stop whenever she wanted to. But the other part, the intelligent part, knew that this was something both he and his mother needed to hear.
"The birth of you and Adnan were two rare ocassions that I saw your father smile.
“Then one day, King Suleman’s army attacked Mirzan. They were ruthless and merciless. Their only aim was to cause us pain, and that they did. While your father and uncles were out on the battlefield, a group of Suleman’s men crept into the almost undefended palace. They found you and… and…” Zainab gulped for air, lifting a hand to her chest as if to hold back her heart. “They all but tore you apart, Raafi.” Her voice broke as she spoke his name. “When I found you there was so much blood, like a river. It was splattered against the walls, covering the floor, all over your body. I could not see your face because there was so much blood and I kept telling myself that it wasn’t you, that surely nobody could butcher a five year old boy like that. But sure enough, it was your perpetually messy hair that was matted with blood, your small hands that were clenched by your side in pain. It was your tiny body that lay there, unmoving.
“The physicians said you were going to die. They said that there was no hope, that there was no point praying for you to live. Instead they advised me to pray for your peaceful resting in the grave until the Day of Judgment. I ran around Mirzan like a crazed woman, begging people for answers that were a little more hopeful. And then I found a sorceress named Bilqis who said that there was one way I could anchor your life to this world. She told me I could ask the Shadows for help. The Jinn.”
It was that word that made Raafi’s heart lurch with a fear that he did not know he could feel. Could his nightmares really show him a truth that everybody wanted to dismiss but could not possibly deny?
“Your father… he was a crazed man about to do anything to get his son back, even if that meant delving in magic that ought not to be touched.”
Raafi could not help but doubt his mother’s words. Could there really have been a time when his father would have done anything to keep him alive?
“What did you do? Did you end up seeking the Jinn’s help?” he asked, wanting to block his ears right after he had asked. He had been the one to demand an answer, yet now he doubted whether he would truly be able to take it.
Queen Zainab glanced at Raafi for a split second and looked away just as quickly in something disconcertingly close to shame. “I had no other choice. You were going to die,” she murmured.
“Tell me what happened,” he replied through gritted teeth.
“The sorceress was able to get your father and me contact with the Queen of the Shadows. Her name was Dunya.”
No, Raafi begged silently. Please don’t let any of this be true.
A lone tear trickled down Zainab’s cheek as she took a deep breath. “I don’t quite know how it happened, but when you finally awoke from your deathly sleep, my lovely Maryam was… gone. Dunya had not told us that your life would require the death of another. And as your eyes opened I heard a single voice in my head, a devastatingly beautiful voice. ‘One day I will be back for something in return’, she had said.”
Raafi grabbed his hair, his face tightening with anger and grief. His nightmares had been awfully true, then. Maryam had given up her life for his. He walked in the shadow of her ghost. He owed his life to Dunya and that was exactly why she tormented him day and night. She had promised his mother than one day she would come back for her favour to be returned, and that day was today.
“You should have just let me die,” Raafi said. He was surprised by the bitterness behind his words, but he could not possibly rein it in. “I would rather die than exist the way that I do now.”
Zainab gently turned his face with one hand so that Raafi could not help but look into her wide eyes. “But why? How has your life been so awful that you can no longer bear to live?”
“Dunya does not forget, Mother.” That was all that needed to be said for understanding to dawn on Queen Zainab’s features. Holding Raafi’s face in her hands, she asked in a voice barely above a whisper, “She’s back?”
“Yes. The Queen of Shadows is most certainly back. And she will not leave me alone until she has been repaid for letting me live.”
“Well… what does she want?”
“She wants Mirzan.” With those three words he pulled his mother’s hands off his face and stood up, not at all surprised by the way the room spun around him. He had grown almost accustomed to the world spinning endlessly, never resting, never granting him the slightest mercy.
“Raafi, you cannot give in to her. You’re a strong and worthy prince and if you are my son, you will not hand all that our family has worked for so easily over to her.”
He gazed at her blankly. Her eyes pleaded with him, begging him to heed her words. “I know that I am not the greatest of mothers. At times I have been utterly lost and clueless. But what I do know is that I love you. And just as I do, Susannah loves you too. Neither she nor I have raised you be a coward, Raafi. Both she and I know very well that the courage in you is built from compassion and kindness. Promise me that you will use that courage. Promise me that you will not give up.”
He rubbed tiredly at his eyes and walked towards the door. Just as he stepped out, he turned around and met his mother’s wide, imploring eyes. “I promise.”
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THOUGHTS? So did you liiiike it? I can't believe I'm approaching the end of the story. I have never ever been patient enough to write so much. The fact that I can now is partially due to your comments that let me know that someone out there does not think that all this is stupid. As usual, thank you for reading and let me know if you find any mistakes. Vote and comment if you think my writing is worthy!
Ciao!
- Zarin.