Chapter 11:: The Village

Standing in the balcony, looking at the city lights glittering at her like hostile fireflies blinking in the dark, Him heaved a small, dramatic sigh. She felt only slightly better. City was still a word she was getting used to, like a strange taste in her mouth. It was alien and unfriendly, and it didn’t like her.

City, she said to her Tanhai. City. What do you think?

City, it said back to her. I preferred the old life.

And as if from another time, everything that had happened flooded back into her. She could see the village now, and she could see herself, back in a time where she didn’t know what City meant. And she heaved another sigh, which wasn’t dramatic and didn’t make her feel any better, but came out with a sadness that made her Tanhai shimmer a little more brightly.


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Him and her Tanhai often spoke to each other. It was hard, having no one but a Tanhai to talk to, but Him wasn’t the kind of girl who worried too much about things being hard, especially since she’d been brought up by her Ma to stay out of everyone’s way. Ishtahar was that kind of village.

Sometimes, when Him stole into the marketplace, she could feel her Tanhai struggling to Hear. It never could keep up with the smells of garlic and magic and raw fish and dirty money wafting up from the vendors and their carts – smells that invited her to just step out this once, try this sausage, buy that creature. They broke Him’s concentration and weakened the connection. And since her Tanhai couldn’t See for her, it expected Him to step up and do the watching herself. But she always held back, stealing glances at mounds of glistening tomatoes and quivering cages, at the little tents that opened up only with a password, and at the strange little knots of yellow leaves that her Ma liked to put into a stew. Knowing that she must never be discovered, that she should never have been here in the first place. Knowing that she was unwanted. Him almost smiled at the thought. Almost. Not many people in Ishtahar had seen her smile.

Ishtahar was not a village that was kind to children. And although she had many theories, Him could never come to a possible explanation for her Ma choosing to live here, in this village of old people. For Ishtahar was old – old and wearily magical. Its age creaked through the gaps in the wooden houses and showed in the wheezing voices of its inhabitants, it wafted out of the yellowed grins and the tufts of white hair that everyone seemed to own. Everyone except Him and her Ma, of course: two bright spots on a landscape of grey, standing out because of their youth, their smooth skin, their sudden swift moments and their quick voices. How often had Him seen glances of pure, concentrated envy thrown their way? And yet they were allowed to live here, fresh-faced outcastes, apparently without any magic in them, in a sad, droopy, resentful seaside hamlet.

The elders always tried to hide their magic when Him was around, or rather, when they noticed that Him was around. Him was good at melting into the shadows; she always seemed smaller and duller than she really was - a character of indifferent browns. Some said she slunk around entirely too much. Others put it down to her non-magical lineage.

A common mother, and no trace of the father. Probably common too, because there’s no trace of magic around her. What can you expect of such an ordinary child? They’d ask, not knowing that the Tanhai was lurking above their heads, an almost undetectable tremor in the air, and relaying every word they said to Him sitting peacefully under the jackfruit tree in her garden.

Really, how much more obvious are they going to make it that there’s something wrong with this place? She asked her Tanhai. Here I am, in a village full of old idiots who wear long cloaks and hang strange leather pouches by their belts. They carry sheathed daggers, very romantic looking, in gnarled, jewelled hilts. They have beards that are strangely coloured, stained, and smell rather nasty, probably from being dipped into cauldrons. Don’t magicmakers have cauldrons?

Yes, the Tanhai replied. And they chant funny spells over it. That’s what the books you aren’t supposed to read say.

How juvenile. Him almost-smiled. Where was I? Oh yes, so they do all of that, and pretend to be harmless old people whenever I walk by, and try to nod at me encouragingly. Really, they’re about as encouraging as a pebble. If I ask questions they frown with their eyes and pretend like they don’t know what I’m talking about. They grimace at the sound of my name, only they don’t know I know that. They give me sweets with very unloving looks in their faces. They try to keep me out of the marketplace. They tell me that the sounds coming from the sea – which are clearly some sort of song, sea beasts perhaps? Or those creatures in the books…Mermaids? – are just the winds, blowing over the waves. Dear me, how fanciful the child is, they say, and ruffle my hair and give me another sweet. Whatever magic they do, they certainly don’t apply it to their sweets.

She pulled at her nosepin meditatively. It was strange that they hadn’t detected Him’s own brand of magic, including the Tanhai. Did that mean that her magic was too strong for them to notice? Was it something they’d never come across? Is that why she was here?

Him had tried asking her Ma about the life they led, but she knew it was of no use, just as she knew it was of no use to ask about her father. She would be lied to. It was, her Tanhai explained to her, the same way you knew that Hajid the baker was lying when he told you the loaf you’re buying was baked this very day, fresh out of the oven. You knew he was lying, and you knew Ma was hiding something when she stirred the yellow knots into the broth and brushed her hair out of her eyes and said in that tired, patient voice, “We’ve been through this before, Himalaya, not again.”

And yet you had to doubt her.

When her Ma looked out of the window on certain evenings in that tired, patient way, letting the steam from the soup bowl rise and redden her cheeks, impervious of the food growing cold, Him knew she was Thinking. Of Other Things. Sometimes Him wasn’t even sure she was her mother.

What kind of mother, she would ask her Tanhai, would deny all knowledge of how and why they came to be at a village full of ancient magicmakers? What kind of mother didn’t realise that there were no children in Ishtahar? What kind of mother kept her books hidden in the wine cellar? This is where the library has always been, Him. Why? To protect the parchment from the sea-air, of course. A likely story. What kind of mother named her daughter Himalaya?

And most importantly, what kind of mother failed at explaining the Factory?

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Damn the Factory, Him told the Tanhai, marvelling again at how strong it had grown in this place – this City with so many smells and so many marketplaces. Damn the Factory, and damn that mermaid, and damn that scar-faced fool.

Yes, I know, said the Tanhai. It’s Hell.