Demon's Arrow

Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Aria stood in the petitions room, her mind seething, thinking about people and places and feeling secure and knowing you were where you belonged. Every night, she was tormented by dreams. She needed a distraction. She needed to stop feeling sick and useless. She was determined to ask one more time to go on the next seeking mission. She was ready to beg.

Nobody understood her. She knew she was sick. She understood more than anyone else how sick she was. But she couldn’t bear to only be the sick one, to not offer anything useful to her land or her people. There were still a few people in line ahead of her and she jiggled her legs to keep them from falling asleep. She pulled the hood of her cloak closer over her face and glanced up at the elders.

Isika sat on the platform that was slightly raised at the front of the petitions room. The four elders were beside her. Isika sat as though she belonged there with them, not even paying attention, playing with something on her lap. Aria felt a jolt of love for her sister, and then, swiftly, hatred so deep she gasped with it. This was her sickness. She switched back and forth between emotions that were opposite and varied, sometimes so quickly she could barely catch her breath. Back and forth in a constant torment. She hardly remembered feeling normal. She wondered if any of the people around her were wounded like her.

Isika was so beautiful. She was staring at something in her lap. Aria wondered what it was and in the next moment she wanted to hit the smug look off her sister’s face. The men in front of her were next. They asked something, but Aria couldn’t hear because of the ringing in her ears. She paid attention to the men’s feet, to the bracelets on their ankles. She tried to bring her attention back. The pillars were smooth and long and reaching into the ceiling. There were paintings on the walls. She had been here in this land far longer than her sister, rescued before her sister ever came here, but look how secure Isika was, sitting up there in her chair barely paying attention. And Aria was not even allowed to go on a simple seeking journey.

She shook her head. They had to listen to her. They had to.

The men bowed to Isika, and Aria thought about all that had happened in the last months and the fact that their father had pursued Isika and rejected Aria. She thought of the fact that she could fight now. She had powers that she hadn’t known she had before. She could go out on a seeking mission. She could be of use. She could help. She didn’t have to stay in the tents of the healers like an invalid.

Her parents didn’t know she was here. They wouldn’t approve of her asking to go out on the seeking mission, because they were the ones who had asked the elders to not allow her to go again. She couldn’t understand why they didn’t understand how important it was for her to go.

The three men were talking and Aria shuddered to know that she would be next under the elders’ gaze. The three men seemed to be asking for something and the elders seemed to be willing to give it to them, but maybe not. And her brain was hurting. Her mind kept flipping back and forth between love and hate and love and hate and she was so tired. If only she could run, she would run far and fast on a seeking journey, and drive all this torment away from her.

Isika told the men that she would confer with the elders and consider whether she could help the men. Aria felt a wave of scorn for her sister. Isika was so weak. She should know that as queen she could do whatever she wanted. She could push the elders away. She could take over the whole land. She didn’t have to submit to them, she didn’t have to make herself so small. In the very next moment, Aria thought about how Isika was arrogant.

She clutched her head, pulling her hood farther down over her face.

It was the arrow inside of her, the arrow that had pierced her all those months ago. It had reached her heart the day she met her father and he rejected her. The healers couldn’t get it out, so it dug deeper into her heart with every passing day. The healers weren’t sure if she would recover. She knew some of them wondered if the arrow would kill her.

The men left and Aria was next. What was she going to say? She hadn’t thought this through. But there she was, at the front of the line and there was no time to come up with something so she stepped forward and threw back her hood.

She looked at all of them, each one in turn—the four elders. Laylit the beautiful, Jabari’s mother. Andar the regal, Jabari’s father. She didn’t know those two very well. They were rather distant, considering themselves above everyone. Not fit to be rulers, Aria thought. But then she shook her head. That was the arrow speaking.

Ivram the wise, Ivy’s father. And Karah the brave, Ivy’s mother. Karah was pale-skinned with long red hair. She was beautiful in a way so different from Laylit’s beauty, they could have been day and night. Karah was the reason that Aria’s friend Ivy had tawny skin and long thin legs like a crane.

And then there was Aria’s sister. Isika. She sat on her chair with her head up now, fully engaged, her eyes full of compassion for Aria. Questions in her eyes. Aria knew they wouldn’t understand why she had come this way. But she needed to show the elders that they had pushed her to this point. She had no other choice because no one would listen to her, no one would let her go on the seeking journey if she did not make it big, come to Petitions, lift her hood and speak.

“Aria, dear, what is it?” Karah asked, but Laylit broke in.

“Surely another place and time would be more appropriate for her question.”

Aria frowned. Even now, the elders tried to keep her quiet.

“Don’t I have the same rights as the rest of the Maweel? To come to Petitions and offer my questions? Is it because I am rescued that you don’t want to hear me? Or because of my father’s blood?”

All around, people stirred and murmured to one another. Aria saw Isika’s face close down suddenly. The elders shot each other concerned glances. Laylit started to speak, but Andar put up a hand and stopped her.

“You know you are welcome here, young one,” he said. “We are simply surprised at the manner in which you have come. Speak. Bring us your question so we may set your heart at ease.”

Sorrow and guilt stirred in Aria’s heart. She didn’t know where those words had come from. The arrow made her think and say things that didn’t seem to come from her own heart, but from somewhere or someone else.

“I am sorry, Uncle,” she said. “It is the arrow again . . . never mind that, though.” She stood as tall as she could. “I am here to ask you to allow me to go on the next seeking journey. I wish to continue my work as a seeker.”

There it was. She had made her request and now she would find out whether they were willing to listen. She stood very still.

Their faces were full of pity. Laylit and Andar looked at one another, communicating without words, and then Laylit turned to Aria, holding her hands out, palms up, and Aria knew what she was going to say. A buzzing started in her ears and her limbs felt heavy, so heavy. She could barely hear.

“Dear one, we must say no. You know that you are very ill. Your parents have asked us to keep you home for healing. And we agree with them—in fact, we are full of regret for allowing you to go before. Your injury came from a seeking journey, and you worsened during your last journey. We want you to be well, Aria, child.” she said.

It looked as if Laylit would stand and come toward Aria, but in the last moment she remained where she was. “The elders love and respect you, Aria, but we cannot let you go.”

Aria waited. Her head buzzed. Her limbs grew even heavier, as though she was pinned down by rage and fear. She waited for Isika to say something, to come to Aria’s defense. She stood there looking into Isika’s face, but Isika didn’t say anything. She only sat and looked back at Aria, and then she shook her head the tiniest bit. Aria knew then that Isika didn’t want her to go either. She thought for a moment that maybe Isika was jealous, maybe Isika didn’t want Aria to have good things.

The buzzing grew louder until it sounded like a hive of bees inside Aria’s head. Then she fell.

It felt as though she fell slowly, like a tree falling in the forest, or a stone falling through water. No one reached out to catch her. No one tried to help her. But Aria saw her sister’s face change and then Isika was running toward her, jumping off the platform and in a tiny non-arrow part of Aria’s mind, she knew she needed to warn her sister not to touch her. She wasn’t sure what the arrow would do.

She started to tell her sister to stay back, but just as Isika reached for her, just as the whole room reacted with concern, she opened her mouth and another sound came out.

Aria hissed a long slow hiss that sounded exactly like the Balota, mud demons that had attacked the city of Azariyah with the Desert King. Horrified, she pulled away from Isika, who stared at her with shock. She jumped up, trying to ignore the stricken faces around her, and as she turned she was already running.

She ran for a long time.

She ran out the palace and tore down the steps, down the stone pathway, over the bridge alongside the river, and then into the fields. She ran to get rid of the memory of the demon lizard’s voice coming out of her mouth. She ran to escape the shame that washed over her again and again. She was coming out of her skin.

While she ran, she threw keep-away thoughts ahead of her, knowing that her brother Benayeem would understand them and leave her alone. She lay in the grass when she was too tired to run, then got back up and ran again.

And at the end of the day when she couldn’t run anymore, and she was sore and sick and heart weary beyond recognition, she went home. She opened the door to her house. Her foster parents jumped up and came toward her, and she saw with surprise that they had been crying.

It was her mother who spoke first. Elba had been Aria’s mother for six years already, but Aria still did not feel understood by her.

“Do not be angry with us, dear one,” she said. “We are doing the best we know. You must rest now, and in the morning we will go back to the healing tent.”

Aria shook her head wildly, clenching her fists.

“I don’t want to go again!” she said. Her throat was so raw with exhaustion and tears that she could barely get the words out.

“You must,” her father said, staring at her with deep, sad eyes. “The healers want you to stay for the next four weeks. Please respect us, Aria,” he said.

Aria slumped over, exhausted, feeling the four walls of her home closing in on her.