I sat up, Lila slid off me and rolled to her feet. “Is that it, are we there?”
I looked around us. “I think so.”
Maggi sat in her same chair with her eyes at half-mast as if she were dozing. “You are both fully here. That is interesting. Most don’t dream so deeply into this world.”
“This is another world?” I couldn’t help the question.
She gave a single nod. “It is. And in many cases, what happens here is reflected in the real world. So, you must be careful if you find yourself here. Death is final in these dreams, and not a game.”
“Awesome,” I muttered. “One more place that can kill me.”
She smiled. “I doubt it will ever come to that. But be wary.”
Lila trotted in a circle. “I feel awake. Are you sure we are not awake?”
“Yes, you are bound to Zamira, and she is here fully, so you are as well.” Maggi looked at me again. “But that is not why you are here. You want to understand what is happening. Why all this is coming at you, all at once.”
I didn’t dare hope for that much. “And why you’re helping me. You really haven’t answered that one yet either.”
She smiled, but the smile slipped as she settled into speaking. She waved her hand in front of her and the wooden floorboards turned to sand and a miniature Oasis I knew all too well. The water sparkled a clear blue, the trees around it were thick with foliage, but none of that held my eyes. The sand was covered in red spots and golden-furred, unmoving bodies. My throat clenched at the sight of one of my worst memories.
“This is where the world turned on its head, Zam, not only for you, but for all of us. The Jinn and Marsum, in particular, believed he could become the super power the Emperor had been for so long. You see, even asleep, the Emperor still draws on the Jinn. He uses their power to keep from being put too deeply into stasis. That is how he kept his son from killing him. He knows his time of escape is coming, and he is banking on not being weak when he emerges.”
I stared at the bodies of my family as the memory, the smells, the sounds, rolled through me as if I stood there again. “What has that got to do with my family?”
Her eyes lowered as she stared at the water of the Oasis. “Because the lions held the Jinn in check. Your mother held the Jinn in check. She taught the Bright Lions to fight in a way that allowed them to battle with the Jinn on a more even field. She led them into battle, not your father.” She swirled her hand and the scene changed to one I didn’t know. This one was frozen too, a still picture cut out of time.
A woman with black hair and green eyes fought from the back of a huge chestnut horse with a flail I knew all too well in her hands as she clashed with a Jinn. Her eyes were narrowed and mouth open in a scream of what I could only think of as defiance. My skin prickled. It was like looking at myself, but I had never fought in the desert with the flail from the back of a chestnut horse.
“That’s . . . your mother?” Lila whispered. “She looks just like you, Zam.”
Maggi swirled her hand through the image, turning it and showing all sides of the action. “She was determined to see the lions live for more reasons than that she loved them and your father. She knew there would be one with the blood of a lion in their veins that would become the Wall Breaker. She believed the wall needed to come down, that the Emperor needed to be freed.”
She swirled her fingers and the scene shifted to another I didn’t know, one that made my heart freeze in my chest. A little girl with dark hair and bright green eyes sat crying in the sand, her chubby legs not yet able to stand on their own. In front of her stood the woman who was my mother. My whole life I’d been told that I was the cause of her death. Shem had said I wasn’t the cause, that I was older, but I’d not really believed him. Because that would mean the truths I’d lived with and carried as a weight for so long were in reality, lies.
What I was looking at put that belief and those truths into question in a way that Shem’s words could never have done. Unless it was something worse that had stolen my mother from me. For the first time, it hit me that my childhood was nothing what I’d thought—what I’d been trained to believe.
My breath came in little gasps. I couldn’t help it as understanding flowed through me, what Maggi was going to show me. . . “Do not make me watch my mother die.”
Maggi lifted a hand and gave a single nod. “I will spare you that. But you need to see what comes before, the pieces of the puzzle that may help you understand who you are.”
The image swelled until I stood within it behind my childhood self. My mother’s back was to me and she faced someone I knew.
The man in front of her was Shem—a younger version, but Shem without a doubt—and he was arguing hard. The action and sounds went from nothing to full-on in the single beat of my heart. My child self cried softly, and the two adults raised their voices.
“You must run. Take the girl and go. The Jinn know she’s the one,” Shem said. “They will come for her and what then? You must go, for all that is holy in this land, you are not strong enough to protect her here. If you run, you’ll have a chance.”
His words were like a slap to my face. My mother had been weak, and everyone believed her incapable too. Just as they believed of me.
She shook her head. “They don’t know any such thing, Shem, and neither do you. You are speculating once again. The Jinn might suspect, but there are others who could be the Wall Breaker. There are others who could fit the prophecy.”
“No.” He snapped the word at her. “There are not. You might cast doubt on those here to protect her and you might make it look like another cub has the potential, but you and I know the truth, and so do the Jinn. You are a fool if you think she will make it to adulthood without some sort of protection. Without continually running.”
“Ishtar has agreed to take her if something should happen to me,” my mother said. “She will raise and protect her.”
“Then send her there now!” Shem roared, and my little self cried harder. I wanted to stop the noise, but my mother didn’t look back at me. She couldn’t turn her back on Shem. That was a sign of submissive behavior in the pride and I understood she couldn’t do that even for a crying child.
“No. She is my daughter, and if we are to be separated, I would have as much time as I could have with her.”
“You are a dead fool then.” He spun on his heel and stalked away, his shoulders hunched. She watched him go and then turned and dropped to her knees, holding her hands out to me. I’d been told my whole life that she’d died shortly after my birth.
I had to be at least six months old in this memory, assuming it was true. I didn’t know if that was better, knowing I’d had her love for a little while. But why then tell me I’d been the cause of her death? That my birth had taken her life? The guilt I’d lived with for as long as I could remember was not easy to let go, but I pushed it aside.
Maybe it was not my fault she died.
Of course, I was wrong. My birth hadn’t caused her death. But my life had.
“My little Zamira, can you crawl to me, lovely girl?” She wiggled her fingers at me and I obediently flopped forward into the sand and squirmed my way to her. She scooped me up and held me to her face, her eyes closed, and more than one tear tracking down her face. “What can I do to protect you, my darling? What can I do to help you survive until you are old enough to stop that old bastard? You are the only one who can. Such a heavy burden for one so young.”
She held on until the little me squirmed and squawked to be put down. My heart thumped wildly as the light around the scene changed, shifting to an early twilight. What old bastard was she talking about? Who could she possibly mean?
Marsum . . . it had to be Marsum.
As if thinking his name had summoned him, a dark mist flowed along the sand and through the trees until it formed into a man. A Jinn. My throat clenched because there was nothing I could do. This was a dream, a memory that couldn’t be changed.
Marsum’s dark eyes and white-blond hair marked him clearly as a Jinn even if the mist he floated on for legs did not.
My mother spun and let out a hiss. “You wish to die today, Marsum?”