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April 19 - April 21, 2025
The cave looked like a scene plucked from a dream or brought to life by an artist’s paintbrush: lacy lichens, glittering crystals, and mushroom-like stone growths in every color of the rainbow covering the rocky walls. Writhing formations in glittering minerals hung from the uneven ceiling, reaching down to touch their siblings bursting from the floor.
We crossed silent fields of jutting silver shards that could have been the abandoned swords of a vanished army and climbed steps of such perfect natural geometry that I whispered God’s praise.
The increasingly foul smell made it feel like we were stepping into a fetid wound, the warmly moist brush of the moss against my skin causing me to shudder.
People do not take to the seas if the land offers better, and the kind of men lured to a life of smuggling and raiding are not gentle.
The bluish hue that clung to him might have been a trick of the light; the raven tresses and speckles dotting his skin, both shadows and reality.
“But—but you are not a believer.” “Of course I am. Best to know the competition, yes?”
Raksh looped his fingers through my hair like he was placing tapestry threads, marveling at me in a way that felt more assessing than romantic.
the sand falling away to reveal wants that seemed naïve and raw in the bright light of the sun, squirming creatures that belonged hidden beneath the seabed.
Our stories always want to make villains larger than life. They should be snarling or scarred, hunchbacked or otherwise marred in a way society doesn’t like. It makes them easier to demonize.
“You have traveled more widely than I would have expected,” I noted, attempting a conciliatory response. I was supposed to be drawing this man in, and he was clearly the type who liked to talk about himself. “So you came to admire us?” “Oh, no. I came to kill you,” he said conversationally.
I genuinely could not tell if Falco wanted to seduce me, hire me, or cut my throat and hang me in the cave to perform nefarious magic with my blood.
“Will you at least tell me your name?” I asked more gently, ignoring the threat. “Your real one. Not your Banu Sasan one, Crafty Dalila.” She laughed and rose to her feet. “You shall not have that, Amina al-Sirafi. Names are for tombstones. And us? We are not yet dead.”
But not even when he was about to be buried alive had I seen the expression of terror in his face as he gazed at the southern horizon.
“Oh, fuck off, you fish-brained wizard.”
What else am I supposed to do?” He pulled at one of his tusks, seeming to genuinely contemplate the question. “Well. The fish is good. And you might as well enjoy what time you have left before the island’s court learns of your presence and kills you. We could have sexual intercourse,” he suggested. “That’s always a pleasant way to pass the time.” Raksh paused, seeming to take in my haggard appearance. “You know . . . if you washed up.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” I finally replied. “This man could manifest as a beam of celestial light, and he chose to use that power to spy on a naked woman?” “Are you surprised?” Honestly, no. The details might have been fantastical, but strangely I bought this lunar aspect being a pervert. Men . . . useless, the vast lot of them, celestial and mortal.
The deep-water qaraqir with ornate stern carvings and the best sails one could buy. The sleek galleys with room for a hundred oarsmen that were twice as fast as any vessel I’d ever been on. The much-feared barija with its naft-spewing bellows and battering rams. Even the smaller bandit skiffs, the kind of boats that float so close to the waterline they’re all but invisible until their fighting men are throwing grappling hooks over your rails, were glossy and striking, drifting on the clear blue water like clouds on a beautiful day.
I might have originally taken this job with the aim of being discreet, of burying my brash, flamboyant younger self away, but to hell with all that now. I would fight in the manner truest to my soul. Accordingly, the old Amina al-Sirafi had been unearthed in an emerald tunic embroidered with fire-yellow sunbursts, butter-soft bloodred leather boots, and billowy trousers the exact blue of a dusk sea. A layer of finely made chain mail went over it all, followed by the sharpest green and black jacket I had ever seen, picked through with silver thread. I wrapped my hair in an ebony block-print
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smirking with all his shark’s teeth (do not attempt to envision this—it is a deeply cursed sight)
A shadow fell across us, a petite form in a billowing tattered gown standing before the roaring bonfire. Bruises and bloodstains ringed her wrists from where she’d been bound, her hair wild and blowing everywhere.
you petty, perverted excuse for a planet?”
“You don’t even see it, do you?” he asked, seeming to marvel at me anew. “Amina, I am going to make you a legend.”
“A supernaturally blessed warrior tasked with traveling the world and hunting down some of the most marvelous treasures ever created,” he breathed, sounding almost reverent. “Do you not realize your potential? I am going to spin such tales that your adventures will live on in epic poems grander than that of Antarah and Dhat al-Himma, your name sung in odes to heroes whose mighty feats surpass those of Alexander.”
I wanted to give her all that I’d had to take, positioning her to enjoy opportunities I could never imagine.
“You were the one who told me to relax!” Granted, Dalila had obviously been referring to slumber, not shushed sex with my chaos spirit spouse in the ship’s cramped galley, but everyone had their own way of unwinding.
Is the Moon of Saba a real legend? Absolutely not: one does not spend one’s time reading stories of djinns and demons and then give directions to summoning such a creature in a commercial novel.
