The Fire Wish

By Amber Lough

A jinni. A princess. And the wish that changes everything. . . . Beautifully written and accessible fantasy for fans of Tamora Pierce, Rachel Hartman, and Laini Taylor.

In this romantic and evocative fantasy, Najwa is a jinni, training to be a spy in the war against the humans. Zayele is a human on her way to marry a prince of Baghdad—which she’ll do anything to avoid. So she captures Najwa and makes a wish. With a rush of smoke and fire, they fall apart and re-form—as each other. A jinni and a human, trading lives. Both girls must play their parts among enemies who would kill them if the deception were ever discovered—enemies including the young men Najwa and Zayele are just discovering they might love.

1
Najwa
The earth and all her layers sped past while I traveled to the surface. I was smoke and flame, swirling through granite, through shale and sand. It took only a moment, and then I emerged, myself again. I stepped onto the dirt and shielded my eyes from the blinding star in the sky. I was in a human's garden, just as I'd wished.
"Shahtabi," I whispered. It wasn't a long-lasting wish, but it kept me from being seen by humans. It kept me safe, and it was the first wish I'd learned in school.
The sun beat down on a garden filled with flowers and their spiny pale green stems. It cast shadows--real, sun-made shadows--on the dirt. The garden was soft, without a trace of crystal. Instead, it had roses. Delicate, fragrant blossoms opened on the ends of the stems, yellow and pink in their centers.
A bird landed beside me on a branch and turned its head to look at me. It had shimmering feathers that it fluffed out before turning its head another way and taking off. Just like that, it was flying through the air, straighter than a bat. I had seen a live bird, and I had seen it fly!
But I was here for a flower, so I squeezed my hand around a stem. I was about to break it free when I heard music.
I dropped the stem, leaving the flower to bounce on its bush, and looked in the direction of the music. An arched door stood open. Someone, a human, was in there playing one of their stringed instruments. An oud.
The notes fluttered upward, and then dove into a melody I recognized. I couldn't name it, or remember when I had heard it, but it felt familiar. It was like breathing in a scent that made you sad, but not remembering why.
I should have gotten the flower and headed straight back, but I didn't. I tiptoed to the doorway. It was darker inside, and after my eyes adjusted, I saw a young man about my age bending over an oud and plucking at the strings. His sun-darkened fingers danced over them.
I knew this song. It swirled around in my memory, elusive and haunting. Why did it sound familiar?
The young man finished playing and put down the oud; then he pulled off his turban, tossed it onto the floor, and ran his fingers through his hair. It stood up, messy and thick.
I pressed my back into the doorway and took in the room. Shelves lined the walls, filled with bound books. Charts with numbers and maps of the stars covered the walls above the shelves, while scales brimming with broken rocks stood scattered on the single table in the room's center. It was a kind of laboratory, but one in which human boys played music.
The music hung thickly in the air, like the scent of incense, as he stood up and went to the table, taking two long strides before picking up a stone ball off one of the scales. He stared at the ball, which was so large he had to hold it with both hands. Then he turned it over, where it caught the light in milky-white layers. It was selenite. We used it to house the flames of our streetlamps, but it was heavy. I had never seen anyone rolling it in his hands, pressing it close to his face.
"How is this going to work?" he asked the almost-empty room.
My face started to tingle. Soon my shahtabi wish would fade, and he'd see me standing in his doorway. I backed out of the young man's laboratory while he was still staring at the selenite ball. Then I turned and ran to one of the rosebushes.
I was in a pool of hot sunlight when the wish died out, with a thorn-riddled stem between two fingers. Quickly, I bent the stem till it snapped, gasping as the thorns pricked my skin, and held the rose tight against me.
"Mashila," I whispered.
My body fell into a cloud of smoke and flame, and I dragged the rose with me, its bit of pink dusting the air like a blush.

2
Zayele
"I dare you to cross it," Destawan said. He pointed at the remains of an old bridge. It spanned a river with water bubbling and white with cold.
I wouldn't have minded if the bridge had still been fully intact. But then it wouldn't have been a good dare.
When the first spring melt happened, the river flooded and took with it bits of the bridge. The thick, woven ropes managed to stay on their posts, but most of the wooden strips were worn away and rotted. No one bothered to fix it, because there was a nice stone bridge just a few hundred feet down the river.
Destawan smirked. He was visiting from another village while his father came to trade with mine. He had gotten four of the children to follow him around, and it made him cocky. Or maybe he'd always been cocky.
"Don't dare Zayele," my younger brother Yashar said. He stared at Destawan with his unseeing eyes. "She's a young woman now."
"Then why is she here with us?" Destawan said. "They said you were the fastest climber, so it's either that or Truth."
I'd only known Destawan for a day, but I could tell he wasn't going to give me an easy question to answer. He'd want me to admit to something humiliating. I'd rather fall in the river than give him that.
"I'll do it," I said.
"Zayele--" Yashar pleaded.
"Don't worry about me. It'll be easy." I moved away from the children. They had come to see what Destawan would dare me to do. Now they ran alongside me, saying stupid things like "Don't do it, Zayele," and "It's just a dare." I ignored them and fixed my hijab so the wind wouldn't blow it off my head. Then I took off my shoes and carried them in one of my hands.
"Zayele," Yashar whispered. "Help me." He reached out for me, and I turned to take his hand, guiding him down to the bridge. We stepped over the broken rocks and the clumps of green grass. Everything was clean and bright today, glowing beneath gray clouds.
Down by the bridge, the water roared, crashing into the biggest of the boulders that stood in the middle of the river. The boulders dared the water to take them down.
Destawan laughed and jumped up on a giant brown rock that flanked the river. We stood there in the shadow of the gorge, watching water flow by. The bridge was only a few feet above the river, so it wasn't the fall that would hurt. It was the rapids. Yashar gripped my hand and wouldn't let go.
"It's really not that bad," I told him. "The wood's almost gone, but there's so much rope. I could walk it blindfolded." Bad choice of words, I realized.
"Are there any rotted bits on the rope? Does it look secure?" Yashar hadn't always been such a worrier, but since he'd gone blind, things bothered him more than they used to. I patted his shoulder.
"It's not that far, really. Just twenty or thirty feet." I pulled my hand out of his and set down my shoes. Then I smiled at Destawan. "If I fall in the river, be sure to tell my father it was all your idea." His eyes narrowed, which only spurred me on.
Each of the ropes that had been the railing was tied to a boulder on the riverbank. The ropes were made from woven grass, as thick as my arm, and they were heavy and wet from last night's rain.
I'd have to trust that whoever had woven the ropes had done a good job.
I grabbed one of them with both hands and walked sideways. I didn't want to get spread out if the middle ties broke apart. Step by step, I moved along the rope. My ankles clicked together each time I finished two steps. Within a few feet, I was out over the water.
My toes were turning blue in the cold, and beneath them was the white water. It was impossibly fast. I could swim, but not in that.
I had to keep moving. The wind was stronger here, coming down the gorge, and my hands were getting stiff. After a while, I looked up to see how much farther I had to go. I was midway over the river.
"Zayele!" the children screamed. I couldn't tell if they were cheering for me or warning me, but I didn't want to look back. I didn't want to see their faces.
One more step. Then another. And another, with the water rushing, rushing past. Where did it all go?
I didn't want to think of how cold it was. I only thought of movement, of the other side. And then, finally, my left hand touched something hard and unmoving. It was the wooden post on the far side.
Behind me, everyone cheered. I was shaking a little, but I turned around anyway and lifted a fist into the air. Then I cupped my hands around my mouth and shouted, "Your turn, Destawan!"
He shook his head and everyone laughed. Then he pointed at the village, and we all turned to see six horses trotting into the village center. We rarely had visitors this time of year, because the mountains were still frozen and no one had any crops yet.
I ran down to the other bridge, where I could cross over and get a closer look. Our village pushed up against a cliff, a little above the riverbank, and the horses and riders lined the street along the river. One of the horsemen carried the black banner of the Vizier of Baghdad. The vizier hadn't been to our village since the night my uncle and his wife were murdered by jinn, and something in me turned cold.

3
Najwa
I was the last one to return from the surface and found everyone standing on the wool rug in Faisal's artifact room. The other students were all holding flowers or leaves, just like I was. I was the only student training directly under Faisal fulltime, but everyone had to take the transporting class, even if they weren't training for the Eyes of Iblis Corps. It looked as if they'd all passed and would move on to their other teachers. It would just be me now.
Atish made his way over, holding a red poppy blossom in front of his dark, intense eyes. I was used to his handsome face, but now it looked strange in contrast with the young man I'd just seen on the surface. Before we'd all left for our test, Atish had promised he'd find me something pretty up there and I had laughed it off, brushing aside the feeling I got whenever it seemed he was trying to shift from longtime friend to something more. I hadn't wanted him to think of me, especially while we were each on our first mission. Now the poppy he held was as red as the drops of blood on my fingertips, and I hesitated before taking it from him.
"For you," he said. I nodded in thanks and wiped the blood against the petals, where no one would notice.
"Najwa, where did you get that?" Faisal's deep voice rumbled across the room.
"The red flower or the pink one?" I asked. I held each one up, gingerly holding the rose. So pretty, but so sharp!
Faisal motioned for me to bring the flowers to him, and as I made my way past the other students, I saw Shirin. She was sniffing her flower, which looked like a thistle. Her nose touched the tip, and she pulled back and rubbed at the spot where it had poked her.
When I got to Faisal, he held out his hand and I gave him the two flowers. He returned the red poppy, ignoring it. Then he pulled the rose petals apart, studying the stamen. "Where did you get this?"
Faisal was never this sour-faced. He was my affectionate, and often eccentric, uncle, who didn't bother with flowers and such things most of the time.
"I got it from a rosebush."
With a frustrated sigh, he strode on his short legs to his bookcase, then thumbed the spines. It was such a curious thing to see him so stricken that the whole class fell silent. When he found the book he was looking for, he pulled it off the shelf and flipped through its pages.
Then he looked up at the class. "You passed. What are you still doing here?" This was strange behavior, even for Faisal, but they took leave without asking any questions.
I leaned in as close as I dared and saw he was looking through a journal, with drawings of arches and flowers, Arabic calligraphy, and a few building layouts. He stopped at an illustration that matched the ombre rose I'd brought back.
"Najwa," Faisal said. He cleared his throat and held the book out to me. "This flower comes from only one garden." He tilted his chin down and frowned.
Faisal's gaze hadn't left mine. It was like he was studying me, trying to find out if I matched something in one of his books. I shifted on my feet, feeling my face flush.
"Which garden?" I asked.
"Janna's garden," Faisal said. He snapped the book shut and sniffed the flower. "The former caliph's dead wife."
That meant I'd been to the palace in Baghdad. No one could wish herself into the palace. Strong jinni wards, put up after the start of the war, kept us from getting in. But I had been there. The flower proved it.
I had gotten past the wards. No one, not even the Corps, had done that!
"I was in the palace?" I couldn't hide the surprise in my voice.
"You penetrated the wards, Najwa." He sounded disappointed, which was strange. It wasn't as if we were forbidden to go there. It was just impossible to get in.
"Come with me," he said. Then he turned and left the artifact room, still holding the rose.
I followed him down the hall and into his small office. It was plush like human homes, with overlapped rugs covering the stone floor and oil lamps casting golden halos of light along the walls.
Faisal was a magus, which meant he had the sort of wishpower that came to only a few in a generation. He was also Master of the Eyes of Iblis Corps and in charge of training any magi and those entering the Corps. I wasn't a magus, but I was the only one in my year training for the Corps. Once, when I was lamenting the fact that I wasn't a magus, Faisal said it was his love of humans, and not his wishpower, that made him a good observer in the Corps. He knew the way human minds worked, and how their hearts beat. He understood their stories, their faith, and their superstitions. Most of all, he knew why they kept trying to get into our tunnels. They wanted safety, just like any jinni, but for humans, that meant wealth and power. They wanted our jewels, and they wanted our wishes.

The Fire Wish

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