The Secret Gift Read online

  Even our parents saw us poorly-Gifted ones as a disappointment.

  Since we weren’t strong enough to be considered for the Jinni Guard, and most of us couldn’t acquire a basic mentor, we were left to ourselves. Until eventually, one by one, we’d be forced to take on some kind of menial labor.

  “We can’t talk here,” Asher whispered, pulling me out of my dark thoughts. His usual cocky grin stretched across his face hinting at all kinds of secrets. As my spirits lifted with anticipation, I grinned back.

  2

  SECRETS WERE JINNI BREAD and butter. It must be an especially good secret to worry that someone might overhear. “Take us to the usual place,” Asher commanded, holding out a hand in my direction.

  Times like this, when his insecurities about being Gift-less made him sharp, I oddly liked him more. To find pleasure in the little power he did have over us in moments like these—well, I knew the feeling better than he realized.

  So, I simply took his hand and traveled with him to the ruins at the edge of the main island. The others appeared beside us a moment later.

  When we glanced back at the enormous capital city of Resh we’d left behind, it looked like a miniature toy town in the distance, with the acropolis stretching protectively all around it. The castle rose above everything else in the center, glowing white in the moonlight.

  Here at the edge of the island, clouds drifted past, close enough to reach out and touch. Somewhere far below, too distant to see from our elevation, was the human world. And there to the right, floating in and out of clouds, was Urim, one of the smaller Jinni islands. It was close enough that many Jinn could travel the distance between these particular islands and visit other cities without bothering to use the bridges.

  Not the five of us, of course... but some.

  Asher pulled his hand away as soon as we landed. I tried not to let my disappointment show. He turned to the others who stood in a half-circle. Miriam was next to Simon, since he’d brought her. Her wrinkled forehead and crossed arms said she felt the same as Asher about their lack of abilities. Simon might’ve brought Phillipa too, I couldn’t tell; though she could travel on her own, she preferred to stick with one of us and fade into the background of our little group.

  After a quick glance around the ruins, I frowned. There was nothing unusual here. Just a few white pillars that used to hold up a roof, tall grass swaying in bright moonlight, and a steep drop off at the edge of the island. I whispered, “You have to tell us! I can’t stand the suspense!”

  Asher’s pinched lips relaxed into a smile. Knowledge was another kind of power. Something we all craved. He waved for us to follow him into the trees. “Remember our discipline years, when they taught us what a Daleth was?”

  “A portal to the human world,” Miriam snapped, though her expertise didn’t seem to make her feel better. She hated nature. “What of it?”

  “I found one.”

  Simon immediately traveled in front of Asher, though he’d only been two steps away. He liked to show off the meager skills he did have. “You’re making that up.”

  “You wish,” Asher said with a grin, hitting Simon’s decorative silver breastplate as he stepped around him.

  “Those don’t just pop up one day out of nowhere,” Miriam said, swatting at bugs as she followed. “How would no one have found it before? I doubt it’s really a portal at all. You’re just trying to trick us.”

  “You’ll see.” Asher kept walking, grinning over his shoulder. “This one is nearly impossible to stumble onto. If I hadn’t tried to pick a specific herb right between two trees, I’d have missed it myself. My hand vanished!”

  The details made me start to believe him. My heartbeat sped up. We could use information like that as a way to curry favor with the royal family—maybe find a better profession at the castle than what we were destined for.

  It could even produce an opportunity to meet the handsome Prince Shem. I glanced over at Miriam and Phillipa, wondering if they were thinking the same thing.

  Better yet, being introduced to such powerful Jinn could help me get away from my father for good.

  The royals were always looking for Daleths. For whatever reason, they liked to have control over them. Probably because an unguarded portal was asking for trouble when it came to adolescent Jinn like us.

  At the smirk on Asher’s face, I sighed.

  He’d chosen the trouble.

  Leading us away from the edge of the island, on a curving path through the grass and the trees, he couldn’t stop talking. “I found it when I was looking for some star anise.” His cheeks blushed slightly blue. Since his natural-born Gifts were non-existent, he was determined to learn Jinni enchantments instead. Truthfully, the idea of another kind of power intrigued me as well. Though we all knew this about him, he still changed the subject quickly. “Besides the Jinni Guard, no one we know has ever visited the human world.”

  “Except for Master Yeshiva,” Miriam reminded him. All of our thoughts turned to the teacher we’d had briefly during our discipline years, right around the time we’d all met. He’d been banished to the human world for breaking one of the three Unbreakable Laws: Never use a Gift to deceive, never use a Gift to steal, and never use a Gift to harm another. To this day, we still didn’t know which one he’d broken.

  “Well, we don’t know anyone who’s ever come back,” Asher modified. “We’re going to be the first! We’ll see this human world with our own eyes, instead of hearing dull bedtime stories about it. Maybe we’ll even have a little fun with the humans themselves.”

  He and Simon chuckled as each tried to hit the other’s breastplate first, making the showy armor clang loudly when Simon succeeded.

  I shuddered at the thought of interacting with humans. Miriam, Phillipa, and I exchanged tight-lipped glances.

  Humans were said to be slimy to the touch and terribly unsanitary. Their intelligence level was about the same as one of our mutton grazers. You couldn’t approach them in groups or you’d be more likely to be attacked than greeted.

  We had a few humans living in the capital city of Resh, but it was rare, and usually only for a short time before someone with the Gift of memories made them forget. They were usually employed by Jinn who thought they had a special talent or ability they needed. I couldn’t fathom it. What could a human do that a Jinni couldn’t?

  Though the dangers of the human world didn’t appeal to me, I trailed along behind them anyway.

  Asher drew up next to a seemingly empty space between two trees that gently arched toward each other. Other than that, there was nothing to indicate they were anything special. If Asher hadn’t stumbled across it while looking for herbs, it would’ve likely never been found. Gesturing to the bark on one, where some scratches created a poorly carved circle, he said, “I marked it so we can find it whenever we want.”

  “But do we really want to go to the human world?” I spoke up, arching a brow at him.

  “Everyone knows they’re inferior,” Miriam agreed, though coming from her it didn’t mean much. “I hardly see the point.”

  Asher ignored her and stepped through the space between the trees.

  He disappeared.

  “The point—” Simon mocked her “—is to have a little fun. But if you’re as scared as an actual human and want to stay behind, then we’ll see you when we get back.” With that, he followed Asher.

  Unlike traveling, where the whole body vanished at once, the daleth seemed to almost eat his body, swallowing it in pieces.

  Miriam shook her head at the empty space, while Phillipa glanced between us.

  I rolled my eyes.

  When Asher stuck his head back through unexpectedly, I squeaked.

  He roared with laughter. Miriam shoved his head back through and followed, no doubt anxious to prove herself. Giving me a small shrug, Phillipa stepped through next.

  Once again, I brought up the rear.

  Throwing my head back, I took a deep breath, then pressed th
rough the invisible portal to the human world. The tingle of magic on my skin as I passed through made me shiver.

  In the dark, it surprised me how similar the human side appeared to home. Though the moon above was naturally smaller from this lower vantage point, the rest of the landscape wasn’t terrible. Wildflowers grew along the edge of the woods. A town on the hill ahead shone like a cheerful lamp, lights flickering in windows and laughter flooding out all the way to where we stood in a small clearing.

  Asher was already moving.

  From the dark edges of the forest, we were still invisible to the humans, but there were at least a dozen of them in sight, hurrying in different directions throughout the town like little ants on a mission.

  “Slow down,” I called softly to Asher, rushing to take his elbow and pressure him into waiting for the rest of us. Though I’d never made my feelings for him known, I liked to think I held some sway over him. He did slow a bit, even if he refused to stop altogether. I tugged harder to get his attention. “What exactly are you hoping to accomplish here?”

  With a glance back at the others, he leaned in to whisper in my ear, “I’d like to talk to one.”

  I shivered. A human? Why? Glancing up at his feverishly bright eyes, I could tell there’d be no arguing with him.

  Still I tried. “We won’t blend in.” I waved toward Miriam, Phillipa, and myself with our short skirts and sandals that laced all the way up our bare calves, then at the village ahead. “Human women dress much more conservatively than the Jinn.”

  Phillipa and Miriam nodded sagely, attempting to hide their relief as they slowed to a stop.

  “That’s fair. You can wait here, if you’d like,” Asher said over his shoulder. Freeing his arm from mine, he tugged his ceremonial armor off and chucked it beneath some nearby bushes, not pausing in his stride. Simon imitated him, following on his heels.

  I stuffed down my disappointment yet again. He could be stubborn when he was focused on something.

  “We should probably make a plan first,” Miriam tried, when I glanced over at her in desperation.

  Finally, Asher stopped pressing forward. Turning to face us, he waved his hands wide. “Why must you all make everything so difficult? We’re just going to talk to them.”

  “But what about the Unbreakable Laws?” Phillipa asked in her high, reedy voice.

  “You think I forgot about them?” Asher snapped, fists clenched at his sides. “We’re not going to use our Gifts to steal from anyone, deceive anyone, or harm anyone, because none of us has any real Gifts in the first place.”

  The reminder dulled the pulsing excitement in the air for a moment. Technically, we all had more Gifts than him except for Miriam, but he was sensitive to that, so none of us mentioned it.

  I pondered the advantages of the human world as I searched their faces. What if I didn’t even worry about talking to a human at all, but instead found a safe place to explore my Gift outside of the tiny boundaries of my bedroom at night?

  I flexed my fingers tentatively.

  What if I could test my limits? See what else I could do? The others never needed to know.

  The freedom that had always been out of my reach tempted me like a rare dessert.

  “Fine,” I pulled away from our uneven circle, turning toward the town. “We’ll all talk to a human. Meet back here by midnight.” My strides started out small, but quickly stretched wider and faster as a tiny thrill tickled up my spine.

  “Wait, Bel,” Asher hissed as he caught up to me. “I, uh... I kind of thought we’d all talk to a human together.”

  “We can’t,” I said, ignoring the other’s nods as well as the spark of pleasure at Asher admitting he wanted me there—even if he did lump the others in too. “If we all show up in one place, it’ll be far too suspicious.”

  Not to mention it’d ruin my half-formed plans.

  “We must each go alone. Avoid any crowds, only talk to a human if they’re on their own, and make sure you have an escape route if it goes poorly. Understand?”

  “Who put you in charge?” Miriam muttered, but she didn’t seem to expect an answer, and I didn’t bother to give one.

  It was exhilarating to lead for once.

  3

  AT THE EDGE OF town, our collective nerves made us huddle together behind a big stone wall, just outside a ring of lantern light. “Who’s going first?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

  “My eyes are going to stand out too much,” Asher complained, blinking his red eyes owlishly at the rest of us.

  “You always do this.” I crossed my arms, irritated that his worries made me question my own decisions. Am I being foolish? Is this is a mistake? “You convince us to do something and then back out last minute.”

  As expected, this made him dig in his heels. “I didn’t say I wasn’t going. I’ll just have to make sure they don’t see my eyes, that’s all.”

  Training on humans was part of our Jinni discipline years. We all had a basic understanding of how to interact with them—whether the ones allowed into our world or the ones met through rare travel, such as joining the Jinni Guard. They occasionally ventured into the human world for their own secret purposes.

  The thing about humans that always stuck out to me, though, was how incredibly little they knew about our culture. They had many wild tales based on the occasional rare sighting of a reckless Jinni or two. But the current royal family had made it a precedent over the last couple centuries to erase any memories of our more distinct differences. Such as our wide variety of eye colors.

  My own eyes, though a paler blue than any normal human color, would be far less conspicuous.

  “We all have a handicap we have to deal with,” I reminded him, pointing to my bare, sandaled legs. Those would stand out just as much in this town as his eyes. More actually, since they’d be much harder to hide.

  Without another word, I strode past him into the perimeter of the town.

  Alone.

  Keeping to the shadows, I didn’t glance back until I’d walked past a dozen buildings and at least as many humans. At that point, as far as I could tell, everyone had gone their own way. I had until midnight for my experiment.

  Anticipation made me walk faster, until I was practically running, dodging down one dark alley after the next, avoiding the humans.

  The first non-human creature I stumbled upon in the dark shadows of a private alleyway was a dog. It ignored me, rummaging through some garbage. No other living soul was nearby to see.

  Without another thought, I attempted shifting into the same form, leaning into the strange feeling of my body stretching to a breaking point before softening and settling into a new shape. This was a breed we didn’t have in Jinn, but the composition of the creature was the same: four legs on the ground, lengthier spine, and my nose extending away from my face as my jaws grew sharp canines. Once I’d seen it, it wasn’t too difficult to replicate. The whole transformation took only a few minutes.

  Letting out a cheerful bark at the real dog, I silently laughed as it backed up with hackles raised. I took off, racing along the packed dirt between homes at full speed, enjoying the wind in my fur.

  I dug in deeper, taking one alleyway after another. Back home, I’d only dared the smallest of creatures, ones that a Jinni wouldn’t look twice at. I reveled in this new form.

  The downside of this creature, however, was the sense of smell. Some of these alleyways were full of human filth that overpowered my new nose.

  Tentatively, I played with my Gift. Forced to feel my way through something that I should have been taught, it took multiple tries before I discovered how to block the nasal passage. Perfect.

  Halfway down one alleyway, I drew up short, panting. There was a small human boy at the other end. Young. No more than a few years old.

  My heart thudded heavily in my chest, and not from the exertion.

  The boy blinked at me, then grinned.

  He sees a dog, not a Jinni.

  Ev
en if he did recognize me, what could he do? He looked as if he could barely even speak. Fear faded and confidence slowly replaced it. Some part of me wanted him to see me—to see my Gift. My power.

  That compulsive part of me that I’d let loose for the first time in months whispered, Do it. Show the human child. Who can he tell?

  It’d stretch my abilities. In fact, it’d probably use up most of my strength.

  I exulted in the challenge.

  Shaping my fur into skin as I reformed my endoskeleton within, I shifted. It took far longer than the dog, as I’d never tried to emulate another person before—human or Jinni. I left the fine details of the little boy’s face for last, adding a smattering of freckles under newly brown eyes and overly-long straw colored hair.

  His eyes had grown large as saucers by the time I finished the transformation, but he didn’t make a sound.

  I took a testing step toward him, into the small ring of lamplight by the door.

  The little boy’s lower lip began to tremble.

  I attempted to copy him.

  He stumbled back against the wall of the home and let out a wail that pierced the night.

  The door of the house flung open, bathing me in light. “Naseem,” the woman cried, sweeping me up in her arms where I stood stunned.

  My whole body tensed.

  A human was touching me.

  I wanted to make the same noises the child had at the awful sensation.

  The real Naseem had cut off his cries when the door opened and met my gaze with shocked eyes as his mother whirled back inside, completely unaware, and shut the door between us.

  “My little escape artist,” the woman clucked as she moved toward a stove, bouncing me on her hip in a way that made my head hurt. I tried amidst the jiggling to get a sense of the small human home. There were two other children playing a game on one of the beds, and a stove took up the nearest wall. “Want to help me clean up dinner?” she asked, turning her face toward mine.