The Weight of Our Sky(57)
I was always handy with a knife.
The man reels back, his face a mask of shock, blood trickling from the shallow wound on his left arm. “You’re crazy, you stupid girl!” he shouts, then turns and walks away, shaking his head.
The Djinn smiles a slow, delighted smile.
The knife falls to the ground, and I realize it’s because my fingers are trembling so hard that it’s slipped right out of my hand. I kick it away, as hard as I can, and it goes flying off into the streets.
May sidles over to me, and I hug her close. The heat is oppressive, yet somehow I can’t stop shivering. “We have to get to a safe place,” I tell her. I look up and down the streets, mentally trying to clear the chaos in my head, map our location, figure out where to go. Then I spot it. The school.
School, I think. We could head for the school. There might be teachers there, adults who can protect us. There’s nothing to steal at a school. Nobody has any reason to attack a school.
I nudge May. “See that building over there?” She looks in the direction I’m pointing and nods. “That’s a school. We’re going to go there, okay?” She nods again. “Come on,” I tell her. “Let’s go.”
We walk briskly, keeping close to walls and ducking low behind cars or trucks when we can. I hold May’s hand and focus on putting one foot in front of the other, counting off in threes, and not on the look on the man’s face, or the blood dripping down his arm, or the way it felt when the knife sliced into his flesh.
The school sprawls before us, seemingly untouched by the chaos that’s raged around it for the past few days. This is an independent high school, reserved for the wealthy Chinese who want only the best for their children. Unlike most regular schools, including mine, this school is all solid brick and concrete and has the shiny, brand-new look of a building whose administrators can afford its upkeep.
The heavy iron gate is chained and padlocked, but the fence isn’t too high, and I manage to hoist May up and over it, then clamber over myself, landing on the ground feetfirst. “Let’s go inside,” I say, dusting myself off and reaching for her hand. “Maybe there’s someone here who can help us.”
Cautiously, we step into the wide, paved corridors, relishing the cool relief that seems to emanate from the concrete walls. I pull May toward what seems to be the school hall. “Come on over here,” I say. “If there’s anyone here, that’s where they’re bound to . . .” The words die on my lips.
Down the corridor, a woman is approaching us. The lines of her dark dress are severe, her hair is scraped back into a bun, her lips are set in a thin, hard line, and her hands grip a heavy wooden bat.
The Djinn stirs immediately, wrapping his cold fingers around the base of my spine.
May gasps and instinctively, I push her behind me, shielding her body with mine, quickly tapping a protective tattoo along her little back as the Djinn whips my insides into a frenzied panic.
“Who are you?” the woman asks loudly, her voice echoing in the corridor. “What are you doing here?”
“Please, ma’am,” I say, my arms outstretched, palms up, trying to show her I have no weapons, I mean no harm. Beads of sweat are forming on my forehead and dripping slowly down my face, but I make no move to wipe them away. “Please, we’re only looking for help. I have this little girl with me; we don’t mean any harm. We’re just looking for a safe place to hide.”
There’s nowhere to hide, the Djinn sneers. There’s no way for you to protect her. There’s no way you can pull this off. It takes effort, and I can feel my fingers spasm, longing to tap, to count, to do something, but I ignore him.
“How do I know you’re not a trap?” the woman says harshly. “How do I know you haven’t lead the looters and the thugs in to murder us all?”
“Please, ma’am,” I say again. I can hear the note of desperation in my voice. “Please, this isn’t any kind of trap. I just wanted to bring her somewhere safe.” A sob escapes me before I can stop it. Behind me, May begins to cry, her little face buried in my back.
The woman relaxes her stance then, dropping her arms to her sides, a look of relief on her face.
“Sorry, girl,” she says, her voice softening as she looks at May. “Sorry, sorry. It’s been a difficult few days and we have people to protect. Cannot be too careful.”
She beckons to us. “Come, come. I take you inside, we have food and water. You can rest.”
My knees almost buckle with relief. May still clutches my waist tightly and won’t let me go, so I scoop her up in my arms and carry her like a baby. She flings her arms around my neck and hides her face in my shoulder, and I give her gentle pats on the back as I walk—one, two, three, one, two, three. I hum as I go, softly in her ear for only the two of us to hear. The girl with kaleidoscope eyes. She isn’t the lightest, but unless my arms give out, I know there is no way I’m putting her down.
The woman—“Call me Miss Low,” she barks over her shoulder as she walks briskly ahead of us—leads us through a maze of corridors and up flights of stairs until she finally stops short in front of a wooden door on the top floor. She pauses to tap lightly on it—three times, and I’m both pleased by this and ashamed at how pleased I am—before flinging it open.
We step into what seems to be a small library. Shoes are lined neatly along the wall next to the doorway, so as not to scuff the wooden floor. The walls are lined with worn, beat-up shelves filled with worn, beat-up old books. Light streams in from the windows that line the right-hand wall.