Chapter Text
On the twentieth of May, Greenwich Mean Time, in the year two thousand and three, five US soldiers died in a helicopter crash in Iraq. A bomb blast in Ankara, Turkey killed one woman. The Israeli army pulled back from the Gaza Strip despite a series of Palestinian suicide bombings. The treaty zone in Kashmir between India and Pakistan remained relatively quiet for the first time in months. And, to the northwest of that line, at exactly 2:12 in the morning Echo Time, Priya Dayoub became a Slayer.
Priya was unaware of all of this.
She had no way of knowing that vampires and demons and unholy gods walked the earth, creating chaos and destruction.
She had no idea that Slayers even existed. Had never heard the legend, that into each generation was born one girl in all the world with the strength and skill to hunt the vampires. Had no way of knowing that on the opposite side of the planet a small group of Americans (mostly) were preparing to make that legend obsolete.
She was, in point of fact, asleep.
And she was dreaming, an intense dream, like nothing she had ever experienced, and no matter how she tried, she couldn’t wake herself from it.
She felt dark and small. Confined. But she knew they were out there. Creatures so horrible she couldn’t make her mind envision them clearly. She wanted to run, needed to run. She was too small, too fragile. But her feet wouldn’t move. She was trapped and they were coming, thousands and thousands of them. She was going to die, and she couldn’t do anything to stop it.
She opened her mouth to scream. But her voice was swallowed as a light blossomed deep in her center, flared white and blinding hot. It coursed through her body, burning away something embedded in each cell, releasing something . . . overwhelming. She staggered as the light faded, pulsing fainter with each heartbeat. She felt the monsters closing in on her and lashed out, fear turned to force. Each blow of her hands sliced out in blades of light, turning the unseen attackers to ash before her. Stroke by stroke she wiped away the darkness until all that remained was glowing and bright. She had expanded in the light, filling with it to change into . . .
She gasped and sat upright in the bed with a cry. The room was dark and quiet, save for the soft sounds of her sisters’ breathing. She raised a shaking hand to her forehead, then felt her flushed cheeks. Her heart was still pounding and she felt . . . odd. And nauseous.
She rose and crossed to the window, looking out across the darkened yard and to the starlit sky beyond. Everything looked as it always did, but she still felt the remnants of the dream, felt as though the world had shifted somehow while she slept, in a way that wasn’t discernable to her eye. Even the cool breeze drifting in the window couldn’t soothe her unease.
Finally she crawled back into bed and pulled her baby sister close in her arms, the child’s heartbeat soothing her back to sleep.
The sensation had mostly faded by the next morning, only a hazy remembrance lingering to leave her distracted as she went about her duties at the mullah’s house. Even the simple act of washing dishes was hard for her to concentrate on.
She looked down at the dirty water in which her arms were sunk to the elbow. Between the low ripples, her wavering face looked back at her. Her small, heart-shaped face looked younger than her fifteen years, narrow chin and wide set eyes adding to the illusion. Her black hair was knotted into a long braid that fell to the hem of her shalwar qamiz. Her eyes were her most unusual feature, the pale blue contrasting dramatically with her tanned olive skin. The eye color came from her grandmother’s line when she had been married over the mountains from Afghanistan. It wasn’t an unheard of feature, but it was uncommon enough to earn her stares in the street and quiet whispers in school and at mosque.
She chuffed and churned the water. No time for vanity. She quickly scoured out the last pan and hung it to dry, then swapped her drab shalwar for a brighter, cleaner one and, throwing a head scarf around her shoulders, went in to read to the girls.
The girls were the daughters of Mullah Hamed’s children, nine in all so far. While their grandfather didn’t see the need for formal education for these girls, he wouldn’t neglect their religious education, for it was written that all must be offered the words of Allah. Although Priya had been pulled out of school three years before and put into service to help support her family, she was able to read and write enough to be made responsible for reading to the children from the Qur’an every morning for an hour before the midday meal. Priya looked forward to her time with the girls. Of all her duties, this was the one she enjoyed most, which made her special. Any drudge could do the cleaning and washing she did every day, but she alone among all the women in the household had the education to read.
The girls were all gathered under the shade tree in the courtyard, laughing, running, kicking stones around. As Priya came out into the yard, she was spotted almost immediately and the cry went out. “Priya! She’s here! She’s here!” The girls swarmed around her, angelic young faces from five to twelve years of age, eager and happy to see her.
She smiled softly, stroking hair and hands. “Now, now, is this any way for proper young women in a prosperous house to behave?”
The girls quieted, their faces still wreathed in smiles.
“That’s better.” She rewarded them with a smile of her own. “Now go find seats and we’ll begin.”
They all cheered and raced across the yard, making her laugh. They collapsed artlessly, as only young children can do, on blankets and rugs spread around the base of the large tree and waited for her.
She settled onto the rug waiting for her and opened the small leather-bound book that was waiting for her to the page marked with a thin brass page holder. She was about to begin reading when one of the girls spoke up.
“When are the Americans going to bomb us in our sleep?” Nuria asked.
“Don’t be stupid,” one of the older girls, Heera, elbowed her. “The Americans are too busy blowing up the people in Iraq to have time for us.”
“That’s right,” Sarai, the oldest girl, at twelve, contributed. “They’re just going to get the Indians to kill us all for them.”
“The Americans aren’t going to have us killed,” Priya explained patiently. “They are our friends. They won’t hurt us.”
“Aren’t they friends with India, too?” Menaka asked.
“How can they be our friend and India’s friend?” Nuria asked. “That’s just stupid.”
“Well,” Priya asked, “what do you do when two of your friends are fighting?”
They all thought about it for a minute. Finally, Sarai said, “Usually I stay out of it. Unless I know one of them is right.”
“Yes,” said Priya. “And that’s what America is doing. They are our friends, and India’s friends. They know we are quarrelling, so they leave us alone.”
She looked up to see Rheem, the mullah’s oldest daughter and mother to Sarai, Nurya and Bela, glaring at her from across the courtyard. She had done it again. Crossed the line of proper knowledge for young girls. With all that was going on in the world, she found herself doing that more and more often.
“But you don’t need to worry,” she hastily (and overly loudly) added. “Your fathers and brothers and uncles will protect you, and the mullah will protect them, and Allah will take care of all of us. You have nothing to be afraid of.”
The girls all muttered, but looked a bit reassured.
“Are you ready now?”
At the voices of assent, she turned back to the Qur’an. “If anyone slew an innocent person it would be as if he slew the whole mankind and if anyone saved a life it would be as if he saved the life of the whole mankind. . .” [Qur’an 5:32]
The midday meal was finished. The dishes were all washed and dried, again. The evening meal didn’t need to be started for a little while yet. So Priya stood by the cistern, stealing a few quiet minutes in the early afternoon sun.
It wasn’t a bad life. Enough of her classmates from school had left for marriage and children, or worse, for service living in someone else’s house. She was fortunate to be able to return to her parents’ home every night, to be with her sisters and brothers. To be loved.
Still, she wished she could be more. If only she had more schooling, she would be a teacher. Or a healer. Someone who could help people. Her parents knew this, and so her father was looking for an educated husband for her, maybe one of her brother’s friends from university. Her father saw it as a generous indulgence of his oldest daughter, letting her be wife to a man who was what she wanted to be herself. She knew he thought she could be satisfied with her husband’s accomplishments as though they were her own. She sighed. At least he cared that she be happy. He could have married her to Fareed last year. Fareed had his own business. And was as ugly as sin.
She sighed. She would never be more than she was at that moment. It was her place, as it had been her mother’s and her grandmother’s before that. She should be grateful that she came from a good family and could look forward to an advantageous marriage. To expect more would only lead to disappointment. She dipped up a bucket of water and sluiced her face and arms with it, then grabbed up the water jar to hurry back in to her duties.
And if the jar seemed lighter than usual, she didn’t notice.