The Daughters of Izdihar by Hadeer Elsbai

Author:Hadeer Elsbai
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2023-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

20

Nehal

By Nehal’s fourth week at the Academy, her skills had improved to a degree of which she had only ever dreamed.

Nagi had begun teaching them how to affect water pressure and physical state in order to grasp objects. Nehal liked Nagi very much—he didn’t condescend to her or Shaimaa, treated them the same way he treated the men, and made no special allowances for them. And he even managed to make scientific jargon interesting, as he related it to weaving in a practical way that made Nehal embrace the knowledge and yearn for more. He’d spoken quite a lot about molecular structure and the shifting states of matter, then paired each of them with a rather large rock. Nehal was quite eager to perfect this new skill: a length of water in her hands, swirling it around her like a snake as she grasped at its molecular state, as Nagi had told them.

Beside her, Waseem lashed out with a splash, his water spilling all over the ground. With a smirk, Nehal turned away, then began carefully maneuvering her own water toward the rock. As she willed it, she felt the water shift in her grasp, solidifying, and it was as natural as breathing—she wrapped the water around the rock and lifted it into the air.

Nagi whistled. “Nice.”

Talaat, who, like Waseem, had only managed to splash around unsuccessfully, shot her a dark look. Nehal resisted an extremely childish urge to stick her tongue out at him. Shaimaa, who stood at Nehal’s left, gave her a gentle shoulder tap and a smile.

“Let’s try something, Nehal,” said Nagi. “I think you’re ready for it. The rest of you, keep at it!”

Nagi took Nehal aside and gestured for her to sit down. He pulled a small amount of water out of the Izdihar and held it up between them. Then, within moments, he shifted it into a solid ball of ice.

Nehal could not help the delighted sigh that escaped her. Nagi grinned at her pleasure, shifted the ball of ice back to water, then pulled his arms apart and transformed it into steam.

Nehal could not help but gasp. “Amazing!”

“Perhaps. But also something you can do,” said Nagi. “It’s only an extension of what you just did. Just keep going.”

Encouraged by his confidence in her, Nehal took the water from him and held it up, then began to solidify it, and, as Nagi said, simply kept going . . .

Until she was holding a ball of ice.

She and Nagi shared a surprised laugh, and then Nehal, wanting to impress him further, focused all her will and energy into the ball of ice and shifted it back into water.

“Excellent!” Nagi beamed. “Now we try steam.”

It took Nehal several tries to turn liquid into steam, but by the end of the lesson, when some of her classmates were still dropping their rocks halfway through, she was effortlessly shifting large amounts of water from ice to liquid to steam and back again.

Basking under the glow of her success, Nehal walked off arm in arm with Shaimaa, Waseem trailing behind them.

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