So, we settle back and listen to the stories these objects tell, as narrated by Qasim. We learn of the pain these keepers suffered. They spent their lives either in hiding or in the employ of someone who kept on taking more and more from them until they had nothing else to give but their lives. With each tale, Taraana turns paler; Daraja sits down beside him and slips her arm around his waist. He stiffens for a moment before relaxing into Daraja’s embrace. Each keeper’s life ended messily; each one’s death is an escape. None of them were more than thirty years old when they died.

Finally, we get to the handkerchief with the unraveling embroidery. The faded threads tell the tale of a keeper named Yasmine. She is the lone woman among the keepers whose tales we read. It is always worse for a woman, and so, too, it is for her. Violence against a woman is so much more than the physical marks on her body. Even Qasim has to take a break between relating all that was done to her, all that she endured. What hurts most is that Yasmine never gives up. She speaks of looking for human conjury that will help her. Every day she gets up determined to escape, determined to find that conjury, determined to reclaim her life and her body, and take revenge. Her hope persists until her tale abruptly cuts off. She died hoping.

Qasim finishes his tale with a wobble in his voice and wet eyes. We, however, don’t cry. We are too angry to.

“Why?” Paheli stands up, knocking the chair back so it falls to the ground with a clatter. “Aren’t the Keepers of the Between important? Don’t they have power of their own? Why are they treated this way?”

Ferdinand jerks at the violence in her voice. He shudders, and we wonder if Paheli has managed to kill someone simply by questioning him. Finally, he breathes out in a gasp and we relax. “I, too, have wondered the same thing, child. Eckle told me in confidence that they only gained power once they bonded to the Between. Before that, they, though not hunted like the keepers after them, were powerless. Unlike the keepers after them, however, they had a mentor, an old magic user whose primary purpose was to educate them.”

“Where is that magic user now?” Valentina asks.

“He died some years after Eckle came into power, or so Eckle told me,” Ferdinand says. “Eckle was very, very old. They felt as old as the Between sometimes. If they hadn’t chosen to fade, they would still be walking the corridors.”