The War to Save the Worlds

by Samira Ahmed

  The giant mint-green ghul plods into the clearing. His jinn skin color reminds me of mint chocolate chip ice cream. (Now all I can think about is ghul-skin-toned ice cream. Gross.) My heart races. My fingers holding the bow and arrow are damp with sweat, and I’m using all my energy to try to keep them still. All he needs to do is see himself in this pool. And then, hopefully, he’ll turn to stone or ash or be killed by poison fumes. Stay still, Amira. You got this. All you have to do is do nothing.

  Maybe it was better when I wasn’t trying to give myself a pep talk, because as I whisper the words to myself, my fingers slip. I watch helplessly as one of my emerald-tipped arrows flies through the air, arcing itself right into the ghul’s thigh and then bouncing off like I hit him with a balloon. Excellent.

  He turns his enormous minty-green face toward the rocks I’m hiding behind and roars. Teeth! Sharp, vampire-y teeth. Giant ones. Able-to-eat-humans-in-a-single-bite ones. Oh no. This was not the plan. Think, Amira. Think of anything besides becoming a ghul snack!

  “Hey! Over here, you nuclear puke–colored oaf!” Hamza yells, stepping out from behind the tree trunk.

  My voice catches in my throat. I try to take a breath, but my lungs feel like stone. The ghul turns toward Hamza, raises a leg, and begins to pivot in his direction.

  I dart out from behind the rocks and scramble to the very edge of the pool, the thick silvery liquid licking at my heels. I grab another arrow, secure it into my bowstring, aim toward the sky, and let it fly. This time it hits the ghul square in the chest and sticks! Before he pulls it out and flicks it away like a tiny twig. Sigh.

  He’s mad. Not that he was calm before. But now that I’m staring at his face, I can see his bloodshot eyes and a tiny tiara of horns that protrude at what would be a hairline, if he had hair. Flames burst from his wide nostrils, and as he steps closer to me, I close my eyes. If this is going to be it, at least I went down fighting. Sort of fighting. Kind of cowering.

  One more step and he’s towering above me—massive tree-trunk legs and smelly, hobbity feet inches away from me. I turn to look at the pond behind me. It’s as smooth and silvery as a mirror. It doesn’t seem possible that it’s liquid. Out of the corner of my eye, I swear I catch a glimpse of our backyard back home.

  “Don’t fall in!” Aasman Peri yells.

  I turn around as the ghul leans over; I can feel the heat from his nose flames. He pulls a hairy fist back while I squeeze my eyes shut and hold my breath.

  And then… nothing. I open one eyelid, then the other. The ghul is leaning all the way over me and gazing at his face in the pond. He doesn’t seem to remember I’m there at all, even though his huge chin is hovering terrifyingly close to the top of my head.

  “Move,” Hamza whisper-shouts. I scramble on all fours between the ghul’s legs toward Aasman Peri and Hamza.

  The ghul doesn’t notice us at all; it’s like we’ve vanished. I look down at my hands to make sure I’m still corporeal and not a ghost—it wouldn’t surprise me if I’ve been scared to death, literally. The ghul leans farther over, staring at himself in the silvery, mirrored surface. He raises a hand to his face and cradles it tenderly, like he’s touching a baby. The ghul leans farther still, until his face is almost touching the surface, and then one of his massive feet slip, then the other. We watch, with our mouths open, as the ghul somersaults into the pool. It ripples, gurgles, and swallows him without a sound.

  “That’s it?” Hamza asks.

  “Did you want fireworks? Let’s get—” I don’t get to finish my thought because the ghul lurches out of the lake, beads of liquid silver running down his arms. He screams and writhes around as a humongous purply iridescent serpent rises from the silver surface, wrapping its tail around the struggling ghul. The serpent opens its mouth wide—its jaw as big as a house—and swallows the ghul whole. We see the outline of the ghul slide down the gullet of the serpent, exactly like when our pet snake in science class swallows a once-frozen mouse. We all shudder. The snake tilts its purple head, turning its fiery eyes toward us. Without saying a word, we run into the forest of burned trees.

  Straggling back to the clearing where we landed, we find Maqbool brushing leaves and ash from Zendaya’s wings. A toothy smile erupts across his face when he sees us. How have I not noticed how big and how crowded in their mouths jinn’s teeth are? Guess I was afraid the response would be all the better to eat you with, my child. If only I’d known trees could eat us here, too, I maybe would’ve asked more questions.

  Hamza runs over to Zendaya and whispers in her ear. She bats all three of her eyelids in response.

  “Weren’t you worried something had happened to us?” I ask Maqbool, a bit out of breath.

  “Of course.” He nods. “But while I was beating back the mini ghuls, they vanished into puffs of smoke, and I knew that you must have defeated their creator.”

  I raise an eyebrow, not quite understanding. Maqbool continues, “They were part of the large ghul. They weren’t independent beings. He had to tear a piece of himself apart to create each one.”

  “Kind of like when you pull apart a worm and both halves keep moving?” Hamza suggests while he pets Zendaya.

  “So many gross facts I’ll never be able to unsee or unhear,” I say.

  “Why would you want to unsee anything?” Aasman Peri asks. “The more you see, the more the knowledge can empower you. That’s what Abba says, anyway.”

  “Speaking of the emperor,” Maqbool says as he refastens his sword at his side. “We must press on. Abdul Rahman has not sent a status report. We must assume the emperor’s forces are falling. No time to lose. And no more detours,” he says, staring at Aasman Peri with his eyebrows raised sky-high. “We’re supposed to be helping them, not getting them eaten!”

  Aasman Peri crosses her arms in front of her, allowing her wings to enfold her. “Well, you went along with it.” She pouts. “Maybe you should’ve been a better guide. You are the oldest one here, after all. By… a lot.”

  “I can brook no opposition. On that account, you are correct.” Maqbool steps to Hamza and asks to see the Box of the Moon. When Hamza hands it to him, we all lean in and see the thing we fear most, the gears whirring, the moon moving. Even though it’s a tiny little mechanism in our hands, the weight of what it means isn’t lost on me.

  The moon is breaking. Broken.

  Soon our home will be overrun with the kinds of ghuls we just fought. Sure, the world’s armies could handle one, dozens, maybe even hundreds of monsters? But what if there are thousands or more? What about when it’s an army of towering ghuls with powers and mini ghuls erupting from their wounds? What happens then? Earth doesn’t have Lakes of Illusion and ghul-gulping sea monsters. Not to mention that I have no idea what it would really mean for Ifrit to free his dad and have two super evil, super evil-est villains running around. Two kids can’t beat them all. I don’t care if we’re the so-called Chosen Ones or not. We’ve barely scraped along so far, and we haven’t even met Ifrit. We would’ve been lost without Maqbool and Abdul Rahman, and, yes, even Aasman Peri. Though, if you think about it, she’s the entire reason we had to take on that minty ghul in the first place. Her mouth and Hamza’s bottomless pit of a stomach.

  We can’t be this stupid again. Stay on target. That’s the only thing we can do. What we have to do. Move on. See this through till the end—whatever that is. It’s like the emperor said, the only way through is forward. We can’t turn back.

  The tablet shows us a sketch of a beautiful, gleaming castle. The words Crystal Palace appear over a squiggly map that looks like you need 3D glasses to see it. That’s the whole point of Zendaya’s three eyes—according to the emperor. She can see in and through multiple dimensions at once. I show Zendaya the tablet, and she snorts and nods. Aasman Peri bites her lip, her eyes super wide and round. She’s scared. I can almost smell the fear coming off her. Could be fairy sweat, but I’ll stick with fear for now, even though she’d never admit it. I know what that’s like be
cause I don’t want to admit I’m scared, too.

  CHAPTER 11

  Crystal Dragon Breath Really Stabs

  QAF FEELS LESS SUNNY. NOT LIKE THE DAY IS ENDING AND the sun is going to set, but literally like the power of the sun is fading and the dark is taking over. Like the blanket of gray clouds that moves into Chicago in winter and pushes the cold into your bones.

  Hamza shivers as we get stuck in a cloud bank. I blow onto my hands, hoping to warm them, but as we descend, a bright burst of color rips the clouds away. Below us is all jagged colorful crystal and sharp edges. No wonder Aasman Peri didn’t want to stop here. There’s no place to even land without getting pierced, it seems. And I definitely do not want to die getting impaled by rainbow glass. As he unsheathes his sword, Maqbool flies down before us, signaling to Zendaya to hover in the air. Her wings beat faster.

  Flying over the stabby crystals, Maqbool cuts through them with his sword, creating a flat place for us to land. I can imagine my dad yelling at us to stop because landing on cut crystal or glass doesn’t exactly seem safe. But it’s not like we have a choice. We can’t go back, only forward, until we find where Ifrit is hiding and crash into our supposed destiny.

  Zendaya doesn’t land, though, and we watch as Maqbool turns his flame on high, fusing the shards together, smoothing all the edges so we don’t get sliced up while walking. Traveling with beings made of fire definitely comes in handy. He beckons us and flies onward, continuing to cut a path through the glass prisms and melting them down to smooth the way.

  “Dude, it’s like the Fortress of Solitude,” whispers Hamza, awe in his soft voice. Before I can ask, he turns to me, guessing what I’m about to say. “It’s in the comics and the movies. Superman’s secret headquarters in the Arctic? Filled with his parents’ memories from Krypton. It’s where he goes for—”

  “Wild guess. Solitude?” I say.

  “When he needs to figure things out,” Hamza snaps back.

  “Are you saying some human stole our idea, pretended it was theirs, and made money off it? The Crystal Palace is tens of thousands of human years old!” Aasman Peri’s jaw drops. “How rude.”

  Hamza and I glance at each other. “Hey,” he says, “remember when Mom yelled at that coffee shop dude when he tried to tell her—”

  “That sprinkling cocoa powder on a chai tea latte really brought out the authentic Indian flavors.” I use air quotes the way Ummi does every time she hears chai tea. That means tea tea! she always says.

  “She was so mad.” Hamza grins.

  “As she should have been. That drink sounds like an insult!” Aasman Peri screws up her face, like she’s eaten an entire lemon. “Humans are a highly dissatisfying creation.”

  “Hey, not all humans, okay? Besides, weren’t we, like, basically forced to come here to save your world because of the bad jinn and devs and ghuls?” Hamza jumps in.

  “It’s saving your world, too! We may have some evil creations, but humans are even evil-er.”

  “According to?” Hamza asks.

  “Me. Plus our historians. You humans hate people because of skin color and who they love. And you throw garbage into your seas and leave junk in space. You pollute the stars. The stars! You’re the only creation that destroys your own environment and kills other species and mounts their heads on walls for sport, which is very strange and highly gruesome!”

  Hamza opens his mouth, but I grab his arm and shake my head. We’re all on edge right now. The air feels weighted down, and we’re only getting by the obstacles by dumb luck. No reason to get into an argument. Besides, Aasman Peri has a point. Several of them.

  I take Zendaya’s reins in my hand, and the four of us march ahead, silently, on the smoothed path of broken shards that Maqbool created. We watch our steps and take care not to slip or trip in this forest of crystal spears. It’s still overcast, but rainbows reflect in all the prisms, which doesn’t make sense. The triangular glass needs a light source to create the rainbow—dividing the clear light spectrum into different colors. But the rainbows aren’t refracted here. They’re not cast onto other surfaces. Looking around, I realize that everything is clear, cold crystal. The crystals have trapped all the color on the inside.

  “This realm is ancient. It’s existed since before our time. There are no written records of its history. No one’s lived here in who knows how long. Maybe ever,” Aasman Peri whispers as we crunch forward, her breathing slow, almost thready. “Light doesn’t penetrate to the ground. There’s no source of water or food. It’s only an abandoned relic, used as a link between realms.”

  “And the Crystal Palace?” I ask.

  “Balances in the mouth of a massive dormant dragon,” she squeaks, then points. “And it doesn’t seem to be sleeping anymore.”

  We stop short. We spy Maqbool beyond the human-size angled crystals that block our path. In front of him is the beautiful, multidomed Crystal Palace. Clear minarets spiral high into the air. Arched windows are etched with flowers and leaves. Interlocking geometric patterns rise and meet above a giant open doorway.

  The entire palace rests in the mouth of an emerald-scaled dragon whose closed bejeweled eyelids lift slowly, one, then the other. It’s beautiful and terrifying. And the dragon lets out a tremendous roar, sending flames shooting past the castle straight toward us.

  “Shield your faces!” yells Maqbool.

  A jeweled dragon is attacking us?!

  I grab Hamza, pulling him down into a duck-and-cover tornado squat we learned during safety drills at school. We huddle next to Zendaya, readying to be burnt to a crisp by the enormous flames coming from the dragon’s mouth. Instead, I feel an icy droplet nick my arm. I peek at it as a tiny bead of blood pops to the surface of my skin, then pluck a mini crystal spike from my arm. What? How? We have freezing rain in Chicago, and hail and sleet, but this is different. And it hurts. Turning my neck to find where it came from, I see the dragon flame expand above us, but it doesn’t rain down in embers or brimstone. Instead, I see thousands—no, millions—of crystal shards arc into the air and pause for a millisecond, then lash down on us. I scream as pellets hit my neck. I fall over Hamza. Zendaya whinnies, turns, and brings her blue-black wings together over our heads like palm fronds, protecting us from the miniature crystal daggers.

  Even with Zendaya’s wings shielding us, I’m too chicken to look up to see if Maqbool and Aasman Peri are okay. Scared of the plink-plink-plink sound the crystal rain makes as it clatters to the ground. Terrified of the dragon’s fiery snarl. Some Chosen One I turned out to be.

  Hamza’s back trembles, and I inch closer to him. A small bird the color of the inside of a blood orange lands on my sneaker. Aasman Peri moves nearer to us, using her bright yellow wings as a shield. Hamza spies the bird and then looks up at me and says, “I guess this little guy is scared. Same, buddy. Same.” The orange bird hops into Hamza’s palm, and he strokes its tiny head with his thumb.

  “What is happening?” I ask as the rain crystals pile up around us, ankle-deep and rising.

  “Rain of the Fire Crystal Dragon,” she says. “We need to move. Or else we’ll be buried for eternity. Like them.”

  “Them? Who’s them?” Hamza asks what we’re both thinking. Though I kind of don’t want to know the answer.

  Aasman Peri frowns and sweeps the shards away from around our feet. “Them,” she says, pointing.

  We peer into the glassy surface, and deep below, we see the faces. Blue, orange, green, red, yellow. Winged. Horned. Wide-eyed looks of terror frozen on their faces. Devs. Ghuls. Peris. Jinn. Captured beneath the crystal.

  All the color drains from my face. The blood in my veins feels like ice. Hamza chews his lip and trains his eyes on the bird in his hand. It chirps. Then chirps again, louder.

  “What is it, little guy? Sorry, I can’t speak bird.” Hamza’s voice is soft, and there’s a quiver in it. I think we’re both trying to ignore the plinking around us and the shards piling up and the likelihood that we’re about to b
ecome Lucite trophies.

  “That’s not a bird,” Aasman Peri says as it hops from Hamza’s hand onto his backpack. “It’s Maqbool.”

  “Shape-shifted into a bird to escape the shards. Smart,” Hamza says, and the bird chirps again and again, pecking the bag.

  “The tablet. Duh. He’s telling us to read the tablet!” I grab it from the bag and ask the jade surface what to do. Words appear: Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart.

  “Ahhhhh!” I scream at the screen. “For once, use words that tell us something useful. That mean anything!” I bury my face in my hands. My eyes sting with tears. This is stupid and useless. I’m useless.

  “Hey, look,” Hamza says.

  I blink away a tear and turn back to the tablet: Fine. Just get on the horse.

  “Wow. The tablet can be snarky. I wonder how they coded that into its program?”

  “Hamza! Get on Zendaya,” I shout, and grab him by his sleeve, hauling him up. We all clamber onto Zendaya’s back. She immediately gallops forward.

  Ow! Ow! Ow!

  We try to protect our faces from the crystal rain, but one nicks me right above my right eyebrow and really stings.

  “Hey! Wait,” I yell at Zendaya. “Halt. Heel. Stop! She’s heading right for the gates of the Crystal Palace. Inside the dragon’s mouth!”

  “We’ll be fried! Roasted! Toasted! Human s’mores! I don’t want to die being eaten by a dragon,” Hamza yells.

  Even Aasman Peri screams as we near the wide entrance of the palace.