by Samira Ahmed
The flames engulf us.
I don’t feel the thousand little gashes in my skin anymore. Don’t feel the crystal daggers falling. Don’t hear the plink. I squeeze my eyes tight and feel Hamza’s forehead buried in my back. There is no sound and nothing to see but the darkness behind my eyelids. In that quiet dark, the moon appears. Broken, drifting away. Some chunks hurtling toward Earth. In the cracks of the moon, in the broken parts, I see Ifrit’s forces, clambering, fangs bared, toward our home. A swarm of ghuls blots out all the light, and Earth falls into darkness.
“Open your eyes, silly human.” Aasman Peri’s voice is shrill in my ear. But it must mean… I raise one eyelid, then another, as Zendaya whinnies and comes to a stop near a sparkling stream, where clear water runs over smooth gray stones. We’re alive! Quickly, I check my clothes, my arms, my hair. Nothing singed. I don’t smell like burnt toast. And I don’t have a scratch on me—not a single nick or cut on my arms. I look down at the tablet that I’d been clutching in my arms: Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart. Now that I have a moment to think and am not panic-dodging tiny crystal rain daggers, I realize there’s something familiar about those words that have reappeared on the smooth jade surface.
Hamza jumps down from Zendaya. “Are we dead? Is this Jannah? Where are the fat baby angels with harps and stuff?”
Aasman Peri play-punches him in the arm. “There’s no such thing as baby angels with wings. Babies can’t do anything. They’re so high maintenance. What would be the point?”
“Uhhh, old-timey Valentine cards?” Hamza shrugs.
Aasman Peri ignores him. Probably for the best. “You’re alive. We’re all alive. Zendaya drove us through fire—”
“But the fire wasn’t real. Oh my God. That’s it, isn’t it? Everyone sees the unseen in proportion to the clarity of his heart. That’s what the tablet meant. That’s what Zendaya could see.” Maybe I’m finally figuring out how to decode the tablet’s funny messages.
The little bird zooms out of Hamza’s backpack and whirls and twirls into a spiral. Before it touches the ground, it transforms into Maqbool.
“Please give me the power to do that,” pleads Hamza. “I could be famous.”
Maqbool laughs. “Humans have many powers that we do not. And you get to eat delightful foods like Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. Flaming foods! Even we jinn haven’t created such wonders. No need to envy us. And you are right, Amira. It appears the flames and the crystal rain were the dragon’s illusions.”
“But how? I felt the pain. I saw my blood! How can all that be an illusion?” I ask.
“The mind is a powerful tool that can be used as a weapon against all—humans and jinn alike. As you saw from all those buried in the crystal—trapped, in a way, by their own minds. Zendaya could see through the illusion with her three eyes. We were able to pass through, thanks to the clarity and goodness of your hearts. And our faith in each other.” He sweeps a hand to his chest and bends his head down in a half bow. I get a little choked up when he does this.
When we first came through the Obsidian Wall, Maqbool warned us that things in Qaf are not always what they seem. Our senses have been tricked in so many ways. I have to remember that, but how are we supposed to know when we can trust our own eyes and ears? I dismount and take a look around. We’re in beautiful woods of thick trees, their boughs crowded with tiny orange blooms. The air smells like chamomile tea and wet moss. What a perfect place for a nap. If only. “So where are we?” I ask. I stare down at the tablet, but it’s gone blank. Perfect. Still being temperamental, I guess?
Aasman Peri shrugs. Maqbool rubs his stubbly chin. “That, I do not know. This tilism—remember, these are worlds created from inanimate objects—is not one I’ve ever heard of. It seems to be embedded in the Realm of the Crystal Palace. Most intriguing.”
“We’re in the dragon’s belly, aren’t we? We have to get out of here. This is like when the Millennium Falcon was swallowed by a giant space slug.” Hamza hops from one foot to the other. His entire body hums and vibrates. This is how he gets when he’s nervous. Like right before rock-climbing competitions. I don’t blame him. Nothing makes sense to me here. I can’t figure out the science. And, hello! Enchanted emerald-scaled dragons that breathe fake flames are real?
“You’re not in the dragon’s belly. We are in an uncharted tilism, a hidden pocket in this realm,” a voice booms through the dense trees. “This place is not on any map and cannot be detected by JPS.” Abdul Rahman emerges from behind the branches, and from the look on his face, he doesn’t have good news.
CHAPTER 12
Hindsight Is 40/40
“AS-SALAM-ALE-KUM, MY VIZIER,” MAQBOOL SAYS, GREETING Abdul Rahman as they clasp arms, not in a handshake, but, like, an armshake? Fingers wrapped around each other’s right forearms. They exchange a meaningful look. “What news from Iram?”
Abdul Rahman takes a seat, cross-legged on the soft, mossy grass. We join him. He unties a sack he’s been carrying and settles a blanket on the ground; we help him unpack the food he brought. He and Maqbool whisper, but I’m too hungry to pay attention. Hamza and I tear into the food, eating Indian-style with our fingers, but not before I squirt some antibacterial gel onto our hands. The world may be ending, but I’m not about to eat food with dirty hands. I shovel delicious saffron rice into my mouth. It’s studded with golden raisins and pine nuts and candied carrots, kind of like a sweet biryani. We also gulp down mango juices; some of the syrupy liquid dribbles down my chin. I wipe it away with the back of my hand and use my clothes as a towel to dry off. Hamza stares at me, mouth open.
“What?”
“You used your T-shirt as a napkin.” He shakes his head. “This journey has really changed you.”
I almost throw a little shade Hamza’s way, but I stop myself. Having him here means that I’m worried about him every second because of, well, the whole big-sister thing, which runs deep in desi culture. The oldest is always The Oldest. But it also means that I’m not alone. I’d never tell him this, obviously, but his dorky remarks make this whole bizarre situation a little less horrible because it reminds me that no matter what happens, we’re still ourselves. I pass him one of the doughnut holes covered in sugary syrup, and he pops the whole thing into his mouth, wipes his face with his shirtsleeve, and smiles.
“Ahem.” Abdul Rahman clears his throat. “We are in a bit of a bind.”
“Really. Tell us something we don’t know,” Hamza says.
“Why would I do that? The list would be nearly endless; we’d be stuck here for eternity.”
“Never mind,” I say. “What’s worse than, oh, the moon breaking apart and Earth possibly being overrun by evil ghuls and devs?”
“That the leader of those evil ghuls and devs has created this tilism as a trap,” Maqbool says.
“I knew it!” Aasman Peri pipes up. “I’ve never heard of this place. It’s not one of the Eighteen Realms. And it’s not a rest stop, oasis, or uninhabited island, either.”
“You have rest stops?” Hamza says.
“How else would—”
“Children. Enough. The problem is not merely that this tilism is unmapped. It’s that we don’t know where or when it is,” Abdul Rahman says.
“Well, how did you get here then?” I ask.
“I arrived at the Crystal Palace and walked through the dragon’s mouth, just like you did. For with age comes deep wisdom.”
A grin spreads across Hamza’s face. “By any chance did that wisdom come from watching us gallop through and then following us?”
Abdul Rahman raises an enormous eyebrow at him. “It is perhaps true that I saw you from a very, very far distance. I cannot be certain it even was you. Anyway, what is done is done! No need to dwell on the how or why.”
Hamza mouths, “You’re welcome.”
But Abdul Rahman pretends not to notice and continues talking. “Besides, entering is not the problem. It’s getting out. That’s why your jade tab
let is not working. Ifrit has created some kind of cloaking system over this place. He’s blocked the entrance, and the only way we can get out is if he chooses to create a portal. Or if we can escape as his minions enter.”
“What? No. That can’t be it. Hoping we can sneak around his horde of goons when they arrive is not a plan,” I say.
Maqbool stands up and walks away from us, looking around the woods, peering down the path, rubbing his orange chin. When he turns back toward us, he has one of those aha! smiles on his face. “The scroll. We should consult the Everlasting Scroll. You did return with it, did you not, my Vizier?”
“Yes, of course. Of course!” Abdul Rahman unties his outer cloak and begins rummaging through his pockets, pulling out all sorts of odds and ends and dropping them onto the blanket. A brass spyglass, a silver teacup, a pack of Big Red gum (obviously an Earth souvenir), a small conch shell, and a pair of red plastic reading glasses. His robe is way bigger on the inside than it looks like on the outside. Then he pulls out a scroll, tightly rolled and tied with a red ribbon.
Maqbool picks up the red glasses and hands them to Abdul Rahman. “Please, my Vizier. Indulge me and use your reading glasses.”
Abdul Rahman harrumphs and plucks them from Maqbool’s hand and pushes them up on his face. The red glasses on his giant blue head are actually kind of hilarious. Aasman Peri giggles, and he stares at her over the tops of the lenses, his eyeballs especially fiery. She bites her lip. Maqbool tries to hide his sly smile.
Abdul Rahman mumbles something under his breath, and I catch only a few words: absolutely unnecessary, eye exam two hundred years ago, perfect 40/40 vision.
He unfurls the long scroll across the blanket. The paper is thick and vanilla-colored. You can see the fibers in it, and the writing goes nearly to the rough edges. The script looks like Urdu, sort of? A flowery calligraphy script that’s similar to Persian. I feel a pang of guilt because I never really learned to read Urdu well. I can make out a few letters and words, but that’s it—the vowel marks are sometimes optional, and I had trouble figuring out which letters connected to which. The letters are a dull, tarnished gold, but as Abdul Rahman moves his finger beneath each word, the letters illuminate and shine like the twenty-four-karat gold jewelry in the Indian stores on Devon Avenue in Chicago. Once he completes the sentence, the light of that line blinks off, and it returns to a faded gilt.
Each of us stare at Abdul Rahman as he reads—a bit slowly, muttering words here and there. Every time he looks like he’s about to say something, we lean forward, like we’re waiting for the answer to a cliff-hanger.
His mouth drops open all the way from the jaw joint, like he’s an alligator. All his sharp teeth visible in his very, very large mouth. His tongue is a blueish pink, like he’s been sucking on a blueberry Dum Dum. His already ginormous eyes bulge from his head.
“My Vizier?” Maqbool leans in and peers over Abdul Rahman’s shoulder. He shoves his own glasses over his nose, and I watch, my breath held, as he scans the scroll. His orange face turns papaya, then cantaloupe, then yellow, then lighter. I think he’s literally turning white from shock, like he’s seen a ghost. But I can’t imagine that jinn would be afraid of ghosts, so this must be super bad.
My palms get all clammy, and I try wiping the sweat off on my jeans. After what feels like an eternity but is likely only a few seconds, I finally blurt out, “What is it? Tell us. Do they eat us? Turn us blue? How bad can it be?”
“I told you to wear your reading glasses!” Maqbool ignores me and speaks directly to Abdul Rahman as his face climbs back up to a deep orange, almost red.
“I… I… don’t… my vanity. I have failed these children. I have failed the emperor, brought all of Qaf to the brink of destruction.…” Abdul Rahman drops the scroll, and all the light goes out of it.
“Will someone talk to us? We’re right here. How have you failed us? What’s happening?” I’m yelling now, and I don’t care if the jinn can turn me into a burnt tween twig.
Maqbool raises his eyes toward us, bits of ash rimming his lower lids. “I am so sorry, children. The prophecy. The Chosen One. It’s… it’s not as we thought.”
“Use words that actually make sense!” Hamza yells, his hands curled in fists at his side.
Abdul Rahman rises to his full height, towering over us. He places a heavy hand on each of our shoulders. “I misread the prophecy.” His voice trembles as he speaks.
“You what!” My head might explode. Right. Now.
“There is a Chosen One. But my classical Urdu was off, and some words were unclear, I fear.… My vision… some numbers blurred. The Box of the Moon awoke, but… Maqbool was right; I should have been wearing my reading glasses.” Abdul Rahman looks right into my eyes. “The prophecy states that I, Abdul Rahman, Vizier to the Emperor of Qaf, King of Kings, Ruler of the Eighteen Realms, Holder of the Peacock Throne, Protector of the World Between Worlds, the mighty Shahpal bin Shahrukh… I was to travel to Earth when Ifrit rose to return with the savior. The mighty warrior to protect our world and yours. The one who, in infancy, was anointed heir of Suleiman the Wise, taken and nursed in Qaf by Queen Peri herself, who daubed his eyelids with collyrium and assigned him the spot of destiny with the blessed ink of Qaf.” Hamza and I both touch our Majid Marks—the identical moles on our faces.
“Get to the point!” I scream.
“I was to return with the true Chosen One, the famed warrior, Amir A. Hamza, from Earth year 1022. I have utterly failed.” Abdul Rahman bows his head and falls to his knees before us.
I stagger backward. Hamza turns to look at me, his eyebrows scrunched, a confused expression on his face. This can’t be right. This can’t be happening.
I take a deep, shuddery breath. Then another. “So… wait… you’re saying… you brought us… two kids from Chicago in 2022… here… by… by mistake? Because you were too vain to put on your stupid reading glasses? You’re a bajillion years old! You lead a jinn army and you… you got this wrong?” I fall to the ground and start crying. I don’t care. I can’t stop myself. I was right. We should never have been here. This was never our job. We weren’t chosen for anything, except bad luck.
“So we’re not the Chosen Ones?” Hamza’s voice breaks as he plops down next to me. “We’re nothing but… but… regular kids?”
Aasman Peri doesn’t say anything. She silently scooches over and envelops us in her wings.
“Children. We do not ask your forgiveness, for this mistake is beyond mercy. We are aggrieved at our deep error,” Maqbool says.
I look up at him, my face streaked with tears, my eyes burning. “Fix it. You’re jinn. You have powers. Figure it out!”
“Take us back. Return us and then go get that other dude. Easy peasy,” Hamza says. “How could you be a thousand years off? Did the moon break in his time, too?”
Abdul Rahman finally glances up. I don’t make eye contact with him. I can’t. I’m a giant ball of rage. And when I’m this mad, it comes out as furious bursts of tears.
“This is what we tried to explain when we said time doesn’t work in the same way here. Human time is not our constant. The moon is rupturing in your world, in the year 2022. But the Chosen One exists in 1022—your past. I would merely have had to enter the portal in his time, but I didn’t. I entered it in yours. He would have battled Ifrit here, in Qaf, setting the world right for you. And in defeating Ifrit, would right our world for us.”
I kneel and close my eyes like we do in the dojo during mokuso—a kneeling meditation—breathing in and out. It’s about calming our minds, clearing them, but it’s more than that. It’s about preparation. About being present. Right now, I have to be here. I have no other choice, because wishing I was back in Chicago with my parents isn’t going to change anything. I open my eyes. “Hamza’s right,” I say.
“I am?”
I nod. “We’re kids. You should return us to where we belong and get the right Chosen One, the only one—Amir A. Hamza—and have him battle
Ifrit. You said time works differently here. So reverse it. Go back.” I pause. Catch my breath. “Help us,” I plead.
Maqbool wipes his hand over his face. When he removes it, he looks like he’s added a hundred years of wrinkles to his forehead. “We can’t,” he whispers. “It has begun. The way back is sealed. To return home, Ifrit must be defeated. If he’s not, you will have no home to return to.”
Hamza pulls the collar of his T-shirt between his teeth. It was a nervous habit he had when he was little. He mostly grew out of it by second grade. I can hardly blame him for reverting to it now. Aasman Peri’s eyes blaze at Abdul Rahman, but she stays with her wing around Hamza’s shoulder and walks him over to Zendaya to get a swig of water from the flask.
I step closer to Abdul Rahman, wrap my arms around my middle, like I’m holding myself together. A wave of queasiness sweeps through me. I hate puking, but if I projectile vomit in Abdul Rahman’s face right now, it might be worth it. I swallow hard, tasting the bile in my throat. I open my mouth to scream. But someone else screams before I do. A voice in the woods that sounds like a little girl. A familiar voice. “Help! Mommy!” It’s a voice that sounds a lot like mine.
CHAPTER 13
Who Do You Think You Are?
HAMZA TAKES OFF RUNNING THROUGH THE WOODS toward the voice. We chase after him. I wriggle my finger in my ear as we run. That voice. The one that sounds like me? I swear I can hear it inside my head.
We pass a small waterfall, and even with the crash of water in the pond below, the voice grows stronger. But we don’t see anyone. Hamza points directly at the cascade of rushing water. He’s right. The voice is coming through the veil of water. Without saying anything, without even pausing to think, Hamza pumps his arms back and leaps into the water like he’s jumping into the ocean depths and lands… on his feet in the ankle-deep pond. I shake my head. He turns to me, a huge grin spreading across his face. This is so Hamza. If we weren’t possibly about to die, I would laugh. Hamza pushes forward toward the waterfall.
