The War to Save the Worlds

by Samira Ahmed

  “Do you plan on poking it to death?” Hamza asks.

  “I have to do something. Nothing else is working,” I say, shaking the tablet. “Tell us how to get off this stinking island!” I yell at the smooth jade face. I get what feels like a tiny static shock in return. “It tried to electrocute me!” I toss the tablet away. “Stupid, stupid, only occasionally magical, tablet.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re acting like me,” Hamza says. Then he sits up. “Oh my God. Do you think this island magically switched our personalities? Like I’m going to be the nerdy, responsible one now? The one who eats all my vegetables and wants to read instead of watch TV? Ugh. Fate worse than death.”

  I roll my eyes at him. He kind of has a point, though. I’m not acting like me. I take a deep breath. I walk over to the tablet and pick it up. There’s a message. Finally. “Raise your words, not your voice,” I read out loud. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Maybe it’s really mad you yelled at it. Or it could be busted. Either one!”

  I shake my head, frustrated. “C’mon,” I say, grabbing one end of the raft. Some of the ties are starting to loosen and look worn, and I don’t think it’s going to last much longer. “Might as well give it one more try. If we get stuck on this island, we’ll only have dates to eat, and that is way too much fiber for anyone.”

  Hamza drags himself off the sand and joins me. Once more, we push the raft into the sea and begin paddling our way to the other shore. Raise your words, not your voice. Raise your words, not your voice. Raise your words, not your voice. What does that mean? Whisper? What words? Wait. What if—

  “Hamza, tell me about your dream again. The one with Noah.” My memory of what I saw on the tablet is growing hazier by the minute, and I’m hoping Hamza remembers it more clearly since it was actually his dream.

  “I don’t know 100 percent if it was him or maybe a very old dude in a brown robe with a boat of animals.”

  “He said something in the dream, right? Some words?”

  “Oh, umm, yeah. Let me think. He sort of whispered it.…”

  We are nearing the center, and I can feel the current starting to work against us. “Hurry, Hamz.”

  “Do you think that saying hurry actually makes my brain work faster?”

  “Ugh! We’re getting pushed back again.”

  “Okay, okay. Well, there was a lot of water in the dream, and then there was that big boat of animals. And he said something like, ibn ya dim sum?”

  “What? He said, ‘son of dim sum’? I don’t think that’s it.”

  “I dunno. I’m hungry. Dumplings at MingHin sound so good right now. Besides, you know my Arabic stinks.”

  “Uh, maybe because you never paid attention during Sunday school at the masjid?”

  “Wow. Are you really guilt-tripping me about that? I was playing a game on my phone one time. One time! And I will never live it down.”

  “Hamz! Focus!”

  “Okay, okay.” He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. The pause lasts forever. His eyes fly open. “Iftah ya Simsim!”

  “Raise your words, not your voice. Whisper it to the current.” I have no idea what that means or if this will be of any use, but it’s better than getting pushed back to shore again.

  Hamza leans over the raft. I can barely hear the words, but I know what he’s saying: Iftah ya Simsim. Iftah ya Simsim. Iftah ya Simsim.

  Ripples fan out across the water. Then the water around the raft begins to bubble and swirl into a whirlpool that grows bigger and bigger. I start paddling away from it, but we’re not moving. My sweaty hands slip on our makeshift oars. I throw mine down and start using my hands in the water to push us away.

  “It’s a tornado in the water! It’s going to suck us in!” Hamza yells as the strength of the vortex grows.

  “A tornado would be above the water,” I shout. “A whirlpool sucks you down; a tornado sucks you up.”

  “Perfect time to correct me on weather terms. Thanks, sis!”

  The water around us changes shades, from turquoise to green to yellow. We’re not quite getting sucked into the water, but we’re not able to move away. The whirlpool grows deeper until it’s like a black hole in the water. We’re dead. So dead.

  I squeeze my eyes shut but then force them open when I hear a whooshing sound. The whirlpool seems to be slowing, and the hole fills up with water again. Through the white foam of the rushing water, an object rises to the surface.

  It looks like a shoebox made of swirly wood, and as the water calms, it drifts toward us. Before I can stop him, Hamza reaches out and grabs it and starts to pull the top open.

  “Stop! That could be a bomb or booby trap or something. What if a mini ghul jumps out of it and bites your finger off?”

  “What if it’s a jinn that we free and that wants to grant us three wishes?”

  I roll my eyes. “If jinn granted wishes, don’t you think that one of the, oh, hundreds of other jinn we’ve met would have already done that?”

  “It’s called optimism. You should try it some time.” Hamza pops open the lid, which is on a hinge. Luckily no tiny ghul crawls out, but neither does a lifesaving jinn. Nestled in the box is a spiral. An object tightly coiled like a snake and held together with small leather bands, begging to be released. It looks like it’s made of marble, maybe? It’s a translucent deep blue, nearly black, with swirls of stardust sprinkled through it.

  “It’s beautiful,” I whisper. “The colors, the cloud of stars, it’s like the Milky Way.”

  Hamza sucks in his breath. He’s in awe, too. He should be; it’s amazing. He bends in closer to get a better look. The specks of starlight twinkle. “I would kill for a Milky Way right now.”

  I glance up at him. “I meant the Milky Way galaxy, you goof! Not the candy bar.”

  “Yeah. Okay. Right… I knew that. Just saying I’m hungry, and it doesn’t look like we can eat that.”

  “Give me your dagger,” I say to Hamza.

  “You better not poke me with it because I’m having a stab of hunger.” He laughs. “Get it? A stab of hunger… because… the dagger and… the candy… and… okay, fine.” Hamza hands me the dagger since I’m shooting darts at him with my eyes.

  I unknot the leather bands holding the coil in place, and the object starts to move, to uncurl itself. Oh God, please don’t let this be some ancient snake. I can’t deal with any more serpents.

  But it’s not a snake or even alive, I don’t think. In a blink, the coil unfurls into a staff.

  “Whoa. That was amazeballs,” Hamza says. “Sort of like a slap watch but in reverse.”

  Okay, clearly we haven’t switched personalities. I take the staff in hand. It’s smooth and cool to the touch.

  Hamza runs his fingers across it, then gasps. “My dream! The old guy had a staff and was holding it in the water. That’s when he said the words. Maybe if we…”

  He doesn’t need to finish his thought. I stick the staff into the water, and I can feel the current release us, like when you come up for air after you’ve been swimming. I pull it through the waves, and the raft glides easily through the water. The fog between us and the hidden shore lifts.

  I’m so thankful something is going our way.

  Using the staff as a kind of oar, I draw us closer to the other shore. Hamza relaxes; I can feel him breathing easier. I am, too. At least we’ve passed this obstacle. I’m trying not to think about the giant one that still lies ahead. The one possibly truly insurmountable task. The most deadly of all.

  Hamza plucks some dates out of his bag and rinses them in the sea and hands me some. I’m so tired and hungry I don’t even give him a lecture about how even if water in oceans and rivers looks clean, it’s a cesspool of bacteria.

  Hamza chews in silence for a while, then says, “I think the samosa was right.”

  “The samosa?”

  “The giant peeing dog you told me about. Didn’t it say it believed in us?”

&n
bsp; “Oh my God. Stop calling it a peeing dog.” I roll my eyes. “It’s a simurgh. How do you get samosa from simurgh?”

  “Whatever. Like I said, I’m hungry. Starving. Famished. All the s words are blending together! Anyway, if that creature believes we’re Chosen, we might as well act like we believe it, too. Not like it could get us in deeper water. Haha. Get it? Cuz we’re on a raft? I crack myself up.”

  I shake my head. But maybe my ridiculous little brother is onto something. Not like we have much to lose. The simurgh believes. And Hamza did have that dream. And the fog is lifting so we can glide to the other shore. The other shore where Ifrit is supposedly waiting for us. We’re silent the rest of the way. The words we whispered into the water, the ones from Hamza’s dream, keep coming back to me. They sound so familiar. Iftah ya Simsim. A light turns on in the dark corner closet of my memory. I remember where I heard those words before. During Sunday school at the masjid, we sometimes watched Arabic-language kids’ shows so we could hear different accents. One day our teacher showed us the Arabic version of Sesame Street. It was called Iftah ya Simsim. She joked about how silly the name was—like a little inside joke. The name means: Open Sesame (Street). Ha! It would be awesome if Grover saved us—when I was a kid, he was the only monster at the end of the book I ever wanted to meet.

  CHAPTER 17

  Fool’s Gold

  THE FOG TOTALLY LIFTS, AND HAMZA AND I IMMEDIATELY shield our eyes from a blazing light as we pull the raft onto the gleaming shore. Blinking as my eyes adjust, I breathe and try to take it all in. I am surrounded by gold. The shiniest yellowy gold. I mean, literally everywhere I look, every structure I see, the mountains in the distance, all seem to be made of gold.

  “This gives new meaning to the gold standard,” Hamza smirks. “What’s this place called?”

  The tablet responds immediately. I guess it’s working now. “City of Gold,” I read out loud. “A little obvious.” The place name disappears, and other words rise to the smooth jade surface: What you seek is seeking you. That’s exactly what we saw in that note from Suleiman that turned to ash in our hands. We’re looking for Ifrit, and he wants us to find him, which is bite-back-my-screams scary. It means we’re close.

  “So this is it? The tilism made from Ifrit’s tears?” Hamza asks. “Does he cry gold?”

  “Maybe? Or it could be like he wants all the gold. Literally. So he made this place in that image.”

  “That’s so basic. He probably has a fake foreign accent and a villain cackle, too.” Hamza flips open the Box of the Moon. The gears seem to have slowed. At first, I think that’s good, but when I look closer, I see that the little moon has nearly collided with Earth. I guess it’s close to completely breaking and opening the gateway between worlds so that Ifrit’s hordes can run amok. This is it. Win or die. We don’t even have time to be scared. Scared-er. More scared. The scared-est. Besides, I think terror has seeped into my bones and is now a permanent part of my DNA, so it’s like I’m used to it? Like it’s become me? And the choices are (1) be overcome by fear or (2) use it, like Sensei says, to channel adrenaline before a karate bout. (Hopefully, one I’ll win.)

  “So do we, like, call for him? Here, Ifrit. C’mon, little guy.” Hamza makes the kissy sounds like when you’re trying to draw out a cat.

  “Uh, maybe we should make a plan first before calling out the biggest evil of Qaf?”

  “Maybe sneeze to get his attention? Get it, cough because of Qaf. So, sneeze. I know, I know, I keep telling that joke, but, man, it never gets old.”

  “Oh my God. Hamz, could you stop goofing around. We could be heading to our deaths. The world could be doomed.”

  “So, basically, the best time to make jokes.”

  “I’m serious. We’re not the Chosen One. I mean, Ones. How do we fight him?”

  “I’m going to say, with our weapons?”

  “Duh, I mean—”

  “You shoot him with the bow and arrow, and then if we have to, we go with hand-to-hand, or hand-to-claw or paw, combat. We really should’ve asked what he looks like so we’d know what to expect.”

  “Hamz. This could… this could be it.” I catch his eye.

  “Sis. In every book and movie where the good guys are outnumbered or outgunned, they win because they have to. Because good triumphs over evil. And sometimes superheroes we thought were dead step out of flaming portals or a Force ghost appears or a T-rex shows up to save the day.” Hamza gives me a half smile. I know he wants to believe in a fictional save-the-day mash-up. I want to believe it, too.

  Even if I know real life doesn’t work like the movies. I lift my chin, nod, smile, and grab Hamza’s elbow. “We got this, little bro.”

  Handing Hamza the flask, I tell him to take a drink before I take a few sips myself. Quietly, we fasten our weapons in place. Hamza tucks his dagger into the cummerbund, which is tied tight around his middle. Looks like that thing mainly only helped him climb a tree, but at least we got dates out of it. I make sure my quiver is secure across my back, the bow over my shoulder, and the sword and sheath attached to the hip holder Aasman Peri gave me.

  Aasman Peri. Abdul Rahman. Maqbool. My mind strays to them for a minute, but I can’t linger on everything that’s already gone wrong. Or on how Maqbool’s death ripped out a little piece of my heart. I have to push all that out of my head and focus on Ifrit, or things could all get so much worse. I have to be ready. I can’t let Hamz down.

  My brother and I walk up the beach and over golden sand dunes. We scurry down and start walking along what looks like a winding path of crushed golden gravel. Trees surround us, but they’re not real trees. There are no leaves, only bright, bare yellow branches that curve up toward the sky. It’s a graveyard of skeleton trees.

  Passing through the fake woods, we come across a pond that looks like it’s filled with liquid gold.

  “That is really impractical. Like, how can you swim in melted metal?” I mutter. Then I turn to Hamza, remembering the monster in the Lake of Illusion. “Don’t touch it.”

  “I wasn’t going to,” he scoffs, and crosses his arms across his chest.

  “What? Like you haven’t gotten us into, uh, situations because you have to touch everything?”

  “I’m curious, okay? What’s that thing Ms. Khan always says in science class?”

  “Curiosity conquers fear? Fine. But it also killed the cat.”

  “Because it was a dumb cat!”

  I roll my eyes. “Have you noticed that this place—”

  “Would even make King Midas want to throw up?”

  “No. I mean, yeah, good point. But it’s not real gold, I don’t think. Look.” I dig at the ground with the toe of my sneaker, and the golden gravel crumbles into dust. I haven’t tried grinding any of my mom’s gold jewelry to dust, because I value my life, but I’m pretty sure gold doesn’t crumble like this. I walk through the border of gilded trees and up to the face of a cliff, and when I claw at it with my hands, pieces fall away. “It’s like clay.” I rub some of it between my fingertips, and they come away streaked with gray, the gold instantly dimmed.

  It’s a fake world.

  Maybe that’s why the geography feels all smushed—dunes to woods to cliffs. It’s all pushed together, crammed in, like my crayon drawings from nursery school, with everything I wanted in the picture—a beach with a snowman next to a giant chocolate cake. Ifrit was holing up here, in this pretend, made-up world of his weird imagination? He isn’t fighting; he’s hiding. Making other people do his dirty work. Maybe he’s not so strong and brave after all.

  The faux gold cliffs rise higher as we walk through, and the valley between them grows narrower until it’s barely two people across. I’m not claustrophobic, but I feel squeezed in here, like the air is too thick to breathe. My steps feel heavier. We push through and slip out onto a desert plain. In front of us is an enormous cliff, and built into its rough face is a palace. Domes and minarets and curved windows and columns are carved into the golden cl
iff wall. It’s a weird architecture mash-up and looks like a cross between the Taj Mahal and the Museum of Science and Industry back home in Chicago.

  “It’s built like Petra,” I whisper as I start walking toward the building, drawn to it. Like I know this is the place we’re supposed to be.

  “Huh?”

  “Remember during our Golden Oldies Movie Night, when Ummi and Papa made us watch that one with the archaeologist and his dad on a quest to find the Holy Grail and there was this really pale immortal knight protecting it in a castle built into a cliff?”

  “I am 100 percent sure I fell asleep,” Hamza says as we enter. The place is weirdly empty. All the decorations and fancy carvings are on the outside. There’s no furniture. Not even a chair, only a huge, echoey, empty round room with a grand staircase that winds upward. We start climbing.

  “That movie was a little boring. Anyway, Petra is a place in Jordan—an old city partially built into red cliffs. It’s pretty cool,” I say. “But this”—I gesture widely as we wind around another story looking down at the huge, empty hall below—“is kind of tacky.”

  “For real. We’re totally going to kick this fake-gold, busted-monster-in-hiding’s butt.” Hamza laughs, and the echo bounces around the walls. Creepy. We step through an archway to the outside and come onto a large balcony that looks out onto the valley and past the barren forest of gold and onto the dunes that slope down to the sea.

  “Who dares enter the City of Gold uninvited?” a loud voice bellows from the balcony of a minaret.

  Gulp.

  It’s Ifrit.

  Don’t panic.

  He’s bigger than Abdul Rahman.

  Calming thoughts. Calming thoughts. Fields of lavender. Sea. Cool breezes. Chocolate cake.

  His chest must be as wide as a truck tire.

  Breathe. Remember to breathe.

  He is pink with gold stripes encircling his thick arms.

  Am I still breath—

  Actually, the pink with gold stripes isn’t that scary. It’s kind of fashion-forward. But his teeth—are all of them canines? Those… those are scary.