Beneath the Rising

by Premee Mohamed

  We tiptoed on, now looking at everyone around us as if they might tackle us, turn us in. No one gave us a second look. There were fences everywhere here, some brightly painted in blues and turquoises and pinks, and lots of murals, some I assumed by children, shakily signed near the ground. Far in the distance, above the tops of flowering cacti in people’s rooftop gardens, I could just make out the silhouettes of mountains.

  “Oh my God,” I said.

  “Did you see the reward?” Johnny said, faintly stunned. “A hundred thousand dollars just for information. That could be millions of dollars by the end.”

  “For you, maybe. I’m worth about the same as a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch.”

  “It said for both of us.” She paused, and frowned. “I wonder where Rutger is taking the money from.”

  “You’re paying for your own reward?”

  “Oh, sure.”

  “People run away every day,” I said. “They’re only putting this up on international TV because you’re rich and famous and loved, and you know it. And I’m... whatever. Collateral damage. Did it say anything else?”

  “Just that all relevant authorities are actively engaged in the search, and that given the state of your house and the disappearance of your family, foul play is suspected,” she said. “At least we’re not in Morocco any more, but I mean...”

  “We’re bounty now! There’ll be bounty hunters! Like Boba Fett!”

  “The police will definitely get it if they can. That’s a lot of money back home, but it’s a hell of a lot of money over here. The cops would never let Boba Fett even try to claim the reward. We’ll have to watch our asses. Keep an eye out for cameras.”

  “Shit,” I said. “People find missing kids all the time.”

  “Well, and a lot of kids stay missing, too.”

  “Because they got murdered or whatever. Christ. If we—”

  “Anyway, we’re not kids. We’re adults.”

  “You’re still a kid. And I’ve only been, technically, an adult for three fucking months! Rutger fucking sold us out,” I said. “We didn’t say it before. But it was him.”

  “Not necessarily.”

  “Yes necessarily,” I said, stopping to face her, too close, watching as she backed up. “He was the only one who knew you weren’t just going on a business trip. And he’s the only one who would report it to the police. And that’s why we got caught at the goddamn airport, and again in Fes.”

  “Oh, so it couldn’t have been buddy in the blue jacket?”

  “He couldn’t even talk! He was dead!” I spluttered.

  “If it was Rutger, he was just doing what he thought was right. We didn’t say that before, either.”

  “Who cares? He promised. We all promised. You made him promise. And he said yes. And now we’re worth money. He broke his promise. Not breaking your promise is the whole point of making one!”

  “What do you want me to do about it?” she snapped, her eyes bright with tears. “It’s done!”

  “I want you to say you were wrong for once! That you trusted the wrong person!”

  “We both did!”

  “I never trusted him!”

  “It’s done! All right? Will you just shut up, because it’s done!”

  “How about you don’t tell me to shut up again, and we could maybe have a civilized conversation about this?”

  “How about you try to understand something about him?” she shouted. “Like, I’m sorry that you never liked him, that you never trusted him, but you don’t know anything about him. Do you even know what it meant for him to—to leave his family, and come work for a six-year-old? Not just personally, but I mean how that looked to his parents, how that looked to the other students, his professors. Everything! And for him to come with me after succeeding year after year, acing all his entrance exams, getting into the university, getting his PhD, and then being homeless, do you know what that means? They ask him about it in interviews and he always just says, ‘I could no longer live at their house, I could no longer,’ and his face, Nick, his face is like...”

  “What do you know about any of that? And who cares what they do back home? You can’t take your country with you when you go!”

  “I suppose you’d know a lot about that! You were born in Canada!”

  “And what does that have to do with him selling us? Please explain, because clearly you got saddled with the dumb guy again! Like always! Why don’t you just get rid of me and do this on your own? Why did you let me come with you? Why did you even ask me to come?”

  “Why do you think?”

  Someone from another house shouted something even I could understand, demanding that we either take it inside or shut up, and the bang of their shutters was like a pair of scissors cutting off the fight. I stared at her for a second, chest heaving just as hers was. I knew it. I knew I was a liability rather than an asset. She hadn’t brought me along because she thought I could help. Not even to keep me ‘safe.’ She just wanted me to do what I was told, like always.

  “All right,” I said after a second. “Let’s go.”

  “Fine.”

  I had to trot to keep up with her, our shoes still silent on the cobbled street, surrounded by low graceful one- and two–storey houses with geraniums spilling out of their windows behind brightly-coloured curtains. Dozens of dark doors nestled under curved and carved arches, some hosting small kids that waved at us as we passed, unafraid. The air smelled of frying food and the leaves of the low, grey-green trees lining the street. It was so peaceful, and I was so mad.

  Goddamn little know-it-all, thinking she’s better than me. Any of these alleys, I thought, kept thinking, couldn’t stop thinking. Any of them, I could drag her down them, I could... something about... red sand, blue stones... white-blue stones, as if their raw surfaces had been chipped away by something as big as a battleship... this would be a good alley, no windows. This would be a good one, there’s a dumpster there. This...

  “Are you even going to try to keep up?”

  As before, I looked up and saw her almost at the far end of the street. I thought: If I had a gun, I could shoot her from here and hit her.

  And then I began to shake, realizing what had happened, the depth of the contagion. How the tendrils of it, finer than hair, had infiltrated the tiny, stifling space that we now inhabited together, how I had been not corrupted or turned but polluted, dusted with their filth in the space of a dream, not realizing that it was spores instead of dirt. Not realizing that waking up couldn’t brush it off, that it had sunk into me somehow. How much stronger would these urges get? They were at the ‘thoughts’ stage, they were pictures in the head, not even as real as a puppet show. But what came next? A shove, a slap? Would it just... accelerate, then, like a dropped stone reaching terminal velocity?

  I had always thought my only good quality was loyalty, that I was the attentive dog to her don’t-touch-me cat, that the best thing about me, maybe the only reason we were friends, was that I was the one who was steadfast and true, true to her, and she was true only to the world. I paused and listened to my breath snort frantically in and out, like a bull. Like the red bull in The Last Unicorn, the embodiment of evil, which had scared the kids to tears for weeks when we rented it. Johnny wrapped in a blanket on the couch between Carla and the twins, equally horrified. Darkness, the flickering screen, the red monster. Me. I.

  “Nick?”

  “I’m coming.” It was an effort to get my legs moving again, but I forced them up the street towards her, in the thickening dusk. “Sorry.”

  “Stomach again, mm?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “I should have gotten some antacids at that drugstore. Remind me tomorrow when the stores open.”

  That was her version of contrition. I knew that. I followed her unspeaking, hating myself, not fearing myself. Yet.

  Around the corner, a sudden blare of noise made me jump, as if we’d walked into a marching band, only muffled by the thick brick walls t
ill now. I clamped my hands over my ears instinctively, taking them off to yell, “What the hell’s that?”

  We turned the corner into the wall of sound, and I saw I wasn’t too far off—a dozen men were blowing trumpets in the crowd, and other instruments I didn’t recognize, made of animal horn or wood, at least three people holding boomboxes in the air, like in that movie, some random people were carrying hand-held drums, and everybody was singing. Only about half the crowd was singing the same song, but Johnny, at my side, back to the wall, yelled, “I think it’s a wedding! They’re singing a pretty rude song!”

  “You think everything’s a pretty rude song!”

  “Well I’m a delicate goddamn flower!”

  I backed myself to the wall too, laughing as a wave of people surged past us, hundreds of laughing mouths and clapping hands, giving us only a cursory glance in the darkness. Across the street I saw flashes as tourists got their cameras out, the white light bouncing off glasses and jewelry, polished brass, the metal edges of the drums, buttons on hats. Flower petals rained onto my face, making me shut my eyes for a second against the soft assault. It was like being caught in a parade, arms brushing past me, feet stepping briefly on my own, smells of steaming food and armpits and the musky cologne of old men. Faces blinked in the streetlight, visible for a second and then gone.

  “What are they singing about that’s so rude, anyway?” I shouted, and glanced down to see that Johnny was gone.

  My head jerked up automatically, a flinch of shock and guilt, as if I’d lost one of the kids in the mall. My responsibility! I’m the grownup here! I failed!

  Wait. Stay put. Like I told the kids, not that they ever remembered. If we get split up in public, stay right where you are. I’ll move, not you. Two moving things will never find each other. One still thing and one moving thing might.

  I hoped that she too would stop moving, just let the sea of people wash past her and leave us together in an empty street. But they just kept coming. I could see over most people, impeded somewhat by a few tall formal hats, and scanned the crowd for something small, blonde, swept away from me as if in a riptide. My heart was beating so fast that when I opened my mouth, a purring noise came out. Shit. Shit. Jesus.

  She’d lost her shield—the so-called ‘guide’ I represented, that kept others from harassing her—but so had I, the person who knew where we were going and spoke the languages I didn’t speak. I felt as if I’d stepped out of a suit of armour I hadn’t even known I was wearing. Everyone seemed to be staring at me, even people who weren’t even looking at me, glued to the wall in the darkness, just a pair of staring eyes and an open mouth in the noise.

  Finally the mob passed—the bride and groom last, obviously exhausted and lagging behind, dressed in sweat-soaked finery and trailed by a half-dozen professional photographers. When the clicking and flashing and singing and honking was gone, I scanned the empty street. She was gone.

  A prodigy, right? A genius. Someone who knew damn well that she should stay put even if she got caught up in the crowd. Someone who would wriggle or fight free, and come back to the last place she’d seen me. So if not...

  Had someone taken her? Or something?

  There were no rules against that, were there? Were there? Not for Them. Not even with the warding spell she carried on the back of the laptop, not the... the warding spell that was no longer protecting me.

  “Shit, shit,” I whispered. I dug in my bag for the cell phone I had put in the front pocket—nothing. I frantically rummaged through the bag’s interior, fingers running across paper, sodden clothes, a smooth surface—the phone? no, a water bottle—pens, cardboard, receipts, garbage, a package of cookies. Lost. Or taken. More likely taken. I wanted to dump the bag out and search properly, but knew already that the phone wasn’t there. I hadn’t even gotten to use it.

  The silence was stunning after the wedding parade. Normal sounds slowly returned: the chatter of the remaining tourists, the hushed hum of traffic in other streets. The brick of the wall behind me was cool under my palms. True night, heat escaping the day-baked clay and cobblestones. A sharp movement across the street was myself, reflected in a mirrored diadem decorating a doorway. And for the first time in my life I was alone in a strange country, functionally voiceless and voicelessly functionless, and lost.

  Stay, I told myself. She’ll come back for you.

  Minutes passed, my breath and heart eventually slowing. This solved the problem, though, didn’t it? Of wanting to kill her and not wanting to kill her. Of wanting to so much as touch her, which would have gotten me ineptly but immediately beaten up. Of saving the world. Of being part of this, drafted like an unwilling soldier, fighting an enemy I didn’t know in a war so big I couldn’t even see the edges of it; nothing but machine-gun fodder. I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it sooner.

  I gasped at the humid air and began to walk, taking turns at random. I kept looking down at either side of me, glancing back into my blind spot. It was as if I’d lost a limb. But—maybe a rotten limb, I thought. Something amputated for my safety. An operation I’d looked at with terror beforehand, relief after, knowing that I didn’t have to worry about it any more. I’d compensate with the others, I knew I could. She wasn’t the only tough one here.

  The renewed noise echoing up the street alerted me to having caught up to the wedding party. I trailed it discreetly—where were they going? Would someone there know enough English to be able to get me to, say, the Canadian embassy?

  They were heading to what looked like an event hall, a lot like the ones you’d see back home on the south side of the city—low, frosted white with stucco, pierced with dozens of round arches, surrounded by dark greenery and drooping rosebushes. Someone grabbed me around the shoulders, singing loudly, a blast of bad breath into my face and a blur of golden skin and black moustache; someone grabbed me from the other side at the same time. I yelled random noises, blending into the din, automatically putting my arm around the first man, my fist grasping for puchase on his robe, rough with silver embroidery. Here for the first time I heard women’s voices rising over the crowd, high and joyful. How would I find so much as a single person to talk to in this crowd?

  Inside, I tore free and beelined for a table covered with coffee urns and glasses of juice. I chugged a glass of what tasted like apple or pear juice, refilled it with black coffee from the urn, and leaned against the exterior wall while everyone went past. My eyes still crisscrossed the room, searching for a blue t-shirt, blonde hair. Wait. Had she still been wearing her scarf? Dammit. Knock it off, I told myself. I’m free.

  Coffee sprayed across the white wall as a cold arm wrapped across my throat, and for a second I froze, unable to breathe, choking on my mouthful of coffee, someone being a little too friendly, or maybe drunk. But the grip tightened and I felt myself being dragged backwards, shoes skittering on the ornamental gravel. Panic overtook me like a wave, suffocating, I’m drowning I’m drowning I can’t breathe, pain across the bruises still on my throat from the fight in Al-Qarawiyyin, I’ve never been in a real fight. Instinct threw the remainder of the hot coffee into the face behind me, the glass following it, connecting with a crunch, shards of glass sticking to my palm. A bubbling scream tore my ears apart.

  For a split second I realized I was waiting for rescue—someone heard the noise, someone would come see what was happening—but the grip slackened slightly and I shot my hands up into the half-inch of space, breaking the arm free and running helter-skelter into the darkness without even looking to see who or what it had been. A single glance behind me as I ran showed me precisely what I had feared, lent wings to my battered runners: the white, damp, pearlescent face of one of the thralls.

  It was like a bad dream. Like the kids waking, crying out, a monster was chasing me, I couldn’t see it but I knew it was there. My chest was already burning from thirst and exhaustion as I ran, dodging corners, hearing the slap of its feet. It wasn’t fast, but I wasn’t as fast as I normally was either, and it
was gaining on me despite my feeble zigzagging. Turn? Fight? No. I’d lose that, too.

  A crowded area, that’s what I needed. Back to the wedding? But I didn’t know where I was now, and the streetlights showed people in ones and twos, who utterly ignored me as I ran. I cried out for help as I went past, but was ignored. The cobblestones became dark ahead of me, outlined in green moss, as if paint had spilled there, slick under my shoes. Another white face shambled out of an alleyway nearly in front of me, ten or twelve feet ahead—lumpy and fungoid, black mouth thickly drooling. I sucked air and pivoted the other way, realizing that they were trying to flank me, surround me. Battle tactics. Find your fort, General. Shit, shit, no, I wished Johnny was here, running by my side, fighting with me, shit.

  Somehow, I had been herded into a space where no one walked, no cars parked. I stopped out of sheer shock and stared around in the darkness, eyes refusing to adjust. Shadows approached, unhurried, shuffling. Like zombies in the movies. I spread my legs, raised my fists, pretended I was in not a zombie movie but some old kung-fu film showing at three in the morning, something where they made the sound effects by wrapping celery in a towel and pounding it with the microphone. I could taste blood and bile and juice in the back of my throat. Last stand?

  “Nick!”