“How can you tell they’re both left?”
“I don’t know,” said Farzin. “I’ve never seen my own behind.”
“You are a thoroughly ridiculous and adorable man.”
“Some say.”
“You’re right, that was a stupid dream.”
“You ever wake up and find us in that situation, you come find me and say something about it, okay?” said Farzin, restoring himself and his blanket to normal sleeping posture. “Because I guarantee that I’ll still love you with everything that I am, and we can run off together anyway.”
Kaveh was silent for a moment. “Promise?”
“There’s no world that exists where I don’t love you as much as I do right now,” Farzin reassured him.
Take Time to Stop and Eat the Roses
Cast: Micah/Ronit (Esther’s little sister)
We first met Micah and Esther in A Harvest of Ripe Figs
For Alex
♡ ✡ ♡
Micah lay flat on the sofa, his arms and legs starfished out against the plush fabric. “If I eat one more festival I’m going to diiie.”
“Then stop eating,” Ronit and Miriam chorused together, which happened often enough in their sisterly hijinks that they’d long ceased laughing about it.
The three Perachi teenagers reposed in a quiet salon, away from the noise and clamor of the party in the next room. That was where the food was, along with several of their future-brother-in-law’s aunties. In true “older female relative” tradition, they were more than ready to insist that Micah, or any of the rest of them, eat even more festivals or ackee or fried breadfruit.
Part of the reason all three of them had overeaten was the novelty of Sugar Coast food.
“But if I don’t eat any more festivals, I’m going to diiie.” Micah’s face contorted in mock pain. “They’re so good.”
“It’s literally just fried meal,” said Miriam. “How are you so skinny?” She and her older sister were comfortably round, and their eldest, Esther—the one who was getting married tomorrow on the beach—was possessed of a graceful and imperial fatness.
“Oh, don’t be a goof,” said Ronit. “You know that has nothing to do with it and never has. God makes some bodies gain weight when they eat, and some don’t. Esther eats the least of all of us, and she’s always been the biggest.”
“She’s going to make such a beautiful bride!” Miriam’s face lit up, and she stared dreamily into the corner.
♡ ✡ ♡
“Hey, Micah!”
He lifted his head from the pillow—he’d been staring out the window instead of sleeping anyway, mesmerized by the undulations of the waves in the moonlight. “Can’t sleep?”
“Haven’t tried!” The candle Ronit held lit a face ripe with devilish glee. “Are you too tired to go on an adventure?”
“I’m not sleepy yet.” Micah sat up and ran his hand through his hair in case it was messy from tossing and turning. “What are we doing?”
“I thought it would be a really beautiful surprise for Esther if she woke up and found flowers all over her room.”
“Sounds like fun! Where are we going to get the flowers? Tzuriel’s aunties will be mad if we touch anything for tomorrow.”
“Other people’s gardens!” said Ronit. When Micah opened his mouth to protest, she added quickly, “We can leave coins in return. Tzuriel’s ima gave me a bunch of change when we got here, little stuff that she didn’t need.”
“That sounds fair,” said Micah. Stealing food when he was a street kid wasn’t the same as a girl from a prosperous farming family stealing flowers, and he was relieved that he didn’t have to bring that up.
“I was thinking we could tie them by their stems to a big ribbon and then wind it up all around the room.”
“Let’s try it!” Micah scribbled a note that said back soon and left it on his bed, just in case anyone got scared he’d turned street again, and hopped after her. “What about Miri?”
“She threw a pillow at me when I tried getting her out of bed,” Ronit whispered as they crept through the dark hallway, “but I’ll try again.” She slid open the door to the room where she and Miriam had been given bedrolls. “Hey! Miriam! We’re going on a flower hunt to surprise Esther.”
“Fuck off,” Miriam whimpered. “My insides are exploding and I just want to sleep.”
“From the food?” asked Micah.
“No, I’m bleeding,” said Miriam.
“I’m sorry.” Ronit knelt next to her and massaged her shoulders. “Do you want us to get you anything before we go?”
“Chocolate?”
“There’s some in a dish on the table where we were hanging out earlier,” said Micah. “I’ll go get it.” He knew, first-hand, how awful she must feel.
“Thanks,” said Ronit when he returned, and she fed the uneven nibs to Miriam before kissing her on the forehead. “Hope that helps. Sorry about the bad timing.”
“Could be worse.” Miriam smiled up at her weakly. “Could be Esther.”
“Worst timing,” agreed Micah.
Ronit stood up. “Come on! Let’s go cause trouble.”
The air outside Tzuriel’s parents’ house was vibrant and alive with the night breeze coming off the sea. Micah, who was used to the much stiller, muggy nighttime air in Perach, breathed deeply and relished the feeling. “This was a good idea,” he commented. “I’m glad we’re out here.”
Ronit dug her hand into her purse and retrieved a handful of coins. “Here’s your lot. Leave one every time you take a flower.”
Micah squinted at the coin in the full moon’s broad light as they trudged along the sandy path. “That’s the queen of Sugar Coast?”
“Yes,” said Ronit. “You can tell it’s only the one-piece coin because the twists in her hair are coiled into a knot. On the ten piece her hair’s a big, soft cloud around her head, and on the crown coin her twists are down around her shoulders.”
“Good thing we don’t have to see all that in the dark.” Micah kept watching for good flowers in the yards of all the sleeping houses, but his eyes often flickered to the bits of ocean he could see between house and shrub. Maybe tomorrow night he and Ronit could walk on the beach, once all the fuss was over.
“Ooh, there’s some hibiscus!”
“Good catch!”
The blooms were large and showy. It was hard to tell in just moonlight, but Micah figured they were some variation on peach. He picked a few, and so did Ronit. “Here, I’ll put them in my purse.” She took them from him, carefully cradling them in her fingers.
As Micah left coins on the fence, he noticed that there was a mezuzah on it—on the fence, not the door, as in Perach. Curious, he peered at the door to the stranger’s house. Another mezuzah sat in its usual place in the doorframe. “Did you see? The house has an extra mezuzah.”
“Oh, that’s to protect the garden from fairies,” Ronit said casually. “Tzuriel’s family has one too, to keep them out of the cacao trees.”
“Fairies?” Micah raised his eyebrows.
“Yes,” said Ronit. “Sometimes they leave out bits of leftovers for them, so they won’t cause mischief, but the mezuzot keep them out of the walled areas where people live.”
“Who told you all this?”
“One of the aunties,” said Ronit, “and Tzuriel’s aba.”
“Well, I guess it can’t keep us out,” said Micah.
“Right, but we’re paying. They don’t.”
“That garden was just hibiscus,” Micah realized after they’d walked away. “What would a fairy want with flowers?”
“Oh, they eat them,” said Ronit placidly.
“Oh, look at that!” Micah pointed, grinning with glee. “Ylang-ylang!”
“Nice,” said Ronit. “This is working out great! These are even bigger than the hibiscus.” Together they picked out three of the prettiest flowers, inhaling the dazzlingly sensual scent as if there was a way to get the smell to stay in their noses for
ever if they breathed deeply enough.
Micah left three coins on the fence, eyeing it to see if—yes, there it was, the extra mezuzah.
“What about those?” Ronit pointed to a tree in the garden of the next house. Its flowers looked either red or orange—it was hard to tell—and they ran thickly through its broad, squat branches. “I can’t reach.”
“I’ve got to teach you how to stand on my shoulders one of these days if you insist on being so short,” Micah teased.
“Save it for our wedding night,” Ronit shot back as Micah climbed, catlike, onto the stone garden fence with one leap.
Micah retrieved a handful of poinciana flowers, then steadied himself and jumped back down to the sandy path. “This enough?”
Ronit nodded. “Perfect landing! Now do it while playing fiddle.”
“Only if you stand in the street and milk the crowd.”
Ronit waved her hands theatrically as they passed more houses, sleeping under seagrape trees and coconut palms. “Ladies and gentlemen—”
“—and everyone else,” Micah interrupted.
“Them too,” Ronit agreed. “Step right up and see the death-defying leaps he takes while playing violin! Will he miss a note? Will he break his neck? Only your coins know the answer.” She shook her empty hand at the air as if asking for the price of admission.
“I’d have to practice with a junk violin first, obviously.”
“Or just a piece of wood, at first. Wait.” Ronit looked around her. “Did you hear something?”
“You chattering,” Micah shot back.
“Shut up. I heard a flittery noise.”
“Moths?”
“It sounded bigger than that. Maybe a dragonfly?” Ronit kept looking around, her little bow mouth pursed up suspiciously.
“Or the wind in the leaves,” said Micah. “Or—wait! Do they have bats around here?”
“Yes, they do! I’d love to see a bat.” Ronit’s eyes flashed. “If I could do magic like that wizard who helped you have the right body, I’d want to do bat magic.”
“Like… turning into a bat?”
“Maybe.” Ronit was silent for a moment as she thought about it. “Or have bat friends. They’re so cute.”
“Hey, look, more hibiscus.” Micah pointed to a bush studded with pink blossoms. “Those look like nice healthy ones.”
“This is so much fun!” Ronit exclaimed.
They continued much along these lines for the next little while, collecting passion flowers—“Careful with all those delicate parts!”—and plumeria—“Watch out for the sap.”—as well as more and more hibiscus. Micah’s pockets grew lighter and lighter of coins, and he imagined the flowers lounging in delicate disarray within Ronit’s purse. They’d look amazing strung up all around Esther’s room when she woke up in the morning!
“Micah!” Ronit suddenly whispered in a loud hiss. “My purse—it moved. I think something’s in there.”
His time on the street spoke for him. “Is it a rat?”
“Eek!” That was the wrong thing to say, because now Ronit was afraid of her purse. “Get away from me!”
“Maybe it’s only a bat,” Micah quickly interjected.
She held her purse at the end of a trembling arm, squinting at it through narrowed eyes. “I don’t want to hurt it, whatever it is.”
The bag moved again, and both of them yelped.
“Right,” said Ronit.
“Right.”
Slowly, they drew together and Ronit opened the purse.
Sitting on top of what was left of the flowers was a tiny, wide-eyed person with skin that looked like dolphin’s flesh—slick, gray-blue, and shimmering in the moonlight. As it moved, cringing from them in fear, Micah realized that some of what he’d thought was flowers—there were so few of them left!—was the creature’s wings, camouflaged to look like peach and pink hibiscus flowers.
“Micah,” Ronit breathed, unable to move. “It’s a fairy.”
“And it ate our flowers.”
The fairy burped.
“Ylang-ylang,” Ronit commented sadly.
“So much for all those garden mezuzot!” said Micah. “Once we took the flowers out there was nothing else keeping it away.”
“Now, look here!” Ronit addressed the fairy sternly. “We paid for those flowers, so they’re ours now. What you did was stealing, and it’s wrong.”
“So?” The fairy looked up at them with big, round eyes with vertical slits like a cat’s. It spoke in a mosquito’s whine of a voice, and it had no nose. Micah was fascinated. “I don’t care. It was delicious.”
“Well, I do,” Ronit insisted. She suddenly grabbed the bag away from Micah and closed it as hard as she could.
“Wait!” shouted the fairy from inside the purse. “You can’t do that! I have to be back in the sea by the time the sun comes up or I’ll dry out.”
“Not my problem,” said Ronit airily. Micah cast her a questioning eye, but she winked at him and smirked. She was bluffing.
“But I’ll become driftwood,” the fairy wailed.
“What can you do for us to make up for the flowers?” Ronit demanded.
“I can give you back your coins,” said the fairy. “I can summon them since I was there when you left them.”
“I don’t want the coins back, I want decorations for my big sister’s bridal chamber!”
“Something that’ll really make her smile when she wakes up,” Micah added.
“Then, it will be as you wish,” said the fairy. “Take me to the room, and then cast me back into the sea.”
“Also, can you take away my little sister’s cramps?”
The fairy sighed. “You humans.”
“You could always just eat wild flowers and not deal with us,” Ronit pointed out.
The fairy did as they wanted, and when they returned to the house, the two of them snuck carefully into Esther’s guest room as quietly as they could. Ronit moved the bag—still clenched shut in her fist—around the ceiling and four walls until sparkling ribbons of magic seafoam and tiny strands of shells entwined the room. Starfish and corals completed the effect. It was too dark to smile at each other and even whispering might wake the sleeping bride, so Micah just squeezed Ronit’s hand in wonder.
They held the bag over Miriam too, before leaving again to take the fairy back to the sea. She relaxed in her sleep, and Micah’s heart felt warm.
“I guess I got my walk on the beach with you earlier than I expected,” Micah commented as he took Ronit’s hand, after dumping the fairy out onto the tide at a safe distance from the human houses.
Once they returned and crawled back into bed in their respective rooms, Micah slept deeply from his exertions and dreamed about rescuing bats from fairies. When high-pitched voices roused his ears the next morning, he opened his eyes to a broad stream of sunlight and went to find Ronit.
She was in Esther’s room, where today’s bride was awake and beaming at the sea magic surrounding her. “It’s so beautiful!” Esther said, over and over. “Oh, I’m so happy. Today is already a dream come true.”
The Generous Princess
Cast: the Royal Family of Perach
For Tof and Nikki, and our sweet godchildren
♡ ✡ ♡
“Come on, sweetheart, either eat those last few bites or say you’re done with lunch,” said Queen Shulamit to the eldest of her children. “There’s no more time to play with your food; I want you to go through your room with Safta and find some things we can take down to the orphanage later.”
“I’m not playing!” said Princess Naomi, placing another cube of papaya on top of the already-precarious tower on her plate. “I’m building.”
“You can build later, with your blocks, after we get home,” said Shulamit, moving one-year-old Princess Ilana to her other breast.
“I want to build a house with fruit,” Naomi insisted. “Lots of fruit make great blocks. Melon and papaya, and…” She thought for a moment. “Cheese�
��”
“I bet she got this idea from her baba,” said Isaac, who was holding the youngest, three-month-old Prince Aram, whom Aviva had carried. Aram’s biological father was Farzin, the innovative engineer who spent his life at the side of Shulamit’s in-name-only husband, and together they were fathers to all three children. Aram was originally intended to be born alongside Ilana, but the oil, as Aviva had put it, had taken a while to heat up in the pan.
Naomi nodded enthusiastically. “Mm-hmm! The last time he was here he built me a wagon out of apples and it actually rolled.”
“But now it’s time for you to ‘actually roll,’” said Shulamit. She waved a hand at her elder daughter as if the motion would waft her out of her chair.
“Why do I have to give things away?” Naomi asked.
“We’re a very lucky country,” said Shulamit, “but sometimes people still go without. You know I do my best to make sure nobody in Home City goes hungry, but I bet there are children who haven’t had a new toy in years, or clothing they got third-hand that doesn’t fit. It’s Purim, and we’re all going to have a party and be happy, but we’re supposed to make sure other people have a chance to be happy too.”
Naomi stuck out her lip, considering her mother’s words. “I have lots of toys.”
Shulamit nodded. “You bet. In fact, since you’re the Crown Princess, I bet you have more toys than anyone else in Home City.”
Naomi’s eyes widened. “Really?”
“When I was your age,” called Aviva from the kitchen counter where she was cleaning up, “I had only two toys, and one of them was really an old spoon with a mitpachat on it to make it look like a woman!”
“Because you were poor,” said Naomi bluntly. “And then you grew up and married a princess and got to live in a palace!” she added, flinging up her hands and sending the top half of the papaya tower flying across the room.
Isaac lifted his hand and made a great show of stopping them midair. With a smirk he slid them across the air to Rivka, where he let them hover in front of her mouth.
“What?” she twinkled back. They had a silent conversation with their eyes before she opened her mouth and chomped down the fruit.
Tales from Perach (Mangoverse Book 5) Page 5