by Karuna Riazi
“Oh my gosh!” Winnie gasped.
“Ugh!” Ahmad spluttered as a huge wave splashed into his mouth, carrying the awful taste of brackish water and thick sludge.
With a final buck and a heave, the tiny boat billowed out into the river, becoming large enough to seat two kids and a very, very large mouse. It was definitely one of the dinghies from Ahmad’s childhood picture books, resembling a regular rowboat, but with elegant carvings and bright flowers blooming on its sides.
“Uh, wow,” Ahmad said, at a loss for any other words.
“I’m not going to get used to this,” Winnie said dazedly.
Ahmad tugged her onto the craft. T.T. took hold of the oars and they jetted away over the river’s surface.
The kids craned their necks to see into the water, white-capped waves surging forward against the bow of the boat. Even as a city kid, Ahmad could tell that current was strong.
“Nothing yet,” Ahmad muttered.
“We don’t even know what we’re looking for,” Winnie pointed out. “Where are these Machi Men? Who are these Machi Men? And how do we get them?”
She shrieked as their boat suddenly tilted to the side. Something had bumped into it, hard. Ahmad leaned over the side, his heart pounding. Giant fingers were curling up from beneath the boat.
“What is that?”
The fingers curled over the side of the boat. There was another moment, breaking the water’s surface: a giant, metallic face.
A Machi Man. And though it was carved and not at all human, it looked like it was pleading.
Winnie jumped back, frightened by the shimmery, scaly fish-man, and nearly took Ahmad down with her as she toppled.
The Machi Man’s metallic grasp slipped.
“Winnie! We need to catch him!” Ahmad bolted forward, Winnie behind him, and the two kids tried to catch hold of one of the slippery fingers, but it slid through their hands. The Machi Man glided back into the water as they tumbled to the floor of the boat.
Righting themselves, they pondered their predicament, peering over the edge of the boat to spy a fleet of fish-men statues sinking quickly into the depths of the water.
“Great.” Winnie gritted through her teeth. “They are huge. I guess trying to help them out is what the net is for, then.”
In the water below, a good half dozen Machi Men floated aimlessly in the water, frozen fingers waving as they were tugged down by the current. Ahmad and Winnie tossed out the net again and again, but every time they managed to drag them upward, the boat nearly capsized. Trying to grasp their huge hands didn’t work. The Machi Men were too slippery and too heavy.
“This is not going to work,” Ahmad gasped out, trying to steady himself in the wildly rocking boat.
“We need to do something,” Winnie yelled back. “The timer’s showing only minutes left!”
But what?
These Machi Men were built like anchors, heavy and solid, and their sinking seemed inevitable. What could they use to propel them back up out of the water and into the boat, where they belonged?
They were running out of time.
And fast.
“Think, think, think,” Ahmad chanted to himself. His hand dangled over the side of the boat.
Something lurched upward out of the water and grasped Ahmad’s wrist. He yelped.
“Winnie! Help me!”
“Ahmad!” Winnie rushed to his side and gasped. “What is that?”
“I . . . don’t know . . . but it won’t let go! Ugh!” Ahmad shook his wrist in vain. Was it some sort of water ghoul? The Paheli of his daydreams had never been this violent or cruel, but now it seemed to be pulling out the stops. He hated it.
“Okay, okay, change of plans,” Winnie rushed out, before grasping him around the waist. “If we can’t make it let go of you, we haul it out and kick some butt to make it sorry it dared to.”
“Wait, what?”
But Winnie was already tugging.
“T.T., I could use a little help here!”
“Oh, right!” T.T. scrambled behind her, resting a paw on Ahmad’s side. Ahmad shuddered. Even through layers of soggy clothing he could feel barely sheathed claws, and it was almost as uncomfortable as the clammy thing around his wrist.
“Heave-ho!” Winnie hollered, and she and T.T. tugged while Ahmad threw himself backward. As he stumbled to the deck, whatever had been holding him broke free of the water’s surface and landed in the boat with a hard thud.
“Ouch, ouch, ouch,” a husky voice said from the bottom of the boat. “Oh, that was a mistake. That hurts.”
Ahmad rubbed his wrist and stared hard at the sodden mass on the floor.
“That voice. It sounds familiar.”
“What?” Winnie asked, but before she could do anything else, Ahmad was already stumbling forward. “Ahmad, be careful! We don’t know what that is.”
“I think I do,” Ahmad panted. It was definitely a human body: tall and lanky, with a damp thatch of hair that a skinny hand was brushing back. Underneath was a face he knew all too well, and a weary smile that still managed to be mischievous.
“What are you doing here?” Ahmad demanded, even as he couldn’t help but return a very astonished smile of his own.
Of all the people in the world he could have expected to see, here and now, his uncle wasn’t one of them.
But there he was, in the flesh.
Vijay Bhai cleared his throat. “I’m here to help you,” he announced, raising an arm. “Now, who’s going to help me up?”
CHAPTER NINE
IN TIMES OF TROUBLE, Ahmad had his own rituals to ground himself and keep his stomach from tying itself into knots and his knees from shaking: holding his Switch under the table during a difficult test, or popping a few chenna murki into his mouth and letting them melt into his tongue.
They weren’t meant to hold off the trouble he would inevitably get into, and they never did. But at least, while he focused on them, his brain had a chance to get itself into gear and maybe find a solution for him.
Now he stuck his hand into his pocket. It was a habit from when he was a little kid. But the marbles he was reaching for had been lost years ago. He wished he had them now, as he watched Vijay Bhai wring his hair out between his hands like a washcloth.
“Oh, that’s cold.” Vijay Bhai winced as water seeped between his fingers.
“Uh, Ahmad?” Winnie said slowly. “Who is this?”
“My uncle,” Ahmad responded. “Well, more or less.”
To be entirely accurate, Vijay Bhai was his aunt’s best friend. It was kind of weird, because he just didn’t seem the type to be friends with Aunt Zohra. She was tall, lanky, and awkward, and he was tall, lanky, and young. That was weird too.
He never seemed the right age to properly be an uncle, mentally or physically.
Winnie was still staring at him, and Ahmad looked at Vijay Bhai through her eyes: the shiny gold hoop through his right ear, thanks to a recent Piercing Pagoda adventure, the light dusting of a beard over his jaw, and that wide, wide grin—even though they had just fished him out of a river in a whole other world.
“Nice to know Paheli is as welcoming as it always was,” Vijay Bhai said with a wink in Ahmad’s direction. He reached out and rumpled Ahmad’s hair with clammy fingers. “And I’m really glad to see you’re in one piece. When I saw how things changed, I was starting to get worried about how I’d find you. I got a little lost, too. Thought I knew this place like I made it up myself.”
“You know Paheli too?” Winnie blurted out, at the same time Ahmad gasped, “You knew we were here? But . . . our world is frozen!”
Vijay Bhai nodded. Droplets of water skied down the bridge of his nose. “I know. I was taking a walk around the block—well, honestly, I was at your house and your mom chased me out with the broom again so she could cook without me underfoot—and the entire world came to a halt.”
“But not you,” Winnie interjected.
“No. And because of that, I was abl
e to put together the puzzle pieces of what was happening.” Vijay Bhai’s face was abruptly solemn. “It’s happened to me once before, you know.”
“What—” Ahmad sputtered. His mind was reeling. Vijay Bhai was still talking, though.
“But we don’t have time for all that. Not now. I think I have something you might need.”
He reached out, dropping something into Ahmad’s still-wet palm.
Ahmad started when his hand felt something round, smooth, and cold settle into it.
OBTAINED! Text flashed before his eyes in a bright gold, holographic font. The words looked almost as solid as whatever was in his hand. MARBLE!
“A marble?” Ahmad whispered to himself. His heart pounded.
He held it up. It was the usual clear sphere, with a winking core of bright green. It rolled over his palm, catching light in spite of the brooding darkness closing in around them.
“This can’t be one of mine,” Ahmad mumbled, staring down at it. Marbles were pretty much the same everywhere, right? Besides, Ma had probably dumped his own precious collection into the nearest Goodwill collection box as soon as he got bored of them back in fifth grade.
Any marble could look like this, as clear and calm as a cat’s eye. Any marble could have the familiar scratches from the grooves of the Queens sidewalk he still remembered bouncing over on his way to kindergarten.
This wasn’t one of his marbles. And yet, here it was, in a moment when he needed its reassuring coolness most. That couldn’t be a coincidence.
Vijay Bhai stared at him calmly. “Try it, Ahmad,” he said quietly. “You can’t win this game unless you take chances.”
“These clouds worry me,” Winnie called from behind him. “We need to figure this out fast!”
“Hold on a moment!” Ahmad yelled back, cupping the marble in his hands as the moisture made his palms slippery. He needed to keep a good grip on it so he could think.
The rest of the equipment that Madame Nasirah had tucked into their satchels was proving to be useless in this challenge. But what if the marble was also part of that equipment? Was this what they were looking for?
“Winnie, I think I’ve got something!”
Winnie sloshed toward him, tossing out her arms to balance on the swaying deck. “What is it? What did you get?”
She squinted at the marble in his hand.
“A marble?” she asked. “How can that possibly help? These are giants, Ahmad.”
“It’s magnetic. I used to collect marbles when I was a kid. I’m sure of it. These guys are giants, but they are metal giants. This is the key, Winnie. I can feel it.”
Winnie’s brow was furrowed doubtfully. “Okay. I get that. But I’m not sure how something so small could be used to fish out those huge men.”
She glanced at Vijay Bhai, who had moved from his hair to wringing out his sleeve, and leaned in closer to whisper, “Also, you really need to explain this whole uncle but not an uncle thing to me.”
Ahmad nodded. It was a fair point, about fishing out the men, and one he hadn’t figured out yet—not that he could explain the whole Vijay thing either. He closed his hands over the marble and rubbed them together, feeling the marble slide over his skin. And then, he closed his eyes, too.
“Grow,” he whispered. “Please. Grow.”
“Uh, Ahmad . . . ,” Winnie began, and then gasped as the marble rolled out from between Ahmad’s fingers.
“No!” Ahmad cried, and reached out for it, but it toppled off the deck and into the water, without even a splash.
“So much for that,” Winnie sighed. “Sorry, Ahmad.”
Ahmad stared mournfully into the water. “It felt like we were on the right track,” he whispered.
The boat began to tremble, listing from side to side. Winnie and Ahmad grasped each other’s arms, and Ahmad felt Vijay Bhai grasp the back of his shirt.
“Steady,” Vijay Bhai warned.
“I think something is under the boat!” Winnie shouted.
The Machi Men, in a panic, were thrashing back and forth. The kids clung to each other as the water seethed around their small craft.
“We have to do something,” Winnie said angrily. “We can’t let them down like this.”
“But what else can we do? We’ve tried everything we were given.”
“Not everything . . . we could . . .” Ahmad frantically reached for his knapsack, tugging out the bag of food.
“That’s not going to do anything, Ahmad!”
“We don’t know that!” Ahmad flung out a soggy pita over the water. It sank. He tossed another.
“Ahmad. Ahmad, stop.”
Winnie grasped his arm, and then her jaw hung as she saw why Ahmad had actually stopped. The bread was growing, spreading out over the water like a flotation device—or maybe a very brown, very soggy piece of paper towel. As the water receded, there was something silvery and round and very large in its depths.
“The marble,” Ahmad whispered. “It is magnetic.”
The Machi Men clung to it, and Ahmad and Winnie watched as metallic lips turned upward and unhinged jaws clacked together happily.
“It’s working, it’s working!” Winnie squealed, tapping Ahmad’s arm excitedly.
As soon as the last Machi Man was attached to the marble, it started rolling toward the boat. Ahmad’s and Winnie’s joy died quickly.
“That thing is going to crash into the side of the boat, Titanic-style!” Winnie shrieked.
Ahmad was already drawing down his hoodie, letting the water spatter against his bare head.
“Ahmad, what are you doing?” Winnie demanded.
“Winnie, I need you to grab hold of my legs and pull me back into the boat once I’ve been able to touch the marble and make it shrink back again,” Ahmad said calmly, rolling up his sleeves.
“Are you serious? Ahmad, that water is churning! It’ll just sweep you away!”
“It’s that or we pull the marble aboard and let the boat sink with the weight of it,” Ahmad pointed out. “I’ll be fine. Can I trust you to keep a firm grip?”
“I’ll hold on to the oars,” Vijay Bhai added from behind them. “Along with your”—he peered at T.T. and the mouse gave him an anxious look—“other friend.”
Winnie stared hard at Ahmad and then sighed.
“Of course I won’t let go of you.”
“I know you won’t. So we’re both good,” Ahmad said, smiling.
He took a deep breath and leaned over the side of the boat, waiting until he could feel Winnie get a grip on his legs. He reached out, farther and farther. He could see the reflection of his face in the marble’s shiny surface. If he could just stretch out his fingers . . .
“Thank you for your service,” he grunted, reaching out, “but I’m going to need you to . . . shrink!”
His fingers connected. Beneath them, the marble shrank, tumbling for the water. He made a final lunge and caught it between his hands, complete with the mini Machi Men attached to its sides.
“I’ve got it!” he crowed. His joy was short-lived as he realized he was teetering for balance.
“Ahmad!” Winnie cried, but he was already underwater. The river ran into his mouth, weirdly briny in a way that reminded him of pickles. He choked and sputtered and gasped for air. His lungs felt like there were pins and needles jabbing into them. Was this what it felt like to drown?
He tried to focus on keeping the marble between his fingers, but he could hardly feel his fingers from the shock and sting of the cold water.
After a few seconds he was yanked upward, gasping and coughing, back into the boat.
“I can’t believe you,” Winnie scolded him, anxiously patting him on the shoulders. “That was the bravest and most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen someone do in my life. Boys, I tell you.”
But Ahmad was only focused on his hands. “I lost it,” he chanted unhappily. “I lost it, I lost it, I lost . . . no, I didn’t lose it!”
He held up the marble triumphantly. Th
e metallic, now miniature Machi Men attached to its sides waved their arms and hands.
Grinning widely, Winnie and Ahmad waved back.
“We did it, Winnie,” Ahmad said, sniffling.
Winnie laughed. “Now to get you dried off!”
But before they could make another move, the water abruptly slid away from the ship, receding so that they could see—once again—the long dock and alleyways of the shore.
And, hovering dramatically, without a hair out of place or a droplet on her sleeve, was the MasterMind.
CHAPTER TEN
WELL DONE, CHAMPIONS!” THE MasterMind said, extending both arms forward toward Winnie and Ahmad with a gleeful smile on her face.
She was floating on a decked-out hoverboard, framed on every side with incredible blasters and iridescent lights. Standing there like that, she looked she was trying to be a jovial uncle at Eid, the type that pinched your cheek and smacked your back and stuffed a sweet in your mouth while pressing money in your hand.
She totally failed. Particularly since no uncle Ahmad knew, even the ones with questionable taste, ever wore zebra-print leggings with a rainbow T-shirt that had “Bad things come in small packages” across the front. She was also wearing one of those bucket hats he usually saw sweet grandmas in Chinatown wearing on really sunny days.
“Who is this clown?” Vijay Bhai muttered out of the side of his mouth.
Ahmad sighed. “Our worst nightmare.”
Vijay Bhai gave a low chuckle. “I’ve seen worse.”
Winnie crossed her arms over her chest. She would have looked intimidating if it wasn’t for her soaked hair and flushed face. “You seem like you enjoyed all that trouble you caused it.”
The MasterMind smirked. “You’re right. I do.”
She stepped elegantly forward, and with every footfall, the water seemed to cringe back from direct contact with so much as the tip of her boots. Even it was nervous around her. Ahmad swallowed hard.
“You’re supposed to entertain us, and though that was a nice appetizer, I feel we can do better during the next round,” the MasterMind said. “Of course, now the training wheels are off. I didn’t work my fingers to the bone for you guys to traipse around all sweetness and light and occasional tea breaks.”