by Karuna Riazi
“In spite of all your little games and tricks,” Ahmad responded sharply. “Maybe you’re losing your touch!”
The Architect puffed out his chest. “If anything, I’m stronger. I was weaker before, easily cowed and devastated by the game’s undoing. But it’s a new day, and you’d better prepare with everything you have. I’m not one to throw down the dice lightly, and every turn of this world will bring a twist of fate to light.”
There was a dramatic pause.
“Oh, great,” Winnie said, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “Wait, what happened?”
When Ahmad reached out and tapped the silent Architect on the shoulder, his fingers slipping right through the apparition, he shuddered back to life.
“Well, I’m pleased to see . . .”
“He’s a hologram,” Ahmad said grimly. “Apparently, he couldn’t be bothered to come and greet us himself.”
“In a way,” T.T. said from behind them, and they both jumped. He had a tendency to appear out of nowhere, quiet as a mouse. “This is one of his new Shades—stop touching it, Ahmad!”
Winnie clutched Ahmad’s shoulder. “Yes, don’t bother with it. He’s trying to scare us. I see a path. I think that is where we are supposed to go next.”
“Ahem. Yes. I shall guard the boat in the meantime,” T.T. said, stroking his whiskers, perhaps enticed by the lure of more chenna murki.
Ahmad and Winnie eyed him, and he recoiled defensively. “Listen! I may be fierce, but inside my heart, I am still little. I’m just a mouse in a big, very hungry world. You’re human. You’ll be fine.”
“And what about Vijay Bhai?” Ahmad asked anxiously. “Do you know where he went?”
T.T. tittered nervously. “Ah, yes, well . . . he said he had a new idea about where to locate his balloons, and a few things he wanted to investigate. Don’t wait for him. He is not officially a player, you see.”
“I’m sure he’ll be fine, Ahmad,” Winnie said soothingly. “Like T.T. said, he’s not a player so that means the game will probably save all its nasty tricks for us and leave him alone.”
“Was that supposed to be comforting?” Ahmad asked with a raised eyebrow.
“It’s all I’ve got right now, okay?”
Ahmad relented. “Okay. Fine. We’ll see you later,” he said to the giant, hungry mouse.
“Let’s go, Ahmad.”
They grabbed their knapsacks, clasped hands, nodded at each other, and started to wade through the underbrush.
The next challenge awaited.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A LABYRINTH BLOOMED FROM THE very ground as they gingerly tiptoed through the jungle. Shrubs brandished themselves out, sprouting heads of green hair. Before they could bloom, though, they were snipped neatly into natural fences by unseen hands.
Seeds clawed their way from the earth, became saplings and trees in the blink of an eye. Plants Ahmad could not identify hovered over trunks or spread out gaudy, highlighter-bright pastel petals toward the brooding sunrise.
Words glittered in the sky: TRIAL: ESCAPE THE MAZE!
A sprawling map began blinking in and out of existence beneath the words. Ahmad could just make out a small red dot that proclaimed YOU ARE HERE and a swallowing mass of greenery around it before it died away, vanishing as quickly as it had appeared.
“I guess we just have to make our way out,” he said.
“I was afraid you would say that. Ugh.” Winnie picked her way through two bushes, shaking her head. “I’m the worst at stuff like this—like, cornfield maze field trips to Long Island, you know? I usually skip those.”
Ahmad did too, but not because of the same troubles with navigation Winnie had.
“Well, at least we’re together,” Ahmad said. “Let’s just make sure we stay together and don’t get lost.”
Winnie was about to respond. Then her gaze turned upward. Her breath rushed out. “Ahmad. Don’t make any sudden moves.”
Ahmad glanced up automatically, then recoiled. A hideous monkey dangled down before them, baring its teeth. Its fur was mold-green and mottled with patches of pink, raw skin. Every other inch of its body was branded with stitches.
“Whoa. It’s a total Frankenstein,” Ahmad said out of the corner of his mouth.
“Whatever it is, I don’t like the looks of it!” Winnie whisper-shouted.
It hissed. Ahmad tossed his knapsack at it.
“Stay back!” he yelled.
That turned out to be a mistake. The creature’s eyes narrowed in on the satchel, and it snagged the handle.
“Hey!” Winnie hollered. “Let go!”
It became a tug-of-war.
“Big mistake, big mistake, big mistake,” Ahmad chanted as the thing’s grasp on the bag became stronger. “Winnie! My fingers are slipping!”
Winnie backed up, looking around her desperately.
“Okay, okay, um . . . Hey! Let go!”
From nowhere, a disembodied hand grasped her wrist, sending her shrieking. She managed to shake it off, backing away, while Ahmad won the bag back from the monkey, which darted up into the tree. Winnie tried to follow but made it only one branch upward before she gasped, losing her grip and falling out.
“Winnie, are you okay?” he asked.
Winnie only clapped the dirt off her pants while shaking her head.
“Nope. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.”
“What happened?” Ahmad demanded.
Winnie gestured with her head without looking up. “There’s a . . . ugh, I can’t say it.”
“What?”
Ahmad followed her gaze. Staring back at him, with nearly human annoyance, was a bird of paradise, its outlandishly long tail feathering back and forth just beyond the branch. He groaned.
“Oh, come on, Winnie. I thought it was a wild tiger or maybe a dragon waiting to roast us for breakfast.”
“Come on yourself,” Winnie snapped back. “I guess you haven’t had a proper encounter with a rat with wings.”
Ahmad’s brow furrowed. She sighed heavily. “Pigeons, Ahmad! Keep up!” She tapped each of her points onto a tip of her finger.
“They are filthy. They probably carry disease. They eat whatever they can get.” She looked properly annoyed—and disgusted. “Humans included.”
“I always thought they were kind of cute,” Ahmad reasoned. “And they know how to cross the street, which some adults can’t even do.”
Winnie stared at him. “They are literally called flying rats, Ahmad. Do you think rats are cute when they know how to use the crosswalk?”
Ahmad bit his tongue and shook his head again. “Well, at least we shook off that monkey. I think I can take on a bird if it decides to swoop at us. This isn’t even a pigeon. Let’s keep going.”
Winnie stomped after him as he continued on, but not before muttering, “So they can get rid of the entire dream district, but they have to keep birds in the code? I hate this place.”
The bird wasn’t the half of it. They sidestepped pockets of quicksand and shouldered through bushes that seemed to grab at them from every angle.
“I am never going to complain about the Bronx Zoo again,” Winnie wheezed, pausing to run her fingers through the twigs tangled in her curls. “How far have we even gotten?”
Ahmad stared around him at the trees. “I really can’t tell. I hope we’re not going in circles. Wait, Winnie!”
He reached out and snagged her collar, dragging her behind the nearest tree trunk.
“What is it?” Winnie hissed wildly. “What’s going on now?”
Ahmad pressed a finger to his lips and gestured toward the path. They watched as a lumbering figure slouched past. It could have been human, almost, if it wasn’t for the creepy twist to its head—as though it were sitting on a broken neck—and the shuffling of its footsteps.
“Ghouls,” Ahmad whispered. A vague memory from one of his childhood nightmares flashed through his mind: a hideously leering face and rotting toes floating in front of his eyes, before he
was buried under a pile of moldy bones and dangerously sharp jewels. “Better watch out for those, too.”
Winnie rolled her eyes. “If they bother us, I’ll make sure they’re sorry they didn’t just rest in peace.”
Ahmad had to be impressed at the fact that she was not creeped out by ghouls but had a hard time with birds.
No one was perfect, but it comforted him to know that Winnie had her struggles.
They stopped to rest against a tree. Ahmad leaned into the satchel to get the water bottle.
“Oh no! Ahmad!”
Before Ahmad could react, a wiry, stitch-scarred hand had snatched up the satchel.
“Not again!” Ahmad groaned.
Winnie took off in hot pursuit and managed to grab the strap, along with the monkey’s tail. The monkey squealed, struggling and trying to scratch her while Ahmad gingerly tried to grab the water bottle on the other side.
“It’s dropped the satchel, but it has the puzzle piece! Get a good grasp on it!” Winnie gasped around a mouthful of fur.
“I’m . . . I’m trying!” Ahmad’s fingers scraped against the puzzle piece—once, twice. Finally, triumphantly, he grasped its neck and gave a good pull. It popped out of the jittering creature’s fingers and into his hands. He rushed to shove it back into the satchel.
The monkey gave one final swipe at Winnie’s hands and ran for cover. Ahmad rushed to her side. “Are you okay?”
Winnie looked at her clenched fingers for a moment, loosening them slightly to see what was inside. When she looked back up, her eyes were shining.
“Oh, I’m better than all right. Take a look at this!”
There, between her hands, was an elaborately carved puzzle piece. Ahmad furrowed his brow, confused. Hadn’t he just put it away?
It hit him.
“Wait . . . so this is—”
Winnie nodded, her eyes shining. “It’s the next one! See?”
Rather than the monkey’s head, this piece featured its curved plume of a tail. Winnie slipped it in the satchel alongside the other piece they retrieved from the ground.
“Let’s get out first. After that, we can figure out what we have to do to get the last piece,” Ahmad decided. Grasping the satchel as tightly as he could, with an uneasy eye on the trees, he took Winnie’s hand and led her out of the grasp of the trees.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
GETTING OUT OF THE forest was more complicated than they thought.
“Ugh! Just . . . stop!” Winnie shrieked as she batted her hands at a snake slithering up her leg. It flickered its pink tongue at her, eyes intent on the knapsack at her side. “Ahmad!”
“I’m trying!” Ahmad panted, trying to steady his grasp on the slippery leather of the snake’s tail. Every animal in this jungle seemed to be a pickpocket. Ahmad struggled to loosen the serpent’s death grip on Winnie, but it took a strategic stomp on its wiggly tail to send it scrambling back into the thicket.
If it wasn’t some wild creature, there were the ghouls. Ahmad couldn’t decide if they would be better if they actually tried to cause harm. Instead, they lurked out of view until they figured out the right moment to pop up, right in your face, and scare you silly.
“They are not going to get me this time,” Winnie said fiercely after the third ghoul had scampered off, leaving them both shaking at the knees. “You hear me? You are not going to—ahhh!”
That wasn’t even the last time.
“Think positive,” Ahmad said to himself firmly. “Think fun. This is a game, right? Games are supposed to be fun!”
“This game didn’t get the message,” Winnie groaned.
He couldn’t argue with her. It was as though Paheli was determined to ruin things that should have been, in theory, quite entertaining. Being chased by ghouls was perfect in a haunted house. Seeking out puzzle pieces wasn’t a bad way to spend an afternoon.
Putting that together with angry birds and zombie monkeys in the middle of the hottest, most tangled jungle ever known to man?
Well, there was really no way to put a good spin on that situation.
A wrong turn here, a twisted pathway there, and more than a few monkey fistfights later, Ahmad and Winnie broke free of the forest’s grasp.
Winnie let out a sigh of relief at the sight of the entrance to the souk. “Oh good. We’re back to civilization,” Winnie said.
“Or as close as we can get right now, anyways,” Ahmad pointed out. He took the puzzle piece from Winnie and turned it in his hand thoughtfully. “I guess our next step is figuring out what we do with these once we have them. That monkey was pretty intent on swiping these.”
“That can be your next step. If I remember correctly from your map, Madame Nasirah is right down this corner. And I’m starving.”
“Really? After all the fuss over the tea last time?” Ahmad asked.
Winnie’s face pinked. “It was actually good tea,” she muttered. “And don’t you want to find out what happened to your uncle?”
Ahmad felt a guilty twinge. With all the battling they’d done to get through their challenge, he had forgotten about Vijay. Winnie was right. Madame Nasirah’s shop was the most likely place for him to wind up, particularly in a world that had changed since the last time he was part of it.
“All right, then,” he agreed. “Let’s go.”
It turned out to be farther than they assumed. They jostled their way through the crowd of holograms, watching shops appear, flicker, and disappear, and crowds of holograms gather and wander and bump right into them. It seemed like the people of Paheli had nothing else to do besides perpetually shop, all day, every day.
Hours had passed, or so it felt, by the time the kids staggered through the entrance of Madame Nasirah’s shop. They dusted themselves off and collapsed onto the cushions, letting their heads loll back as they took a moment to breathe.
Madame Nasirah bustled out of the back entrance.
Ahmad smiled, readying the greeting on his lips—and there, the words froze. Because the woman was indeed holding her familiar teapot, but the look on her face bore not a drop of recognition.
“Oh my!” she crooned. “New players! Why, it must be an age since I’ve seen some young faces in the game. Welcome, welcome! Just give me a moment and we’ll have some hot tea—chai for you, and lemon for you—and get down to brass tacks.”
“Madame Nasirah—” Ahmad said.
“Why, why yes! Hmm, I suppose with all these new gadgets and doodads, they probably have to add in an instruction manual or two to keep the players’ heads on straight. I am indeed Madame Nasirah, your Gamekeeper, and I am here to let you know how—”
The words and the woman both froze. It took Ahmad a moment to realize that Winnie was standing there, grasping Madame Nasirah’s wrist. He hadn’t even noticed her slinking forward, eyes narrowed and jaw set.
“That’s enough, Madame Nasirah,” Winnie said, holding the woman’s gaze steadily. “Cut the act. It doesn’t suit you.”
“I have no idea what—”
Winnie held on, it seemed a little more tightly, and continued to stare in a way that would have had Ahmad shifting uncomfortably in his own skin.
“Yes. You do. Believe it or not, I know a lot about people pretending. I know about them pretending things are okay when things really aren’t. I know about them acting like they can’t see you when they can. I know that really well.”
Something else occurred to Ahmad. “Wait! You remembered our tea orders, too! And you haven’t poured from the pot yet!”
“I don’t know—” Madame Nasirah started indignantly, but Winnie shook her wrist.
“Don’t lie to us. You know who we are.”
After a long, charged moment, Madame Nasirah looked away and shook her head wryly. The pot bobbed up and down in her hands. A grim smile tugged at her lips.
“Yes. You’re right. I do. I’m sorry, my dear. There are certain roles I must take on in this world, as do you. But you will continue to find that out for yourself.”<
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“Why?” Ahmad persisted. Winnie kept her hard gaze fixed on Madame Nasirah, seemingly more angry than anything else. But Ahmad felt shaken. Having Madame Nasirah not recognize them after a whole sea of people knocking into them with their elbows and shopping bags was more than scary.
It felt as though they had lost the entire game, and it was the first day of the rest of their life in Paheli. An endless cycle of days destined to repeat themselves.
Madame Nasirah sighed.
“There is never a moment where you are not watched here. Every weakness revealed is a chink in your armor to cast a spear through. Every wrong step will lead into an uneven cobblestone being placed in that very spot so you can trip again. And remember, there’s someone who enjoys your pain enough to want to see it replayed.”
“That is terrible,” Ahmad whispered. “There’s no moment to entirely be yourself.”
“If I’ll be honest with you, Ahmad . . .” Madame Nasirah paused. She suddenly looked very tired and very old. “I am no longer sure when I was last myself. But I try. All of Paheli tries, from day to day.”
Ahmad nodded and put a hand on the old woman’s arm.
They had to win. For her and everyone else who lived in this city.
“Even the Gamekeeper gets treated that way?” Winnie finally spoke up.
Madame Nasirah looked at her and nodded. “There’s no one here who isn’t a pawn for the Architect.”
They sat in silence for a moment until Madame Nasirah cleared her throat and tried to muster up a smile.
“Well then, enough about that. You’re just in time for fresh falafel sandwiches and some of my homemade hummus. Eat up and please make the shop your home for the night.”
“We appreciate that,” Ahmad said. Winnie was oddly silent.
“Good, then.” Madame Nasirah tugged aside the curtains and looked out at the beautiful neon city and the circling sand winds, her brow furrowing. “Because I have a feeling you’ll need a good rest to face whatever comes for you in the morning.”
Before she could leave, a thought occurred to Ahmad.