by Karuna Riazi
“Wait, Madame Nasirah!”
The woman turned and looked at him expectantly.
“Did you happen to see my—ow, ow, ow!”
Winnie smiled pleasantly as her heel pressed firmly into Ahmad’s toes.
“He was wondering if he left his lantern here, but I have it right here in my knapsack. You should have checked both bags, silly!”
Ahmad grunted between clenched teeth.
Madame Nasirah chuckled and shook her head. “You kids.”
As she moved into the kitchen, Ahmad grabbed Winnie’s shoulder and shoved her away.
“Hey, what was that for?”
“Sorry,” Winnie said with a wince. “Was I too hard?”
“Of course you were—but whatever. What was going on there? Why didn’t you let me ask about Vijay Bhai?”
“Shh, keep it down!”
Winnie gazed anxiously toward the kitchen door, where they could see Madame Nasirah humming to herself as she arranged their meal on one of her wide silver trays. Ahmad’s stomach growled as he caught sight of a heaping platter of pita, topped with generously spiced chicken breasts.
“I don’t know. Not yet. We need to stay alert. There’s just something about this that doesn’t feel right.”
“What do you mean by ‘this’?” Ahmad asked.
Winnie narrowed her eyes. “I just don’t know. Her little amnesia act, something about the way she looked at us to see whether or not we believed it. It just feels strange to me, Ahmad. Can’t you trust me on this one?”
She turned to him, her eyes pleading.
“We made a promise, remember?”
Ahmad huffed out a breath. He remembered, just as Winnie remembered how well he could draw in class and always seemed to think the best of him in spite of his overly quick tongue and how easily he could be distracted.
“Okay. I’ll follow your lead. But Vijay Bhai—”
“If he turns up, we explain it to her then,” Winnie rushed out. “But isn’t it weird to you? She’s supposed to know when new people enter the game, but she never mentioned him at all to you.”
“He’s not a player, though.”
Winnie waved it off impatiently.
“There’s no rest for us here, not when the rules keep changing,” Winnie said with a sigh. “We’ve got to stay alert so we can figure out what’s next. Keep your eyes and your ears peeled. Vijay Bhai will turn up, but in the meantime, we need to rest up for tomorrow.”
Ahmad was about to respond, but Winnie shook her head, silencing him as Madame Nasirah brought in the tray, humming to herself. “Your dinner, my dears. Eat up. You’ll need all your strength tomorrow.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
AHMAD AWOKE TO A scrabbling in the dark.
For a moment, a brief, irrational, blissfully warm moment, he thought it was mice. Of course. That’s what he got for sneaking snacks into bed during his late-night gaming sessions. Ma would be so mad at him.
I warned you about this! she would say.
After all, mice would be mice. The lure of food was absolutely irresistible to them, even in the wilds of the Upper East Side, where death traps lurked, well, everywhere.
Death traps.
Ahmad’s eyes snapped open.
He wasn’t in the Upper East Side. The mice—the kind guardians of their journey thus far—were a furry, softly snoring heap in the far corner of the room.
They had snuck in late, feasting on cake rusk and anxiously sharing their fears about the eerie stillness of the city while Ahmad and Winnie counted and recounted their equipment, tucking away their precious puzzle pieces.
“Not a soul to be seen in the souk!” one had squeaked.
Another chimed in, “And all the floating footbridges are empty!”
“Is that what those are?” Ahmad had broken in with interest, remembering the delicate structures he’d seen during their walking tour of Paheli, bobbing toward a group of pedestrians waiting impatiently on the roof of a skyscraper.
Winnie had nudged him in the ribs with her elbow.
“Ouch! Winnie!”
“Focus, you nerd,” she’d muttered without looking up. “I lost count.”
She didn’t seem as focused on her task as she claimed to be, though, and Ahmad had wondered if she was maybe just as unnerved as he was, hearing about the deserted streets outside.
“But everyone can’t be gone, right, T.T.?”
He’d turned to their intrepid mouse friend, who squeaked, cake rusk crumbs spilling down his sleek chin.
“What? Well—”
Ahmad had angled his chin toward Winnie and made wide eyes.
“Oh, yes, yes!” T.T. had chittered. “This has happened before. At least, I think it has. And all was perfectly fine in the end, I think! Sure, there were craters and avalanches and more sandstorms than you could shake your tail at, but . . . well.”
T.T. had definitely been no help.
But now, even Winnie dozed. Ahmad trained his eyes across the room, trying to make sense of the fuzzy shapes and sounds. Everything was quiet. Too quiet.
Madame Nasirah was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps she had curled up somewhere too, her shawls and layers forming a delicate chrysalis around her tired body.
No. It was just him, the artificial moonlight, the cluster of tea-related artifacts on every spare shelf and windowsill and countertop—
The shadowy figure, standing over his satchel.
“Hey!” Ahmad snapped, pulling himself upright. The figure froze. Ahmad rushed forward, determined to snatch its arm, but in a mere blink, it was gone.
Ahmad blinked. Everything was soft and still. Winnie hadn’t even stirred at his exclamation.
He rushed to the bag, yanking out the equipment and quietly taking stock. After a moment, he leaned back on his heels. Nothing was missing.
Nothing except for, of course . . .
He touched his pocket. The puzzle piece was there, a satisfyingly heavy lump of marble and jewel. He had taken the one with the elegantly curved monkey’s tail, bordered with ruby shards.
Winnie had tucked the other, with the monkey’s head and its polished gem eye, in her own pocket the previous night. Both of them locked eyes and nodded solemnly. Behind them, the mice watched and anxiously rubbed their paws together.
“The Architect is acting oddly,” Winnie had said then. “We can’t take any chances.”
“Are you sure this is necessary?” Ahmad ventured. He trusted Winnie, of course, who never misplaced her pencils on a test day or ran out of Scotch tape when she needed it most. But he couldn’t quite trust himself the same way.
“Ahmad,” Winnie had said softly. “Remember what Madame Nasirah told me. We have two enemies out there—maybe more. We can’t make ourselves enemies too.”
Her eyes had drifted toward the kitchen, and, even now, it struck Ahmad as odd. After all, Winnie had seemed to like Madame Nasirah, enough to suggest in the first place that they double back to the shop.
But they were in this together, and he had agreed not to tell the Gamekeeper anything. Even the transferring of the puzzle pieces had been done while her back was turned.
“Ahmad?”
Ahmad whirled around, drawing his hand quickly away from the hidden treasure. Madame Nasirah herself stood in the doorway.
“Is everything all right? It’s rather late to be up.”
“I thought I heard something out there,” Ahmad half lied, feeling guilty for the shakiness of his breath. He could feel his palms itching, that familiar twitch of anxiety and restlessness in his fingers. He jumped back from the wall as it suddenly shook with a gust of wind and the telltale scritching of sand.
“At least that is a familiar remnant of the old Paheli, as I always knew it to be.” Madame Nasirah reached past him, and he quickly moved back as she checked the shutters. “The sandstorms at all hours.”
“It was like this every day?”
“Well, particularly at night. It tends to be a sign of the Architect
’s temper. The weather is especially bad when things aren’t going his way.”
Ahmad’s brow furrowed. Winnie was right. Madame Nasirah had told them that to begin with. He felt unsettled but couldn’t explain why. They did have two puzzle pieces, after all, so the Architect should be seething or cooking up something particularly terrible for them to face next.
But all he had done was send a measly rabid zombie-monkey or two after them, and then sulkily refuse to sound the Minaret. Ahmad couldn’t quite unravel his reasoning.
Madame Nasirah stepped away from the window. Ahmad reached out to draw back the curtain.
“You won’t be able to see anything,” she warned. “The storms usually hit quite thick and hard at this hour.”
Ahmad looked out anyway. He couldn’t explain why. It felt like he had to witness what was out there.
The clouds of dust parted under his gaze.
Ahmad pressed himself against the glass, his eyes wide.
There was a small boy in the midst of the sand.
“Who is that?” he wondered aloud.
“What’s wrong, Ahmad?” Madame Nasirah’s hand landed on Ahmad’s shoulder, trying to draw him away. But he clung to the window frame.
“No! There’s someone out there!”
It was hard to make out the boy’s face, but his body was hunched and huddled down against the storm. He seemed scared. Lost. Alone.
Trapped.
Ahmad’s heart pounded. Was this a vision, a way of messing with him? If he kept staring, would the boy materialize into a small child with a cake-sticky mouth from a birthday party he, only moments ago, had been careening through? Would he have his father’s ears and his mother’s cheeks and tears streaking his face from crying for his big sister?
Was that dream . . . a real dream?
The sand died for just a moment.
Just a moment to realize that he was wrong.
It wasn’t a version of him, a younger Ahmad.
It wasn’t a memory, or a nightmare, or a trick.
It was the Architect.
He was smaller and thinner, but his clothing was well tailored, carefully stitched, and his face was still smugly round. His eyes, even through the storm, were locked on Ahmad’s.
They continued to stare at each other as the storm picked up once again. The Architect—or at least, this younger rendition—seemed to mouth something. Ahmad squinted.
What?
But before he could make out the words, the boy threw up his wrists to shield his face from the swirls of sand that spun around him. He faded away with the winds of the dying storm.
“Ahmad? Ahmad, are you all right?”
Ahmad turned around and faced Madame Nasirah. Underneath her protective layers of gauze and gathers, her expression was inscrutable.
“Didn’t you see—”
“See what?” She drew the curtains. “There are a great many things to be seen in the sand, and not many of them are true. Remember that, Ahmad. Most of this world, more than ever, is made up of smoke and glitter and dreams that will never come true.”
Ahmad couldn’t shake away the image of brown skin and dark hair vanishing into the whirling sand.
Was that an omen?
And if it was, what was it supposed to mean? A foretelling, or a cry for help? What type of game was this?
“Do you need tea?”
“No,” Ahmad said quietly. “I’m going to try and get sleep. Thank you, Madame Nasirah.”
But as he curled back up next to Winnie, the questions bubbling over in his mind were enough to keep him awake until the early hours of the morning.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
BY THE TIME MORNING—WITH its hustle and bustle on every street corner—had started to settle into early afternoon, Ahmad and Winnie were getting antsy.
They had attempted to make the corner of the tea shop that faced the Minaret their base. Nothing too fancy, just a nest of sheets and pillows and their knapsacks neatly tucked into a corner, ready to be claimed at a moment’s notice.
In spite of the previous night’s storm, the sky was clear and calm. Madame Nasirah, at least, had returned to high spirits, happily pouring tea and fresh steamed milk delicately from one of her etched carafes, served alongside hot spinach pies. It was not a comfort to Ahmad.
“Five . . . six . . . seven . . . ,” he mumbled to himself.
He anxiously fiddled with the satchel in his lap, taking inventory, making the hologram flare upward with its small blast of air that made Madame Nasirah jump and clutch her scarves.
Winnie, on the other hand, paced.
Back and forth and back and forth and back and forth.
It was on her fifth round through the tiny shop that Madame Nasirah put her foot down.
“Enough. If you need to stay busy, I’ll give you a task.”
Madame Nasirah reached into a drawer. Ahmad’s eyes widened as she pulled out sheets of blank paper.
“You like drawing maps of Paheli, right? Try and fill these in while you walk through the city. Keep track of what’s shifted during the night. It might be a clue as to what the Architect is planning.”
“Oh man!” It felt like years since he had gotten to chart out his beloved city—the Paheli that lived in his mind, rather than this waking nightmare. Ahmad eagerly took the sheets and the proffered pen that went with them.
“I wonder if I still know where everything goes!”
Winnie, however, narrowed her eyes suspiciously.
“You want a map of the city? But you’re the Gamekeeper! Shouldn’t you know where everything is? Or if it shifts?”
Ahmad tugged on Winnie’s arm, his ears burning. “Winnie!”
Madame Nasirah chuckled. “Gamekeeper in name alone, I’m afraid. The more you children move about this world, the more I’ve realized how much of it has transformed around me.”
Ahmad and Winnie looked at each other. Ahmad tried to telepathically message Winnie with his brain.
Knock it off.
It felt silly, jumping out of their skin at every word the woman said. After all, she was the only person in this world who had thought to help them at all. Could they really not trust her?
“All right,” Winnie decided. “We’ll help while we wait for the Minaret to sound. But we’re not going on foot.”
Ahmad didn’t like where this was going.
A few minutes later, he didn’t like the speed they were going either.
“Winnie! Winnie, slow down!” he hollered, clutching his seat rest with both hands and squeezing his eyes shut.
They had reclaimed their flying rickshaw, and Winnie was enthralled with playing pilot once again. “Oh, come on,” she scoffed. “Don’t be such a baby. My dad goes faster when we are on the L.I.E.”
Her foot pumped on the gas pedal as Ahmad peeked out from beneath his lashes. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to focus on keeping his very delicious breakfast down. His stomach lurched. And Vijay Bhai hadn’t turned up yet. There was no note, no awkward bumbling through the door, and no sign. It didn’t make sense.
Winnie insisted that the Gamekeeper shouldn’t know that his uncle was even in the game, but Ahmad was no longer sure. Shouldn’t they tell the one adult in here who actually cared if they were alive or dead? Maybe she was too focused on them to notice that Vijay Bhai had entered the game with them.
Winnie took a hard left and Ahmad’s head jerked against the glass. He blinked the stars out of his eyes.
“What happened?” he demanded.
Winnie turned and looked at him ruefully. “Traffic.”
Sure enough, there was a long line of floating cars trailing off into the near distance. Ahmad groaned and sunk into his seat.
“Great. It figures.”
“Never mind,” Winnie said sunnily, her smile returning to her face. “We’ve already seen most of this main avenue by foot anyway. How about we try and find a shortcut instead?”
Ahmad sat up straight. “Wait, I don’t think you sho
uld—Winnie!”
She was already steering out of the line, ignoring a few horns being blown in her direction—and man, it was weird that the sound was comforting to Ahmad—before sidling in between two buildings and cruising down an unfamiliar street.
For once, the car maintained a good speed, and Ahmad craned his head, looking down with interest. This street wasn’t full of the familiar shops. He did see what looked to be a restaurant or two: not with fancy metal tables outside or sunlit balconies, but small lines of people waiting eagerly for packed bags and little containers.
“Fast food,” he whispered to himself. It warmed him. Paheli still had some good city roots to it after all.
But something else caught his eye.
“Wait, Winnie. What’s that?”
He pointed, and then regretted it, as the entire car slid to the side along with Winnie’s eyes.
“The wheel! Keep hold of the wheel!”
“Okay, okay! Sheesh.” Winnie peered over it owlishly. “It looks like some sort of alleyway. We can go through it if you want.”
Ahmad could only nod. He was sure he’d seen a flash of bright neon blue, like the sparks that flew when you tried to plug a charger into a slightly dented and twisted wall socket. There was something down there.
Something different.
Winnie took the car down lower, and Ahmad gasped.
“Look at that!”
“Oh man,” Winnie muttered. “What is it?”
She descended to street level, narrowing her eyes as the car hovered.
“Dad always drew the line at me being able to parallel park, because he said he didn’t want to be part of the news story: ‘Twelve-Year-Old Steals Parents’ Car and Goes on Joyride Through Side of Building.’ But I don’t see why . . . Ahmad!”
She sighed as Ahmad, not waiting for the car to properly stop, leaped out the passenger side.
“It’s a doorway of some sort!” Ahmad called back over his shoulder giddily. There was a strange electricity sparking through him. It felt like when he spent hours wandering over terrain in a new video game, trying to find the next quest—and then, suddenly, his controller gave a little jiggle in his grasp or his character found a new path to go down, and the adventure continued.