by Nafiza Azad
The boy and I stare at each other for a long moment. He is beautiful, so looking at him is no hardship. I notice that he has scars on one side of his face. I have scars too, though mine are all in places not visible to the eye. He is taller than I remember. Slender but solid. He moves with a fluidity that is kin to flowing water.
“I saved myself,” I tell him in lieu of a greeting. I might as well get it over with now. I don’t want any man taking the credit for my fight, for my life. He just opened a door for me; I stepped through that door all by myself. Actually, he didn’t even open that door. He just gave me a key.
The boy’s lips quirk and oh my goodness, he is dazzling. There is something broken about his smile, though. Like his lips aren’t quite at ease with what they’re doing. I know the feeling.
“I am glad you did,” he says. His voice has a bit of the night in it.
“What’s your name?” I can’t keep calling him “boy.” That’s rude. I’m a very polite young-old woman.
“Taraana,” he replies softly, as if he’s telling me a secret. Oh no, I am going to swoon. Wait, no, I am calm. He comes to stand beside Assi, who looks very much like his bodyguard. I bet she makes a good one with those sharp teeth of hers. Actually, all the middle worlders accompanying Assi and Taraana look like they could hold their own in a fight. One that doesn’t include screams. We could totally beat them.
“My name is Paheli,” I say brightly, keeping a smile on my face. “Starting from the right are: Widad, Daraja, Kamboja, Areum, Talei, Valentina, Etsuko, Sevda, Ghufran, and Ligaya. Collectively, we are known as the Wild Ones.…” He listens with rapt attention. It’s embarrassing. I clear my throat. “Thank you for the stars. You gave a chance to escape not just to me but to all my sisters. We owe you something. Ice cream?”
Something like wonder slips into the boy’s—sorry, Taraana’s—face as he looks at all of us once again and stays for a second before fading. He doesn’t seem to know how to respond to my gratitude. For some reason, this makes me like him more. But that’s not important at this moment. I narrow my eyes. What if the reason he called us here is because he wants his stars back?
“Why did you want to meet us? Why now? You could have reached out to us, to me, at any time in the past, but you didn’t. Why?” Perhaps my questions seem too aggressive, because Assi and her companions bristle. My sisters gather closer to me, and I wonder if I’m going to be handling blood. I hope not. I am wearing one of my favorite dresses.
Taraana places a hand on Assi’s shoulder and the woman glows. Whoa. I wonder what their relationship is. Or maybe the boy makes everyone he touches glow. He seems like he would.
“I will tell you, but…” He pauses, so I seize the chance.
“But not here,” I say. I look around the dark garden, bare of any flowers. The dark house promises ghosts, and I’m not in the mood to entertain hauntings. I want to talk to this boy but not in this place.
“It is not safe to talk elsewhere,” Assi says before the boy, Taraana, has a chance to respond.
“Why?” Valentina asks.
“That…,” the boy says, looking at Assi, hesitating.
“What if I promise that we’ll keep him safe?” I say, and my sisters look at me as if I’ve just announced that I’m giving up desserts.
“How can we take your word for it? Do you think you’re strong enough to resist the monsters chasing him? Chasing us?” the middle worlder woman with green thorns sticking out of her neck says.
“Do you want a demonstration of our powers?” Our hotheaded Ligaya takes umbrage at the woman’s words.
“Fine, if you’re not willing, we’ll leave,” I say, and nod at Areum, who lays her open palm on the garden wall.
“Wait,” Taraana says, and we all look at him. He tugs at his collar and lowers his head. “I’ll go with you.”
“No, you won’t.” Assi immediately overrides him.
“Yes, I will, Assi. I need to do this.” His voice is firm, and the feather-haired woman’s lips flatten.
She looks at me, and her gaze promises to tear me into thin strips before she roasts me. Her gaze is very eloquent. “Keep him safe and bring him back.”
I look at the boy and raise both my eyebrows. He doesn’t seem to find her domineering. Huh. I wouldn’t like her attitude if I were him, but I’m not and I never will be. I just need to know what he has to say, and then I can return him to her and continue on my way. No big deal.
The boy walks over to me. He looks so lost that he reminds me of my girls. I grab his hand, intending to comfort. It’s an unconscious action and I mean to let go after I squeeze it, but he latches on. Great job, Paheli. He’s going to become a duckling and follow me around.
“Okay, let’s go. We’ll bring him to you once our conversation is done,” I tell the glowering Assi, and ignore the other middle worlders.
Areum places her right palm on the wall we were leaning against, and a second later, the lines of a rectangular door dissect the wall. She opens it and we follow her into the Between.
Besieged in the Between
We breathe easier in the Between. We are safer here than anywhere else in any of the worlds.
Widad suddenly hisses. “Look at the boy!”
As we turn to him, the golden light of the Between flickers and the hum of it grows louder, warmer. Taraana is enveloped in this golden light; it enters his skin and seems to flow through it so he looks like he’s going supernova.
Taraana looks back at us, the stars in his eyes so bright that we wonder if they will spill over. His face has a pained expression, which strangely enough is reflected on Paheli’s face. Then we see that he is squeezing her hand tight.
“Oi.” Paheli pulls her hand out of his grasp. “Are you having a moment?”
Daraja gives Paheli a look and asks Taraana kindly, “Are you okay? Is this the way the Between always reacts to you?”
He nods jerkily. “It sort of feels as if someone has called you on the phone, and though you can hear their voice, you can’t understand a word they are saying, even though they are speaking your native language.”
“We cannot stay here,” Valentina says, ignoring the other two. “That fish-scaled middle worlder concerns me. It felt like their motive was more than casual observation.”
“Where do we go?” Talei turns to Paheli.
Before Paheli can speak, however, a voice we haven’t heard in a long while says, “I’d like to go to Jiufen.” It is our Ghufran. Her voice is a wisp.
“Then we’ll go to Jiufen,” Paheli replies. “Let’s move.”
Taraana doesn’t seem to have much of an opinion on our destination. Even if he does, he keeps it to himself. He looks like he is ill at ease in the Between; his shoulders are drawn together as if he is suffering some kind of pain. Paheli, in a rare act of mercy, allows him to hold her hand again.
Sometimes the Between splits off into different passages leading to different places in the world. While the distance we walk is not comparable to the distance the cities are from each other in the physical world, there is a relative distance between a door leading to Jbeil compared to a door leading to Jiufen. The magic directs us to the door we want to go to. Sort of like a GPS system without the annoying voice.
We have been walking for an hour when the doors around us all open at the same time. First comes the odor of two-day-old fish going bad in the sun, and then we see the creatures to whom this reek belongs. At first glance, these middle worlders are identical to the fish-scaled man we saw in the old souk in Jbeil, but an unavoidably closer look pronounces the marked difference between them. The middle worlders surrounding us have fish eyes and no noses, just gills in their necks. Their bodies are scaled, but not silver. The scales are a dirty gray, and covered by a thick mucuslike substance.
They surround us, and we in turn surround Taraana, making a wall between him and these middle worlders.
“What do you want from us?” Paheli asks one of the scaled men. His fish lips ope
n and close, but he doesn’t say a word. Well, okay.
A minute into the siege, we hear footsteps. The fishy middle worlders on the right move apart, and we see a human-shaped middle worlder standing at a distance from us. Even with the space between us, we can feel the contempt he has for us. He is tall with broad shoulders and hair liberally sprinkled with gray. His cheeks are heavily scarred, so the beard on his face is uneven and patched. He is wearing a plain black shalwar kameez. Sooty eyelashes ring eyes that are unlike any others we have seen before. Even Taraana’s starry eyes are overshadowed by the strangeness of this middle worlder’s eyes. You see, a river flows in this man’s eyes.
That doesn’t make sense, does it? But that’s exactly what his eyes feel like. Everyone else’s eyes are still pools, but this man’s eyes move like the surface of a river. The malice in his inhuman eyes is practically a scream in the still air. The voices in the Between fade a little, as if the corridor, too, is paying attention.
This, then, is our as-yet-unnamed villain. He looks through us at Taraana, who stumbles as if reacting to the man’s gaze.
The man smiles. It is not a pretty sight. “It has a been a while, boy. Have you enjoyed playing outside?”
His voice is gravelly, and we all never want to hear it again. Alas, we aren’t going to be that lucky. We look at Taraana and find him frozen, as if his ability to talk has suddenly disappeared.
“What, have nothing to say to me? I’m hurt.” The man smiles again, enjoying Taraana’s distress. We bristle, but it is as if we are invisible to the middle worlder.
“Bring them all to the Bhool Bhulaiyaa,” he says to the scaled middle worlders, and turns to go.
“This is the Between.” Paheli speaks before anyone can make a move. “You should leave us alone.” Her voice is the quiet before a storm.
“Or what? You think you have enough magic to oppose me?” The man scoffs. Without another word, he lifts a hand and sends a force, composed of magic, our way. However, we are made of the same stuff as the Between, and the Between is made of magic. Magic won’t harm itself. Space shrinks around the man, and the magic force he exerted returns to him, boxing him into a small sphere without any air in it. He gasps for breath.
Seeing his situation, the scaled middle worlders move toward us. In response, we scream. When we scream, the Between shudders. Our screams melt into each other, so sharp and piercing, they become a weapon. The scaled middle worlders collapse and turn into liquid while the man, with his hands over his ears, opens the nearest door and escapes through it.
Tea, the City of Stairs, and the Story of a Boy
Jiufen is a small mining town not far from Taipei. We follow Kamboja out of the Between into a narrow alley that leads to the stairs that Jiufen is mainly composed of. The sun is nowhere to be seen, but a glance at a clock reveals the time to be a little after ten in the morning. A light rain is falling—not that this deters any of the tourists that fill the old streets of the town.
We walk up many flights of stairs, through twisted alleys, stopping every so often to sample some snacks from the many food vendors (the barbecued mushrooms are delicious), until we finally arrive at a long, dark tunnel. Taraana looks apprehensive, but we sail through it, determined not to give in to the fear stalking our heels. It is not every day that our travels are interrupted by murderous middle worlders, after all. On the other side of the tunnel is a multileveled teahouse that belongs solely to the middle world and is patronized only by beings of the magical variety. This teahouse sits on one of the peaks of Jiufen and boasts views not possible at any other place in the vicinity.
We have been frequenting this teahouse for decades now; the owner, a not-human woman we call Ah Mei, is a friendly sort as long as you don’t ask her any questions. The teahouse is deserted at this time of the day, so Ah Mei seats us at a coveted spot on the balcony facing the bay. She gives Taraana a once-over, looking at his starry eyes a bit longer than we are comfortable with. But she doesn’t say or do anything else and leaves us to deliberate over the menu.
The view of the sea and the little islands dotting the horizon is obscured today, but the rain provides an atmosphere more conducive to the conversation we are about to have. All of us are reeling from our experience with the man in the Between; Ghufran is shaking, so Daraja and Sevda sit on either side of her, giving her comfort and security with their proximity.
Taraana draws away from Paheli for the first time since we met him and sits a small distance from the rest of us. He lifts his trembling fingers to touch his face and takes a deep breath before raising his head. We meet his gaze without speaking. Before we talk, we order, and a little later our tea, accompanied by small plates of mochi, sesame crackers, and green tea cakes, is served. We sip the fragrant beverage from ceramic cups and wait. What we know, but the boy made of stars probably doesn’t, is that the tea served here makes conversations flow easier. He looks like he needs all the help he can get.
Taraana clears his throat and takes a sip of the tea. The lights in his eyes are dim. He has this habit of folding in on himself when he wants to deflect attention. When we made our way through the long winding streets, strung with large red lamps and full of humans, he walked as if he were made of air. We walk as if the roads and the paths we take should be glad we chose them. Then again, we had to learn not to apologize for the space we occupy in the world.
Taraana clears his throat again; his cheeks are flushed. “Earlier,” he says, “I could have taken care of myself. I…” His voice wobbles.
“Being afraid is not a weakness, Taraana.” Paheli wraps her hands around her cup of tea. “In our world, feeling fear is being intelligent because fear keeps you sharp. Fear keeps you ready.” She pauses and looks at him. “Fear keeps you alive.”
Taraana bows his head and shuts his eyes as if letting her words soak into him. Then he looks up and we glimpse the smile on his face. It devastates us, not only because it is beautiful but also because it is made of so many broken things.
“Before I tell you my story, let me ask you what you know about the particularities of the middle world,” he says.
Valentina looks askance at him. “You mean how the not-human men and women are organized in the middle world?”
He nods. Valentina glances at Paheli.
“Aren’t they divided into clans according to the element from which they harvest magic?” Talei asks suddenly. “Eulalie has some books about the middle world in the house library. I read that each clan has a keeper who has the power to harvest magic from a specific element or a natural metal or stone like copper or gold. These keepers have the responsibility of distributing the magic they harvest to all their clan members. The book said there are keepers of land, sea, air, metal, river, and whatnot.”
“The mark of their office is in their eyes,” Ligaya adds, and we stare at her. “What? I read too, you know!” Yes, if forced. But we are nice and say nothing.
“So that man in the Between…” Etsuko raises an eyebrow at Taraana.
“His name…” Taraana stops and swallows. It doesn’t seem to help, so he gulps down some tea and tries again. “His name is Baarish. He is the Keeper of the Rivers and Lakes in Uttar Pradesh. He is also known as the Dar.”
“Ah!” Widad blinks. Her curls are out of control in this weather. “Dar from the Urdu word ‘daria’?” When we look at her, she explains. “ ‘Daria’ means river in Urdu and Hindi.”
“Yeah.” Taraana nods. “Being the Dar means being the head of a clan that functions primarily on magic harvested from rivers and lakes.”
“So why does this Dar, this Baarish, want to capture you?” Paheli asks.
“To tell you that, I need to tell you the story of a boy. Will you listen?” he asks. We lean closer and do.
Taraana was born to human parents in a small village in India. They knew nothing about the middle world that existed around them. They had no idea their child was made of magic and had a fate beyond what they imagined possible. Taraana gre
w up in abject poverty, surrounded by hungry siblings and helpless parents until he was about six years old. His life took a turn for the worse shortly after his sixth birthday.
“There was a lake near my village,” Taraana continues. “I used to spend hours on its shore, playing. People left me alone there, you see. That day, I remember it was raining, and my parents told us to stay home while they went out to beg from house to house with my youngest brother. It was stifling at home; we lived in a one-room shack that leaked and had no windows. My brothers played rough, and I was often on the wrong side in fights. So, I ran away to the lake. I didn’t mind the rain.
“I stayed by the lake for hours. I hunted for sticks, ate some berries, and found shelter under a peepul tree. I fell asleep there. I don’t know how much time passed before some voices woke me up. When I walked back to the lakeshore, I found”—he stops again and squeezes his eyes shut for a brief moment—“two men standing there. One of them was the man you saw earlier.”
“What did he do to you?” Ghufran asks, and we are surprised by her voice all over again.
“You see the stars in my eyes?” We nod. “Apparently the presence of the stars marks me as the Keeper of the Between.…” He scoffs.
“Is that why the Between was flooding you with light?” Paheli asks.
“I don’t know. I don’t know what a Keeper of the Between does or is. All these stars have given me is grief,” Taraana spits out. “I hate the Between.”
We exchange shocked glances. The place is like home to us.
“But why did Baarish want you? Or rather, why does he still want you?” Etsuko asks. When she sees Taraana flinch at the question, she grimaces and mutters, “Sorry.”
He shrugs away her apology and continues with the story we derailed him from. Baarish recognized Taraana by the stars in his eyes, something usually only visible to middle worlders, and bought him from his parents, who were only too happy to exchange one of their children for monetary compensation.