The Wild Ones

by Nafiza Azad

  “He sells children,” I say. Widad’s face loses whatever color it had. “I heard him talking about stock. He meant children. Widad, he sells children.”

  Her hand clutches mine. It’s shaking. I squeeze it, but I need comfort myself.

  “You… You are going to go to the place they’re holding the children?” she asks, even though she knows my answer. I nod anyway. She falls quiet, thinking. “I’ll go with you. No, don’t say anything. Hear me out.” She squeezes my hand, and I get some of the comfort I need. “I’m scared, of course I am, but now that I know, how can I pretend I don’t?”

  Nothing else needs to be said.

  We leave the mansion quickly. Luck is on our side as the gates are open; we slip out, unseen by human eyes. After flickering into visibility in the shadows of a mango tree, we find a taxi willing to take us to the park named by Baarish’s son. It is a little after noon, and the sun is at its zenith; the heat crawls on our skin. The taxi driver drops us at the park, and after asking around, we find an enclosed area nearby containing a number of warehouses.

  We stand outside, invisible to humans once again, looking at the sun glancing off the corrugated tin roofs of the warehouses. To tell you the truth, even though it reveals me as the coward I am, I wish we had left before I heard what I did in Baarish’s study. I wish I hadn’t eavesdropped on them. I wish I could go back in time and tell myself not to.

  People talk a lot about courage and its expressions. But sometimes courage isn’t enough. Sometimes, no matter how much you yearn to do good, you cannot make yourself take that first step.

  I go down on my haunches and bury my head between my knees. I know I will have to see this through just as I know that what I will see in the next hour will destroy me a little. I can’t endure it when people exploit and hurt children, and here, they’re doing both.

  Hah.

  Widad says nothing, but I feel even guiltier. I should have thought harder before I brought her here.

  “Let’s go,” she says when I remain unmoving for five minutes.

  That first step is one of the most difficult ones I have taken. We walk softly but we needn’t have. No human guards stand at the gates, which are closed but not locked. The entire place has a deserted feel to it that would only fool the humans. You see, we can feel the magic.

  It leads us to a warehouse at the very end of a line of warehouses. The faint murmur of voices alerts us as we approach the building. We slow our steps and creep into the shadows cast by the empty warehouse right next to it. There are middle worlders standing at the entrance to that warehouse, watching something on their phones and blocking the way in. Though they are situated as guards, there’s a marked lack of caution against anyone trying to infiltrate the area. I, of course, have to take advantage of this carelessness.

  We move soundlessly into the alley between the two buildings and through it to the back of the warehouse. To our surprise, an unguarded small door is propped open at the back, perhaps to ease the heat inside. Signaling to Widad to stay behind, I slip through the door and into the warehouse. If I am seen, things will get troublesome. There’s no easy entry to the Between here. I could end up a prisoner, and Valentina will be forced to rescue me before she kills me.

  What’s living without risks?

  I blink in the dark interior. At first all I see are shadows, abstract colors, which then coalesce into cages on the uncovered cement floor, containing children, mostly girls, but some boys, too. Naked light bulbs dangle from the ceiling, barely illuminating the large space. As far as I can see, there are five children crammed in each cage. Their faces are streaked with tears, and their clothes are dirty and torn. They are skin stretched tightly over bones. Their eyes…

  Have you ever seen eyes without hope, without life?

  This is not the first time I have seen children stripped of their humanity and locked up as products for sale. It probably won’t be the last, either. But every single time I come across something like this, I lose a little of myself.

  Baarish, dressed up and hiding the monster inside, is walking around the warehouse, inspecting the cages and nodding in approval. His son preens beside him. Are the children inside invisible to him? How much of yourself do you have to lose to become this evil?

  Another middle worlder, a not-human man, stands beside the two with a staff that looks very much like Josefa’s in his hands. He moves to the front of a cage, raises the staff, and intones what sound like incantations. Nothing happens. After consulting with Baarish, he opens a cage and drags a child out. A girl. He takes out a dagger and I stop breathing. The need to march over and snatch the child from him almost overpowers me. I can’t make a move. Not yet. The man slices the girl’s arms, and she wails in pain. He anoints his lips with her blood and retries the incantations. Once again, nothing happens. With a scowl, he throws the girl back into the cage. She curls up in a corner and cries.

  The Dar and his son exchange a few more words with the magic user before exiting the warehouse. They are soon driven away by the chauffeur of their imported car. Left behind are the magic user, the few guards, and the children. The middle worlders clearly don’t expect anyone to make trouble for them. They must have done this many times before; their actions are relaxed, betraying no guilt, horror, or caution.

  I return to Widad, thankful that she had stayed behind.

  “What did you see? What do we do?” she whispers as soon as she sees me.

  If we scream while invisible, our screams will only affect the middle worlders. All right. Finally, something is going right.

  “I will scream while you go to the park and send all humans you see in this direction. Tell them to call the people they know. Tell them to call the media. Can you do that?” I ask her.

  “Why don’t we call the police?”

  “They’re unreliable. Some of them have already been bribed to look the other way.”

  “All right.” She glares at me. “Don’t take risks.”

  “I would never.” I find a smile for her. “Go!”

  Once she’s gone, I slip back inside the warehouse and find a particularly dark corner. I ready myself and take the biggest breath I can. I feel the scream swell up inside of me; it rushes up my throat, into my mouth, and out. My scream, heavy with magic and sharp with anger, pierces through the air and into the unwary ears of Baarish’s henchmen.

  First, they will be surprised. Then, elated because their bodies are filling up with magic. Horror will come quickly, however, because their bodies will fill beyond capacity. Finally, they will feel pain. Pain as they’ve never felt before. Pain as they will never feel again. They won’t die. I refuse to give them that satisfaction. I have been a Wild One for a very long time, you see. Even Valentina’s scream cannot match the lethality of mine.

  My throat is raw and my cheeks are damp when I finish and open my eyes again. All the middle worlders are on the floor, jerking as if they’ve received an electric shock that has cooked their brains. Well, that is not exactly incorrect. The children are frightened, and were I someone else, I would offer them comfort. But I don’t because I can’t. Because I won’t. I return to the alley, lean against the wall, and wait.

  I don’t wait long. Two middle-aged women, dressed in bright saris, arrive first. They march into the warehouse and scream at the sight of the children. In the next moment, they’re on their phones. Other humans make their way over in the following minutes, and soon there’s a brouhaha brewing. The media arrives before the police.

  I find Widad near the gate leading out of the area.

  “You did well,” I tell her. “Let’s get out of here.”

  We take a taxi back to the city center, and Widad leads me to a dessert store where we order too much mithai and two glasses of mango lassi each. We are jittery with shock. Or perhaps adrenaline.

  I am sure of one thing, though. I didn’t save the children. I just removed the obstacles so someone else could.

  “Do you think he’ll know it was us?
” Widad asks between sips of her lassi.

  “I don’t know. Perhaps?” I drown my sorrow in a gulaab jamun.

  “Will you tell the others what we did today?” Widad asks next.

  I think of Valentina’s rage, and I shudder. “Drink your lassi.”

  From the Book of MEMORIES

  WIDAD

  CITY OF ORIGIN: LAHORE

  Dear Dead Boy,

  I read that you died. It was quite by chance that I saw that conversation. Friends from high school were talking about it on social media, expressing shock, sharing stories. One of us is dead. Well. You’re the fourth one, actually. Two boys have already died. One girl. All tragic, but you were the only one out of them all that I touched. It has been more than a decade since that day. I had forgotten. I wonder if you had too. You used to sit in your corner of the classroom not looking at me, and I used to sit in mine pretending your coldness didn’t hurt. We fought, heated whispers, absolute hate because there were these feelings and neither of us knew what they meant or what to do with them. So we hid behind stinging words and cruel looks. We expressed these feelings in the only way we knew.

  Did you remember that afternoon after school? You caught me behind the school building. It was almost the end of the school year. You took my arm and tugged me into the shadow of the wall where we weren’t visible to the rest of the world. You pressed your body against mine. I remember your warmth from that afternoon. It scared me. My white scarf fluttered to the ground, and you stared at me as though you were going to consume me whole.

  It wasn’t only you, though. I wanted to kiss you too. I wanted to feel your lips on mine. I had dreamed about it. So, I let my fingers touch your face. Feel your skin. I broke all the rules then, yours and mine. Moments stilled and pooled; the heat of your skin warmed me. But someone called your name. Then someone else called mine. We broke apart. You turned away. I picked up my scarf. You stifled a shudder. I took a breath.

  We never spoke of it. That almost-kiss. It was as though it had never almost happened. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe I dreamed it up.

  Some days grief catches us unaware. It strips away all our carefully constructed facades and leaves us as freshly hurt as we were when we first became wild. Our roads become impassable, and we cannot turn one damn page because our stories are stuck in that same rank darkness, and we cannot move, we cannot think, and we cannot be anything other than the pieces of what we once were.

  Would giving specific names to our tragedies make you know us better? Get black paint then and mark us victims of rape, sexual, physical, and verbal abuse. Stalked. Sold. Made destitute. Abandoned. Hated. Silenced. Do these words make us more or less to you?

  Some days we are so sad, we want to drown the world. Some days we are so angry, we want to set it on fire.

  When we become wild, the first thing we do is throw ourselves away. Or rather, we throw away the pieces of us that remain after whatever tragedy that tries to define us occurs. Then we throw away all the people we held dear because, ultimately, these people failed us. After that, we unearth ourselves, carefully digging up the roots that we sank into the place we first called home. Last of all, we throw away time.

  This is more difficult to do than it should be. Paheli never talks about the time she threw away. None of us do. But though it doesn’t show on our surfaces, our bodies record the passing of hours in different ways. Our smiles gradually get brighter, warmer, and even though we are the furthest from normal we will ever get, we start feeling like people again.

  The French Quarter, the Spanish Half, and Eulalie

  I.

  We leave Agra the evening Paheli and Widad return from their day of spying. They tell us nothing except that we have to leave immediately, so we do. Settling the hotel bill on our way out, we find an expanse of uninterrupted wall a few streets away. Talei lays a star-embedded palm on the wall, and a second later, a door to the Between glimmers into existence.

  We are three-quarters of the way to the door leading to Arijejen in Nauru, where Taraana is staying with Assi and her group, when the Between’s lights flicker violently. A minute later, we see Taraana sprinting toward us. Behind him are three silver-scaled middle worlders, Baarish’s minions. Taraana has a split lip, a blackened eye, and cuts on his arms and face. His knee is battered and his clothes are torn.

  It will be a long time before we can forget the look on his face the moment he glimpses us. He flings himself at us and we catch him and bring him in, shielding him with our bodies. The hum in the Between deepens—an ominous sign. Anger, a furious storm of it, rises in us.

  The scaled creatures see us and hesitate. They know we are not to be trifled with. “You should let him go,” one of the scaled creatures says. There is an odd quality to the way he shapes words, as if his tongue is not used to speech. “You cannot keep him safe forever.”

  Taraana shudders at his words.

  “How can you be sure?” Valentina raises her chin at the challenge in the creature’s words.

  “Do you think the Dar is alone in his desire for the Keeper of the Between?” another scaled middle worlder asks with a smile we can only describe as fiendish. “He is but one of many.”

  “So? Are we supposed to hand Taraana to you based on that?” Kamboja scoffs.

  “Enough,” Valentina says. In the next moment, entirely without warning, she screams. Like the last time, the creatures fall into themselves, ending as liquid, which might be water but we’re not going to get close enough to truly identify it.

  “You! Give us some warning so we can cover Taraana’s ears!” Daraja scolds Valentina.

  “Our screams don’t affect him.” Valentina rolls her eyes. “Do you think the Between would let us scream if they did?”

  We look at Taraana; he looks shell-shocked but otherwise fine. He flinches when Paheli takes his hand before he realizes it’s her. When he does, he holds on. Tight.

  “What happened?” Valentina asks him as we turn around and make our way to our next destination.

  “I was betrayed.” Taraana’s voice is flat.

  “Assi?” Areum asks.

  He shakes his head immediately. “Not Assi. It was Jam, someone she rescued. He told me… told me…” Taraana shakes his head and stops talking. “I ran into the Between to lead them away from her. She can fight better when I’m not around her, and plus, I thought they’d all follow me.”

  “Did they?” Paheli asks.

  He shakes his head. He licks his lips, then gasps when it stings. “No. She… She…” His eyes are shiny and he is breathing in short, shallow gasps. “I don’t even know if she’s still alive. She’s the closest thing to a family I have, and I can’t even go back to her.” He shakes.

  Paheli slips her arms around him, and he stands rigidly in her embrace before his control wavers and he crumples. We support his weight as he cries racking sobs that shake his slight frame. He might have cried for a minute or many, but finally his sobs taper off and he lifts his head, his cheeks stained by a blush and his eyes lowered.

  We do not say anything more. Nothing that will break his eggshell composure. Instead we resume walking until we reach the door to the next city. Valentina reaches out to open it, but for some reason the doorknob won’t turn, and when it does, the door won’t open. She pulls at it, exerting all her force without being able to open it. Finally, Taraana reaches out and tries, and, confounding all of us, the door opens up easily, revealing our destination on the other side.

  II.

  New Orleans, Louisiana. Also known as NOLA, the Big Easy, and Nawlins. You may have heard of it. The books say it was founded in 1718 and named after Philippe II, the Duke of Orléans. Like all good cities, it has a complicated history replete with revolutions, war, and hurricanes.

  The city’s magical history is just as complex, and we have barely scratched the surface of it. Here is what we know:

  The magic pours off the pavements here. It is strong, sticky, and lasting. You breathe the magic in and you brea
the it out. It keeps you warm on winter nights and cool during summer days. New Orleans is not the only city in the world that has an influx of magic, but it is one of the more accessible ones, and so creatures who live in the middle world crowd it, hoping to get as much of the magic as possible.

  For that reason, New Orleans boasts many more magic users than a lot of other cities in the world. We have said before, haven’t we, that magic is the currency of the middle world? However, very few middle worlders can actually use magic. Sort of like how everyone can hear music, but only a few people can make it. Similarly, all middle worlders can reap the benefits of magic, but very few can actually shape it. This is why magic users are extremely valued in middle worlder circles.

  The French Quarter is the oldest section of the city and is refulgent with magic, so, obviously, we invested in real estate here. From outside, the place we bought looks like a one-level shotgun house painted a sunflower yellow. A porch, surrounded by black wrought-iron railings, wraps around the outside of the house. The front yard is closed off from the sidewalk by a white fence. A garden full of hibiscus and other rioting blooms is interrupted by a path that meanders its way to the five steps leading up to the front porch.

  We walk up these steps light with relief at being in a place where we can perhaps be safe for a bit. The door, spelled to respond to Paheli’s hands, swings open and we enter the house. The middle worlder who manages the house for us appears in the parlor the front door opens to. She utters a short, surprised sound when she sees us. Two steps later, she is pulling Paheli into an embrace. Paheli suffers the contact for a brief minute before pulling away. She smiles to soften her action, but the not-human woman doesn’t seem to mind. An almost maternal affection lights the woman’s eyes when she looks at Paheli.

  Her name is Eulalie, and she is one of those rare magic users we mentioned previously. We keep her supplied with a liberal amount of Between diamonds, and in return, she shapes our house to be as big on the inside as we need it to be. We each have a room; there is an excess of them here. The house also boasts a pool, a library, and even a conservatory, all of it invisible to human eyes.