The Wild Ones

by Nafiza Azad

  “Look at this shoe. Filthy, no? What material is it made from? What about the mud embedded in its sole? Where did it come from? Look at the creases in the leather. This shoe tells a story even to you who do not understand the language of objects, but to me, this shoe tells a tale about a laborer, not particularly old but not young, either. His name was Raoul, and he lived in a vast country not his own. He had a young daughter for whose sake he worked for little pay at a rich man’s company. Raoul owned only one pair of shoes, and he kept them clean.” The young librarian’s face slips into sorrow as his hand traces the creases of the old shoe. “His daughter was killed by bullies who wouldn’t accept her differences, and because he was an immigrant, justice for him, for his child, wasn’t a priority to those in power. Excuses were made. Without his daughter, the man lost his reason to live. He slipped into despair, and one morning, just after dawn, he walked out onto a busy road and ended his life.”

  “Are all these stories tragic?” Areum asks after a protracted moment of silence.

  “The stories of the lost and the silenced usually are,” Qasim says in a whisper. Another moment, soft with sorrow, pulses through us. He abruptly turns to Paheli. “I suppose you are here for the objects belonging to the past Keepers of the Between?” Taraana stills at his words, and he, too, turns to Paheli.

  “Yes, I didn’t finish looking through them the last time I was here,” Paheli replies. “I also wanted to know if Master Ferdinand is feeling better now.”

  “I will get them out for you, if you will wait here? As for the Master, I will go and inquire.” When Paheli nods, Qasim leaves.

  We turn to her when he is gone. She preempts our questions. “Eulalie told me about this library and taught me the knocking pattern guaranteed to gain me an entrance. She was given this information by Mama Magdaline, who thought this library might contain information about the keepers.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us about this place?” Etsuko asks, her dark eyes demanding.

  Paheli’s eyes brush lightly over Taraana before she answers, and she shrugs. “I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up before I found something concrete.”

  “Did you find something concrete?” Widad asks, her question a breathy trill.

  “We’ll see,” Paheli says, and drops into a chair with a sigh, then rubs her face. “I dislike fleeing from places. It hurts my pride.”

  Ligaya sits down beside her, close enough to offer comfort without touching her. Our Paheli is affectionate, but she doesn’t like touching people. Ligaya studies her bejeweled fingernails for a moment before asking, “Why do you think Baarish showed up like that? He had to have known that he wouldn’t be able to capture Taraana once Taraana slipped into the Between.”

  “We’re only safe in the Between if they use magic against us,” Valentina counters. “Perhaps he thought to use violence.”

  “But they didn’t follow us into the Between,” Areum says. Her hair has dried in a cloud of blue curls around her head, so she looks particularly interesting at the moment. She glares at us. “Stop laughing at me.”

  “Are we not safe in the Between, either?” Kamboja suddenly asks, and we all battle horror.

  “I don’t know about that. No one has ever attacked us successfully in the Between. When Taraana was being pursued, didn’t you feel the tension in the Between? I reckon the Between would have acted if we hadn’t showed up,” Paheli says.

  “That’s just speculation,” Talei replies.

  “It’s not like I’m saying that we test it out,” Paheli says. “I’m just saying there is a lot we don’t know. A lot that we haven’t questioned. We move from one city to another, living nomadic lives because this isn’t our—no, your—ever after. It might be mine. What I’m saying is there is more to the Between and to the middle world than we know, and it is best we don’t pretend there isn’t.”

  “Baarish didn’t intend to catch us,” Ghufran says, breaking the silence following Paheli’s little speech. “He wanted to terrorize us. Scare us with his power. His might. He wants to corner us so we lose hope. Why else would he take over the sky?”

  “He must be really confident of his allies if he’s making such big shows of his power,” Daraja muses. While human beings are generally blind to all magical acts, the denizens of the middle world usually try to avoid doing magic that will attract human attention. Middle worlders who continuously do conspicuous magic often find themselves at odds with the regional authority.

  “Did you find anything?” Taraana says, speaking for the first time and bringing the subject back to Paheli’s mission at the library. Hope thickens his voice.

  “Mm, maybe.” Paheli shrugs vaguely. “I don’t want to speak about it yet. Don’t get me wrong.… Actually, now that I have said that, you most probably will.” She bites her lip. “Maybe listening to the stories of the other keepers isn’t a good idea. Especially not for you.”

  “Do you think I am not strong enough?” Taraana demands, two spots of color high in his cheeks.

  “It is not a matter of strength, Taraana. I don’t see why you should have to subject yourself to further tragedy.”

  “Am I supposed to stand back and let you do it for me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I want to. Because I owe you.”

  “You don’t owe me anything,” Taraana says icily, and turns away as if he hadn’t been clinging to her not even five minutes ago.

  Paheli glares at him and mutters unflattering things about stupid boys who don’t listen to commonsense suggestions when they should. He pretends not to hear.

  II.

  The librarian brings back six items and a very old man. The six items include: one handkerchief with unraveling embroidery, a comb with several missing teeth, a link of a silver bracelet, a cracked handheld mirror, a chipped mug, and a yellowed turban.

  The old man is dressed in white robes that have softened from multiple washings. His face is mostly obscured by a long white beard, and his head is covered by a black kufi. But the age that the lines on his face illustrate cannot compare to the time marked by the depth in his eyes. Even though this man appears human, his age is many times the span of an ordinary person. We do not ask, but we have the feeling that the how and perhaps the why of his age will be revealed soon. Qasim holds on to the old man carefully, and the old man holds on to his cane tightly. His frailty alarms us. We tend to break fragile things.

  Taraana rises to his feet when the old man and Qasim come to a stop before him. The old man lets go of Qasim’s hand and surprises us all by bowing to Taraana, who looks flabbergasted. Not quite the right response to the obeisance shown him, but we can’t really blame him.

  “Master!” Qasim is shocked and helps the man straighten from his bow.

  “Show him some respect, boy. He is the new Keeper of the Between and our new Master.” He turns to us. “My name is Ferdinand,” he says in a voice that contains the accumulation of his years. “It is my honor to read for you, keeper.”

  “He’s not the first keeper you have met, is he?” Paheli says while we try to wrap our minds around Taraana being someone’s master.

  Qasim helps the old man to a chair at the table on which the relics have been placed. The old man lifts a shaking hand to his forehead and rubs it. “No. I knew the last keeper. They were the one who created this library.” Ferdinand looks at Taraana. “Sit with me.”

  We all take seats around the table. “They chose to call themselves Eckle, and they wore their immense power lightly.”

  “What happened to them?” Valentina asks. She’s sitting next to Paheli; the tension between them has disappeared. That’s the thing we never understand. They can hate each other one moment and move on to the next as if their argument never happened.

  “They chose to fade. They couldn’t endure the loneliness of walking the Between by themselves any longer. They were the last keeper to bond with the Between.”

  We come to attention at th
ese words.

  “Do you know how they bonded to the Between? What was the process?” Taraana asks, his words tripping over themselves in their hurry to be out.

  Master Ferdinand shakes his head. “It isn’t my place to know the details. I didn’t… No, I couldn’t ask. To do so would have been a discourtesy.”

  Taraana ducks his head, possibly to hide his disappointment.

  The old man picks up a little glass cube containing a link of a silver bracelet. “This belonged to them, and I have kept it by my side for years, waiting for a Keeper of the Between to come and ask me about it.”

  “What happened to the keepers who were born after Eckle?” Ghufran asks. There is a peculiar intensity in her eyes that we don’t yet understand. “Did all these relics belong to them?”

  “The potential keepers were always abducted before we could get to them. Many of them never entered the Between and couldn’t understand the middle world. They didn’t want to. The others, we reached too late and could only collect their relics,” Ferdinand says heavily.

  Qasim keeps stealing glances at Taraana as if he cannot quite believe Taraana is real. “Master will read the bracelet, and I will read the rest. Do you have a preference for the order in which they are read?”

  “Can you read the bracelet link first?” Our poor Taraana seems entirely overwhelmed by the amount of attention he’s getting. His face is a bit too red.

  Ferdinand nods and opens the small glass cube containing the bracelet link. He picks it up, his gnarled fingers sketching an ode to the relic with their gentle touch. He closes his eyes and we hold our breaths, all of us, even Qasim, as the moment stretches and the noise in the library fades.

  “Is there any information about the bonding process?” Taraana shatters the moment with his question.

  “I apologize, keeper. All I see are burning doors in the Between. Burning doors. This is all this bracelet link contains,” Ferdinand says.

  “Where’s the rest of it?” Taraana is furious. And frustrated. We can’t blame him.

  “Lost to the Between,” Ferdinand says. “This library and this bracelet are all that remain of Keeper Eckle.”

  “Perhaps the other items will contain more information,” Qasim says, breaking the bleakness in the air.

  So, we settle back and listen to the stories these objects tell, as narrated by Qasim. We learn of the pain these keepers suffered. They spent their lives either in hiding or in the employ of someone who kept on taking more and more from them until they had nothing else to give but their lives. With each tale, Taraana turns paler; Daraja sits down beside him and slips her arm around his waist. He stiffens for a moment before relaxing into Daraja’s embrace. Each keeper’s life ended messily; each one’s death is an escape. None of them were more than thirty years old when they died.

  Finally, we get to the handkerchief with the unraveling embroidery. The faded threads tell the tale of a keeper named Yasmine. She is the lone woman among the keepers whose tales we read. It is always worse for a woman, and so, too, it is for her. Violence against a woman is so much more than the physical marks on her body. Even Qasim has to take a break between relating all that was done to her, all that she endured. What hurts most is that Yasmine never gives up. She speaks of looking for human conjury that will help her. Every day she gets up determined to escape, determined to find that conjury, determined to reclaim her life and her body, and take revenge. Her hope persists until her tale abruptly cuts off. She died hoping.

  Qasim finishes his tale with a wobble in his voice and wet eyes. We, however, don’t cry. We are too angry to.

  “Why?” Paheli stands up, knocking the chair back so it falls to the ground with a clatter. “Aren’t the Keepers of the Between important? Don’t they have power of their own? Why are they treated this way?”

  Ferdinand jerks at the violence in her voice. He shudders, and we wonder if Paheli has managed to kill someone simply by questioning him. Finally, he breathes out in a gasp and we relax. “I, too, have wondered the same thing, child. Eckle told me in confidence that they only gained power once they bonded to the Between. Before that, they, though not hunted like the keepers after them, were powerless. Unlike the keepers after them, however, they had a mentor, an old magic user whose primary purpose was to educate them.”

  “Where is that magic user now?” Valentina asks.

  “He died some years after Eckle came into power, or so Eckle told me,” Ferdinand says. “Eckle was very, very old. They felt as old as the Between sometimes. If they hadn’t chosen to fade, they would still be walking the corridors.”

  “Mama Magdaline, the Keeper of the Green, told us that the Between is very important to the health of the magic the middle worlders are dependent on,” Talei says, interrupting the old man’s musings. “So why do they treat Keepers of the Between like this? It doesn’t make sense.”

  Qasim steeples his fingers and takes a breath before speaking. “You’re probably aware of or have even experienced that discrimination humans face from middle worlders. The Keepers of the Between always begin as humans, so their importance has always been debated.” He raises an eyebrow in question, and our expressions must answer him because he continues. “Plus, Mama Magdaline is but one voice, perhaps the only contradictory one on the Magic Council. From what I’ve heard, not all middle worlders believe that magic is refined in the Between. They think it a simple corridor that makes traveling convenient.”

  “Eckle died a long time ago, and no other keeper has bonded to the Between in the interim. The middle worlders think nothing has changed,” Ferdinand adds.

  “That’s not quite true, though, is it?” Paheli says. “The Dar, our enemy, said magic is decreasing both in quantity and power around the world. Could that not be an effect of not having a Keeper of the Between?”

  Ferdinand doesn’t say anything, but the expression on his face is loud, making words unnecessary.

  “Couldn’t you speak for the need of a Keeper of the Between to the Magic Council?” Paheli asks.

  “The members of the Magic Council are the ones hunting the Keepers of the Between,” Qasim says. “The Dar you mentioned—he sits on the council as well.”

  “We know that,” Ligaya says with an impatient sigh. “What other power can we appeal to, though?”

  “Can’t you try speaking to the normal middle worlders, then? I know you are human, but perhaps if you did, some of them may surprise you and listen.” Widad is earnest.

  “I can’t step out of the library,” Ferdinand replies, his voice thick with frustration. “I remain alive within the walls of the library, but if I take so much as one step out, I will turn to dust.” The old man looks at Taraana, who sits with his head bowed. “My sincerest apologies, keeper. I can offer you nothing but a haven here in this library. If the Between falls, so will we, but until then, if you need it, this can be your home.”

  Taraana looks startled at the offer, but before he can say a word, Paheli speaks.

  “Thank you for the kind offer, but Taraana’s home is with us,” she says. “We will keep him safe, and we will be his haven.”

  Once, we wrote suicide notes.

  Dear World, we wrote in the dust, in any ink we could find, and, when we were desperate, in drops of our blood.

  Dear World, I am angry and I am hurt. I cannot. Be. Am. Are. Exist any longer. Language has failed me. I am unwanted in all tenses.

  Dear World, why do you not care?

  Dear World, I can no longer hold this pain inside of me. I need to spill blood—yours, ideally, but mine will do just as well.

  But before we could take the step that has no takebacks, Paheli found us.

  Have you ever noticed how, in an argument with a woman, a man, on the losing side, will start casting aspersions on a woman’s sexual behavior? He will call her a slut or a bitch or both, as if her intelligence is compromised either by the number of times she has sex or by the number of men she has sex with.

  Walking in Wicked W
ays or The Importance of Balık Ekmek

  Qasim leads Ferdinand away, leaving us to linger over the artifacts curated in the library. No one else in the library seems inclined to approach us, so we spend some time sitting in silence, gathering our thoughts, mulling over all we have learned.

  Finally, Paheli stirs from the pensive silence she retreated into. Taraana is sore at her, but this has not stopped him from returning to her side. He just doesn’t talk to her.

  All of a sudden Ligaya stands up and stomps her foot. We frown at her actions; we are still in the library. “I’m sorry!” She sits down and bounces in her seat. “I got too excited.”

  “Why?” Valentina says.

  “Because… THIS LIBRARY WAS CREATED BY A KEEPER OF THE BETWEEN!!!” Ligaya screams in a whisper, then coughs. We wait for her to regain the strands of her sanity.

  “So?” Valentina again, with her one-word responses.

  “So? What do you mean, ‘so’? Do I have to explain? Can you not figure it out yourself?!” Ligaya gesticulates.

  “Well,” Valentina replies. Then smiles at Ligaya’s visible frustration.

  “Fine. I’ll spell it out for you. To be able to create a library this huge and this complicated out of magic means”—Ligaya pauses for dramatic effect—“the Keeper of the Between. Is. Super. Duper. Powerful.”

  “That’s after the keeper bonds with the Between, Ligaya,” Etsuko says, her voice cool like always. “Might I remind you, Taraana is currently powerless and vulnerable?”

  Taraana flinches and we glare at Etsuko.

  “Sorry,” she mumbles.

  “Let’s go look for a burning door. Maybe if Taraana bleeds on a burning door, the bonding will happen?” Areum asks with shining eyes.

  Talei snorts. “Do you think it’s so easy to find a burning door? That we can turn a corner and it will spring up in front of us? The Between stretches on in all directions forever. We need time to look for a burning door.”