The Wild Ones

by Nafiza Azad

  She stops. A car honks in the street below.

  “I was sleeping in my bed in my room when he raped me. I was supposed to be safe there. Safer there than anywhere else in the world.” A sob punctuates her narration. “A month later, I found out that I was pregnant. They wouldn’t let me get an abortion. Said they would send me to my aunt’s place to have… that.” She takes a wheezing breath and thumps her chest with a fist. “I heard them talking this morning when they thought I was still sleeping. My sister, that man, and my parents. My sister can’t have children, and that man needs an heir. My parents didn’t want my sister to be abandoned by that monster, so I was elected to be a sacrifice.

  “I snuck out of the house today and went to the doctor. But you know what? They said I needed my guardian’s permission. Why? It is my body. Why do I need to have anybody’s permission to do anything with it? I can feel that thing in my womb. I would much rather die than let it grow within me.”

  “So, you are here,” Paheli says, turning to look at the city glimmering in the distance.

  “Yes. And you? Why are you here?” the girl asks.

  “Me? I was raped by the man my mother sold me to.” The girl turns to face Paheli suddenly, looking at her as if for the first time. “And those girls back there? They all have similar stories. We don’t compare notes.” The girl turns to us. Her eyes are wide and her cheeks tearstained. “Do you want to come with us?”

  “Where will you take me?” the girl asks.

  “Away from here. You won’t ever need to return to this city if you don’t want to.”

  The girl’s lips quiver, and she barks out a sound that is perhaps meant to be a laugh. “You know what hurts the most? Everyone I thought I could unconditionally call my own betrayed me in the most terrible of ways, and yet I still love them. I still want them to love me. The thought of never seeing them again horrifies me. Even though they hurt me so badly. Even though they are still hurting me, I can’t let them go! It’s tearing me apart inside.” The girl brushes her tears away with the back of her palm. “If I go with you, will I stop hurting so much? Will this pain go away?”

  Paheli chooses her words carefully. “Eventually the pain will dull. Eventually it will ease. It will take time, but it will happen.”

  The girl shakes her head. She gives us no warning. Just turns her back and takes a step. The moment slows. Paheli scrambles to grab hold of her.

  An absence of sound. Then:

  A crash. A car alarm. A window opening. A sudden scream.

  We didn’t even know her name.

  The Blue City in the Mountains

  I.

  We leave Istanbul the same night. We gather Taraana and the few belongings we are loath to leave behind, open a door into the Between, and step through. We will not return to this city for a while. Not until the unnamed girl is a memory and not a recent experience.

  How many unnamed girls are there, do you think? How many unnamed girls disappear due to emotional and physical violence done to them?

  How many girls are there who are on the brink of a fall, falling, or fallen? How many of their stories will we never hear? Do you ever wonder that?

  We do. We think about these girls all the time. We wonder what their names were. What they dreamed of. What they could have been.

  II.

  The number of words in a pen full of ink, the number of flowers in a hive full of honey, and the number of turns in the mazelike streets of Chefchaouen; these are the things we most love to ponder to keep the grief at bay.

  Have you ever been so sad that everything tasted salty?

  It is early morning when we arrive in Chefchaouen. The alley we step out into is narrow, blue, and deserted. We don’t talk as we walk single file to the place we call our own in the old town. The buildings here are interconnected, and as we open the door to the house that belongs to us, we can hear the sounds of people in the houses nearby, waking up and readying to meet the world outside.

  Chefchaouen is located in the Rif Mountains of Morocco and is known as the Blue City due to all its houses and buildings at least partially painted the shade of blue we associate with a lament. It has narrow, cobbled streets that frequently change into stairs, alleys, and dead ends. It is a place where stories breathe and become legends. Magic loves this city; it is the only place where doors to the Between manifest not simply as upright rectangles on uninterrupted walls but as actual doors with all the design that fancy magic can grant them.

  Taraana hasn’t asked us any questions. Perhaps he has read our hearts and knows not to. We close the door behind us and stand awhile in the parlor, listless in our grief. Paheli catches Valentina’s hand, and they look at each other in wordless communication. Valentina nods, so Paheli drops her hand and separates from us. The skin under her eyes is bruised. She pauses for a moment and her eyes snag on Taraana. Her mouth moves as if she is trying to work up the nerve to say something, but then her shoulders droop. She disappears into a bedroom on the other end of the house without a word.

  Taraana stares after her, his face worried.

  “Leave her be,” Valentina says. Outside, it has started to rain. A light drizzle that feels custom-made for the way we feel right now. “She needs time.”

  “She will blame herself,” Daraja says. “She always does.”

  “This is not the first time we have lost somebody,” Ligaya tells Taraana. She stomps to a chair and throws herself on it, burying her head in her arms.

  When you lose something or someone, your life becomes a series of sharp corners and razor edges. No matter how much care you take when navigating it, you will get hurt and you will bleed. No one knows this truth more than we do.

  “So, what do we do now?” Areum asks in a small voice. She and Kamboja are holding each other.

  Valentina purses her lips and thinks. “Talei, Areum, Kamboja, and I will go exchange some Between diamonds for money. We’ll get some food on our way back. The rest of you, get some rest. We’ll be back soon.”

  We slip out of the house and into the pale blue brilliance of the city. The cobbled streets are wet and slippery; pedestrians hurry up and down the roads with heads bowed against the rain. We keep ourselves invisible from the humans and our eyes out for middle worlders. Chefchaouen is not unfamiliar to us, so we navigate its streets with ease.

  Every time someone leaves our ranks and returns to the human world, we come here. Because the stars are limited in number, Paheli encourages us to move on when we are ready to face life and the world again. When one of us removes the star from her palm, she is able, once again, to walk beyond the limits of the cities. She becomes wholly human again. She forgets us and the time she spent with us as a Wild One.

  She will pass us on the streets sometimes and look at us with a look that says she once was us but is no longer and cannot understand why. We become the color she sees in the corner of her eye and the name on the tip of her tongue that she can’t quite ever fully remember. We are the nostalgia she feels when she sees a group of girls, and we are the lights she thinks she sees on the darkest nights. Every time a Wild One leaves, it feels as though we have healed the wings of a wounded bird we found. There’s sorrow, but there’s happiness, too.

  We walk briskly up a narrow street of stairs and reach a store that has its door wide open. Because it is raining, no wares are displayed immediately outside, but tables set right by the doors are laden with lamps in different sizes and shapes. The lamps sold in this store illuminate a person’s truth whether they want it illuminated or not. We stay away from them.

  After Talei exchanges Between diamonds for Moroccan currency, we find some restaurants a few streets from our house and place an order that has the manager peeking at us. An hour later, we make our way back with carefully packaged portions of chicken, beef, lamb tagines, couscous, pastillas, meat skewers, a variety of soups, and, especially for Taraana, eggplant with garlic.

  When we get back, the living room is empty but for Taraana, who is sitti
ng at the edge of his seat, his eyes turned in the direction of the room Paheli has cloistered herself in. We exchange glances before Talei takes pity on him.

  “Could you call Paheli out? Tell her to come and eat,” she says. Taraana beams at her and is gone before she has finished talking.

  Paheli: Disharmony in the Attics

  I sense his attention before he even takes a step toward the room I have barricaded myself into. It is as though some newly discovered nerve stretches between his mind and mine. I have been able to feel him thinking about me. His concern feels like a balm, perhaps a Band-Aid, not very useful but comforting nonetheless.

  He opens the door so easily and steps inside without hesitating. I lie on the bed with my back turned toward the door. I don’t move as he comes closer. I don’t move as he climbs into the bed beside me. I don’t move as he slips his arms around me and moves me closer to his body. So close I can feel his heart racing. He tucks my head under his chin. At this moment, he demands nothing from me and, instead, offers me his warmth, his comfort. I am greedy so I take both.

  The silence is loud between us. It usually is. There are things in it that I need to tell him and things that he needs to tell me, but right now, all I can think about is that girl on the rooftop, that girl I failed. My sisters think I feel guilty and they are right, in part; I do. Was it something I said that spurred her on? Pushed her to take that final, conclusive leap? Could I have done things differently? Said something else that would have convinced her to ally with us? I will never know.

  But I am not so guilty as to believe that she was up there because of me. Her presence on that precipice wasn’t my fault.

  When I left Eulalie for the first time, I asked her for a spell that would help me identify girls like me. I didn’t think there would be so many of them. I didn’t think I wouldn’t be able to help them all. Eulalie cautioned me against using the spell even as she gave it to me. She warned me that such spells exact an emotional toll that few are able to pay. I didn’t give her words as much thought as I should have. I needed a purpose, and playing a hero gave me one.

  The truth is, I am no one’s hero. Not even my own.

  You see, even though I pretend to be altruistic, all the girls I save have one thing in common: they were betrayed by their parents, their mothers in particular. Just like I was. And every time I fail to save a girl, it is as though I am failing to save myself.

  The girl in the dumpster a couple of years ago was me. The girl last year who returned home to certain death was me. And that girl who fell from the building yesterday was also me. I mourn them, but to be honest, I am mourning myself.

  I turn around in Taraana’s embrace and face him. Looking at him hurts me, somehow. My heart feels too full, too full of thorns. His eyes contain no censure, even though I know he can feel everything that is in my heart. I run a finger down his face and his eyes flutter closed. He is too good for me, and me, I am bad for him. I will corrode his goodness.

  Knowing this makes no difference. I continue lying in bed with him when I should be outside, making decisions, pretending to have answers. I let him hold me when not a few days ago the idea would have made me run in the opposite direction.

  “Why do you insist on getting closer to me?” I ask him.

  He opens his eyes and the stars in them peek at me. I look at him and am surprised anew not just by his beauty but by how familiar, how dear, he has become to me.

  His presence is slowly becoming a necessity to me. How did I survive all these years without him? How did he live without me?

  These feelings scare me.

  Is this love? How am I supposed to know? Or do these feelings exist because of his tear that I wear on my palm? Will my attachment to him disappear once I take it off?

  “What are you thinking?” he asks, pulling away. A frown upsets the symmetry of his face.

  “Can’t you tell?” I sit up and run my fingers through my hair. Or I try to. My hair is too tangled for me to succeed.

  “No. I can’t read your mind, Paheli.” The way he says my name always startles me. There is a history in the way he says it, a wealth of meaning I don’t get. Am I supposed to?

  “It’s nothing. I am thinking about nothing. No, that’s not true. I’m thinking about how I’m hungry but how I don’t want to go out of the room because, well, because. I don’t have a reason, but you don’t always have to have one, you know? It’s okay to not be strong all the time. I’m giving myself permission to be sad. I’m going to stop talking now.” I get off the bed and move to the small vanity on the side. I locate a hairbrush and, without thinking too deeply, throw it to Taraana. He catches it and raises an eyebrow.

  “Brush my hair.”

  My mother used to comb my hair. It was the one thing, apart from my blue eyes, that seemed to give her pleasure. She would spend a long time brushing it.

  I kept it short for years after that last day I saw her. I hacked it all with a blunt knife I found somewhere. I got Eulalie to buy me contacts because it was difficult for me to look into the mirror and see my blue eyes staring back at me.

  But time, you see. It passes. I let my hair grow again and came to terms with my blue eyes. I started loving parts of my body. My odd feet, my bony fingers, my clavicles, my waist… my hair. I learned to belong to myself.

  Taraana holds the hairbrush awkwardly. He brushes my hair as if he doesn’t quite know what to do.

  “How are we going to use human conjuries? Won’t Baarish know what they are? He will kill us before we can use them on him,” he says.

  I rub my lips, thinking. “I don’t have all the answers, Taraana, but you know, conjuries are the one thing that makes middle worlders vulnerable. So, I’m not sure how we’re going to use the conjuries or even if we can use them, but we have nothing else. We have to see this through. Do our best to find something.”

  Taraana stops brushing my hair and turns me around by the shoulders.

  “What?”

  “What if we can’t find any?” he asks with his eyes downcast.

  “We will,” I tell him. Then, graciously, flick him on the forehead. He grabs my hand in protest. “Look, we know for sure that these things exist. They’re rare but not impossible to find. If it’s too difficult for you, you can give up. I won’t. If one place, one city, doesn’t have them, I will go to another one. I will keep on looking until I find something we can use. I will keep you safe. I promise. Okay?” He doesn’t respond, so I pinch his chin. “Okay?”

  “Yeah. Okay.”

  “All right. Now stop staring at my lips. Let’s go. I’m hungry.”

  From the Book of MEMORIES

  VALENTINA

  CITY OF ORIGIN: PARIS

  I was once a king.

  Paheli: Continued

  We leave the house when the sun dips beneath the horizon and the city lights up; the night sky is enthralled by the pale luminescence of a half-full moon. In other words, it is night and the moon is out when Valentina and I slip out of the house, ignoring the protests of our sisters and Taraana. They want to accompany us, but we’d rather not take the risk.

  The air is nice and cool and people are out and about, enjoying it. I glance at Valentina as we navigate the narrow sidewalks of Chefchaouen. As usual, she is perfectly put together. Her lips are a signature red, her eyes hooded to hide their cold depths, her long, skinny boots cover half of her legs, and her clothes are all exquisitely crafted.

  “Is my beauty so great that it rendered you speechless?” She smirks at me.

  I side-eye her. “Your beauty doesn’t, but your narcissism might.”

  Her smile broadens. “I have it so I flaunt it.”

  “Too bad Tabassum Naaz isn’t around to appreciate it,” I say, and am rewarded by the deepening color in Valentina’s cheeks.

  She clears her throat. “Do you know the way to the store?”

  “Yeah.” I quicken my steps. “The place isn’t that far. Just over half an hour’s walk from here.”

>   “Have you figured out a way to use conjuries against Baarish? Is it even possible to use them? Won’t he recognize them for what they are?” Valentina asks me things that Taraana was asking me, and I haven’t magically gained answers in the few hours that have passed since he did.

  “No, I don’t know, and maybe,” I reply. I don’t mind being short with Valentina because when you’ve been companions with a person for more than three hundred years without killing them, you tend to go beyond familiarity-breeds-contempt. We’re into familiarity-breeds-comfort territory now. Heh. “I can’t make plans until I know what manner of conjury we’re dealing with.”

  Before we cross the street leading to the mountain on which the conjury shop is located, we come across an old man sitting on a low stool in a corner. In front of him is a stove on which he’s cooking msemen, which is a thin, square-shaped pastry. We’ve eaten a lot today, but neither of us can resist the call of the msemen, especially when it’s drizzled slightly with both butter and honey. We treat ourselves and promise to keep it a secret from the girls.

  I don’t know which of us notices the preternatural quietness in the streets closer to the store. No couples linger in the shadows being annoyingly mushy, no family strolls the streets exuding their harmony, no one except us and shadows. Valentina nudges me and I nod at her. We slip into the shadows cast by the buildings, which seem stoic fortresses that will admit no one.

  “Magic?” Valentina raises an eyebrow.

  I nod. What else could it be?

  We haven’t been to this conjury store for a few years now. Well, it is wrong to call it a conjury store, as the primary products offered are pots and pans. The old shopkeeper sells conjuries on the side, probably to beef up his thin profits. He didn’t have many things the last time we saw him, but what he did have was authentic.