The Wild Ones Page 13

  “Plus, the Between isn’t exactly safe for us right now,” Sevda adds. “While we have been able to defend ourselves thus far, there is no guarantee Baarish won’t send forces who will be able to overpower us. Can we confidently take risks with our safety? With Taraana’s?” Sevda has been gradually distancing herself from us recently, so we are surprised by her comment. Not at the content of her comment, but at the fact that she made it.

  “Let’s look for human conjury,” Kamboja says. She glances at Paheli. “Wasn’t that what you were trying to do in the voodoo store? Did Qasim read you Yasmine’s handkerchief earlier?”

  “Did you already know that human conjury might help us fight Baarish?” Daraja asks Paheli. “How exactly will it help? What does it do to middle worlders?”

  Paheli’s tendency to keep things from us has, on more occasions than one, provoked us into arguments.

  She looks at us without speaking for a moment. Her eyes are dark and her face devoid of the smile that we almost take for granted. “The first thing we will do is go to Istanbul and look for Baarish’s errant granddaughter, Tabassum Naaz. When we find her, we will try to persuade her to ally with us. She has already helped Taraana twice, so it’s not a stretch of the imagination to believe she will do so again. There were a few stores in Istanbul that carried authentic conjury when we last visited them. We will visit them again. If we are unsuccessful in locating human conjury in Istanbul, we will travel to Chefchaouen, to that store we found conjury in three years ago. If that store too doesn’t have any, we will go to Marrakech. I seem to remember coming across a store selling authentic conjury in the souks there some years ago.” She pauses to let her words sink in. “I’m not sure if we can really use human conjury against middle worlders. But it can’t hurt to find out for certain. Does anyone have any other questions?”

  “Do I give up trying to bond with the Between?” Taraana asks.

  “Of course you don’t,” Paheli replies. “Lalie is still looking for that middle worlder who worked in the Library of Alexandria. She might have some concrete answers for us. If you want, we can look for a burning door for you to bleed on, but I fear Baarish is going to intensify his search for you.”

  “It would be better for us to have a plan of action, a way of countering him, before Taraana spends more time in the Between,” Talei says.

  We all nod in agreement.

  “Anyone else have anything to say? No? Let’s go.” Paheli gets to her feet and leads the way up the stairs to the floor containing the door to the Between. She signals to a man dressed in the same loose white tunic and pants that Qasim was wearing, and he nods, bowing slightly.

  We stand, momentarily tense, in front of the black door leading to the Between. We worked hard to unlearn fear; we are not going to let it define our days again, but oh, we remember how it feels to live with fear’s clammy touch. None of us miss those days.

  Paheli opens the door and we step into the Between.

  Talei leads the way to the door that will open up to Istanbul. Before Talei can pull open the door, though, Paheli halts her. She turns to Taraana, who immediately stiffens.

  “Have you ever had any run-ins with any middle worlder based in Istanbul?” she asks him. “Do you know?”

  He shakes his head. “I’ve never been to Istanbul before. Assi told me the city is too crowded with middle worlders, so I stayed away.”

  “All right.” Paheli gestures to Talei to open the door and she does. Or she tries to. But the door is stuck again. Once again, it takes Taraana to pull it open.

  We exit the Between in the Beyoğlu District in the European half of Istanbul, not far from the apartment we own on Istiklal Avenue. However, our first destination is the magic shop in Balat, the Jewish quarter of the city located in the Fatih District.

  Taraana seems starstruck by Istanbul. He looks around at the architecture and landscape with bright eyes.

  “The city is overflowing with magic,” he whispers, his fingers closing around Paheli’s. She looks at him with some exasperation.

  “Are we friends again?” she asks him.

  “No. Maybe,” he says distractedly, his eyes moving around.

  Istanbul, once known as Constantinople, is a city with deep roots, and, just like in Byblos, people have left their histories sunken into the stones of this place. A fact that the citizens of the magical world don’t usually acknowledge—like Mama Magdaline said, human lives generate the magic middle worlders live on.

  “Can you tell the difference between refined magic and crude magic?” Talei asks Taraana as we walk. “Like, is the magic on the streets here crude magic, or has it been refined by the Between?”

  Taraana’s face contorts in a frown as he considers her question for a minute. Then he nods self-consciously. “I have been able to do that since always. It’s just that I didn’t have the words to explain what it is I am able to feel. To me, refined magic is like breathing in clear mountain air, while crude magic is breathing in smoggy air.”

  “How much of the magic on the streets is crude magic, and how much is refined?” Kamboja asks. “Can you tell?”

  Taraana purses his lips and Paheli glances at him. He looks down at her and smiles before replying. “A little more of the crude compared to the refined.”

  We ponder over this as we make our way through the streets. It takes us forty minutes to get to Balat; we manage public transport quite well without being visible to humans. Like us, Taraana can choose his visibility at will. The day is a fair one, and a clock somewhere chimes three in the afternoon when we get off the bus.

  Balat is a series of narrow streets and alleys with tall and equally narrow pastel-colored houses on either side. The houses are rather dilapidated and could do with some maintenance and a new coat of paint. But the air is filled with light and the shouts of children playing; a bright blue sky stretches overhead, and the waters of the Bosphorus Strait glimmer in the distance. Laundry flutters from clotheslines strung high up from the third or fourth floors. To complete the picture, every house has at least two window boxes from which flowers and other greenery spill gleefully over.

  We follow the magic to a narrow, three-storied building located halfway up an incline. The house is pale yellow with white trim; a rainbow of roses blooms in a garden box in the lower window. A flight of stairs is located immediately outside the second door, which is the one we need. The house looks nothing like a shop from the outside; the door is closed and covered with a metal bar, which, despite the roses, adds a forbidding demeanor to the place. We know better than to be intimidated, though.

  Paheli simply turns the knob and the door opens inward. We enter the store and take a much-needed moment to orient ourselves. Clocks cover every surface of the establishment; modern clocks with asymmetric shapes, vintage ones with yellow faces, Gothic cuckoo clocks made of black metal, and Turkish clocks with tile faces featuring the most beautiful Arabic calligraphy. They are all ticking, and the din is incredible. We have been here, so we knew what to expect, but Taraana’s jaw drops open and his eyes go round. The proprietor is black-haired with turquoise eyes ringed by gold eyelashes; she is sitting at the counter, working on yet another clock. She has a weathered, stern but not unkind face. She looks up briefly when we enter.

  “We have a bag full of Between diamonds.” Areum throws the first volley. “Are you interested?”

  “As if you need to ask,” the middle-worlder woman replies dryly. Her name is Miray. Though her manner is brusque, she is not unfriendly. Or at least, she hasn’t been hostile to us before. Things can change. They have before.

  “Oh my, who is this?” She puts down her tools when she sees Taraana, who admittedly is not making any effort to hide himself. He spares the woman a glance before returning his attention to the clocks.

  “He is one of us,” Valentina replies with a too-long stare at the middle worlder.

  Taraana beams at her words, and the sun comes out in the musty dark store.

  “Are the
se for sale?” he asks Miray.

  “Indeed, they are.” Miray holds up the cogwheel in her hands. “I am willing to sell you whichever one you choose.”

  “Do you really want to buy one?” Paheli asks Taraana.

  “Why not?” Taraana replies.

  “These clocks allow the buyer to reexperience bits of their past. And you cannot choose which bits you reexperience,” Daraja says gently.

  Taraana pales at her words. “I… Sorry. I no longer want one.”

  Miray looks at Taraana again. She puts down the cogwheel and opens a drawer beside her chair. She rummages around in the drawer for a while before pulling out a thin rectangular box. She hands it to Taraana, who opens the box to reveal a pair of spectacles.

  “I got this from a magic user as payment for a clock.” She sees our baffled looks and elaborates. “They will make an effective disguise for him. I don’t know who he is, but the stars in his eyes are very conspicuous. They might attract the wrong sort of attention.”

  Taraana takes the glasses out of the box and puts them on. Immediately, his appearance changes into that of a rather rakish boy who still has dark hair and dark skin but with no magic that we can sense. These spectacles make him into a beautiful but very ordinary human. When he wears these, middle worlders won’t give him a second glance. Probably.

  “Will they do?” Miray asks.

  “Why are you helping us?” Kamboja gives the middle worlder a suspicious look.

  “Oh, don’t worry. That isn’t free. I will make you pay for it.” Miray smiles with all her teeth showing. “Now, shall we bargain?”

  Ten minutes later we are done with business and on our way to the reason we came to Istanbul. And no, we are not talking about Baarish’s granddaughter.

  Taraana’s glasses give us and him a reprieve from hiding. Obviously, we are still not completely safe, but to be a Wild One, you have to be comfortable with walking on dark roads. The road to becoming a Wild One is dark.

  So, we catch a bus to Eminönü and make our way to the western side of Galata Bridge. The place is full of people enjoying the day and the food we have come searching for.

  Whenever we come to Istanbul, we ensure that our first meal of the day is the balık ekmek sold from the restaurants located on the boats tied up at the quay. These boats, decorated with golden trimmings and intricately detailed figureheads also painted gold, pitch either gently or roughly depending on the weather. The servers who sport jaunty red hats seem to have sea legs and maintain a steady flow of conversation with the customers they serve. The only thing on their menu is the balık ekmek, which is a fish sandwich composed of freshly caught grilled mackerel and vegetables, and a beverage made from the salted and spiced juice of pickled carrots.

  We cast an illusion of safety and feast, laughing at Taraana’s delight, the taste of the sea, the hum of the magic, and the freedom, false though it may be, to enjoy all of it.

  From the Book of MEMORIES

  KAMBOJA

  CITY OF ORIGIN: JAKARTA

  I was a part-time friend

  a full-time girl and a glass

  half full. Open-toed stilettos and the whisper

  of city pavement. I was that journey

  of orange rinds and too-rich chocolate in dark, musky

  hotel rooms. I was a five-minute love; scheduled between

  the featured program and the sponsored commercials.

  Words and trickery; I was a book waiting to be read. I was

  midnight and I was the last hour before dawn that stretches into

  an insomniac eternity. One heartbeat to culmination and I

  was the time back when nights used to be only about the dark.

  Looking for the Needle in the Haystack

  I.

  By the time we get to our apartment on Istiklal Avenue, daylight has slipped away, taking with it the fair weather. The door to what we’ll call home here opens with a ping after Ligaya enters the passcode in the mechanical lock. The air inside is musty, so Talei walks over to the large windows in the central living room and opens them. We are on the third floor in one of the narrow buildings that line the avenue. Fresh air tinged with gentle rain wafts in.

  The place is magically enhanced like our home in New Orleans and adjusts itself to meet our needs. Paheli throws herself down on a rug in the living room and stretches.

  “I,” she announces, “am exhausted.”

  “Here, I will lend you my lap,” Taraana says, in an unexpected moment of generosity.

  “What?” Paheli sits up in alarm. “Why?” She doesn’t appear to appreciate it.

  “So you can take a nap,” he says, almost as if he is entirely without guile.

  Paheli stares at him for a full moment before she turns and looks at us, her face bewildered. Valentina is trying, unsuccessfully, to stifle her giggles at the look on Paheli’s face.

  “Is he trying to flirt with me?” Paheli asks sotto voce.

  We look at Taraana, who is looking confused.

  “I don’t think so,” Sevda says. She grins. “I think he really just wants you to use his lap.”

  “You can’t say things like that!” Paheli scolds Taraana.

  “What did I say?” Taraana frowns, looking lost.

  “Do you make it a habit of offering girls your lap? What’s wrong with pillows? Do you have something against pillows?” Paheli’s cheeks are definitely red. This is very entertaining.

  “No, you are the first girl I have offered my lap to.” Taraana runs a hand through his hair so tufts of it stick up. “Nothing is wrong with pillows. I just don’t know if you have any here. You don’t want my lap?”

  Paheli opens her mouth, perhaps to deliver some pithy response, before closing it without uttering a word. This is the first time we have seen our Paheli so completely at a loss. Perhaps we shouldn’t be enjoying this so much.

  “I think we need ice cream. I will go buy some!” Paheli stomps out of the room, and soon we hear the front door close.

  “What’s wrong with her?” Taraana asks no one in particular.

  “Forgive her, she doesn’t know what to do with feelings,” Areum replies, with a big grin on her pixie face. “She hasn’t had them very often.”

  “What feelings?” Taraana asks.

  We look at each other for a moment.

  “Oh dear,” Daraja says softly.

  II.

  We wake early in the morning and make our way to our favorite restaurant a few blocks away. We sit on benches at a trestle table at the back of the restaurant that is all but groaning under the weight of the food we ordered.

  Widad enjoys Turkish cheeses the most. She loves the pungent taste of Tulum but will always choose the fiery flavor of smoked cheese over it any day. Daraja and Areum adore sucuk, a spicy sausage served in thin slices along with bread and cheese. Kamboja’s favorite is an egg dish called menemen, which contains tomatoes, green peppers, and spices. It smells intoxicating and we all demand bites, which Kamboja grudgingly gives. Valentina eats simit, which is a fancy name for a pretzel-type bread coated with sesame seeds. We all enjoy börek, which is made of layered phyllo pastry and filled with meat, potatoes, greens, or cheese. To help wash it all down, we drink countless cups of black tea from Rize.

  Replete, we set out to look for the middle-world creature who acts as a fount for all sorts of information for us and probably many others. Like the Greenich in Beirut, we give him Between diamonds in return for information.

  The sidewalks are full of humans and middle worlders, so we walk in groups of two and three with Taraana and Paheli at the forefront. With Miray’s glasses on, Taraana looks like any other exceptionally beautiful eighteen-year-old. Thanks to us, he is smartly dressed. He walks with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders stiff, ready for the world to bare its teeth at him at any second.

  We spent most of last night at a hair salon. We weren’t solely following our whims, though a large part, we don’t deny, was indulgence. Our changing fac
ades function as disguises in case Baarish has managed to lay his hands on our descriptions. Apart from Taraana—we couldn’t convince him to color his hair, as he is a bit of a purist where some things are concerned—we all sport new dos that make this morning look brighter and us more colorful. Paheli’s waist-length hair is now a pale lavender, and she seems smitten with the way it looks.

  “Do you remember that song that was popular a few years ago?” she said this morning while admiring herself in the mirror. “The one that made girls loving themselves sound bad?”

  We did not. We have better taste in music.

  “Humph,” she said when we told her as much. “It isn’t as if I like that song. It was just so difficult to avoid. I happen to love myself very much.”

  We first look for our informant in the Hagia Sophia. Unlike the Greenich, our informant in Istanbul has no fixed location, which makes the business entirely inconvenient. He is not in the Blue Mosque, where Taraana is bedazzled by the domes and spires of the house of worship. Finally, we check Topkapı Palace and find him lingering in a courtyard there. He is sitting on the floor with his hands pressed to the ground and his eyes closed. Probably absorbing the magic in this place.

  There are too many middle worlders around for us to approach him as a group without drawing unnecessary attention, so Paheli separates from us and sashays over to him. She sits down in front of him and waits until he opens his eyes. This middle worlder’s name—well, he calls himself Hizrat. He and Paheli have a history neither of them wants to talk about, but their bond is undeniable. Even if a long time passes between their meetings, they pick up the threads of their friendship and continue for however long we are in town. He is very tall and limber with curly black hair and eyes the color of the full moon. Though he looks to be no more than twenty, we know his years contain centuries.

  We watch as Paheli asks him a question, receives an answer, and passes him a pouch containing a Between diamond. He says something else to her, something not related to her question, and we watch as she laughs in response. When Paheli laughs, our world brightens.