AHMAD AWOKE TO A scrabbling in the dark.
For a moment, a brief, irrational, blissfully warm moment, he thought it was mice. Of course. That’s what he got for sneaking snacks into bed during his late-night gaming sessions. Ma would be so mad at him.
I warned you about this! she would say.
After all, mice would be mice. The lure of food was absolutely irresistible to them, even in the wilds of the Upper East Side, where death traps lurked, well, everywhere.
Death traps.
Ahmad’s eyes snapped open.
He wasn’t in the Upper East Side. The mice—the kind guardians of their journey thus far—were a furry, softly snoring heap in the far corner of the room.
They had snuck in late, feasting on cake rusk and anxiously sharing their fears about the eerie stillness of the city while Ahmad and Winnie counted and recounted their equipment, tucking away their precious puzzle pieces.
“Not a soul to be seen in the souk!” one had squeaked.
Another chimed in, “And all the floating footbridges are empty!”
“Is that what those are?” Ahmad had broken in with interest, remembering the delicate structures he’d seen during their walking tour of Paheli, bobbing toward a group of pedestrians waiting impatiently on the roof of a skyscraper.
Winnie had nudged him in the ribs with her elbow.
“Ouch! Winnie!”
“Focus, you nerd,” she’d muttered without looking up. “I lost count.”
She didn’t seem as focused on her task as she claimed to be, though, and Ahmad had wondered if she was maybe just as unnerved as he was, hearing about the deserted streets outside.
“But everyone can’t be gone, right, T.T.?”
He’d turned to their intrepid mouse friend, who squeaked, cake rusk crumbs spilling down his sleek chin.
“What? Well—”
Ahmad had angled his chin toward Winnie and made wide eyes.
“Oh, yes, yes!” T.T. had chittered. “This has happened before. At least, I think it has. And all was perfectly fine in the end, I think! Sure, there were craters and avalanches and more sandstorms than you could shake your tail at, but . . . well.”
T.T. had definitely been no help.
But now, even Winnie dozed. Ahmad trained his eyes across the room, trying to make sense of the fuzzy shapes and sounds. Everything was quiet. Too quiet.
Madame Nasirah was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps she had curled up somewhere too, her shawls and layers forming a delicate chrysalis around her tired body.
No. It was just him, the artificial moonlight, the cluster of tea-related artifacts on every spare shelf and windowsill and countertop—
The shadowy figure, standing over his satchel.
“Hey!” Ahmad snapped, pulling himself upright. The figure froze. Ahmad rushed forward, determined to snatch its arm, but in a mere blink, it was gone.
Ahmad blinked. Everything was soft and still. Winnie hadn’t even stirred at his exclamation.
He rushed to the bag, yanking out the equipment and quietly taking stock. After a moment, he leaned back on his heels. Nothing was missing.
Nothing except for, of course . . .
He touched his pocket. The puzzle piece was there, a satisfyingly heavy lump of marble and jewel. He had taken the one with the elegantly curved monkey’s tail, bordered with ruby shards.
Winnie had tucked the other, with the monkey’s head and its polished gem eye, in her own pocket the previous night. Both of them locked eyes and nodded solemnly. Behind them, the mice watched and anxiously rubbed their paws together.
“The Architect is acting oddly,” Winnie had said then. “We can’t take any chances.”
“Are you sure this is necessary?” Ahmad ventured. He trusted Winnie, of course, who never misplaced her pencils on a test day or ran out of Scotch tape when she needed it most. But he couldn’t quite trust himself the same way.
“Ahmad,” Winnie had said softly. “Remember what Madame Nasirah told me. We have two enemies out there—maybe more. We can’t make ourselves enemies too.”
Her eyes had drifted toward the kitchen, and, even now, it struck Ahmad as odd. After all, Winnie had seemed to like Madame Nasirah, enough to suggest in the first place that they double back to the shop.
But they were in this together, and he had agreed not to tell the Gamekeeper anything. Even the transferring of the puzzle pieces had been done while her back was turned.
“Ahmad?”
Ahmad whirled around, drawing his hand quickly away from the hidden treasure. Madame Nasirah herself stood in the doorway.
“Is everything all right? It’s rather late to be up.”
“I thought I heard something out there,” Ahmad half lied, feeling guilty for the shakiness of his breath. He could feel his palms itching, that familiar twitch of anxiety and restlessness in his fingers. He jumped back from the wall as it suddenly shook with a gust of wind and the telltale scritching of sand.
“At least that is a familiar remnant of the old Paheli, as I always knew it to be.” Madame Nasirah reached past him, and he quickly moved back as she checked the shutters. “The sandstorms at all hours.”
“It was like this every day?”
“Well, particularly at night. It tends to be a sign of the Architect’s temper. The weather is especially bad when things aren’t going his way.”
Ahmad’s brow furrowed. Winnie was right. Madame Nasirah had told them that to begin with. He felt unsettled but couldn’t explain why. They did have two puzzle pieces, after all, so the Architect should be seething or cooking up something particularly terrible for them to face next.
But all he had done was send a measly rabid zombie-monkey or two after them, and then sulkily refuse to sound the Minaret. Ahmad couldn’t quite unravel his reasoning.
Madame Nasirah stepped away from the window. Ahmad reached out to draw back the curtain.
“You won’t be able to see anything,” she warned. “The storms usually hit quite thick and hard at this hour.”
Ahmad looked out anyway. He couldn’t explain why. It felt like he had to witness what was out there.
The clouds of dust parted under his gaze.
Ahmad pressed himself against the glass, his eyes wide.
There was a small boy in the midst of the sand.
“Who is that?” he wondered aloud.
“What’s wrong, Ahmad?” Madame Nasirah’s hand landed on Ahmad’s shoulder, trying to draw him away. But he clung to the window frame.
“No! There’s someone out there!”
It was hard to make out the boy’s face, but his body was hunched and huddled down against the storm. He seemed scared. Lost. Alone.
Trapped.
Ahmad’s heart pounded. Was this a vision, a way of messing with him? If he kept staring, would the boy materialize into a small child with a cake-sticky mouth from a birthday party he, only moments ago, had been careening through? Would he have his father’s ears and his mother’s cheeks and tears streaking his face from crying for his big sister?
Was that dream . . . a real dream?
The sand died for just a moment.
Just a moment to realize that he was wrong.
It wasn’t a version of him, a younger Ahmad.
It wasn’t a memory, or a nightmare, or a trick.
It was the Architect.
He was smaller and thinner, but his clothing was well tailored, carefully stitched, and his face was still smugly round. His eyes, even through the storm, were locked on Ahmad’s.
They continued to stare at each other as the storm picked up once again. The Architect—or at least, this younger rendition—seemed to mouth something. Ahmad squinted.
What?
But before he could make out the words, the boy threw up his wrists to shield his face from the swirls of sand that spun around him. He faded away with the winds of the dying storm.
“Ahmad? Ahmad, are you all right?”
Ahmad turned around and faced Madame Nasirah. Underneath her protective layers of gauze and gathers, her expression was inscrutable.
“Didn’t you see—”
“See what?” She drew the curtains. “There are a great many things to be seen in the sand, and not many of them are true. Remember that, Ahmad. Most of this world, more than ever, is made up of smoke and glitter and dreams that will never come true.”
Ahmad couldn’t shake away the image of brown skin and dark hair vanishing into the whirling sand.
Was that an omen?
And if it was, what was it supposed to mean? A foretelling, or a cry for help? What type of game was this?
“Do you need tea?”
“No,” Ahmad said quietly. “I’m going to try and get sleep. Thank you, Madame Nasirah.”
But as he curled back up next to Winnie, the questions bubbling over in his mind were enough to keep him awake until the early hours of the morning.