There was an apartment building in the middle of Old Town Gopibagh, purportedly haunted, which rattled during storms with ghostly shrieks. The building was old, before the real estate developers really got going in Dhaka, and thus had not been designed properly. Rather, it had the appearance of an old six-story house partitioned into a dozen or so separate apartments, sharing a common stairwell and wraparound balconies that served as passages.
The house was haunted because one of the apartments belonged to Matteras. He never visited, and no one lived there. The green wooden door was fixed with a very heavy padlock on the outside, impervious to the attempts of a generation of children trying to break in. The apartment seemed to have its own internal climate, which did not correspond to the greater weather patterns of the nation. It gave off great heat and cold alternately, so that sometimes the door was rimed with ice and sometimes steaming with heat.
Ironically all the Old Town people believed in djinns, and had Matteras actually come down and explained what he was about, they would have been perfectly satisfied with him. Instead, it was the cause of continuous speculation, the source of a hundred urban legends, until every lame dog, every missing child, and every unexplained pregnancy was blamed on the apartment, despite it having never manifested any hostile intent whatsoever.
Inside, the apartment had floors stained with red oxide, a very old way of decorating cement. The place was completely empty. Hieroglyphs marked the walls, carved into the plaster, almost invisible to the naked eye, but crowding dark and thick for those with djinn vision. These spells made the interior freezing cold. The source of the heat came from a room farther inside. The apartment was disused except for the central bedroom, which was locked. The door was too hot to touch, and only the efficacy of the spells carved into the wood stopped it from combusting. The heat turned the ice into steam, and the door smoked continuously, adding to the otherworldly atmosphere.
Inside this room were the only two objects in the entire apartment: a large urn made of grayish clay, set upon a low wooden table. Every surface within was covered in hieroglyphs, done in the same hand as the rest of the place, done by Matteras personally in fact, for no other djinn or man knew of this room. These last sets of spells were exhaustive, the work of a master, and the dignatas of Matteras would have gone up considerably had his fellow djinn ever seen them.
The urn gave off great heat, and sometimes it made rattling noises, but it had never moved an inch from its base; in fact it was gripped there by forces unimaginably complex and would never even contemplate moving. The urn was currently full of dirt, good black loam, pebbles, sand, and water. There were hints of odd stuff in there: a hot line of fire, a handful of worms, a few other things.
The urn was ancient and had been subject to huge quantities of magic over the years by various hands, so much so that it was almost sentient now. Its thoughts were glacial, which was good, because it barely had time to register surprise before its innards started shaking and then expanding, and then some strange quirk in quantum space allowed an odd-looking foot to smash through its body and land on top of the table, a foot attached to misshapen legs, and the urn had time to reflect indignation before a second foot also came out, and everything shattered into a thousand shards.
A fully grown djinn stood on the collapsed table, careful not to move, a slight smile on his face. His skin was burned crimson and black, like a striped beast, and he had horns on his head.
“Fucking Solomon,” he said, as he looked at the remnants of the urn.
He sat on his haunches and studied the surrounding glyphs for many minutes, until he found the one he needed. One picture, carved deeply into the floor, was cloven in two, a particularly far-flung piece of clay bisecting it. Thus divided, the meaning of this glyph changed entirely. It was just about enough. He put his finger to the spot and the spell started to unravel. A little white dervish swept through the runes, breaking them down, opening a safe path to the door, then out across the living room to the main gate. The padlock popped open. Givaras the Breaker of Things balanced himself on someone else’s legs and walked out.
Several days later, the urn had almost reconstituted itself into some proximity of a vessel when another body flopped out of n space, shattering the wretched thing once again. This time, used to near-death experiences, the urn did not panic, but resorted instead to a stoic reflection on the generally ill nature of man and djinn.
Indelbed fell to the ground, a smoking carcass, held together by will and a vestigial wisp of the field. After an interminable amount of time, he sat up, because even though he was sickeningly injured, he was not dead. Skin and scales flaked off him, but pain was a distant drum. He was used to pain, and the absence of core fire was a relief to which all other sensations paled. At first he saw only darkness, but when his eyes adjusted to the field he saw black lines surrounding him, trees in a winter forest, stretching in all directions, and superimposed, tessellations of force, tiles of icy power. The field roiled all around, disturbed. There was no way through, only a terrible, leaching cold, frost rimming all the surfaces, forming now on his fingertips.
I was burned and now I will freeze, Indelbed thought. He did not really want to move. The cold was slowing down his thoughts, lulling him into stupor. Idly, he gathered the shards of clay around him, piling them up. It took him a moment to realize that they were like puzzle pieces, glowing with power, the edges literally straining to reconnect. He joined them together, and the urn re-formed, slivers of clay flying back through the air in a temporary reversal of entropy. Indelbed’s blind eyes could see the thing very well, an ancient vessel glowing with power, its field fluctuating as it regained form.
“Hello?” He spoke on whim, not really expecting an answer.
“Thanks,” said the urn. “Really. It would have taken me ages to do that.”
“Ahem, I’m talking to a jar then? A bottle?”
“We prefer urn. Although Solomon, of course, called us amphorae.”
“I suppose I’ve finally lost my mind.”
“There were twenty thousand of us created. I can’t imagine there are too many left. I am an ancient, unique—”
“Was I inside you?”
“Of course. You, the wyrms, the other one. It’s all to do with folding space. You could fit anything into anything, if you know how, which of course Solomon did, being the premier magician of his time. However, they say that those are lost arts now, although if you ask me—”
“Other one?”
“He’s the one who broke me the first time. Walked funny.”
“Givaras!”
“Very abrupt fellow.”
“Where did he go?”
“He found a path through the spells. I was shattered at the time, but I believe I got a good look. That’s the interesting thing about me—”
“Can you show me out? Sorry, it’s just that I’m freezing to death.”
“Oh yes, of course. Would you mind just gathering everything together and really sweeping all the little pieces in? I’d like to come with you; it’s not very interesting over here, although I once spent several thousand years on the ocean floor, but there were crabs, and fish, and sponges, and—”
“Look here, I’ve got it. Hang on, there’s a big piece over there. Okay, I think you’re whole. Hey, so that entire murder pit thing was built inside of you?”
“Yes, it’s all to do with n space. When you start unraveling some of the dimensions, you get different kinds of geometry—”
“So my wyrm is still in there?”
“Well, he certainly did not come out.”
“Good. Come on, urn, you’re up. Show us the way through these spells.”
“Right. I’m on it, Young Master! One false move will destroy us! Well, destroy you. I’ll probably just reconstitute. Still, I’m going to try my hardest! We have to be careful now—the odd-legged one took a long time getting out, I think first left, and then—”
“You’re the best urn Solomon ever built.”
The urn would have beamed had it the facial mechanism to do so.
At four o’clock, while Rais and Maria were speeding across the Pacific, Indelbed was limping from the apartment building in ill-fitting pants and a flood relief blanket, the urn clutched protectively in the crook of his arm. His current ailments were innumerable, and the small cache of adrenaline that had fueled his escape from the ensorcelled room was soon used up. On top of everything, he was suffering from massive sensory overload. The noise hit him like a sledgehammer when he approached the main road—the cars ringing in his ears; the ceaseless street-side conversations; the hollering, shouting, and swearing—the grinding pressure of humanity buffeting him along, keeping him upright even as his feet stumbled over unseen obstacles. His vision was overwhelmed, all that hard-earned skill gone; he was just another blind boy walking the beggar’s road.
When he finally couldn’t will himself any farther, he fell to his knees and let the heels and knees of irritated passersby push him toward a wall. He sprawled there in a daze, burned feet bare, head and body covered in the stolen blanket, shivering. Someone stopped, pressed a two-taka note into his hand. Another man tossed a note at his head. A dog sniffed at him and then ran away barking. After some time, a nearby tea stall owner grabbed him by the arm and dragged him into an alley.
He slapped him a few times, asked him some questions, but Indelbed couldn’t speak coherently, his regrown tongue flopping in his mouth like a dead fish. The tea seller noticed his sightless eyes and stopped shaking him.
“Are you blind?”
“Yeshhh.”
“Beggar?”
“Yes,” Indelbed said after a moment.
“Where are your people?”
“Orphan,” Indelbed said. Not true. I have a father. I had one. I’m going to find him. And if he’s dead, I’m going to kill everyone who did it.
“You look sick.”
“I was burned. It’s not contagious.”
“You can sit in this corner for a bit,” the tea man said. “You can’t beg here. If you come near the stall I’ll beat the shit out of you. You’re scaring away my customers. How much money do you have?”
“What?”
“Do you think taking care of sick people is my job? Give me your money. And that jar. What’s in it?”
Indelbed handed over the crumpled notes he had collected.
“The bottle.” The tea man cuffed him lightly. “Come on.”
“No.”
This time the kick was in earnest, battering him in the ribs. “Give the fucking bottle, beggar.”
“It’s an urn,” Indelbed said. “You can’t have it.”
The tea man laughed, slammed him twice in the stomach, wrested the urn away, and promptly dropped it as it nipped his fingers with frostbite.
“Djinn.” Indelbed grinned through cracked lips. He dribbled out the distortion field, letting the light sparkle on his palm in pretty colors. It was pretty much the extent of what he could do right now.
“Djinn!” The tea man staggered back in fear. He was a believer.
“Where are we?”
“Motijheel, Master. Please, I have children. Don’t…”
“Possess you? Eat you?” Indelbed bared his teeth, stained red from his own bleeding gums. “I’ll take your right arm.”
“What?”
“Cut it off and give it to me. Or do you want me inside your head? I’ll wear your skin like a coat.”
“God save me…” The man started to mumble prayers. He was on his knees now, hands clasped, the very picture of supplication. People were looking at them funny.
“Oh, shut up,” Indelbed said. “Your broken Arabic has no effect on anything. Do me a service, and I will forgive you.”
“Anything, Master, anything.”
“There’s a house in Wari I must get to. Take me there, and your service is done.”
“Yes, Master.”
“Oh, and get me a cup of tea.”
By the time they got to Wari, Indelbed was thoroughly lost. The old houses were gone, supplanted by tall, cramped apartments. The streets were unrecognizable, the roads full of cars now, the old shops gone, replaced by newer, swankier efforts. He knew no one, and no one knew him.
They overshot his road a couple of times, back and forth, the tea seller too frightened to object, until some remnant of decade-old topiary clicked in his head, taking him back to the last time he had left this street. Indelbed stood at the narrow mouth of the alley, feeling very small. It was quieter here, cooler, and his fledgling sight returned, the field stealing around him like a whisper, until he could see the contrails again.
He walked toward his gate finally. There were ley lines of power clustered around the house, physically pulling at him, but he hit a barricade long before that, plainclothes ex–police officers fingering shotguns, bored. They turned him away with a push and a shove, one of them recoiling in disgust after getting a good look at his face. Indelbed wanted to say that it was his house, that he belonged there, that he wanted to go home, but there was no one to talk to, no one the least bit interested. With a terrible pang, he longed for the old days, when it was just the Doctor, Butloo, and himself, their peculiar three-pronged family that had just about lurched along, oblivious to djinns, magic, and dragons.
He looked in vain for someone he knew and remembered Mr. Karim, who lived in the neighboring apartment building and had sent them a fruit basket every Eid. He tried the gate, but a guard blocked his way, and when he mentioned Mr. Karim of flat 4B, the man laughed and said that Karim Sahib was not in the business of talking to diseased beggars. When he didn’t move off the step quick enough, the guard whacked him with a stick halfheartedly. Loathe to give up, he found a shady spot by the electric pole and sat on his haunches, waiting for at least a familiar face. People passing by avoided him, but otherwise left him unmolested.
After several hours sitting still, he had his patch of the road sewn up, his power spread painstakingly thin, until he could track every mongrel rat that strayed into his path.
At last he saw Ali, his old friend from two houses down, grown tall now, walking with a backpack but still with that telltale shuffle, surrounded by a gaggle of other boys. Ali Baba would remember him—they had spent hours playing marbles, poring over a solitary dirty magazine; he had often thought of Ali in the cave. He called out Ali’s old nickname as he passed, softly enough, and Ali’s head jerked around in recognition, but his eyes dulled as they crossed Indelbed’s huddled form, like a curtain falling, and he walked on without slowing, not seeing anything that might possibly interest him.
Indelbed almost despaired. Was it Ali? Might his sight be off? He wanted to run after him, to ask him about marbles and magazines, but the moment had passed.
Then he saw an old man walking toward the corner store, slightly stooped, wizened, but not really that much worse off for a decade’s worth of living. It was a man absently walking the same steps he had done for the past forty years. Butloo! Indelbed squinted hard, tracing every familiar plane on that face, every wrinkle, until he was absolutely sure.
Then he called out in joy, he stood and waved his arms, forgetting everything. Butloo turned and stared at him, perplexed. “It’s me! It’s me!” But the old man saw something fearful, for he made a warding sign and backed away, brow furrowed, a look of horror on his face. Indelbed croaked out again, voice breaking, but there was only confusion in Butloo’s face, and it occurred to Indelbed that perhaps he didn’t look like himself, not like little Indelbed, not like anything human at all. He wanted to speak, but no words were coming out, only a lot of blubbering tears. It was too late anyway. Butloo was hurriedly walking back, and the shopkeeper, irate at this disturbance, was already coming out from behind his counter with fists clenched.
Indelbed retreated, gathering his tattered blanket around him, casting his face back into the shadows, adopting the shuffling gait of a beggar. Givaras had promised him dragonhood. Instead he had made him into a misshapen outcast.
He wandered aimlessly for a while, walking off the despair in his gut, until he came to a railroad market—hawkers with baskets of tired vegetables, ripe-looking fish eyeing the tracks with longing, their ghost souls contemplating annihilation, and clothes piled on racks—a sort of impromptu shopping center that scattered every time the train came and then amalgamated again on the tracks. It was dark now, and even these inveterate traders were winding down, heading for nearby shanties, or just finding a good spot on the ground. Indelbed was tired, hungry, and desolate, his distortion field guttering out so that he could barely see two feet in front of him, and he had no money for food or water, so he found a quiet space and lay down inside the cocoon of his rotten blanket, trusting in the dark.
He woke up in the weak light of predawn, found himself propped upright and tied to a pole naked somewhere behind a tin shed in another section of the tracks. His hands and feet were loosely bound with cables, enough give that he had slid to his knees. A younger boy sat on a stool nearby, watching, a thin strip of bamboo in his hands.
“Water,” Indelbed said. He raised his face and gave his captor a ghastly smile.
The boy took a plastic Coke bottle full of tube well water and poured it over his face, keeping a fair distance. Most of it dribbled into his mouth.
“Bless you,” Indelbed said. “Where am I?”
“They brought you at night.” The boy nodded toward the shed. “The night guard from the market and Ramiz.”
“Why?”
“They were going to rape you, but when they looked at you with a flashlight they thought you were diseased, and no one wanted to have a go.” The boy picked up a brick. “Listen, do you want me to hit you on the head?”
“What?”
“Trust me, it’ll be better. The guard is not so bad, but Ramiz likes hurting people. He’ll beat you for hours and then set you on fire. That’s what he said last night. He did a retard beggar like you last month. The guard filmed it and showed it to me.”
“I’m not a retard.”
“You’re a freak. No one’s gonna come looking for you.”
“They let you live.”
The boy shrugged. “I’m not diseased. Have it your way. You’ll be begging for the brick soon.”
“Won’t the market people come when I scream?”
“Scream?” The boy laughed. “No one came when I screamed. They’re protecting the market, see, catching thieves. Everyone knows little boys are thieves.”
“They’re going to burn me…”
“With kerosene.”
“Stick around then,” Indelbed said, and grinned. “You’re going to enjoy this.”
When the men came out finally they found him napping. The night guard was in his uniform, replete with stick and whistle. From the stains it seemed to be his only set of clothes. He came and cracked his truncheon against Indelbed’s shin, hard.
“Look at this thief, Ramiz,” he said. “Sleeping like a baby.”
Ramiz was a chubby, bearded man with a checkered scarf around his head and a spiffy Arab-looking outfit. He had a three-foot length of rod in his hands, which, up close, Indelbed identified as a product of the BSRM steel company. A second later it slammed into his arm, hard enough to fracture human bone.
“Look at his eyes,” the night guard said. He had his phone out, filming, an avid, obscene gaze on his face. “He’s blind.”
“He’s still a thief,” Ramiz said. “You know what I do to thieves.”
“Yes, Ramiz,” the guard said.
“We’re going to break your arms and legs, boy, and then I’m going to cut your hands off.”
“And then we’ll burn you,” the guard said. “Don’t forget the burning.”
“He already looks burned,” Ramiz said. “Disgusting. He ought to be killed before he spreads his filthy disease.”
“Don’t touch him, Ramiz,” the guard tittered. “It might be catching.”
“Don’t worry,” Ramiz said, “the only rod I’m going to use on him is iron.”
They laughed a bit at that, and then Ramiz started cracking Indelbed’s arms and legs with a well-practiced swing. The blows got harder progressively, but Indelbed was dragon inside, and his bones wouldn’t break. He cried from the pain, though, screaming with each terrible hit, and that seemed to please Ramiz well enough. The guard watched from the sidelines and shouted instructions. Ramiz started bashing Indelbed’s knees, stomping on his hands and feet, working methodically for an interminable amount of time, until he was faint from the pain and his voice reduced to a whisper.
Inside he was laughing, because this was nothing compared to the madness Givaras had inflicted. It seemed as if his master had trained him well for life on earth.
“Fire!” he shouted, letting the laughter bubble out. “Bring the fucking fire, enough of this tickling.”
Ramiz didn’t like that. He set to with rage, aiming for the head, trying to blot out the unexpected intrusion.
“He’s going to pass out!” The guard pulled him back. “He’s not going to enjoy the kerosene!”
“Fuck this.” Ramiz tossed the rod aside. “This freak actually wants to die. Get the kerosene, boy.”
The boy brought a jerrican and splashed it all over Indelbed, shaking the last few drops directly on his face.
“Wish you’d taken the brick now?” he whispered.
Ramiz lit a book of matches and threw it into the puddle, fanning the fire with a piece of cardboard until it caught properly. The three of them stood back to watch. The flames shot up with the kerosene, covering Indelbed almost completely, igniting the scales beneath his skin. It was nothing like core fire. He was dragon, and kerosene fire was like a mother’s embrace, a hot breeze on a summer’s day; it energized him, taking away the pain and the exhaustion. It burned off his bindings, freeing his arms and legs. He surged up, arms spread wide, fire dancing on his skin, and he embraced Ramiz, holding him tight in a lovers’ grip, and kissed his face until the fire caught his clothes, his hair, his mouth, until his eyes shriveled and his ears crisped, and he fell in a wet mess, thrashing in animal pain, trying to slough off his own skin.
The night guard tried to run, but the boy tripped him, ramming that bamboo stick into his legs. Indelbed set fire to his ankles, holding on for a good minute, until he could feel the bones turn to charcoal. He left the moaning guard for the boy. They seemed to belong together. He felt the urge to leave this filthy place, but everything was distant, subservient to the roaring exuberance of the dragon. Indelbed whistled as he walked along the tracks to the market, carefree as a bird, arms alight, setting fire to everything he touched.