Page 7 of The Wishless Ones
“As if you needed help getting out of there.”
It was the stranger’s smarmy voice, only it was coming from—below? Jafar looked down and blinked at what he saw, certain the effects of being repeatedly locked inside a cramped broom closet had finally gotten to him. He blinked again.
It really was the bird. His nemesis. Baba’s wretched parrot.
“Y-you,” Jafar sputtered.
“You’re welcome,” the parrot replied, tossing the key he had clutched between two yellow talons to the corner and landing on the marble tiles.
Jafar could only stare as the clattering subsided. “You can talk.”
Itwastalking, wasn’t it?
“It can talk,” Jafar breathed to himself.
“I’m a he, and you’re kinda stating the obvious there, pal,” the parrot deadpanned. “Thought you were the smart one.”
Which was precisely why a talking parrot was so dumbfounding a concept.
“So what are we going to do about that?” The parrot jerked his head at the parchment folder.
Jafar blinked down at his hand. Right. The scholarship.
But he couldn’t stop staring. The parrot’s movements were so oddly human, it was fascinating to watch. As if he were a human shoved into the body of a parrot.
He squawked. “You’re staring. The longer you take, the deeper a hole your father digs for himself.”
He was right about that, but Jafar didn’t care about the hole Baba was digging for himself—only the one he was digging for Jafar. He clutched the torn scholarship and realized something else just then: the parrot wasn’t like Rohan. He wasn’t trying to paint Baba in a better light, or make Jafar see something that wasn’t there. Talking to the parrot didn’t feel as though Jafar were trying to navigate some labyrinth.
It appeared the parrot saw the world much as Jafar did. He fluffed his feathers, causing the shreds of the scholarship to scatter. Jafar hurried to gather up as many as he could.
“Do you have a name?” he asked.
The parrot sighed. “This better not be the start of an interrogation. My name’s Iago.”
The name didn’t sound as though it originated from any local tongue. It was unusual, but so was a talking parrot.
“Well, Iago, myfriend,” Jafar said, straightening up to his full height, “it’s time we got to the bottom of this.”
Rohan knew that Baba was a creature of habit. Before relenting, he typically waited a few hours until he was certain Jafar was too defeated to start up another argument. Jafar, on the other hand, might give the illusion of defeat, but Rohan didn’t think Jafar ever truly felt it. He appeared, more often, to simply stop caring; at that point, he would stop engaging, too.
Still, Rohan had left the broom closet determined to try, for his brother’s sake. Baba’s office wasn’t far from the broom closet in which Jafar was locked. It was in the center of the house, a large and spacious room that quickly shrank when Baba’s men were there, voices loud and pride louder. Now, it was empty, save for Baba, seated on one of the many majlis cushions that created an intimate nook for his business discussions. His headdress was on the pillow beside him, a dark crimson coil bedazzled with a golden tendril at its center, and his dark brows were furrowed.
Rohan kept his footsteps light. “Baba, can you please let Jafar out? He didn’t intend to be rude.”
Baba heaved a weary sigh and looked up from his work. Sometimes, he gave the impression that he didn’t think Rohan was all that bright. “I know you think your brother is smart, but he’s in there for his own good. Brilliance means nothing without respect.”
Rohan didn’t think that was necessarily true.
“He has good ideas,” Baba continued, reading his mind, “but his heart isn’t always in the right place. Intention goes a long way, far more than actions ever do.”
Baba filed away several sheaves of papyrus notes into a wooden box and looked up when Rohan didn’t respond.
“You know this. You’ve said so yourself,” Baba said.
Rohan lowered his gaze. He didn’t always “say so himself” as much as find himself in positions where he couldn’t disagree with Baba. It happened just last week, when Baba was grumbling about Jafar’s scholarship, which Baba knew would arrive soon. It had surprised Rohan, because he hadn’t thought Baba paid enough attention to Jafar to have been keeping track of the days and thinking about the scholarship a week ago. Enough to be contemplating whether or not his son should attend the House of Wisdom.
It will be a win, yes, but he’ll leave us,Baba had said, and Rohan thought it a strange reason when Baba rarely cared for Jafar’s presence.
