Page 11 of The Wishless Ones
The ground beneath their sandals rumbled, sand and little pebbles shaking loose with the distant thunder of hooves. Horses. “Hear that? Everyone who wants a piece of Baba’s fortune—ourfortune—is already on the way. You know as well as I do that they won’t give us what we’re owed by right.”
Rohan stood on weak legs to face Jafar in the meager light. His brow was creased. “So that’s it? We’re giving up?”
“Yeah, what’s the plan here?” Iago asked.
Jafar wrapped a checkered keffiyeh around his neck and the bottom half of his face before doing the same for his brother. The sands were calm, but he didn’t want to take a chance at being recognized. He stepped into the open, pulling Rohan behind him, and the dry heat assaulted them as readily as the sun.
Jafar guided Rohan away from the plumes of smoke still huffing into the sky. “Iago, stay close. No, that doesn’t mean sit on my shoulder.”
Iago remained on his shoulder, talons digging into his robes and settling just on his skin. Jafar let him be. He had more pressing concerns, like remaining unseen.
“Ah, he wants me to pry,” Rohan said to no one in particular, but if he was exasperated by Jafar, it meant he was distracted from everything else, and that was yet another victory. “What are we going to do, then?”
The scholarship weighed heavily in Jafar’s pocket. But his chance at admission might yet exist, even if it hung by a thread, and with Baba gone, Jafar had never felt so hopeful. And cautious, as Iago’s words about Rohan still rang loud.
Jafar looked to the skies and the sands dusting the blue with gold and grit. The heat of the early afternoon sun across his robes was not unlike a mother’s embrace. Presumably. He remembered less and less of his mother as the years went on.
“Remember the last story Mama ever told us?” Jafar said finally, knowing it was his brother’s favorite.
“The golden scarab and the genie in a lamp, yes,” Rohan said, though he looked a little guilty when he said it, for reasons Jafar couldn’t place.
Jafar would have liked to say that he still wanted to apprentice in the House of Wisdom—that, instead of seeking out the scarab or the lamp, he wanted to find those enchanted rubies from a whole other story for reasons Rohan couldn’t understand.
A falcon swooped through the air with a cry, its limber form silhouetted against the light, and as Iago dug his talons deeper into Jafar’s shoulder in fear, Rohan looked up at it with a soft expression. He would take it as a good sign.
Jafar smiled. “That’s the one. We’re going to get our three wishes.”
Rohan was the one who had killed Baba, and Jafar could never know. It wasn’t Barkat exacting vengeance or a neglectful kitchen hand who let the fire grow high enough to catch a curtain, it wasn’t a glass left in the wrong ray of the desert sunlight, it was Rohan.
Jafar wanted to find the genie lamp and utilize those promised wishes as they were meant to be used. Unlike Rohan, who hadn’t used a genie to make his wish, just a handful of bitter, angst-ridden thoughts. He peered through the hole at the remains of their house, and he knew, deep, deep inside of him, that Mama had not returned. And instead of trading Baba’s riches for Mama’s return, he’d lost Baba, too.
The weight of that threatened to crush him.
Rohan had killed Baba, which made him certain now more than ever that he had also killed Mama, and if Jafar and the parrot hadn’t saved him, he would have died, too, in a moment of his own making.
Jafar pulled him from the old shack, and as they darted from the shadows of one enclave and alley to the next, Rohan snuck a glance at him, certain his brother could hear his thoughts. Sweat was dripping down his back, dampening the keffiyeh wrapped around his nose and mouth. They crossed one street and then another, that bright red parrot on Jafar’s shoulder.Talkingparrot. There was so much happening at once that Rohan didn’t think he’d fully grasped his current situation. His looming future.
Baba wasdead.
For as long as Rohan could remember, he had been Jafar’s shadow. And for as long as he could remember, he had been more than content toremainhis brother’s shadow. Even now, as he trudged along after Jafar, his heart sinking like his footfalls in the sand, he was grateful he wasn’t alone. Grateful his brother didn’t know the truth.
“Too bad we’ve had some good rain lately, or this one would have been a hero with all the water leaking out of his eyeballs,” Iago snarked from atop Jafar’s shoulder as Rohan swiped the tears from his face.
He hadn’t thought the parrot would be cruel when he and Jafar had purchased him in the bazaar. Then again, Rohan hadn’t thought the bird could speak, either.
By the time Rohan realized where they were going, Jafar was looking both ways before wedging his dagger behind the latch of the door. It snapped open, and the three of them stepped into one of their father’s storerooms not far from their house.
“Why are we here?” Rohan asked. His throat closed when the scent of Baba’s attar welcomed him.I’m sorry, Baba. He, too, had never been close to Baba, but their relationship had still been special in its own way. They shared secrets and conversations Jafar might never know about. Baba sought him out at times, even afforded vulnerability—a rare moment when he’d allowed himself to shed tears about Mama.
Focus. Jafar had a plan in mind. The genie lamp. If Mama’s stories were true, the lamp could do anything. Not only would Rohan bring Mama back, not only would Rohan right this horrible wrong by returning Baba to the world of the living, but he could wish for Baba to be a better man. Mama would appreciate that, too.
He would rewrite their entire lives for the better, and best of all: he would be responsible for their happiness.
It wasn’t often that Rohan was in accord with Jafar’s plans, but this time, he was.
Jafar wiped imaginary dirt off the blade and slipped it back in its sheath. Rohan was surprised there had been enough time for Jafar to grab his dagger as they were escaping from the house. It wasn’t as if he’d been forewarned of the catastrophe. “We might as well make use of something that’s ours by right.”
Rohan flinched at the heartless words and couldn’t stop the ice from slipping into his own. “He’s dead, Jafar. He might not have always been good—”
